Well, the pandemic is, ya know, still not exactly getting better.
Well, the pandemic is, ya know, still not exactly getting better.
Eh, if Nolan didn't wanting people opining on his movie without seeing it, maybe he should've waited rather than forcing it into theaters in the midst of a pandemic. Anyhow, don't take it personally. I'm just going by the reviews i read back when it was released, on AV Club "more confusing than exciting" ,"the writer director has lost his way in a maze of his imagination", "rarely is a film of this scope and budget so proudly difficult to follow" as well as io9 which called it "a frustrating, convoluted mess of a motion picture". Although my saying "most" didn't like does seems incorrect based on RT, so i'll retract that comment. also, one thing common to reviews and comments i've read is that the dialogue is very difficult to hear in parts, which is a pet peeve of mine. Still, i'll give it a shot when i can watch it on HBO max with subtitles.
Anyhow, seems like Nolan should be the last person WB would listen to now since they were roundly castigated for listening to him regarding Tenet's release. If Nolan wants to run over to Disney, Universal, Sony, or i guess Paramount, that's his call. And no, i'm not a huge fan of WB either but feels like they are making lemonade with lemons given the U.S. ongoing inability to get the pandemic under control.
With all these delays of movies as well as streaming at the same time of release I think COVID has put a stranglehold on big release movies. I can't see how movies can be made into franchises if the box office receipts are so low. It will take years to recover and by then it might be too late.
A fair point, but it's been released on DVD/Streaming for like a month now.
And WB shouldn't want to lose Nolan. He was wrong, and double or tripled down on being wrong, but by the time he makes another movie, we will either all be dead or have this under control. In theory, anyway.
AMC update---
https://deadline.com/2021/01/amc-ent...eo-1234679592/
That should be a good sign. That investors are willing to take the risk in floating AMC a little while longer. But I can't help but read between the lines here and see a buyout in AMC's long term future. Seems more and more possible that down the line we are going to see one big chain that basically has a monopoly on the industry, plus a few smaller outlier theatre companies.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
I was thinking the other day that it would be nice if Paramount took over the lease of all those Paramount theatres--as there seems to be a whole lot of them across North America. I'm assuming at one time they had a big share of the market before they were forced to break up the company.
welp, on a local note the mall in my town is being demolished, which includes the (currently closed) Regal cinema. So i'm guessing that's it for seeing movies here in town, although there is are a few other theaters within a 30-40 minute drive. Hard to see anyone building another movie theater in town given the current uncertainties.
This mall was mostly empty prior to anything COVID with most of the remaining stores closing last January so i'm not really surprised, but i'll miss it anyhow even though i mostly used it for moviegoing and walking around during inclement weather.
So going way back to the first few pages and I saw it brought up "if there are jobs, the demand will be there." And now we're staring from the bottom of a potential valley into an upswing economy with the pandemic still in full swing. Seems like a bad combo.
Wouldn't this mean theatres are part of the superheated part of the economic conditions, leading to a crash if intervention is not taken directly on theaters?
How will they survive if the industry implodes and people switch to streaming? Hollywood would be fine but not theaters themselves.
What do you think?
Last edited by BeastieRunner; 01-29-2021 at 09:35 PM.
"Always listen to the crazy scientist with a weird van or armful of blueprints and diagrams." -- Vibranium
I think the idea that people "switch" to only streaming is false. People have streamed, are streaming, and will continue to stream yes, but they'll still go to the theaters when it is safe to do so. Sure, the theater chains might go out of business and bought by someone else, but theaters will return after the pandemic. We're not looking at a "only streaming forever more - the two can't coexist" future.
The movie theatres I miss in Vancouver are all the local theatres that weren't franchises for some distributor, but had second-run films and art films (lots of foreign language movies). We had several in Vancouver and over the decades they've gone away. If they all are torn down--where will the Vancouver film crews be able to film a scene set in the past with the heroes at some movie theatre? They'll have to construct a fake theatre, I guess.
Given you will always need theatres for education and commerce, there will always be physical spaces for showing film and video to a large audience of students or conventioners. It's just that those theatres won't have the aesthetic charm of the old movie theatres.
I thought of a comparison. This might be a0t, or completely different. People miss eating out. Now many order in food from their favorite restaurants or learned to cook their favorite meals. But when this is over they will flock back to restaurants because they like the experience. They won't say, "I'll just stay home and eat this".
Will this happen to any degree with movie? Will people say the miss the experience and go back to the theaters? Especially when the movies aren't streaming the same time they are in the theaters.
Just a thought.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!