Note: Originally I wrote this piece for the Malaysia
Box Office Facebook site on 20th November, 2020.. Plenty more
cinemas have closed down after this piece, notably Golden Screen
Cinema which shut down its theatres at Berjaya Times Square and
Cheras Leisure Mall, I've added an emotional quote from Spielberg to conclude this err... plea?
The Covid 19/Coronavirus pandemic is not a local phenomenon (no, not like the immortal Selangor water woes), it had hit global community left, right and centre, yes, including the political leanings. No one is spared. Young, old, teens, or supporters of Manchester United... the virus is like the Terminator, only with Punk-ish points.
Speaking of water woes, the film fans, movie buffs and cinema aficionados world over face the somewhat the same situation, we are now bereft of any flicks to watch on big screen.
In Malaysia, we were saddened by the closure of MBO, and again, this is not a local issue. Britain's second-biggest cinema chain has drawn the curtain too. And in the mightly US of A, the Regal cinema is temporarily shutting its door and that is going to impact 40,000 employee in the US and 5,000 in Britain.
Most of the films that started out big, promising to smash across the big screens world over, have now pocketed their smugness and humbled themselves to smaller screens, may it be Netflix, or other OTT platform (Over The Top – referring to content provision through internet, not that highly forgettable Stallone flick). Smaller screen is the new black for filmmakers. Sad, but true. Or is it so?
And, does it look like Edison has won. Why?
There has been conflict as to who invented cinema. Well, like most stuff, it has always evolved from something. Cinema definitely had a very humble (probably smelly) beginning in dank caves where the men and women of neolithic age used shadow to tell stories. It's the same old concept today, except the audiences has grown from own family members, neighbours to the irreprehensible members from Star Trek conventions.
Most of the time, credit goes to the master inventor/thief, Tomas Alva Edison who invented the kinetoscope, a device where you can screw your eyes into a viewfinder and watch the reels. Of course, it feels voyeuristic, with the keyhole approach, but sitting with a the large crowd as enabled by the big screen innovation through the Frenchmen Lumiere brothers' invention of camera and projector.
With the cinemas industries lifespan uncertainties, we are back at watching small screens ala Edison who personalised watching moving images. Or will this be the future of cinema?
Take the case of The Irishmen, for example. Directed by Oscar-winning, possibly one of the greatest filmmaker in Hollywood, Martin Scorcese, it has the magnitude of a huge Hollywood epic, bringing in a team of brilliant casts, and genius crews (I can't vouch that for, say, the Key Grip, but hey...).
Apparently, the main reason why it went to Netflix, instead of letting screen bloods out for wider audience, is simply Scorcese wanted it to be so. He didn't want it to be on big screen where it was infested (my word, not his) with comic book heroes, and there is no place for more artistic presentations such as his. Apparently the studios have passed The Irishmen, a costly production, thinking that it will not be able to make back the dough enough for them to laugh their way to the bank like The Joker.
In addition to Scorcese, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Paul Greengrass, and the great David Fincher found second home there. This is just the beginning and it doesn't look good for big screen trade. And now the goddam virus is looking to end it all, or would it?
What is the next step of cinematic evolution as far as the silver screen is concerned? One of the possibilities are that it will still be kept alive as one of the profit centre arms by the non-traditional studio. In fact, the very Netflix has bought a cinema last year, somewhat saving the “ailing industry” as the linked article pointed out...It also could be that to qualify for Oscar nominations, films have to have run in an LA theatre for seven days.
Will the big studios give up on cinemas then, thus ensuring the death of the dear dream theatre of darkness and light? Not so, if the Scorcese's nightmares are to be kept alive. In fact, it is argued that low to mid-budget films may enjoy their run on small screen, but not so the biggies. Franchise flicks like Avengers and Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible (7 on the way), need the cash cow in form of mass ticket buying.
Right now, everyone is tied up at home, and the four walls is going to bore the heck out of them one day. There is a possibility that this is just suppressing the audience, and when the time comes for all to come out be in masses, there might be mass cinema door opening, in fact as mentioned by Tim Richards, founder and chief executive of cinema chain Vue International, in this piece:
“....Families, couples, individuals are being tied up at home for weeks or months now...When it is over there will be a demand to get out like we have never seen in history. There is no scenario after lockdown [where] people will say ‘I’m not going out, I’m staying in to watch Netflix’.....”
Post lockdown, will the audience, fed-up with claustrophobic smaller screen (no matter how big their TV screens are, they are not going to match the big screen... the ACTUAL big screen), push their way out to the cinemas? Or will they be consumed with post-Covid 19 paranoia and eschew anything involving crowd? Did Edison win this round, with personal film viewing snatching the trophy from mass gawking at the big screen?
Not too fast, Thomas... in addition to the content, its quality, its shape, size, taste whatever...what's missing is the experience. Sure, you can cook a gourmet meal at home, dim the light, light candle, and do the double role as a waiter with fake French accent and the “customer”... but will that be the same as in actual, proper, restaurant and saying (like in When Harry Met Sally, 1989, in case you are missing the reference) “I'll have what she's having”? In the theatre, everyone has the same thing.
Let us not even get started with the concessions, burn as much popcorn as you want at home, you are not going to get the same texture, aroma...most importantly, the taste you are going to get in the movie theatres. In fact, that is where the theatres really push their profit margin... Yes, its the goddam popcorn you are, err, popping that has been keeping the theatres alive, where the concessions contributes 85% to the profit.
Eating popcorn from that humongous tub, sucking carbonated drinks, heads stretched upwards staring at the screen, losing yourself amidst the caramel taste in your mouth is not an experience you are going to get at home, where you don't turn your mobile phones in silent mode, and your fellow audiences has too close a personal relationship with you.
And have opinions while watching the show.
Watching movies in a theatre is not a pastime. Its an experience. Its a ride for the audience to getaway from reality, a safe haven instead of alcohol and drugs, to be in the shadow, watching the light, being transported into a different world, now that the sound system and other innovations have been making the experience more visceral.
Let the OTTs be, but note that quality of the streaming will be questionable. Why? Well, here, it noted that the main players announced that they are reducing the picture quality in order to cut the data going to homes by 25% so that the Internet doesn't get bottlenecked.
Sounds familiar? Sounds like how the products' quality become less awesome as they become mass-produced? Soon, the produced films for OTT will be offered in inferior packages so the service providers don't have to do the quality reduction themselves. You don't get this just because this movie theatre screen is slightly smaller than the other. Edison's Kinetoscope didn't make it, Lumierre's invention did. Big screen is here to stay, it just has to evolve into something more awesome as half a century ago it went into widescreen and started stereo sounds that got audiences to start coming back in drove despite the wars, and the invasion of television at homes.
Cinemas in Malaysia is going through just that, some sort of continental drift, a big evolution that is going to make it much more awesome with newer innovations and most importantly, better experience for audiences, who are weary of indoor life, and are ready for that dark hall escapades.
It is good to add this quote from a piece by Spielberg who wrote eloquently and emotionally for Empire Magazine:
... In a movie theatre, you watch movies with the significant others in your life, but also in the company of strangers. That’s the magic we experience when we go out to see a movie or a play or a concert or a comedy act. We don’t know who all these people are sitting around us, but when the experience makes us laugh or cry or cheer or contemplate, and then when the lights come up and we leave our seats, the people with whom we head out into the real world don’t feel like complete strangers anymore. We’ve become a community, alike in heart and spirit, or at any rate alike in having shared for a couple of hours a powerful experience. That brief interval in a theatre doesn’t erase the many things that divide us: race or class or belief or gender or politics. But our country and our world feel less divided, less fractured, after a congregation of strangers have laughed, cried, jumped out their seats together, all at the same time. Art asks us to be aware of the particular and the universal, both at once. And that’s why, of all the things that have the potential to unite us, none is more powerful than the communal experience of the arts.....
I almost cried...
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