Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Dreams Of A Movie Theatre With Wifi, Outlets, And Low-Lights So You Can Surf The Web At The Movies

Because, on his blog, the normally very smart, very sharp Walk came up with a not so sharp idea to improve the movie-going experience:

I’d love to watch Pacific Rim in a theater with a bit more light, wifi, electricity outlets and a second screen experience. Don’t tell me I’d miss major plot points while scrolling on my ipad – it’s a movie about robots vs monsters. I can follow along just fine.

If you took a theater or two in a multiplex and showed the types of films which lend themselves to this experience I bet you’d sell tickets. Maybe even improve attendance during the day since I could bang out emails with a 50 foot screen in front of me.

In case you can't follow along, Walk wants a movie theatre that lets you do work so you don't have to watch the movie. We assume he wants to bring a laptop to the theatre, since he wants WiFi.

The commenters on Walk's original blog post lit him up, and rightly so. This is a comically misguided idea. It's unfortunately the kind of thinking that comes from a busy VC, who gets a lot of email.

Normal people get email, but no so much email that they can't carve out two hours to watch a movie on the big screen. And, if you're not that interested in the movie, stay home, rent a movie, and wait for whatever is in the theatre to be in iTunes.

The reason one goes to a movie theatre is the big screen, loud speakers, dark room, and uninterrupted experience that only comes from being at the theatre. There's a reason the movie theatre asks you to turn off your phone before the movie starts.

It's so you can be engrossed in the film! If you don't want to see the movie, don't go!

We like Walk, think he's normally pretty great, but he just missed the mark here.