Where Movies are Moving
Travel back in time with me.
It’s the summer of 1975. The Vietnam war has just ended and Gerald Ford is the President. You’re in high school and you decide to head to the movies because you feel like you’re the only one amongst your friends that has yet to see the summer’s hottest flick. Everyone - and I do mean everyone - is watching and talking about it. If you don’t see it now, who knows how long until you will get to see it or even how. Blockbuster Video doesn’t open for another 10 years! Plus, do you really want to run the risk of being the only one in your group of friends that has nothing to add to the only conversation anyone is having?
The movie is Jaws and it’s by a relatively unknown director named Stephen Spiller… er, um… Spielman? Oh, Spielberg? What a stage name.
What you are experiencing all around you has come to be known in modern times as the first ever “blockbuster” craze. Sure, nowadays it’s easy to see how fake the shark looks in the moments between when it eats Robert Shaw and when it explodes (No, I will not apologize for spoiling a 45 year old movie.) But to your 16 year old brain, you are part of something - a monoculture of sorts. It’s the idea that everyone around you is being shaped by all the same pop culture influences.
Now quick, fast forward to 2020 and name the thing that we are ALL watching and talking about. Ok fine, there are a few from recent memory, but Marvel movies are based on comics from the 60’s and Game of Thrones started in 2011 and is the last dying breath of monoculture. There is a reason beyond simple nostalgia that college kids have Star Wars posters in their dorm rooms and not as many of Iron Man or Captain America. Those guys are cool, but franchises like Star Wars and Terminator didn’t just shape movie culture back in the day; They shaped all of culture. They were culture. For everyone.
In our present day, though, the presence of a monoculture in our society has all but ceased.
So what changed?
Well, we got a lot more options.
I remember 10 years ago the feeling of bewilderment I had as my freshman roommate watched Dexter on Netflix on his computer thinking, “Wow, it is so cool that he can just watch that without a DVD!” A decade later most of us don’t remember the world before thousands and thousands of movies and television shows were delivered directly to us and an algorithm scored how much we may like it based on our prior viewing.
As a matter of fact, Chris Ryan of theringer.com argued recently that the monoculture of today - the thing we are ALL consuming - isn’t an individual show or movie but is actually just Netflix itself. We’re all scrolling the title screens and the most universal culture experience for any of us is the sort of buffet line of endless possibilities available on these streaming services. Most people have cut the cord on a basic cable package and opted for their own cocktail of subscriptions that is tailored to their very specific likes and dislikes.
“I’ll have a little bit of this. A little of that. Oops, need to subscribe to this one because I want some of that other thing too.”
It’s not just in film either. Try to imagine a band in 2020 having the influence of The Beatles in 1965. Music is easier to access than ever before on Spotify and Apple Music, and yet because no one listens to the radio, no one is listening to the same stuff. Our collective attention is fragmented because we just have a lot more options.
None of this is bad, necessarily. But it does come with consequences.
If you have driven by your local theater recently, you may have noticed that there seems to be only a certain kind of movie playing there: Toy Story 4, Frozen 2, Jurassic Park One Too Many, etc. The only way people go to the movies anymore is if it is something that harkens back to the monoculture. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gives everyone that can remember it a feeling of the way that things used be:
“I have to see it, EVERYONE is.”
This only happens with the giant franchises and reboots (Ever wonder why Disney is making a live action remake of every animated movie they’ve ever produced?) As televisions get bigger and higher in definition, so too does our collective unwillingness to pay 15 dollars to see a movie at a theater when we could just wait to watch it at home. It’s not just us, though. Movie studios and producers are much less willing to bring their movies to the big screen. It used to be that a studio had to take a $25 million chance on investing in When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle. If the movie was a smash to the tune of $125 million, they could make a ton of money! Sometimes, though, these mid level movies would flop or struggle to break even. It’s a classic high risk, high reward. For film investors, some might say too much risk. Now, filmmakers and producers can make a $25 million movie and sell it to Netflix for $35 million (I don’t know exact numbers). They don’t make a ton, but they do make a profit. But it begs the question, “What if the movie is a flop?” The answer: NETFLIX DOESN’T CARE!
A typical movie has a 3-6 week run in theaters in which they have to make an impression and generate revenue. However, movies live on Netflix FOREVER. Netflix doesn’t care how good the movie is, they just care that there are enough movies to make your $12.99/month worth it to you. If there is an endless sea of options, you won’t feel the need to go elsewhere - even if the options are ultimately worse than they used to be. Netflix doesn’t release stats on how many people watch their movies, but if more people watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before over the course of FOREVER than watched 10 Things I Hate About You in it’s 6 week run in theaters, it would seem it’s worth it for Netflix to keep buying/producing these movies at low cost.
And so, movie theaters are slowly dying. Even the Avengers and the four upcoming Avatar sequels aren’t enough to save them in the long run. Eventually going to a movie theater will feel like a novelty in the same way that a drive-in does now. A company like Disney is preparing for this future certainty by developing streaming services of its own and pulling Disney movies slowly from their previous homes on services like Netflix and Hulu. If you want to watch the newest Disney movies, you’ll no longer have to head to a theater. Just head on over to Disney+.
All of this has been happening at a rapid pace over the past 15 years or so. It’s happening even faster because of Coronavirus.
It is already being speculated that theater chains like AMC may never recover from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. While theaters are closed, studios and independent filmmakers have been presented with an interesting sort of test run period. What will it look like when movies debut exclusively on streaming services? How much money are people willing to fork out on a pay-per-view basis in the weeks before the movie hits the subscription portion of the service? We’re finding out the answers to those questions now. Movies like Emma, The Invisible Man, Onward, and Trolls: World Tour - films that were either newly in theaters when COVID-19 struck, or were scheduled to premier shortly thereafter - are available on services like VUDU and iTunes for $19.99 under the category of “Home Premiere”. 20 bucks may feel steep, but it’s $12 per ticket at a theater. For a family of 4, buying the new Trolls movie to appease the gremlins some people call children doesn’t appear so bad. It will be interesting to see the narrative about how the Home Premiere phenomenon fared financially.
Either way, the theater-going experience is dying. My hope is that studios like A24 (Lady Bird, Uncut Gems, Eighth Grade, Ex Machina) and Neon (Parasite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire) develop streaming services of their own.
If so, add ‘em to my buffet.
