I came of age going to the movies at the turn of the century. In 1999, I was finally old enough to see R-rated movies and my friend and I caught virtually every great movie that came out—this was near the tail end of the wave of Indie cinema that started off the ‘90s. Back then, my friend and I judged how good a movie was by the headache we had at the end of it. We figured, being creative artist types, that a great movie makes you think, challenges you, changes you.
I’m just going to leave that here at the opening of this essay and let it melt in your mouth while you read the rest of it. Should you care to.
There are people who still talk about the movies like they’re a big deal. I mean the actual process of going out to a theater and seeing one. The parking, the pandemonium, the price. Lots of people still feel a jolt seeing a movie on a big screen with a bunch of folks surrounding them. I also used to have that little hobby and it used to give me glad tidings of great joy. I was even one of those nerds who watched the end credits and wondered what a “best boy” did, etc. But in the last several years, when anyone brings up the Oscars, for example, my overall reaction is, “Meh.”
And that’s quite the sea change. Because I loved the movies the way I did, the Oscars were my Super Bowl. I would cry along with the actors when they won their little statues, hoping I would be there on that stage, doing the same thing someday. It was a rush, and I get a little sentimental about it, because the movies are something a) I no longer recognize, b) I’m not speaking to, and c) are like the old Greek gods—dead as a doornail.
Comparing the movies to gods may seem inappropriate to some of you, but the movie palaces of yore were like the temples of the “old gods”—the Baals and golden calves of the ancient world. You go in a dark space to be illumined by bright, shiny colors—a screen that fills you with emotion and leaves you riven when you step back outside, waiting for your Uber. Going to the movies, for me, used to be a religious experience. I would see a movie I loved and then become a missionary for it—telling everybody to stop what they were doing and go see it. And when people walk out of rich, heady movies—their demeanor is akin to the old worshippers, stumbling forth from the Eleusinian mysteries.
There are those still converted to the magic of the films themselves, not just the movie-going experience. The amount of money some of these things make is obscene, asinine—should make people feel unclean. So, folks are still clearly going to the movies, enthralled by the new gods, who are now all in capes or covered in digital fur or are a reboot/remake/reissue of one thing or another.
This is where I show my age. So, I’m actually not one of those people who lectures young folks on how they’re music is bad, because I don’t believe that. Not only are there interesting young composers and songwriters everywhere now, but some of the stuff on the radio is not half-bad either. I probably get that from my father—when he died, nearly eighty, his favorite singers were The Weeknd and Lady Gaga. In a world where Em Beihold and Doja Cat and folks like that are around, I think we're doing okay. However, when it comes to the movies, I do want to get ahold of younger millennials and Gen Z-ers and shake them and scream, “Those aren’t movies! Those aren’t movies!” 'Cuz they ain’t.
I was born in a world where brand recognition, fantasies, science fiction, and action/adventure had already taken over everything, not only in Hollywood. In the early ‘80s, the money-folks wrestled Tinseltown back from the directors who gave us film’s most thrilling period (1967-1974, roughly) and handed it over to Spielberg, Lucas, and their acolytes. Those types (and now their acolytes) have essentially been in control ever since.
But there has also been a change since then as well—one more disturbing—because the branding is on steroids. Now cinemas are for superheroes, children’s films, and the oddments that don't fit in either categories and they usually don’t even find themselves in movie theaters—they go to Netflix. I was one of those who used to think streaming services would kill the movies because it would get people out of the habit of going. Now, quite frankly, the naturalistic stories, the meaty drama, even the funnier comedy—it’s all on the streaming services, not in the theaters. You can go back to the movies. But what for?
Awhile back, Martin Scorsese got in a brouhaha about superhero movies, comparing their predictable thrills with those of amusement or theme park rides. I expected the types who attend ‘cons to rail against the little man, and they did. But I thought at least a few people would actually pay attention to what he said. Few did.
In the end, Scorsese’s basic point was that one cannot take something like Thor: Ragnarok and talk about it as one does a work of art. There is much being advanced in such a film, but not art—the uncomfortable place where one rails at fate or demands clarity from the gods, or something that tries to be aesthetically beautiful on its own. Those things are found in abundance when cinema allows people to tell personal stories.
I would add to Scorsese’s criticism that it is also the sameness, the Xerox feel, the Franchise Problem, of the Marvel films that make them so disappointing, not to mention the all-too-little risk they’re taking artistically (and even financially, as the movie has been sold before it opens). Note I said the films were (artistically) disappointing, not badly made. No one, not even Scorsese, said they weren’t well-made.
Some of the people working in the MCU are thrillingly talented. More than likely, most of the talent is with the MCU right now, acting or otherwise. I just happen to think all superheroes are not created equally and therefore the vast majority of them don’t need their own films. I also think about all the writers and directors who may want to tell personal stories on the big screen. Why shouldn’t they be able to? Well, they might be able to physically make them, but there’s not enough room on the schedule because we discovered a bad superhero from the early ‘70s who hasn’t been done yet.
The last film I saw in theaters was Elvis. An appropriate choice. The story of Elvis is a pageant of life in mid-20th-century America. Movies make great pageants, and it was a fantastic pageant, by the way. The best thing Baz Luhrmann has done (and maybe will ever do). I’m glad I saw it in a theater. And yet I found the whole experience seeing it a little empty.
I walked down the hallways of the old temple. The carpet design may have been the same as it was in the ‘90s—it was hard to tell. Perhaps the patterns or colors have just come back in style.
The popcorn didn’t seem to taste as good. They certainly weren’t as generous with the butter as they used to be.
And even though Elvis was great, there was that odd feeling in me that I’d seen it before. Even a film as technically brilliant and well-made as that one, the only stories I see now are ones I’ve been told before.
Then, I thought back to the next-to-last movie-going experience I had prior to that one. That was the time I stood up in the theater during the Beauty and the Beast remake and decided, once and for all, I wasn’t going to give Disney one more dime to rewatch something that was far superior the time previous.
It's a little rueful, the end of this love affair, or the end of my devotion to the old gods. I may have felt the first pang of it when Peter Jackson began making The Hobbit films. There was something decidedly altered about The Hobbit experience. Being made in the wake of his Lord of the Rings trilogy (a merchandising juggernaut the likes of we hadn’t seen in years), the new films were no different than the tee-shirts, the trailers, and the formula that was established and was already paid for. Plus—I had this odd feeling that movies were no longer making me dream. They were doing all the dreaming for me. I was watching someone else’s dream, but my world was not changed, my heart had not skipped a beat. I wasn’t moved.
The same year The Hobbit saw its first sequel was the last time I saw a movie-theater-movie that made me dream. Her, Spike Jonze’s masterpiece about a love affair with AI in the future. Now, a film does not have to be as forward-thinking, singular, and deliciously crafted as a Spike Jonze movie to make me dream. It actually can just be good and give me hope for my world, and the world at large. But I somehow cannot see something as weird as Her even getting a fair shake now. And besides, even Joaquin Phoenix has now played a supervillain, Taxi Driver rip off that Joker was.
Nowadays, when people tell me I’ve missed out on not seeing a certain movie, I know somehow I haven’t. That’s what makes the end of the affair so painful. People want me to have hope for the movies, but I don’t.
There are, one could assume, great movies to be made and, if one can make them in the tight strictures of today’s Hollywood, I’d love to see it. But my feeling is it will take a tip in the culture to set things right or get the ball rolling in a different direction.
We don’t need the movies the way we did in the past. Oversaturated with media 24/7, our faces stuffed with noise and color nearly intravenously, there’s nothing a movie could even do to entertain us, except having the explosions bigger and the 3-D 3-D-ier. Can the surprises be more surprising?
But even if they were how do you even expect disbelief suspension from a people and culture so fundamentally bored?
You can stay in. But I’m out. And I’m mostly happy that I’m out. As much as I love a great dramatic story, there is a life to be had. As much as a performance can be described as “must-see,” is it really? Aren’t the little critters and the trees and the flowers more deserving of our attention? Or the books? Or the people? Heck, you can never know too many people. I find myself wanting more and more to know the real person down the hall than a fictional character I will never meet.
The old gods are dead. At least for me. Time for a new beast to slouch toward whatever hamlet that might wake us up from our doldrums.
Seriously. Why not a new art form, or a new form that blends even more of our forms? That’s all the movies ever were—a blending of theatre, music, and photography.
Or maybe it’s time we start living our lives. Maybe we all need a little time out of the darkness and out of the front of this screen you’re holding now.
Go fall in love or off the deep end or anywhere else but here.
Let’s all go do something.
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