Jay Barmann for SFist on the city’s newest movie theater:
The new Regal location offers the 10-year-old Regal Premium Experience (RPX) with its 270-degree screens, as well as the 4DX experience, which, if you haven’t heard about it, is sort of insane. Taking cues from amusement-park rides, blocks of seats have motion effects that pitch, twist, vibrate, and roll in coordination with action happening on screen. And, there are “atmospherics” that include bursts of air and squirts of water on your face, to go along with the movie action, and scent effects that drift out of the seats into the theater as well. Also: fog and bubble machines that fill up the auditorium, and actual snow and rainstorm effects, when needed.
I mean… what the literal fuck? In much of the U.S. we’re just now leaving a world ravaged by a pandemic. A pandemic which has absolutely destroyed movie theaters. A pandemic which has taught us all to be wary of our activity indoors, especially where people might be vocal. And Regal’s move here is to open an amusement park-style movie theater. With moving seats and bursts of air and squirts of water aimed at your vulnerable face. The first screening may as well be titled: ‘COVID: The Experience’.
I will say that the name of the theater is absolutely perfect: The Regal Stonestown Galleria ScreenX, 4DX, & RPX. I can’t tell if Microsoft or Vin Diesel named this thing…
