It strikes me as odd that this could come from the guy who gave us Blade Runner:

Famed director Ridley Scott has apparently stated that watching films on mobile phones and computers is killing cinema. Unfortunately, it seems that he has it backwards. He’s blaming the wrong thing when he says things like: “We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. But we’re fighting technology.” As we’ve pointed out time and time again, people want to go out to the theater, but they want the experience to be enjoyable. They don’t want to be treated as if they’re criminals. So, the problem isn’t that people can watch movies on gadgets like mobile phones and computers — but that the theater industry has done its best to drive people away from actually wanting to go to the theaters.

Read the whole entry with comments at the TechDirt blog: “Ridley Scott Warns That Gadgets Are Ruining The Movies”

Another issue: this is a “world is flat” sort of triumph. If I had my wishes, every movie I see would be in the theatre. But do the math: I have four children. Watching a movie together takes a lot of money. I can rarely afford this place. So the people who can afford it, go to the theatre, and the rest of us use the falling costs of digital technology to compensate for what we can not afford.

By the way, movies started out cheap. That’s why people all got used to them. In fact, I think they were even more affordable during the Jimmy Carter stagflation era, though I’ve done no research to back that up. Theaters are increasingly out of reach for families with children. So they stay home and make do.