And worse, it's not even consistent, they show different amounts of trailers based on the movie/showing! If you show up 20 minutes late, you might miss the start for some movies and yet still have another 15 minutes of trailers for others.

Calling them trailers is a bit of a stretch; and only 3 minutes of ads? We go to different screenings!

Now that reserved seats are the norm, I leave my house at the specified starting time and never have missed even a minute of the feature film.

I hate this. Like the ticket is not expensive already, they also feel like feeding you ads.

And then wonder why people don't go to the cinema and wonder if they can increase the amount of ads to compensate...

Ticket sales typically go to the distributor, those ads are how the theater makes money

Sure, that needs to change.

As a customer, though, I don't really care about the theater's pricing structure. If I'm paying for a pricey ticket, I don't expect to be advertised to. If the theater experience is lousy, I won't go to the theater.

Well at least it's not Amazon prime where they now interrupt the movie for the same ad/trailer 3 for weeks unless you pay extra again.

Fwiw I always enjoyed the trailers at the movies, no the other ads I could very much do away with (and I used to purposefully come late to shows to miss the ads).

I don't necessarily hate the trailers per se, but this is about time management.

If the whole preshow is 10 minutes like in the theater where I used to live a few years ago, that is still somewhat more acceptable. But these days, with 20-25 min of preshow, were I to arrive at the showtime, I'd be looking at spending 1hr extra just to see a movie compared to watching it home (consider the time it takes to travel and maybe wait in the line for concessions).

I'm sure that's what lots of people do and many people are totally fine with this. Not me. I have got too much going on to spare that 1hr, especially on a weekday evening. I have to intentionally leave late to arrive on time to justify even going to the theater at all.

Just bring your smartphone and a headphone.