Duncan Lay: Why Millennials are giving films the flick

NEWS this week that the film industry is worried that Millennials, the 18-24 demographic, aren’t going to the movies enough. I’m not surprised, Duncan Lay writes.

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NEWS this week that the film industry is worried that Millennials, the 18-24 demographic, aren’t going to the movies enough.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

For a start, a movie ticket costs almost as much as a plate of smashed avocado. A Millennial looks at the price of a ticket and thinks: It’s the movie or breakfast.

So Millennials are not going to the cinema. I’m not surprised, Duncan Lay writes. Picture: Thinkstock

That’s if they have got their heads around the whole concept of paying for something. After a life funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad, they are slowly learning money does not grow on trees. Even if avocadoes do — although then you have to pay someone to smash them.

They would much rather wait until they can rip it off for free on the internet.

This illustrates a bizarre contradiction with Millennials. They work themselves … sorry, I’ll change that. I shouldn’t have mentioned the “W” word around them.

Anyway, they get angry over climate change, warning that if nobody starts paying to fix it, the world as they know it will come to a fiery end.

Yet they see nothing wrong with the concept of illegally downloading everything off the internet. As far as they are concerned, if nobody is paying for it, things will just go on like before.

But back to the movies. There are some other fundamental problems with the cinema. It asks you to turn off your mobile phone before the movie starts.

For a Millennial, that’s like asking them to turn off their life support.

Snacks at the movies might be just too expensive for Millennials, Duncan Lay says. Picture: Brad Newman

Then there’s the snacks. It’s not so much the stupidly expensive cost of them but more that none of them look any good in an Instagram post. Plus the lighting’s hopeless for all those selfies.

Then we come to the movies themselves. It’s not that films aren’t aimed at the 18 to 24 demographic. It’s more that the film is not about them. This is a generation that grew up with fairytales reworked to have them as the star.

Why would they spend two hours of their precious time on a story about somebody else?

Now of course there are very many wonderful Millennials, to whom the above piece is a huge insult. Just like there are many kind-hearted traffic wardens and charitable supervillains. In fact, when we find one of those, how about we make a movie about them?