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AIPROPX ReportThe A.V. Club · 2h ago
Want James Cameron to talk through Terminator 2? There’s an app for that
Terminator 2 returns to theaters today, kicking off a weeklong run in celebration of the film’s 35th anniversary. While movies returning to theaters for a limited engagement is hardly anything new, one deal-sweetening gambit to get people to check back in with T-800 caught our glowing red eyes. A company called TheaterEars is offering James Cameron’s director’s commentary, long available on the film’s dizzying number of DVD releases, in theaters via an app. An app? In theaters? Terminate? Maybe not.
The director’s commentary is a staple of home viewing, with not much presence in theaters aside from RiffTraxx live commentary events. The Criterion Collection began offering audio commentaries on its LaserDiscs with its 1984 release of King Kong . Roughly 15 years later, director commentaries were on seemingly every DVD special features disc, offering viewers a very knowledgeable tour guide through the movies they love. Who could forget the first time they heard the Clerks audio commentary where Jason Mewes shows up drunk and falls asleep in the middle of the movie? It’s an experience like none other. Today, “premium large format” theaters like Imax have driven a surge in theatergoing this summer with The Odyssey . Boxed out of Imax theaters by Dune: Part Three , Disney hopes to sate theatergoers’ hunger for high-quality presentation with a proprietary certification system called “Infinity Vision.” It’s all in service of giving people an experience they can’t get at home, and audiences are buying it. TheaterEars is doing the opposite, digging up a relic of home viewing and bringing it to movie theaters.
“Where it used to be that almost every film had a director’s commentary, now very few and far between get them,” TheaterEars CEO Dan Magru tells The A.V. Club , “so we started looking at ways to give that new life.”
TheaterEars was created for translation, beginning with the 2017 release of Coco , which the company accompanied with a Spanish-language dub provided by the studio. Today, Mangru says, the company has around 4 million users in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico using the app for translation. Its expansion into commentary coincides with the box office resurgence and Alamo Drafthouses’ implementation of phone-based ordering. TheaterEars also requires some in-theater phone usage, which is a non-starter for most moviegoers. Just ask anyone who’s been to— or has actively avoided going to —an Alamo in recent months. But TheaterEars has taken steps to make the app as unobtrusive as possible to other theatergoers. Audio from TheaterEars cannot be played through the phone’s speakers and must go through wired or Bluetooth headphones, and as soon as the film syncs with the picture on screen via the phone’s mics, it automatically dims the screen.
“There’s really no reason to tap your phone [once the film begins],” he continues. “When the app is synced, there’s a black overlay that goes over the screen, so even if you’re not on the lock screen, it’ll just be black, just pure black on the phone at the lowest possible setting, so nobody can see that.”
Adds Mangru, “There’s probably a 99% chance you’ve been to a movie theater with somebody that’s been using our app, except that the app is designed to be so inconspicuous inside a movie theater that you didn’t even notice.”
TheaterEars has more offerings on the horizon for both new and old films. James Cameron’s commentary on Terminator 2 begins today and runs through September 2 for the film’s re-release. TheaterEars also has commentary for La La Land with director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz, Toy Story 5 with co-director Kenna Harris, production designer Bob Pauley, and visual effects supervisor Thomas Jordan, and Wet Hot American Summer with director David Wain, co-writer Michael Showalter, and star Janeane Garofalo. Sadly, the Wet Hot DVD’s infamous extra farts audio track isn’t available. But hope springs eternal: “If they make it,” Mangru says, “we can do it.”
Want James CameronTerminatorThere’sOnceSpanishTheaterEarsWhileJames CameronDVDMaybeRiffTraxxThe Criterion Collection
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