- What's the critics' pick of movie popcorn?
- Let's talk about that.
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- Good Mythical Morning.
- Right off the top,
you should know that our new debut novel
The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek is available
for pre-order right now.
It's a thriller with humor and supernatural elements.
- Ooh. - And the teaser just launched
so make sure you check that out.
Pre-order your copy now at BleakCreek.com.
- BleakCreek.com, hey, the Oscars are this Sunday,
which means you've only got a few days to hit the theaters
and watch every single film nominated for best sound mixing.
- Get it in!
Now, I think that even the worst movie can be redeemed
by a tasty bucket of popcorn.
I would go and watch a root canal if they serve fresh,
delicious, buttery popcorn there, in fact,
I would get a root canal if they could figure out
a way to feed me popcorn during it.
- Okay.
But no matter how hard your meemaw tries homemade
or microwave popcorn, just doesn't stack up,
but which movie theater popcorn is the best?
Let's find out.
It's time for Which Popcorn Is The Top Corn?
Which Butter Makes Our Hearts Flutter?
Which Cinema will Win-ema?
- Okay we're gonna taste popcorn
from six different theater chains and because
of the nature of movie theaters,
we don't have six huge national chains to choose from.
We've got four national and two regional:
Pacific, Cinemark, AMC, ArcLight, Laemmle, and Regal.
And then we'll place them on the ranking boards behind us.
- You notice our rankings are all based on films
from last year, starting with the nastiest.
We've got Popcornian Crapsody, Cruud 2,
Sorry to Butter You, A Simple Flavor,
A Star Is Corn, and The Favourite.
- Let's taste some popcorn.
- [Rhett and Link] Round one.
- Okay we're starting with Pacific.
This is a regional Southern California chain,
been around since 1978.
The way we're gonna be doing this is we actually
gathered the butter or whatever it is, from each theater
and I'm gonna just spray a generous layer on top.
- Yeah and we're guessing that this is most likely
the Flavacol brand of orange butter product
that they use at a lot of these theaters.
We're guessing that's what they use specifically.
- [Rhett] But we got it from them,
so we took the guess work out.
- Smells like I'm about to nestle in and enjoy myself
for two hours.
- I mean that's good.
I think this is gonna be very difficult to separate
one from the next.
- I don't know, to hear Stevie talk about it,
she knows what her favorite is.
- Yeah when we talked about doing this, she was like,
no no no no, there's definitely one that's better
than the rest. - Okay.
So let's just start by putting this one right in the middle.
We'll probably have to do some retaste, but for now,
three and a half, as specific as the first one.
- [Stevie] Guys, I'm here, you know.
- I know.
- [Rhett and Link] Round two.
- Okay so next we have Cinemark.
A couple of distinctions here.
Instead of using coconut oil, they use canola oil to pop it
and they use anhydrous butter fat which is butter
with all the water and milk solids removed.
And according to a Yelp review from Supo,
he says that the popcorn here is very addicting
as opposed to everywhere else he normally
gets underwhelmed by the popcorn.
- Now there's a difference, there's a visual difference.
There's almost a uniformity to this
that I didn't see in the first one.
- Hmm. - Hmm.
- You're saying,
you're saying you can look at it and tell a difference.
- It's more uniform. - There's less yellow pieces
in that so this has got the more butter infused pops.
Mm. - Mm.
- That's good.
- I want to like this more because of the science behind it,
but having just tasted Pacific again,
I actually think that Pacific has a better flavor.
I think that the oil, the oil that they use for that
makes a better popcorn flavor.
- Okay so you wanna put this ahead.
- You don't agree. - No I don't.
I actually think this tastes burnt.
- This doesn't have nearly as much taste in it.
Less salt, not nearly as much taste.
It's not even comparable.
- So weird, I'm getting the exact opposite experience.
- This tastes like nothing to me.
- This is much more flavorful to me.
I don't know what it is.
It's butterier. - You also like dog food.
- Saltier.
Well, just the...
I don't know I think we're gonna have to duke it out.
Let's just put 'em right next to each other for now.
- This could be a problem.
We might have different popcorn palates, uh-oh.
- [Rhett and Link] Round three.
- Okay now we've got the largest theater chain
in America, AMC with 8200 screens in the U.S.
Go ahead and spray some butter on there.
It's popped in coconut oil and a Yelper in Inglewood said,
this popcorn sucks and the tickets are expensive.
Our show should've been discounted as a matinee.
- Wow.
I don't wanna be overly influenced
by that Yelp review but...
If I get a lot of the spray, of course it tastes good
'cause it's like, that Flavacol stuff but--
- There's a blandness and almost a fakeness to this.
- It's flat.
We're not even getting anything to disagree on, you know?
- Yeah clearly worse than the other two so--
- Yeah, clearly. - Wow.
- Crapsody is what I'm picking.
- They're cutting a lot of corners there
at the larger theater chain.
- [Rhett and Link] Round four.
- ArcLight is a small national chain with theaters
in LA, Chicago, D.C., and San Diego.
They pride themselves on a higher quality control
and just a better movie-going experience.
Does that apply to the popcorn as well?
- Now this is where we watch movies.
I mean we typically will only go
to the ArcLight to watch movies.
- Right, get your reserved seats and they stay
in the theater and check to make sure it's,
it's playing correctly, sounding correctly,
lookin' correctly and that the curtains aren't coming in.
- Has that ever happened at a theater for you?
- I've been in a frickin' movie and the curtains were in
a little bit and it was like I was watching it in 4:3
like an old YouTube video.
It's made with real butter.
- First of all, it is distinctly different than all the rest
and it reminds me of,
I'm thinking about all the movies I've seen
over the past couple years because this is the popcorn
that I get but I've never really stopped
to think about what it tastes like.
- No.
- I just eat it without thinking.
- Mm-hmm, that's a great thing about popcorn.
- Now Pacific Theaters owns the ArcLight.
- Doesn't involve the brain.
- Pacific Theaters owns ArcLight but--
- Whoops, missed my mouth.
- That's a different popcorn.
- Yeah, I really like this.
But I'm biased 'cause I really like the ArcLight experience.
- I don't like this. - You don't like it?
What do you not like about it?
- [Stevie] That's right, Rhett, that's right, Rhett.
You tell 'em. - It tastes like Cinemark.
It tastes like the one I don't like.
We have a diametrically opposed opinion
when it comes to popcorn.
I don't think we're going to be able
to stick to our ranking.
Because Pacific, the bigger owner of ArcLight
makes better popcorn!
And I think the-- - If you like burnt popcorn,
you like Pacific. - No, okay.
- It has a burnt. - So if you're the kind
of person that when you get down to the end
of your popcorn and there's those little half-popped kernels
and you enjoy those, you're like me.
You have a popcorn palate like me and I prefer Pacific.
If you don't like that, then you have the opposite thing.
So we're gonna have to basically have
to reverse the whole scale.
I don't know what we're gonna do.
- [Rhett and Link] Round five.
- Okay now we've got the Laemmle.
This is another regional chain.
This is like a family-run art house theater
established in 1938.
I go to the one in Pasadena sometimes
and you just feel fancy.
- Feel like you've got taste.
- I'm just going to see an indie.
- I enjoy-- - It's just an indie.
- Art.
- Normal folk don't enjoy-- - Moving pictures.
On a screen.
- Al Bondigas over in Pasadena said
this is the best popcorn in Pasadena.
He also said, I often go by just to get the popcorn.
Yummy!
(crew laughs)
- Is anyone else, have you ever thought about doing that?
- Oh, uh-oh.
- It's light.
It is fluffy.
It's real butter.
Nothing tastes burnt to me.
I'm likin' it.
Of course, I'm likin' this and I'm comparing it to that.
- Hold up, sucka.
- I'll even compare it to your flavor.
(grunts)
That's good.
We agree on that.
- [Rhett] This is better than all the rest.
- [Link] And you know what I like too,
I like the design of their bucket.
- It must not just be about the burnt part.
- What do you like about it?
- It has the most flavor.
I'm looking for flavor
because popcorn is such a uniform experience,
you wanna be reminded of what's happening
every once in awhile.
- I feel sophisticated.
- [Rhett and Link] Round six.
- All right now we have Regal which is
the second largest theater chain
and they also operate Edwards and United Artists
but we can't confirm they have the same popcorn.
It's popped in coconut oil and does use Flavacol.
Uh-huh.
Give it a nice little...
Again, it's not that I don't like this buttery flavor,
but I think once I've had real butter,
I don't like this as much.
- It's pretty middle-of-the-road for me.
- Yeah, yeah.
It's not singing any high notes
but it's not making me run out of the place.
- Okay.
- I think this is, I mean,
I'm lovin' this, you're lovin' that.
This is the area of dissension and disagreement.
I'm puttin' it below that just because
I like these.
You're putting it below that because you like that.
I think you might wanna put it here.
- I probably would. - But as a compromise,
let's just put it here.
And let's then shifty shifty shifty.
Shift all of this up here.
There we go, this is gonna work.
And there we go, and then yeah,
we'll just leave a big gap there.
- Okay so as you can see, the conclusion is clear.
(chuckles)
At least with the top, we both agree that the best popcorn
is at Laemmle which unfortunately is a regional chain
and where we get into the ones you can get nation-wide
at Cinemark and Pacific,
you're just gonna have to make your own decision.
Go see a movie why don't ya?
Feed the economy, stupid.
- Be artful, come on.
I'm gonna spend the next 25 days getting kernels
out of my gums.
- Thanks for liking, commenting and subscribing.
- You know what time it is.
- Hi I'm Nico. - I'm Colson.
- We're in a gas station parking lot.
- [Both] And it's time to--
- Let's talk about that.
- Come on!
Just spin it.
- Yeah, it's not easy.
- No it's not.
- Click the top link to watch us eat some
viewer-submitted popcorn hacks in Good Mythical More.
- And to find out where the wheel lands.
- [Rhett] Having a naked phone is embarrassing,
but you can avoid that by popping into Mythical.store
and buying some of our popsockets.