The Decline of Cinema
When’s the last time you wanted to see a movie in a theater? It seems more than a few people nowadays can’t recall.
Why pay to eat popcorn in a crowded theater when you can microwave it for free at home?
We’re living in strange times when it comes to technology. Cardboard is sold as an application for virtual reality, money seems to find its way into the arms of people mouthing the words of popular songs on social media, and offensive things celebrities say in their twenties get them blacklisted from events in their forties. This is a time where much of what happens could never have been predicted in previous decades.
A perfect example of this is the decline of traditional movie theaters, which is becoming more and more evident as less people than ever visit cinemas. A 2015 CBS News poll found 84% of American respondents watched more movies at home than at theaters, a significant increase from just two years prior. First, let’s delve into what exactly is making movie theaters not as profitable as they once were. From there, we can examine the once-booming entertainment medium’s top competition in regards to what they offer consumers and how that affects the appeal they garner.
Genre-Defining Margins
It’s important to remember that the movie business is not the same as the theater business. Money-wise, movies as a whole aren’t suffering, breaking box office records regularly. But upon examination of the most successful films of this decade, it’s hard to deny that the appeal of genres plays a larger role in profitability than the theaters themselves.
Worldwide, the 2018 Marvel superhero films Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War made $1.3 billion and $2.1 billion respectively. These numbers can be reasonably attributed to the insane hype surrounding the genre of superheroes. When was the last time, say, a horror movie managed to surpass $800 million in the last ten years? 2017’s It achieved a worldwide box office total of $700 million, the highest of any horror film ever. When compared to crowd-pandering schlock like Despicable Me 3 ($1.0 billion) and franchise epics like Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($1.3 billion), it’s clear audiences are more invested in particular genres than in theaters. In other words, if horror films were exclusively released in theaters while superhero films were exclusive to Netflix, the latter would prosper and the former would crumble, because Netflix has what audiences want.
This is purely hypothetical, but it serves to illustrate theaters rely on profitable genres to ensure people buy tickets, when thirty-or-so years ago, the idea of going to a movie theater (3-D, special effects, huge screen, etc.) was enough to hook consumers.
Remote vs. Ticket
With that dissected, it’s time to address the elephant in the living room: streaming. Companies are acknowledging the market potential of this entertainment-viewing method more than ever nowadays. This is because at-home movie-viewing is far more appealing to consumers than sitting in theaters.
The idea of renting a movie online in the comfort of one’s home, without the inconveniences of buying snacks, finding seats, tuning out fellow movie-goers, and sitting through repetitive commercials, among other annoyances, is certainly enticing. It also helps that, unlike with theaters, there is no scheduling for when you can watch a movie on streaming and/or rental sites. Once a movie is out of theaters, you don’t have to wait around for showings and attend on time to watch it on Amazon. The ability to stream is right there at the consumers’ fingertips. Viewers at home can pause, rewind, turn on subtitles, and go to the restroom without fear of missing scenes. The advantages of at-home viewing as opposed to those of theaters are veritable bullet points for why cinema’s future is anything but promising.
The Future of Cinema
Of 52 Heritage students polled, 43 respondents claimed they watch more movies at home than in theaters. It’s not difficult to understand why that number is so high, given all of the medium’s outdated inconveniences. What makes its future even more bleak is the reliance on genres rather than gimmicks in order to attract consumers, something you couldn’t say about cinemas twenty years ago. Are movie theaters doomed to be the next Blockbuster Video on a wider scale, or can they adopt new methods of proving their worth against online streaming?
Hughes • Dec 20, 2019 at 4:35 am
Despicable Me 3 was actually quite good. If you wanted to give examples of schlock, there are plenty of other syrupy movies. When it comes to animation, Toy Story 4 was much worse than Despicable Me 3.
I agree with the point about people preferring to view movies at home, but in my experience, that is because local multiplexes suck. Theatres are all with, unimpressive screens.
The best cinema experiences are in the premium priced cinemas, where tickets are very expensive. The bigger cinemas present each movie as an event. It is that which allows people to view a movie to its best advantage. Most bigger cinemas are in city centres or much further than most people would like to travel. If the travel seems like a hassle and paying extra for a film you can see for much less locally, why would anyone bother to go? Sure, local cinemas will lose money if all cinemas had enormous auditoriums and massive screens (they’d need bigger premises, and cut down the number of screens), but people need to feel that the experience they will get at the cinema will be very special. You have to be addicted to that experience.
If you watch movies in multiplexes, the experience is never intended to be deluxe. It is cheap and anyone can turn up. If you go to a bigger view you already filter out the people who only came because they were noted and needed a room to good about or snog.
Cinema chains made a choice in the 90s and that was to survive. The multiplex model was chosen, bigger cinemas with huge acreens, showing one or two movies per day were pretty much all shut down. In London, even the big Empire cinema has introduced more screens and gotten rid of its gorgeous art deco main auditorium. To add insult to injury they have a small theatre which they now call IMAX (and not even a very big IMAX if you compare it to the BFI at the Southbank). They got rid of their best screen to accomodate more patrons and have more screens to show more movies, but the experience has been watered down. With what? A small claustrophobic auditorium? The screen is big but it sure isn’t as impressive as the old theatre. So for cinema to become popular again the impossible must be done. Cinema screens need to get bigger, the auditoriums larger, and the ticket prices cheaper to deliver that experience. None of that will happen which means the standard cinema experience will be mediocre. In fact, the people growing up today don’t even watch TV, or go anywhere for their screen-based entertainment so in the distant future that will also have an effect on cinemas.
Cinemas might survive by getting films with expired copyrights, bringing down ticket sales. I can see that happening. It is already happening with the some TV channels where broadcasters show “classic” movies that are out of copyright. Those channels are cheap to run and exhibitors don’t have to get the rights to broadcast the media. Cinemas will follow suit and become nostalgia hell, as if it wasn’t bad enough that people prefer to romanticise the past and want to live there.
Zack Roy • Jan 28, 2020 at 11:23 am
Thank you for the insightful response!