Told you we’re gonna do this dance again, and i feel now it’s the time to address some of the issues left unchallenged and unchanged, as anyone with any foresight could have told you before.
I guess the catalyst for new lamentations is the new blockbuster releases mostly doing very bad, regardless of quality or marketing employed, as even movies coming from recognizable and renowed studios and carrying recognized names and brands come out to basically big box office woes most of the time, in what most people have accetted as a “post-Covid 19” world, even in countries where it’s still far from over because reality and consequences and such.
Because i’m a dumbass, instead of making a thumbnail with a load of nonsensical buzzwords on it for a “video essay” (really, words mean nothing anymore to a certain subset of creatures) that’s somehow longer than the movie it discuss… i’m gonna say it’s obvious this wanna gonna happen.
Even if we collectively agreed to pretend the pandemic is over everywhere and forever, even pretending and disgarding the argument/issue as a thing of the past, this newly found “box office bombagery” should really not surprise anyone that has been to theathers more than once in recent years.
To avoid repeating what i said before, i’m just gonna link the previous editorial so you can check that out instead. Consider this an addendum more than a “follow up”.
The first reason why the masses ain’t coming back to the cinemas – let’s not kid ourselves – is habits.
Newly found habits, cemented by the lockdown and quarantine realities, making streaming a normal commodity, and a double edged sword for distributors and theather chains, because the customers have been trained to expect the newly released movies to be quickly available on VOD after their theathrical run, even if it was conterproductive, like, one of the few successes of late is Spider Man Into The Spiderverse by Sony Animation, which raked in the spidermillions and fast, and could have been kept as a theathrical only release for some more weeks, people were gonna see that anyway and bit the bullet if Sony provided a delayed VOD and home video release.
But again, they also trained the customer base to expect the dripfeed to streaming to happen quickly, before the interest peters out in a matter of weeks, before increasingly quicker irrilevancy put it out of public discussion on social media.
And i will have to keep saying again and again, who can really lambast people for deliberately opting out of a theather experience if possible?
I mean, what did change for the better to make people consider the option?
Heck, leaving aside the current issue of being the “frog boiled in the pot” as climate change is setting new records for heatwaves and taking the situation as-is, it remains the fact cinemas often don’t even guarantee air conditioning in their theathers, despite claiming they do as a base feature.
Or worse, they do have it, but it barely makes a difference when stewing in your own boiling skin and sweat like a frankenfurt, while eating overpriced foodstuff, so yeah, it’s not unreasonable to decide you’d rather stay home and watch something on Netflix or one of the many streaming services you feel like i’ve “joined” more than subscribed to, you already paid for them and maybe you can stay more comfortable while trying NOT to go the way of the Wicked Witch Of The East.
Which is made extra “hilarious” as the biggest change the industry has labored to try and make people go back into the theathers… can be boiled down to make popular or expected blockbuster movies longer themselves, do them in multiple feature length parts, sometimes both, in an effort to make the experience an event again.
Which is both potentially counterproductive, as the trend has every big release come close to the dreaded 3 hours runtime, which let’s be real, 3 hours are a LOT, even to this day, so yeh, the promise of more to come in this terms can and will turn off most people that will just not bother and just wait for the movie/s to dribble on streaming, saving a lot of money in the meantime.
That and now try to cynically replicate the synergy of polar opposite releases after the “Barbenheimer” thing happened, we already have corporate Twitter (i’m not calling it like a Tic Tac Toe move) jumping on with the announcement of a new Paw Patrol movie and Saw X coming out in theathers the very same day (at least in North America) with the hastag “SawPatrol”.
All made extra cringier and tiresome by the fact Barbenheimer itself looked like someone wanted to recreate the “Doom Eternal X Animal Crossing New Horizons” situation but for theathrically released movie, but even that imitation was borne of genuine internet freakery, unlike the corporate brands following suit and remind one once more of the “Fellow Kids” meme.
Plus, a tip: wait before declaring a movie is a box office bomb, implying it is so everywhere, because Elemental didn’t perform well in American territories, it didn’t perform much better here in Italy (not that it matters much as we’re not considered one of the big players in this regard), but in “Asia” (especially South Korea, figures given it’s a by first generation immigrant Korean director that moved to the US) is doing FAR better.
The world thankfully isn’t just North America, despite what you would be led to believe.
Overall, i still don’t think theatherical cinema experiences/releases will become the way modern opera or theather plays are (a reminder that back then opera audiences pretty much behaved the same as they do in cinemas to this day, far away from the composed snobbish etiquette we now associate with it.
But if nothing is improved, there’s not much chance of people getting back to theathers en masse like the pre-streaming days.
Wise Cafe (International) 