Well, no. He targeted the inanity and stupidity on display with faultless accuracy.Looks like someone's overdue for a nap! ( probably also a diaper change, yikes)
DC Movies - To Infinity and Beyond
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
I'm not just talking about my personal experience, I'm talking about the whole worldwide box office trend.
This is true.
Sure, but as home entertainment technology continues to advance, I would expect that trend to continue. As the experience watching movies at home gets closer and closer to what we can get at the theater, people are going to continue to have less and less reason to the theater. Why would people put up with insane ticket prices, over priced snacks, and assholes in the theater, when they can have a very similar experience in their own home?
People no doubt asked the same question 30 years ago, when home theater systems became available to those who could afford them. The only real advantage of movies at that point was image resolution. But people still go to theaters 30 years later. As I said, some people just like having an occasion to go out rather than stay home, or to share a communal experience rather than isolate themselves.
"I think movies are dying, dying, dying. But I do not think they are going to stay dead for long. They are like the theater; theater is dying all the time, but it never dies altogether. It is like the cycle of the seasons -- it has its summer, autumn, and winter." -- Orson Welles, August 1953
People have been confidently predicting the imminent death of movies for at least 70 years, and before that were predicting the death of theater for who knows how long. You can see why I'm skeptical of any such claim.
And now TVs and home projection systems have at least met what we can get in theaters, people in general have inconsiderate, rude, and overall really fucking shitty assholes, and COVID has also made people a lot more nervous about going out into crowds, theaters are really starting lose their appeal. And it's also worth considering the fact that even buying movies on demand is significantly cheaper for a family than going to the theaters. Why pay around a $100+ (I believe most theater tickets are around $20 now, and then most people will probably add drinks and candy to that) for a family of 5 to go see a movie, when you can either watch it as part of a subscription, or around $20 for everyone to watch it at home?
I know there's no absolute way for someone who can't see the future, but with the way things are looking now, and the way things will probably go in the future, I'm just say it looks to me like that's the way things might be going.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the examples you're using are all from before streaming, which has introduced a massive shift in how we watch movies and TV.
By the standards of 30-35 years ago, a good projection TV seemed almost as good as a theater, even if it seems much worse by our standards. Perceptions change over time. The assumptions you make today may seem naive to people 30 years from now.
I'm still not hearing anything I wouldn't have heard 30 years ago. Rude theatergoers have been a constant throughout the age of television, as people got used to watching things in the privacy of their homes and lost track of the courtesies of the communal theatrical experience. It's gotten worse now with mobile devices, to be sure, but that's just an amplification, not a novelty.
That's true today, but what about 20 or 50 years from now? You can't project that far ahead.
Many people think that way, but it makes no sense to assume everyone will think that way. Humans are not a monolith. There will always be a range of different opinions and preferences. Even if theatergoing becomes a niche practice, movies can still survive if they adapt to that reality instead of clinging to the unsustainable blockbuster addiction of today. By analogy, relatively few Americans attend live theater anymore compared to a hundred years ago, but there are still plays put on regularly, on and off Broadway.
And I'm just saying the intelligent thing to do is to acknowledge every possibility, not arbitrarily pick one prediction and deny the validity of all others. It's not a horse race. The goal is not to pick a winner. The goal is to intelligently assess all the possibilities. And that requires being honest about what we don't know as well as what we do know.
The introduction of TV itself in the 1940s-50s was a far more massive shift. People predicted then, with great confidence, that it would inevitably kill movies. It didn't.
I agree with a lot of what you said here, but have trouble with this one.
The introduction of TV was probably scary for movie studios, for sure, but Strangers on a Train wasn't exactly competing with the experience of watching I love lucy. And also, if people wanted to see the movie, that was the ONLY option forever ( as far as they knew). There's been a giant shift with streaming. "I can wait 40 days (or less) to see it comfortably without even having to leave the house for what feels like free since I'm paying for this service already" is night and day from "I might miss this experience forever" to even later on with "I'll have to go to Blockbuster in a few months" which, we're lazy now, even that seems like an effort that in retrospect we're happy to not have to deal with.
i feel like there will still be blockbusters, but right now we can't sustain many of them, like we did in 2018.
To me, the old Austin Powers commercial comes to mind "If you see just 1 movie this summer... see Star Wars. But if you see TWO movies this summer, see Austin Powers"... having that humble mentality
Also, most blockbusters, they really have multiple audiences they cater to, and all of those different groups coming to see something makes it a monster hit. Take Barbie....a WHOLE lot of moms (and dads) brought their young girls to see the movie... even though it wasn't a kids movie (like where the Wild Things Are movie)... so you had that mix, but also older girls who could actually appreciate it also went, and really every generation of women have been exposed to Barbie, and many (as well as especially feminist men) came with. That, and the media hype also factored in.
I would also say other things that have a cultural interest buoy success... for example Black Panther actually beat Avengers Endgame in the U,S .. that would be because many who want to promote black pride and culture bought up theaters so students could see the movie (even though they might have already seen it with friends or family), in addition to the overall Marvel connection, as well as an excellent commercial during the Super Bowl
The other factors you guys mentioned indeed also play a factor in overall deflated interest:
Also, things that were made to bring people in -- the bars.... i wonder exactly how successful they are. I am pretty sure they are not gathering places outside of the movies themselves (which would help theaters stay in existence), they help the bottom line, but not a real alternate revenue source
Do you guys think they are paying too much for VFX? You guys who have seen Trek and Wars fan films... if those artists did something for the big screen, would the resolution be that bad? Certainly not for small screens.... but could the work really be done with less? I have a hard time seeing why hundreds of employees are needed to make the digital parts...though i sympathize with them on deadlines and pay.
Oh, and one last thing...even though the DCFU is going out in a whimper... my relatives did say that at least where they were, Aquaman had been sold out... so it seems to be popular in some areas.... just not enough to repeat 2018's success (which would have secured it in the top 10 in 2023, as we in the TrekBBS Box Office Predictor Game have seen and thought)
To me, the old Austin Powers commercial comes to mind "If you see just 1 movie this summer... see Star Wars. But if you see TWO movies this summer, see Austin Powers"... having that humble mentality
Also, most blockbusters, they really have multiple audiences they cater to, and all of those different groups coming to see something makes it a monster hit. Take Barbie....a WHOLE lot of moms (and dads) brought their young girls to see the movie... even though it wasn't a kids movie (like where the Wild Things Are movie)... so you had that mix, but also older girls who could actually appreciate it also went, and really every generation of women have been exposed to Barbie, and many (as well as especially feminist men) came with. That, and the media hype also factored in.
I would also say other things that have a cultural interest buoy success... for example Black Panther actually beat Avengers Endgame in the U,S .. that would be because many who want to promote black pride and culture bought up theaters so students could see the movie (even though they might have already seen it with friends or family), in addition to the overall Marvel connection, as well as an excellent commercial during the Super Bowl
The other factors you guys mentioned indeed also play a factor in overall deflated interest:
- Covid (nowadays, fear of getting something
- Obnoxious viewers (at least in my neighborhood, we have encountered more people who were ruder than i have noticed in 4 decades prior)
- Expenses
- exhaust not of Superhero movies overall, but just the big hypeness... didn't the same thing happen with comics?? The original Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite earths were brand new, and the tie-ins to individual titles was something we hadn't had before . So back in 1984-1985, we might have been willing to buy extra issues for a year... but that wasn't gonna be sustainable
- streaming -- has the window of going from theater to home availability shortened a lot? i know there was a time of main release, dollar theater release, then home video sales, then rental, then premium cable, then TV_
Also, things that were made to bring people in -- the bars.... i wonder exactly how successful they are. I am pretty sure they are not gathering places outside of the movies themselves (which would help theaters stay in existence), they help the bottom line, but not a real alternate revenue source
Do you guys think they are paying too much for VFX? You guys who have seen Trek and Wars fan films... if those artists did something for the big screen, would the resolution be that bad? Certainly not for small screens.... but could the work really be done with less? I have a hard time seeing why hundreds of employees are needed to make the digital parts...though i sympathize with them on deadlines and pay.
Oh, and one last thing...even though the DCFU is going out in a whimper... my relatives did say that at least where they were, Aquaman had been sold out... so it seems to be popular in some areas.... just not enough to repeat 2018's success (which would have secured it in the top 10 in 2023, as we in the TrekBBS Box Office Predictor Game have seen and thought)
The Orson Welles quote challenging the widely held view that movies were dying was from 1953. I thought that alone would have ended the debate over whether people have made that prediction in the past.
People always think that the changes happening in the present are giant compared to the changes that happened before their time. Comics writer Brian Cronin discussed this in a recent column talking about comics fans' reactions to status quo changes in comics, dubbing it "Chronological Privilege." To us, the older changes are just the way things have always been, so we don't realize how big they must have seemed to people at the time. Which is why wisdom requires a healthy skepticism about our own assumptions and an effort to compare them against perspectives outside our own.
Both physical media from DVD onwards and streaming have opened up a vast library of amazing movies and TV shows to people at very reasonable costs. To get them to make a new movie at a theater their outing of choice, that movie has to be something that people have been anticipating or be of such high quality that word gets around about how good it is.
That's a good terminology for it. I really appreciate that more and more as I look at changes and then step back and appreciate other changes that have happened, rather than assume "Oh, it must be like this."
It probably wasn't.
Have they? Streamers these days keep pulling shows and films from their libraries. There are thus a lot of productions that are currently hard to find anywhere, and cinephiles are starting to remember how much they appreciated physical media that they could actually own. Also, those "reasonable costs" have shot upward repeatedly over the past couple of years, and multiple ad-free tiers have started including commercials, since most streaming services have proven unprofitable. The streaming industry is highly unstable, and its bubble is probably close to collapse. It will presumably survive, but less pervasively than it has over the past few years.
Also, remember how they said decades ago that vinyl records were obsolete? They're back in now. Retro is a thing. If people today can be nostalgic for vinyl, people 30 years from now will be nostalgic for going out to the movies.
Exactly. The flaw in assuming the industry must die is the same as it was when Orson Welles made his speech 70 years ago: it overlooks the possibility of the film industry changing itself to adapt to the new status quo.
Just came home from seeing Aquaman 2. It's fun, good follow-up to the first one. Easily the best DC movie of the year. Which, admittedly, is a low bar, but still. If you liked the first one, you'll most likely enjoy this one, too.
With Aquaman 2 being the final release in the current DECU, here is a list of opening day totals for the fifteen movies, courtesy of Comscore.
DC Extended Universe film openings
DC Extended Universe film openings
- “Wonder Woman 1984” (2020) — $16.7 million
- “Blue Beetle” (2023) — $25 million
- “The Suicide Squad” (2021) — $26.2 million
- “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” (2023) — $27.7 million
- “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” (2023) — $30.1 million
- “Birds of Prey” (2020) — $33 million
- “Shazam!” (2019) — $53.5 million
- “The Flash” (2023) — $55 million
- “Black Adam” (2022) — $67 million
- “Aquaman” (2018) — $67.8 million
- “Justice League” (2017) — $93.8 million
- “Wonder Woman” (2017) — $103.2 million
- “Man of Steel” (2013) — $116.6 million
- “Suicide Squad” (2016) — $133.6 million
- “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) — $166 million
Which just goes to show how little correlation box office has with quality. Those top two openings (at the bottom of the list, oddly) are IMHO the two most unwatchably incoherent and terrible movies in the series, at least in their theatrical releases (the director's cut of BvS is considerably better).
I doubt these numbers say much about the movies themselves at all, and more about the vagaries of audience interests as shaped by any number of factors. I mean, surely the opening-day results are the least correlated to the actual merits of a film, since the audience hasn't seen it yet. I don't get the industry's obsession with the first weekend instead of the overall performance over time, which would surely be stronger for a film people wanted to see again and recommend to their friends.