At film school last semester, I became attuned to the importance of the debate whether movie theatres will still exist or not in the future, and how it’s important to still watch movies in the theatre. (I guess the first time I heard about this debate was in 2021, through my Intro to Filmmaking class, idk if I shared it here before – a classmate from Engineering there argued that movie theatres will die because we can watch movies from our laptops & airplane TVs – anywhere. Forgot how that ended, though)
The wider issue is that the existence of movie theatres are endangered by the encroaching hegemony of streaming services (a.k.a. VOD – video on demand). My dad predicts they will still exist but they’ll become only a luxury due to how expensive tickets will become. (Hmm, reminds me of how Uber was a disruptor to the world of cab services.)
From a filmmaker’s perspective, not showing films in the theatre eschews a lot of the creative and technical choices filmmakers have painstakingly made in their films. I studied a couple of directors in Basics of Directing: of course, Sir Christopher Nolan (who I’ve been yapping about for the past several months 😂) and Jeff Nichols. Chris is known for advocating the use of analog film which goes hand-in-hand with watching movies in the theatre, because the wholly immersive experience of watching a film, which (for now) only a theatre can provide, is one of his core tenets as a filmmaker. Surround sound, giant IMAX screens, and uninterrupted viewing of a 2-hour (or more, in his case) film in a theatre lends to that sense of immersion.
Yeah, if you watch a lot of Nolan interviews like me, you’ll hear him talk a lot about this and even the technical reasons why theatre-viewing is superior. He even wrote an article about it on Wall Street Journal. Tbh, it was kinda all over the place, but I like his metaphor in this excerpt: “The theatrical window is to the movie business what live concerts are to the music business—and no one goes to a concert to be played an MP3 on a bare stage.”
Though, in an interview with a French journalist (it was funny because I first saw an excerpt of it in a Youtube short – Nolan was subjected to a one-minute, Boy Abunda-style interview with rapid-fire questions), he was asked, “Can people watch your movies on an iPhone?” and he answered, “Yes.” Haha, it’s nice that he doesn’t judge people for not watching films in the theatre.
Jeff Nichols, my favourite director (LOL Chris is just my top 2 because Jeff’s style is closer to my personal taste as a creator/artist, plus I love the family-related values that are the foundation of his films, even if we share different beliefs), talked about he wishes TVs would have chips that tell them what specific settings did filmmakers pick for their movies being played, so that the TVs can display them. Though, I have to find and re-listen to that interview because, as I learned in my postproduction classes, today’s TVs don’t have the same colour space or dynamic range as movie theatres, and I have to find the exact example Jeff gave.
He just said that he and his cinematographer (aka DP – director of photography), Adam Stone, would spend a lot of time determining the colours of his films, how it looks like, and it’s a pity when they aren’t shown properly on TVs. He argued, if the radios in our cars can get a signal from the satellite that tells them to display the artist name and song title of what’s playing, why can’t we get the right technical/visual info of films on our TVs?
With all these thoughts from filmmakers in mind, I’d been yearning to watch movies in the theatre more. I’ve been missing the frequency of watching films that my family enjoyed in Nepal – in Armenia it’s more difficult because there’s a limited window of when the English-language version of films are shown (Russian or Armenian are the top languages).
Also, I’m in film school, so I should be making more of an effort to explore the experience of watching films (currently have watched 35 films this year, though). I’d been scouting new films since February: Mickey 17 sounded interesting but it’s not my type.. Novocaine has Dennis Quaid’s son who I saw in the Hunger Games, but I didn’t think it was worth it. What else was worth watching?
…..MINECRAFT!!!!
How was it like to enter the theatre on Minecraft opening weekend with this baggage of knowledge about movie-going that I’d previously mentioned to you? Actually, it wasn’t so revelatory – I mean, as a whole, I was too immersed in the Minecraft story to notice how different it was in the theatre, plus, I picked a not-very-artsy film — I wished we had speakers at the back to have that full immersion. Initially, though, I loved how big the screen was compared to being used to watching at home on my small computer or fair-sized TV 😂 I also loved how the scale served the scene where the characters were flying through the Minecraft canyon — it gave me a sense of being there that not even flying in Creative Mode could give me.
The social aspect of being in a full theatre was also a huge plus for me (it’s something my profs mention when I talk to them about the debate of whether movie theatres will survive or not). I went with my little brother – my buddy for watching Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek and movies – it was our first time going to the theatre on our own, together, and it was memorable. He’s also bigger now and not the little boy I watched stuff with anymore, back before I got too busy with master’s. So I loved seeing him smile at the Minecraft opening title, along with all the other kids and parents and teens and twenty-somethings (like me) in the darkened background of the theatre.
I guess it was really nice too how – you’re living in a post-Soviet country where you can’t understand most of what people are saying on a daily basis, out in the streets and establishments, although I have some slight conversational knowledge of Armenian and Russian. But I’m always a foreigner here. So, watching Minecraft in English on the opening Saturday with all of the kids speaking in English, wowing at all the crafting and mob- and Youtuber appearances, yelling “I… AM STEVE.” and “CHICKEN JOCKEY!” and the parents laughing at the Villager romance, it was really comforting. I felt a sense of solidarity, of belonging in there. And I felt free to be audibly nerdy (which I’ve learned to rein in for years because I got in trouble before 😂) because the kids were carefree and just kept making remarks, it was so cute.
Seeing the reels of people going wild in cinemas (-_- those guys throwing toilet paper at chicken jockey) – I laugh and cringe at the same time. Actually, on the day we watched it, I was surprised how much dialogue the kids (and my brother) had memorised and recited in the theatre. In Armenia, you kinda forget how they’re the iPad, Youtube-addicted generation because of the language barrier (and I rarely talk to kids here outside of our circle of Armenian friends who have young kids :p we occasionally play Roblox together.)
I was grateful how the Minecraft movie connected me to my Filipino friends and relatives around the globe, too – from Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Qatar, to Manila – I got to reconnect with people simply by talking about the movie with them 🤣 (nyahaha we have cheaper tickets in Armenia 🤠)
I think that if more films become social phenomena like this, the next generation will still keep movie theatres alive. Exclusivity of the theatre worked out for Minecraft (Warner Bros lol – funny if u remember their split with Chris Nolan bc they broke this in 2020). People went to the theatre for the hype. “I already spent my allowance” – my friend explained why he hadn’t seen the film yet. Later on, I saw him share his friend’s story of them going to watch it, and the friend captioned it with something that went like this: “40 dhs wasted 😤” HAHAHA OOF (it was probs the IMAX theatre there)… My other friend was holding out to somehow watch the movie in the cinema, even if her friends had watched the pirated version.
It brought our generations together even if we knew it wasn’t gonna be a brilliant movie. Now I look forward to a non-IP movie that’ll strike a chord with the younger generation like Star Wars did. (Why am I going far back into the 70s with that reference? Maybe because I didn’t go to the theatres much as a kid – only when I was a teen – so I didn’t take part in any crazes over movies in the cinema.) I guess we need a Chris Nolan for the kids – someone able to craft original stories like Inception and Interstellar and have them be widely successful (AND with the trust of a big studio to finance them :p) I mean, there’s always been animated films but what about the live-action Star Wars type? (Correction: I double-checked Interstellar and it actually didn’t come from him initially – Kip Thorne did a treatment in 2006 and his brother Jonathan Nolan was hired to write the script in 2007, and he brought Chris onboard in 2013.)
That kind of original storytelling craft takes years, though. Nolan had the initial idea for Inception when he was a teenager, and he worked on the script for about 10 years, for example. I haven’t read much about the history of Star Wars yet, and I know it’s harder now to come up with something new and revolutionary, because there has been a more diverse plethora of ideas circulating around through our accumulated history of movies and social consciousness since the 70s and 80s.
I did come up with a movie plot idea recently (which I had to pitch twice in two classes) that involves synesthesia – not a well-traversed subject in films, and so my two profs – a sales agent and a producer – thought it was fascinating and encouraged me to develop it further. Hopefully I’ll get it made into a film someday – pray for me!
I do wish people would stop taking photos inside the theatre during the movie (my conviction is okay with taking pics during credits HAHA), or texting while there. I mean, show some respect T_T I miss that one time there was a theatre guard in the Philippines who scolded us for taking a group picture with a digicam after the High School Musical 3 movie ended 😭🤣
Well, whatever happens to movie theatres in the future, we can focus on enjoying them now. It’s a place for families and friends to come together (my mom says it’s her happy place with Dad 🥹). It may be tougher to go there these days, but I hope that good stories will continue to be written and shot, which will make the cost worth it 😆😊 🎥 🎞
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