A new AP poll shows 40% of adults under 44 often or always watch TV shows or movies at home with the subtitles turned on. Movie theaters are catching on to the trend and are becoming more accessible for those who are hard of hearing. Many are offering open caption screenings, which means the captions are on in the movie theater. And these screenings have picked up an unexpected audience.

In the parking lot of the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee, I caught Amelia Van Howe, who loves watching all movies with captions. 

“I feel like COVID was maybe the time that I started watching everything with captions, and I think that that was just because I was living in a perpetual couch state,” Howe said.

Once she started watching Netflix with the captions on, she just never turned them off.      

“Everyone I know watches with captions, and maybe this is because I’m a millennial, but why not have it in theaters as well?” Howe said.

The executive director at the Belcourt, Stephanie Silverman, decided to run open caption screenings to help the many people who need them. 

 ”One in seven Americans have hearing loss and other challenges, and that's the community that we're really trying to make sure has easy, open, accessible screenings available to them” Silverman said.

It’s part of a growing accessibility movement in theaters across the country. In 2021 AMC, the country’s biggest movie theater chain, added open caption screenings to 240 theaters around the country. They’ve since increased that number. Regal, the second largest chain, added screenings too. Now small independents like The Belcourt are dedicating entire days to open caption screenings.

Film critic and professor Walter Chaw said there is a reason that captions are showing up everywhere these days: streaming. He pinpoints the change to AT&T’s takeover of HBO in 2018. 

“Before there was a standard from the golden age of broadcasting where the volume of a piece was always grounded on dialogue being the loudest noise.”  

But, Chaw said, AT&T changed the standard — the loudest volume could be the loudest sound in the movie. 

“So, all of a sudden when you had a gunshot or an engine revving, or a crash or an explosion, that became the upper register. So, everything else was considerably quieter then,” Chaw said.

That’s when so many people got in the habit of following along the dialogue by reading the words on the screen. 

But Chaw said we kind of lose something watching movies like this. 

“I think that it's just making us a little bit lazy and beholden to a plot. In the past we would've just sort of let the vibe carry us.  I'm not sure every word is sacrosanct. I think you actually lose more by having subtitles on that are not necessary,” he said.

This “captions on/captions off” debate was even playing out at open captions night at the Belcourt Theatre while Trey Johnson and Holly Field, a couple in their early 20s, were gearing up to watch “One Battle After Another.”

“So here's the thing, if it were just me in the theater, I would say no 'cause I feel like it draws my eyes to the bottom of the screen,” Johnson said.

Standing in line for popcorn, they were a house divided. 

“I wish I had subtitles in real life.  I'm just prone to not paying attention if I'm not reading something, honestly,” said Field.

Soon AI transcription will make virtually every movie available for captions in the future. So, whether you want to, need to, or are seeing it against your will, everyone will be able to read Leonardo DiCaprio yell “viva la revolution!” on the screen during “One Battle After Another.”