On the couch or on the big screen?

By Kurlis Mati

The two most popular ways people watch movies are sitting in theatre or at home using a streaming service, such as Netflix.  

Netflix now has over 60 million subscribers and the box office numbers for big budget movies have hit the one hundred million mark.

According to a non-scientific survey conducted on Survey Monkey, 34 per cent of people prefer watching a movie in the movie theatres while 43 per cent prefer streaming on Netflix. The other 23 per cent say they prefer watching movies on DVD, Blu-ray or a completely different way of streaming. As stated on the survey, streaming is much more popular in 2017 than going to theatres.

Ashley Samsone, a 20-year-old ancient classical history and archaeology student at the University of British Columbia and self proclaimed movie fanatic, said she prefers watching movies at or in theatres.

“I personally prefer the movie theatre over Netflix because of the experience you can feel by going to the movies. I suppose it is the feeling of being uninterrupted,” said Samsone.

“I do enjoy Netflix, I prefer to watch my series that way or any movie I haven’t seen yet. But with Netflix I find I lose my focus more so than in a movie theatre because of my surroundings. At home there are so many distractions.”  According to the survey, the most popular movie franchises to see in theatres are Marvel Studios, Harry Potter and Star Wars.

Riley William, a manager at Silver City in Windsor, said the most popular genres and movies are action and comedies.

“ Particularly sequels attract big crowds of people, especially any of the Marvel movies,” said William.

“You can’t see a fantastic netflix original such as Stranger Things at the movie theatre. Just like you can’t see a brand new movie with a lot of hype around it on Netflix. They both offer very different things,” said William.

Matt Jean, a local video editor, said he prefers movie theatres but not the crowds that attend.

“The theater is great because you could see all the work put into the special effects on the big screen but with Netflix, you get less annoying people talking and going on their phones,” said Jean.  

Netflix has been an active movie rental company since 1997 but moved to streaming in 2007. Movie theatres, on the other hand, date back to 1905.