Cineworld: run by robots who just don’t care
Just got back from a showing of “Sherlock Holmes” (which was rather good, by the way) at Cambridge Cineworld. The talking point of the evening, however, was not the main movie, but a trailer shown beforehand for a quite dreadful-looking movie called “The Sitter”. The problem was that the trailer was in no way suitable for an audience containing 12 year olds, with more use of bad language in two minutes than would be allowed in an entire 12A movie, and some sexual references which were uncomfortable even for the adults in the audience. Now, if people want to make and watch movies like that, then fine, but the (presumably mistaken) showing of this trailer demonstrated why the cinema multiplex business is slowly killing itself. Mark Kermode would nod his head knowingly.
On heading out from the showing, the young manager was clearly waiting for us all, accompanied by our complaints. It turned out that he’d been besieged by angry cinemagoers all day, and could only offer the defence that “the computer says it’s a 12A trailer for a 12A film”. When we pointed out that “The Sitter” was actually a 15 movie, and showed him the BBFC website, he resorted to saying that “the computer says otherwise”. When we asked if he’d watched it, he said that he had (unsurprisingly, given the complaints he’d been getting), and we asked if he agreed that it was unsuitable. At this point, while not saying yes, he admitted: “We’re not able to stop the trailers even if we wanted to, they come direct from a satellite”. So whatever was being streamed to his screens, the human being in charge was unable to do anything about it, regardless of the distress – and at our showing, anger – being caused. It makes you weep.
The trailer has been rated 12A.
There is a 12A trailer, I’ve just found it. But I’ve also found the considerably more explicit trailer we were shown, and here it is. It’s called “red band” in the USA, I’ve not heard of that classification here. And it is NOT suitable for work, as they say.
The cinema has NO control over what to show, these decisions come from head office, and they are also told what to show and when by the distributors, so if they say they want a particular trailer to be shown before a certain film, and they are paying for the privilege then it has to be done.
the BBFC rated this trailer as a 12A, therefore if you have complaints take it up with them, they say it is quite acceptable to show, the cinema and its staff only do as they are told, they do care, contrary to the stupid comment at the top, but i am sure you can understand it gets a little bit much after a while when you get people constantly berating someone when it is no fault of there own and there is NOTHING they can do to stop it….. CONTRACTS ARE CONTRACTS and if they are broken (and trailers and adverts are checked frequently by an outside company) the company could lose the business of the advertiser and the distributor could decide the next big film will not be showing in Cineworlds cinema’s.
Take it from me i know
Cheers JagBoy, interesting, and I’m sure you do know! However, the point remains that the trailer being shown cannot have been the one rated by the BBFC as 12A, but was in fact the one rated as 18. There are two quite different trailers. It’s Cineworld showing the wrong trailer – the BBFC has done its job.
I thought we were all quite understanding with the helpless cinema manager, and have directed our complaints at Cineworld head office. However, just how inappropriate does content shown in error have to be before the manager just has to use some initiative and do something about it?
UPDATE
Just had this response from Cineworld head office: “I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for the unsuitable trailer before a 12A film. I have spoken to the General Manager at Cineworld Cambridge and he confirmed that there was an error for this particular performance, where the wrong reel of film was shown. This was a genuine error on behalf of the Projection Team and the manager asked me to pass on his apologies to you for this incident.”
As a former projectionist for a cineworld I can tell you how easy this can happen. Be it digital or 35mm the stupid labels put on the trailers can easily be mistaken one for the other. Specially on the digital projectors, they have the most pathetic names that are alphanumeric and all one word in a tinny screen no bigger than an iPhone with names that span 4 lines. The projector normally ingest in order. It only takes a misreading of one with “12” in the name somewhere. The BBFC were not at fault on this occasion but they do make life difficult. You should see the stupid format they have for trailer plans and half the time they don’t provide you with the right trailers.
Normally on the first showing of a new playlist/ad reel I use to make sure I watched it all, its to easy to make mistakes.