Chinese woman is emotionally damaged from excessive advertisements

by Liam on September 8, 2010 · 2 comments

Aftershock Whenever we go to see a movie it is common place to see advertisements before the showing. Personally i’m not too bothered by them as they only last around 5 minutes and then we get to see the latest trailers, but it seems not everyone is happy about them.

According to The Calgary Herald a Chinese woman is suing the distributors of earthquake movie Aftershocks and the place she saw the movie “for wasting her time by showing 20 minutes of commercials” and claims they “should have told her how long the pre-movie advertisements lasted”.

Chen Xiaomei is demanding the companies refund her 35-yuan ticket (5.20 dollars), pay her 35 yuan in compensation and one yuan for emotional damages and write her an apology, the report said. She has also advised the cinema to publish the advertisement times on its website, in the lobby or on its customer hotline and asked Huayi Brothers to cut the length of commercials to less than five minutes.

20 minutes is rather excessive, although if I were emotionally damaged as a result i’d want more than one yuan (0.147262 U.S. dollars).

After doing a little research on the movie I can understand why she was annoyed with the 20 minute wait. Aftershocks is the first IMAX film made in China and has become the highest-grossing domestic film, raking in 650 million yuan ($95 million). It’s the Chinese Avatar basically.

The film is based on the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed 240,000 people in Tangshan in northern China. The story centers on a mother who has to decide which of her two children to save from the rubble. Between the twin boy and girl, she opts for the boy. The mother is unaware her daughter is still alive and hears the decision. (And she isn’t suing for emotional damage from this!?)

You can watch the cool trailer below. It looks like 2012, just not a comedy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QntkZ1R9yTM

  • http://mybrandnewlife.wordpress.com/ Mr Kiki

    Personally I’m with her. I’ve been to see films at the Odeon in the UK which could have up to 25 minutes of adverts and trailers (I kid you not!). When you’re going to see a 2 hour movie that’s one fifth of your total time in the cinema. Seems a little excessive to me. If this was TV that would be illegal. I think they make enough out of ticket prices and massive mark ups on food that we can live without the commercials (like we used to) and just have the trailers.

  • Aaron

    Here in Canada there are typically 10-20 minutes of commercials (advertisements not for movies) and just as many trailers (advertisements for movies). Personally, I enjoy the trailers and feel their an important part of going to the cinema. I’m not so tolerant of the commercials, which began playing around four years ago. This is on top of a new (started around two years ago) “preshow” that lasts half an hour and is essentially a alternative form of advertisements, played in theatres with the lights still up. This “preshow” replaced the movie trivia that theatres used to show before the trailers. On occasion they still drop in a “who is this actor” sort of thing but it’s mostly “interviewers” promoting music or a new laptop or upcomming dvd release or fancy car. The silent (as in not formally announced) reason for all these advertisements is that the film industry is apparently not doing so hot, the justification here is that ticket prices aren’t going up … much.

    I may be alone or part of a minority but I would rather pay an extra fifty cents or dollar to enjoy the cinematic experience without almost an hour of advertising.