Has Covid-19 changed cinema for good? Or is there something else at play?
Piece by Eddie on 14/07/2023
Since Covid-19 first burst onto the scene in 2020, throwing the world as we know it into a state of chaos/flux, the debate around the future of cinema has been raging like a wild fire; a fire that has had a significant amount of fuel added to it in the wake of a string of 2023 blockbusters that have under-performed, stagnated or downright flopped, with many doomsayers commentating that the world of cinema that we knew is long gone and potentially doomed to a fate that is now irreversible.
Looking at things purely on a numbers point of view it’s hard to argue against those spreading doom and gloom around the topic with Hollywood’s releases this year skewering far too often into the red, with the likes of the billion dollar taking The Super Mario Bros Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse or John Wick 4 rarities amongst a slew of other films such as Fast X, The Little Mermaid, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, (sadly) Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, (extra ouch) The Flash or Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, films that have all failed to meet expectations or make back their insanely over the top budgets in the wake of their high profile releases.
The Flash has been one of many 2023 blockbusters that has the doomsayers ringing the death knell of cinema
Examining this topic raises many a possibility as to what is the root cause of cinemas current problem, such as Hollywood’s overspending on projects in a production and marketing sense, an over-saturation of popcorn films that are remakes, re-dos or Comic book themed, the fact people supposedly now prefer to just sit in their own rooms in their track pants and enjoy content on demand, people just hate people following their Covid-19 isolation experiences or that cost of living across the globe has made going to the movies a luxury many would rather not lash out on and while all of these are potentially the right answer, I believe it’s much simpler than that…..people just don’t want to go watch movies that aren’t any good.
I suspect that as I write this article we are days away from seeing the latest Tom Cruise vehicle Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One make a significant impact at the global box office and next week we get the much-vaunted Barbenheimer double bill that is looking likely to cause a mad rush at cinemas around the world and the reason behind this is that these particular films actually look decent, they look like films that are worth going out of your way to watch on the big screen and in the case of Mission: Impossible, critics and audiences agree that it’s a spectacle that is worthy of the effort to go out/made in such a fashion that it demands the big screen treatment.
Despite humanities many flaws and problems, the fact is audiences aren’t stupid and Hollywood has to stop thinking they are.
Can Tom Cruise once more prove that audiences will pay for quality blockbusters on the big screen?
Last years Top 10 global box office performers included the record breaking Avatar: The Way of Water, the instant blockbuster classic Top Gun: Maverick and the return to form The Batman, films that treated their audiences with some form of respect and justified their existence as part of the blockbuster season and they showed to us all that when you make a product worth seeing, people are still willing to make the effort to attend their local cinemas.
There’s not many shared experiences that exist in this world that are universal, music and sport are the most notable other events akin to heading to a packed cinema on opening night/weekend, witnessing something as a shared collective with shared interest and likes and while its fantastic we can enjoy high quality viewing at home with an abundance to pick from, cinema will always be something most of us enjoy and if Hollywood can begin to understand the cinema landscape problem at present isn’t impossible to fix, we will all be better off, with more quality to pick from and enjoy and to feel like we are once more being treated with the respect we as paying audiences deserve.
Doing so will create a perfect circle where everyone can be happy (including the industry bean counters) and content and cinema can thrive long into the future.
See you at the movies!
What are your thoughts on the future of cinema? Do you still like the shared cinema experience or are your days of visiting the big screen world numbered? Let me know in the comments below!
Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys) 
Well, people still think Avatar is clever, so not all ‘great’ films make a crap load of cash (I don’t hate it btw but tried watching the new one and it was inane I gave up after two separate tries…)
BUT, as your general point, audiences definitely want a bit more and like to be tested. I remember hearing from Nolan about that, regarding trusting that the audience want to be tested – even if they don’t always understand it. I’d always thought the role of ANY film is to be taken away from the every day, especially the big ones aka Maverick, M:I7, Indy – silly on the reality but brilliant to drift away with and dream.
There’s nothing like that shared experience. I’m nowhere near London these days but I used to do the press screenings in Leicester Square regularly, some of those shared experiences were amazing, unforgettable because the majority there wanted to be entertained and they were, it’s unique!
Great talking points, thank you 🙂
I think one example for me is how people seem to be far less interested in the latest Marvel, Transformer type films compared to even 5 years ago, people are getting sick of watching the same thing over and over or why do they need to watch films like The Little Mermaid when the first one is still perfectly fine?
Hollywood to me seems to have lost touch with the common man and also in touch with budgets that could work for a film. There’s a lot of issues going on but really I sense people just don’t like wasting their money on films that offer very little entertainment or imagination.
E
I think the MCU slow burns, the streaming series have been FAR superior to the films – with that latest Ant-Man being a strange almost something and almost nothing, after so much promise (although Jonathan Majors is first class)
I don’t understand how the Transformers films continue to exist, and the live action Disney films generally, I mean they must make them some money – right?!
At least Tom Cruise knows what the people want, thankfully, and just!
Cruise seems to be one of the last people really being a champion to what the big screen can do. It shows in how audiences are reacting to his most recent films.
E
Fascinating piece. I think audiences have just moved on and evolved – not just viewing habits like streaming / box-set binging ect – and they want a bit more substance to what they watch. Superhero fatigue is a big factor in poor box office returns I think, I’m a huge comic book fan, but you can have too much of a good thing. Also, recent films like Dial of Destiny and the Flash double down on the nostalgia factor and audiences just aren’t buying into that so much now. Movies need to push boundaries, challenge us, and offer something new than just reheated sequels and reboots.
Everything you say is so true. Hollywood isn’t giving its audiences the credit we deserve, serving up half-assed entertainment that we know is just a cash grab. Then they wonder why independent flicks do so well. Audiences are screaming for original stories and something new but they’re just not listening.
I am keeping my fingers crossed this week’s release of Oppenheimer shows once more what type of film audiences are willing to go and see, while it might be a slow burn I suspect its worldwide box office will end up being fairly significant over time. There’s nothing wrong with popcorn films but even those have been missing too much over the last few years. Be interesting to see where things fall by years end.
E
There has certainly been an evolution over the last few years mate. I totally agree with you that audiences need something more even if not for a challenge how about Hollywood give us some fresh and fun ideas not just repeating of past glories?
I truly believe people still want to go to the movies to watch films that offer at the very least a fun escape but far too many recent films of a high profile can’t even get that right.
E
Very interesting commentary all around. I’m not certain I agree with the audiences need challenges theory. A great book to me is a better challenge. Lots of people just want to be entertained and dazzled at the theater, not challenged. But I also think the cinema is in jeopardy simply because new technologies have taken over the populace. Streaming, which I don’t do, is very trendy, so much so that renting DVDs is already dying out. I prefer the rentals to view the newest movies of interest because I can’t get to the theater regularly anymore. I’m 77 and I’m happy to have a large collection of the good old stuff on DVD — Double Indemnity, North by Northwest, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sting, etc. — with which I can pleasantly fade away 🙂 as the world turns to new frivolities.
I think its hugely important we still support physical media, there has been far too many times I have searched streaming for certain films and can’t find them anywhere.
My worry with streaming is that many movies will be lost in time and people are unable to find them by any means. At least with DVD’s etc we can track them down and purchase.
E
Absolutely! I’m very uneasy with the reality that each new technology causes what we just used previously to become obsolete.
That’s a very true and scary point! Even with films its quite shocking that these companies will dictate what we can and can’t watch, people will grow use to the fact they can’t choose their own content they will only be able to pick from the options given too them, it’s a bizarre situation.
E
Good piece, I believe it just boils down to economics. Hollywood is a business, and recently the people in charge have forgotten the fundamentals, especially the streaming model (see also recently announced SAG strike, which is another story).
Oop’s (posted rather than new line!) – if we take Indy and Dial of Destiny. Budget @ $300m, Marketing at least $150m therefore $450m @ to put on the screen. With Cinemas taking half the box office, the film has to gross somewhere north of $800m/$900M to break even. That is like sending a tennis player out on court with two hands tied behind their back, destined to fail. At time of writing box office $260m is not a flop, lots of people have seen and it enjoyed it on some level (it’s not perfect) BUT it is doomed to fail financially…..remember this is business not “Art”.
It’s insane to think of the budgets some of these films get, they really are set up to fail before the cameras even start rolling!
Even with all its success its unbelievable that Avatar 2 was needing to hit 2 billion dollars to be considered a success, that is some type of out of whack business model.
E
I think most of that budget is James Cameron’s hyper-sell, I mean do we really need another 3 of those?!
I certainly don’t think we do ha, I am actually hopeful he might end the series with 3, I suspect the box office next time around will be fairly lower than what we saw with two.
E
People have definitely become more selective about what they watch at the cinema, and going to the movies is perhaps less of a habit than it was once. I’m not sure if it simply comes down to whether or not the movie is “good”; I could point to many mediocre and terrible films that made a killing at the box office so obviously quality is not always a decider.
One factor that I didn’t see mentioned is the death of a movie star, which has been a foundation for Hollywood for many decades but has now been reduced to rare exceptions. We no longer have stars that draw people to the cinemas, instead the focus has shifted to the IP and brands like Marvel. I think that this has made both studios and the audiences much more risk averse and less willing to take a chance on something new.
That is a great point. I remember someone saying that they believed Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio are really the last of the movie stars where people will go to watch a movie purely around the fact they see them attached to it.
I can’t really disagree with that, the thing with those two is as well that usually their films are set to a certain quality so people know they will be entertained or challenged.
E
Apart from COVID-19 and Hollywood over-spending on movies, one factor to consider is the QUALITY of each and every new script made by screenwriters nowadays. I heard rumors that several screenwriters have used AI-enhanced tools to write scripts, retool the content and submit to the studios pretending they made it all themselves.
Watching inside the movie theater is still my preferred way of enjoying movies. When it comes to watching movies at home, Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray are my preferred ways.
I am the same as you mate. I love seeing as many films as I can on the big screen and still mostly love the shared experience but watching quality films on Blu Ray and 4K is great at home compared to streaming resolution.
E
In my mind there’s no doubt that Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Pt 1 is a great movie and I really enjoyed Indy 5 (even though you have some problems with it Ed) and thought it was a worthy ending given Ford’s age. I understand even Spielberg predicted that big budget films would feel the pinch going forward with these so called global shifts. If you read Variety it’s all doom and gloom.
I am really interested to see where it all goes mate. There’s a lot of doom and gloom right now I do think there’s a glimmer of hope still but it’s really up to the powerbrokers of Hollywood to sort it all out and there’s not a lot of trust in them.
E
Great piece! I think that now, with perfect viewing conditions at home, and an overabundance of content at everyone’s fingertips, people need a strong and convincing reason to see a movie in a theater, whereas before they sometimes went to the movies just to go to the movies.
The exploitation of nostalgia is growing thin. People have been disappointed too many times. Also the endless action sequences and overlong run times are having a numbing effect. Hollywood needs to wake up. If they want to win people back, they need to offer basic things like imagination, quality and heart. They also need to start allowing themselves to take risks again. Otherwise, we’ll start getting reboots of reboots of reboots, and the world will move on to another art form.
Spot on thoughts Jack! I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
Seeing the results for a film like Oppenheimer on the weekend only goes to strengthen these sentiments.
E
To borrow from another movie: “If you build it, they will come”. In this case, if you have a compelling story that is well told, people will go to a theatre to see it. A perfect example was Mission Impossible. I saw on an IMAX screen and was very glad that I did. This week I will see Oppenheimer on IMAX as it was meant to be seen. I will add though that the movie going experience can be hampered by the audeince; latecomers, talkers, phone watchers etc who have forgotten manners in a public place and take away from the experience of the movies. Theatres can do more by shutting and locking the doors when the film starts (I had people arriving 15 mins into the theatre after it had started rolling for MI – not just the trailers) but they can also have early someone monitoring the people inside. We shouldn’t have to remind people about basic decency in attending a theatre. The lack of creativity in Hollywood is a familiar tome, certainly with nonsensical sequels (Jaws 3-D anyone?!) milking the original summer blockbuster back in the day. I like that bad movies bomb, and good ones like Top Gun Maverick get rewarded. It should encourage Hollywood to create better content and big screen worthy films.
Such a shame you had that experience in the cinema mate. I was pleasantly surprised how engaged and respectful my session of Oppenheimer was in IMAX, it really was one where it felt like everyone was totally on the same page and hooked from start to finish.
It’s been great though to see such a huge response at the cinema for the Barbenheimer release, it shows people still are happy to go to the cinema they just need a good reason too, not just more run of the mill films we’ve all seen before.
E
Watching films in the theater will always be my preferred way to see movies. When my health and my budget allow, I enjoy sitting in the dark with other fans.
There are movie franchises I’ve followed through with and am happy as a clam when I get to see special effects on the big screen. Some movies interest me, but I decide (based on my health and budget mostly) they will be as entertaining to me when they make it to a streaming service.
I think the future of films, especially films that have personal, and life-relatable plots will continue to draw audiences. I’m one of those annoying people who always watch the credits, so I’m sad we’re waiting for the film industry’s strikes to be over.
A foreign film I’ve watched several times comes to mind: “Cinema Paradiso.”
A great film that one Paula!
I am glad you’re like me and still enjoy the shared experience of seeing a film in the cinema. When you have the right audience there is really nothing else that compares.
E