It Will Soon Be Curtains for the Movie Theater

Myself during the pandemic I was really turned off by the idea they were going to keep doing concessions the way they usually did because the idea of a popcorn and coke mess would turn my stomach.

Since then I've seen Barbie and Superman and it was cool but I'm not in a rush to see more movies in a theater. We were worried that the chain theater in town was going to go out of business because it had been leveraged by an Israeli company just before the crisis. The art house theater downtown is starting to show those tentpole movies but the art house movies in the trailers seem all the same to me and don't catch my eye. If they wanted to get me in they should have shown Ne Zha 2. The big chain theater is actually getting interesting because they show all kinds of unusual thing such as live opera performances, anime movies, etc.

Just can't see it beating streaming though, also I think somehow television has outpaced movies in terms of the scope of stories it can tell. I find it so boring that they keep making three-packs of superhero movies and then reboot and tell the origin story over and over again, one thing I liked about the latest Superman was that they didn't retell his journey from Krypton and his upbringing in farm country but just jumped into it -- I mean, Superman has been around 87 years we know his origin story.

In a TV show they couldn't get away with rehashing the origin story and the first few books over and over again -- I could care less if Spiderman was bit by a radioactive spider or a GMO spider, I just want to seem him slinging webs and punching bad guys and mostly being loved by the community and occasionally feared.

Where's the demographic data in this piece? Moviegoing isn't the 'same' but it seems like there's a segment of the 'younger generation' that gravitates towards the 'event' aspect of some bigger draws. Taylor Swift movie? Barbie? Minecraft? etc

And what is 'older generations'? Maybe that's not the elder millenial-Gen X portion of the market, but maybe 65+ have a lot of time on their hands to go see Oppenheimer etc. Top Gun? Just some off the top of my head that seemed to have an impact culturally and box office-wise.

There's something to be said about the quality of films and/or the role of the blockbuster level ones. Maybe the result is only the mega films are what the cinema is for in the end.

Meanwhile just last month Zootopia 2 set single-day record for a Hollywood open in China.

The experience of going to a movie may not be what it was before streaming or even the VCR, but the fewer theaters that remain have gotten nicer in their own way. I can recline the big leather chair and have food delivered to my seat.

One of the WSJ comments made the comparison to drive-ins, which are now a rare niche thing...I think my US metro area has maybe 2 left. But those have less control over the viewer experience than a regular theater does.

I don't and have never gone very often, but it's a lot of fun to see certain films in enormous theaters like IMAX. I will definitely see the Project Hail Mary film that way. And my kids still like to go, and I know people who go a ton on the subscription plans. So, who knows!

no paywall: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/it-will-soon-be-curtains-for-the...