I love movies. In my home office/man cave, I’m surrounded by movie posters and autographs. The classics. ALIEN. Star Wars. Jaws. The Godfather. They are hanging in tribute to the experiences that I treasure.
And I may never see the inside of a theatre again.
It’s not because I’m a germaphobe. In fact, I’ve done some pretty gross things before, that I don’t want to repeat here (I blame free SXSW booze). I just don’t see the upside. The communal experience is no longer accessible, because I’m no longer part of the community.
I shall explain.
Theaters used to be temples to me. I loved the experience, and there is nothing like seeing a big movie with an audience. Singing along to Singin’ In the Rain, or The Blues Brothers, with hundreds of fellow travelers… It’s like nothing else.
But then. COVID-19.
We are now afraid of our own shadow, and afraid of each other. I’m not scared, personally… But when you have the people shaming you if you don’t wear a mask when you are just buying a soda in a gas station, it has a mental toll. On even the best of us.
Movie going was never easy, and as a user experience designer, I have studied how people work and act. People almost always go down the path of least resistance. That is why people order takeout, instead of fix dinner. Why most people buy toy spaceships instead of build models.
As I’ve written/ranted before, the movie-going experience has degraded the past few years. Too many self-involved people talking on or using their phones instead of watching, too many rude patrons who have no respect for the people surrounding them.
COVID just accelerated things.
The big movie theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and across America are closing. Convenience and (now) safety is taking precedence. Marvel just announced all their 2020 releases were now delayed to 2021, and the box office results for the only 2020 “tentpole” release out so far this year, TENET, has under-performed. Movies, and movie theaters, are in trouble.
We’re all watching different things, and the communal experience is disappearing. Only with big sporting events or “event” films” are a shared experience happening… And then, it’s not always together.
What will this mean, in the end? Don’t know. But I do know the communal movie-going experience… Heck, the communal EXPERIENCE… Is getting less and less common. Movies will still be made, but the high budgets that has become the norm may go away. And actors who have been paid millions to pretend may all of a sudden discover the hard law of supply and demand.
Isolating people from each other, in the past, has never ended well. And here we are.
I hope for the best, but I also prepare for the worse.