question of the day: Would you pay extra to add the experience of a theme-park ride to an action movie?

Presumably, this scheme is an attempt to combat piracy by making movie fans eager to pay for a multiplex ticket. And it’s another excuse, too, for theaters to hike up ticket prices... as Oh Gizmo! explains in its look at the high-tech seats: the seats will add $7 Canadian to the price of admission. Is it worth it? Oh Gizmo’s Andrew Liszewski:

The D-Box Motion Seats can kind of be compared to the experience you’d get from a ride at a high-tech theme park, but the range of motion on these seats is far more subtle. In fact, the seats don’t actually move at all, but tilt forward and back and side to side with a total range of about 15 degrees. And while that doesn’t seem like much, it’s more than enough to enhance the action in any film, particularly when you consider you’ll be enjoying the experience for 2+ hours at times. According to D-Box the seats are actually a bit larger than your standard theater seats, and that’s partly because they’ve got 3 brushless electric motors underneath which not only do an effective job at moving you around, but are also completely quiet.

We were shown a 20-minute clip from the beginning of the recently released Fast & Furious which is probably the perfect kind of film for the Motion Seats. The clip included a rather involved ‘car chase’ which admittedly was a lot cooler with the chair pitching and shifting underneath you, as well as a foot chase scene which was a bit subtler, but did a good job at showing off the range of motion the seats are capable of.

Does this sound appealing? Do you want your movie-theater seat to move more than the motion you get when the kid behind you kicks the back of your seat? Would you pay extra to add the experience of a theme-park ride to an action movie?

(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me.)