Why my Avatar: The Way of Water 3D experience was ruined

There is nothing worse than going to watch a movie you have been waiting 13 years for and then having it ruined by uncontrolled kids.

Avatar: The Way of Water, Source: Peakpx, 2021

If I was to list my pet peeves, screaming children in the cinemas would be at the top of that list.

On Thursday 29 I decided to take my mum to go watch Avatar: The Way of Water, because I know how much she loved the first one. As we were booking the tickets online we both felt that rush of excitement to finally see the movie after all this time, and even more excited to see it was going to be in 3D just like the first movie.

My mum and I are big movie people. We love going to the cinemas to watch a newly released film and feel the emotional journey with the audience around us. However, this time we were trying to hold back our emotions of anger and frustration, but not because of the movie...

When we arrived at the cinemas we showed the lady at the counter our online tickets and bought a combo with popcorn, a large solo drink and our all time favourite boysenberry ice cream. This special combo feels like a family tradition if thats what you can call it.

Anyways, my mum and I walked in the cinemas as the trailers were playing and sat down in our seats as we prepared ourselves for the long emotional journey ahead of us.

As the lights turned off and the movie began we heard some kids screaming and yelling. We just presumed the parents settled them down because they went quiet not long after.

As the movie was starting I questioned to myself why anyone would even bring young kids to a three hour-long movie in the first place.

Throughout the first half of the movie there were occasional screams from children but I tried not to let it bother me. After all I paid to see the movie on the big screen in 3D for the experience to share with my mum.

However, let me say this. There were so many great emotional scenes throughout the movie... BUT EVERY SCENE WAS RUINED BY KIDS SCREAMING, RUNNING AROUND PLAYING TAG.

I can not express how frustrated I felt for the second half of the movie.

There is nothing worse than when parents bring their young children and even babies into the cinemas who start screaming every five seconds and interrupting a serious or emotional scene.

There were so many moments I looked off the screen for one second to see if the parents were going to get their kids and then I missed something important that I could not just simply rewind.

My heart started pounding really fast as I tried to contain my frustration and anger towards both the parents and the kids who looked like a couple of five to seven year olds.

It wasn't just the screaming that annoyed me, but the fact that the parents let their two uncontrolled kids run around in front of the screen playing tag.

I would have said something to the kids or parents but I was too far up the back.

In all honesty I was hoping someone else would tell them off, but to my surprise it never happened. I could clearly see peoples heads turning towards the kids and whispering to each other but no one did anything.

When the kids finally sat back down, not long after loud kid music started playing from a phone during another emotional scene that was meant to be silent. The music was playing for around a couple minutes before the kids seemed to get bored and went back to running around and screaming again.

What I am trying to say after this little rant is that things like this are unacceptable.

The uncontrolled screaming kids ruined the experience of the movie that I was excited to share with my mum.

Those are moments I can't get back and defiantly cannot forget.

I can't just pretend like none of it ever happened, because it did.

Kids under a certain age should not be allowed in the cinemas if they don't have a parent who will actually tell them off for screaming or running around.

Especially with long movies like Avatar!

A solution to this problem would be having another theatre room in every cinema specifically for kids where they won't be distracting an audience full people who actually paid to watch the movie in peace.

For those of you who are parents with young kids, please control your kids and be considerate of others when taking them to the cinemas.