culture / movies

The Return of the Cinema?

The Portly Politico19 Comments

After years of declining box office totals and the closures of The Age of The Virus, it suddenly feels like moviegoing is back.  Four major releases seem to be driving folks to theaters in droves:  Barbie, Sound of Freedom, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and Oppenheimer.  Even with relative flops like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the woke Pixar flick Elemental, everyone seems to be flooding back into theaters, almost out of nowhere.

To be fair, box office receipts for Summer 2022 were up, likely on the strength of Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  Perhaps I didn’t darken the door of a theater in 2022 as frequently as I have in 2023 (there’s something about being single and dating that drives me to the movies frequently), so my admittedly anecdotal observations are skewed.  But, dang, it sure does feel like folks are flooding back into theaters.  In my mind, that’s a good thing.

When I saw Sound of Freedom, it was a 6:45 PM Sunday showing.  When I arrived, the theater lobby was very busy, and after the film, it was packed.  My theater for Sound of Freedom was not filled to the brim—far from it—but it had a sizable attendance.  Walking around in the lobby after the film, there were floods of teenagers and adults in pink going to and coming from screenings of Barbie.  Anecdotally, my brother told me that when he saw Oppenheimer the same weekend in Indiana, it was the first time he has been in a sold-out theater in probably twenty years—and that was an expensive IMAX screening of the film!

It seems like just a year ago, theaters will still limping along post-pandemic; now they’re humming with activity.  The poor kid working the concession counter that Sunday told me he had reached his limit of difficult customers (the people in front of us were sampling nacho cheese, as if they’d never eaten industrial orange cheese goop before, and were generally taking forever), a testament to the number of stupid customers coming through (a side note:  in this day and age, you should buy your tickets online, or at least know exactly what screening you want to attend when you get up there; your indecisiveness is making it more difficult for the rest of us).  Even after the film—around 9:15 PM—the concessions were going strong.

I’m not the only one to notice this trend.  Blogger Esoterica of Existential Ergonomics has picked up on it, too, detailing the phenomenon in her post “Theater-Mania.”  She notes the bizarre but interesting trend of seeing Barbenheimer, a double-feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer that’s five hours long (Oppenheimer clocks in at three hours!).  Perhaps it’s just the absurd contrast of these two vastly different films that has spawned this Internet-fueled sensation, but it’s getting butts into seats.

I suspect, too, that folks are just ready to see normal, engaging movies again.  Yes, I hear that Barbie is pretty woke, but it is drawing in tons of women, from teenagers to middle-aged cat moms, who grew up playing with the dolls and are familiar (even if in passing) with the various non-troversies around the line of toys and their supposed contributions to and/or detractions from the ever-evolving concept and goals of feminism.  Those women are bringing along their reluctant boyfriends, husbands, and cats (well, maybe not the last one), and the film is something of a cultural moment for these chicks.  Sound of Freedom is the must-see film of the year, especially for Christians, but it avoids the pitfall of most Christian movies in that it’s not overly preachy.  Oppenheimer is also a cultural watershed, as Christopher Nolan films tend to be.  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is a classic action thriller without an ounce of wokery in it.

At the time of writing, I have not seen Oppenheimer, but I will hopefully have seen it (on IMAX, ideally) by the time this post is published; it will certainly get a full Monday Morning Movie Review treatment.  I doubt I’ll see Barbie, but there are plenty of reviews of the film already out there, both positive and negative.  Most of the analysis and reviews I’ve read of Barbie suggest it’s a mean-spirited feminist matriarchy fantasy in which the Kens are mere “accessories” and are second-class citizens in a supposedly utopian Barbieland, but Laura Loomer argues it’s a deeply satirical sendup of feminism; YouTuber Shoe0nhead calls it “An Accidental Anti-‘Woke’ Masterpiece.”  That’s probably a stretch, but, hey, it’s generating some conversations and, again, getting people into the theater.

Whatever is happening, I hope it is sustainable.  It’s great being able to watch movies at home, but nothing replaces the magic and immersion of seeing a flick on the big screen.

19 thoughts on “The Return of the Cinema?”

  2. I’d love to be able to go to the cinema again but I just don’t see it. I went over a decade ago to see one of the later Pirates movies, had a claustrophobic panic attack and left at the start. I haven’t been back since. Crowds, kids, idiots? I’m happy to wait for the DVD release.

    Plus, I liked cinemas when they were sort of old fashioned. Sliding red velvet curtains. Ushers who you’d see in the dark by their torchlight. Respectful audiences who knew to keep scthum for a few hours. Cinema going was much better when I was younger.

    There’s no amount of cash in the world that would make me watch Barbie and as for Oppenheimer, something tells me the serious subject it’s been based on will have lightened to make it entertaining rather than educational. I know that entertainment is what you want but I’d be more interested in a documentary about Oppenheimer rather than a glossy feature.

    By the way, I watched the final season of The Walking Dead last week. It ended well – Tina and I are looking forward to the film, out next year, which will focus on Rick and Michone – but I’m not sure about the series as a whole. Two things that stood out were, firstly, the disparities between plenty and not. Some of the people leave one of the communities at the start, complaining about lack of food and rationing. Bizarrely though, they’ve all put on weight, especially Diane (formerly of the Kingdom) who looks like she’s eaten her enemies.

    Secondly, the all out fascination with walkers who can climb. But you see this in the very first series, when the dead scale a fence chasing Rick and Glenn in Atlanta.

    Away from that, you have references from shows like Supernatural and Lost and it makes for a pretty jumbled series. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t as much fun, for me, as previous seasons.

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  3. Apologies, Audre. She DOES pick up the bunny! Crikey, I watched that only a couple of days ago!

    I bow to your superior knowledge! 👏😂😂😂

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  4. I don’t think they completely went the Woke route but representation is certainly high throughout the series. For one, it has the same immunity issue as The Last of Us 1 & 2 – if you’re LGBTQ, you can survive any pandemic.

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      • Only at the start of the last season. Up until then, it wasn’t that much of an issue. We saw strong females and we didn’t bat an eyelid because it was normal. I just wondered what their thinking was in the final season.

        It was the Hurley syndrome though that made me chuckle. It reminded me of an earlier series when Olivia told that season’s antagonist, Negan, that they were all starving in Alexandria. He looked down at her, as anyone else would, and noted her obviously rotund frame. Diane was the same. I imagine when she reached her destination, the townsfolk would have hid their supplies! 😂

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