Blueberry Smell-o-Vision, AR Popcorn Buckets, and In-Lobby Pickleball will not make the movie great again

Back in 2017, acclaimed French actress Isabelle Huppert was asked during a junket interview about her favorite movie snack. “NO snack!” Huppert replied: formidable as always. “No drink. No food. No noise!” (Come on. Can you really imagine Isabelle Huppert rolling up to the cinema and go to town on a box of nachos and a Blue Icee?)

That video comes to mind often these days as theaters and studios continue to announce new stunts that fill me with the same quiet disdain as Huppert in that clip. Smell-o-vision. Ever more grotesque popcorn buckets. Zip lines. Imagine telling Isabelle Huppert about the zip lines.

The latest comes via the A24. Select screenings of their lively new horror film Hereticalstarring Hugh Grant, will feature something no one ever asked for: the buttered smell of blueberry pie that fills the theater during a blueberry pie-related moment on screen.

“When we first heard A24’s bold idea to revive the multi-sensory experience to emphasize this pivotal sequence, it had us howling with laughter,” directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods told Black. “We are so pleased that audiences have this unique opportunity to be immersed in the world of the film.”

Oh, for sure. I know it sounds hypocritical coming from the star i Megalopolis‘s live component, but I would argue that going to the cinema is already a multi-sensory experience. Seeing and hearing the film is good enough.

Gimmicks have been around to get bums in the seats pretty much since the beginning of cinema. And 4DX – with vibrations, fog, wind effects and so on – has also been around for years now. As we have argued in GQit may well be the ideal way to see a blockbuster such as Twisters. But it’s not encouraging to see creep across genres, aided by an obvious thirst to create the next viral thing. Me personally? I don’t need to get Giardia from being in the splash zone too Gladiator II.

Speaking of Gladiator IIit is at the forefront of the battle – against Alien: Romulus sample container and the infamous Dune sand worm – to create the most unnecessarily flashy collectable popcorn bucket. On top of the previously announced MF Doom bathtubwill be another option shaped like the Colosseum that allows you to scan a QR code and watch a buttery scented battle take place inside. (I will remember this plastic production when I blog from my floating office in Underwater Manhattan.)

People still don’t go to the movies like they used to. It is expensive. There is streaming at home. Audiences also stopped knowing how to behave in movie theaters – what’s the point of paying at least $20 per movie? ticket and then mess around on TikTok while you’re at the movie? In response to this, theater owners have resorted to trying to lure people in with anything other than, er, the actual movies. Take this report from Black on a $2 billion plan to upgrade displays across the country, including pickleball courts and, yes, ziplining.

My favorite cinema is pretty much the antithesis of all this. The programming is well thought out. Popcorn kind of stinks. By a presentation of drive my carsomeone’s phone went off twice and I thought there was going to be a real riot. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the multi-sensory experience that theaters need to invest in – seven-year-olds who will tell you when to shut up.