This past weekend was the first time in three years that the top four movies at the box office made more than $20 million: Sinners, Star Wars—Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Accountant 2, and A Minecraft Movie. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners may be the only non-sequel non-IP of the bunch—and Revenge of the Sith is from 2005—but it’s clear that, five years after the global coronavirus pandemic shuttered movie theaters for as long as 18 months, people still want to go to movie theaters. Across the board, all ages, all demographics, they want to go. So what’s the problem? You know: there’s nothing to see.
It’s nice that theatrical re-releases are having a comeback, even if it’s just Star Wars at the moment; but remember that the only reason this is happening is because people don’t own their movies anymore. Who knows what streaming service the Star Wars movies are locked away on? Disney+? I don’t know. I doubt most people check. I’d imagine those who were too young to see Revenge of the Sith in 2005 are getting a kick out of seeing a real blockbuster, something grand, in theaters; the reappraisal of the prequels is only baffling if you can forget how bad Hollywood movies have become in the last 20 years. Good luck—I can’t.
I went to a revival of Joseph Losey’s The Servant on Monday night at the Charles. It was a thin crowd, mostly older; a few rows in front of me, a pair of couples recognized each other, made pickleball plans, and, just as the movie was starting, talked about how they wanted to “come here” more often. “But you look at what’s playing and it’s just… not what we want to see.” I doubt they were as excited about Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag as everyone else pretended they were, and I’m sure they don’t even know what A Minecraft Movie is. That’s okay: it’s a blessing that kids movies have remained one of the stalwart genres in American cinema, because that’s where people get the bug, a lifelong habit, a visceral sense that this—the film you are about to see—is bigger, deeper, and more expansive than anything you could see at home. “Magic” isn’t an inappropriate word.
Besides blink-and-you-miss-‘em theatrical windows (two weeks??!?!?!), misdirected advertising is what’s keeping more people from going to movie theaters. No one knows what’s coming out now because cable television collapsed, and social media is too wide and woolly to serve as a replacement. An under-discussed possibility is that because people aren’t going to movie theaters, they’re not seeing any trailers. Last year’s Fly Me to the Moon bombed so spectacularly that Apple decided to scrap any future theatrical runs for their original films. I knew Fly Me to the Moon was coming out because The Senator played the trailer regularly. But I was going to revivals last June, and the only new releases I saw around then were Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and The Watchers. I doubt the pickleball couple had any interest in either. They like foreign films. Hey, me too.
In order to establish a healthier cinema, moviegoing habits must regular. There can be droughts, there always are: it’s called February. But the maintenance of the cinema as a place, a territory, is as important to its survival as the movies themselves, whether they’re great, good, or shit. Movies live and die in theaters, and when you stream them, when you play their discs, you’re looking at a postcard, an adequate facsimile of something that only exists when the lights go down. People remember what they see before a movie, if a trailer looks good; if it looks like shit, they’ll usually say so. Coogler’s Sinners is a major hit, its success bolstered by Coogler doing everything he can to educate the audience on IMAX, different formats, aspect ratios; even if the difference between “full frame” and 2:79:1 is an egghead concern, the word is out there. Someone is talking about a new movie. Hey, it looks kinda good. You know what? Let’s go.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits