Great news for anyone who’s ever been watching a movie in a theater and thought to themselves, “Damn, I’m neither wet, nor physically shaken enough, by this film”: AMC has just signed a new deal with South Korean theater co*pany CJ 4DPlex to bring 40 of its 4DX theater auditoriums to U.S. and European venues.
If you’re not familiar with 4DX—once memorably described by The A.V. Club’s own Emma Keates as “like seeing a movie in an actively crashing plane”—it’s basically an attempt to take the experience of watching MuppetVision 3D at Disney (or your nearest theme park movie theater equivalent) and export it to the masses. You know the kind: Vibrating seats, sprays of water, pumped-in stinks, and other effects meant to, in a perfect world, increase immersion with the film. (The co*pany’s list of features also includes a “leg tickler,” in case this wasn’t already too William Castle for you.) Although AMC has flirted with some of this before (mostly just the vibrating seat part) if you wanted the full 4DX experience in the U.S., you were stuck going to Regal Theaters; now, though, AMC is getting on the fun, which means that AMC patrons will now also be able to be distracted from the attention span-sapping hell of sitting quietly and watching a movie in 40 new locations.
Not that it’s all just simulated bubbles and snow—they also pump in simulated bubbles and snow—though: CJ 4DPlex also makes a technology it calls ScreenX, which might be of interest even if you just want to, say, watch a movie without having all your teeth shaken out of your skull. Via the same deal, AMC is also going to open 25 of those massive auditoriums, which use multiple projectors to broadcast onto what’s essentially three movie screens at once, in 270 degrees. (There’s actually one in South Korea that projects in 360 degrees around you and the ceiling, but we’ll take some baby steps here. We also regret to inform you that there are theaters that co*bine ScreenX and 4DX to produce what sounds like Ideal Sensory Freak-Out Conditions, but blessedly none of those are Stateside yet.) Does all of this seem kind of desperate from an industry desperate to claw its way back to sustainability after the massive hits it took during the COVID-19 lockdowns? Shh, stop asking questions, and just sit back and watch A Minecraft Movie while having your spine knocked out of alignment every time Jack Black lands a joke.