Chris Nolan Saving Movie Theaters

What will happen to movie theaters?


Christopher NolanKurt Iswarienko for Variety
With thousands of theaters shut down across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, filmmaker Christopher Nolan urges people to show their support when they reopen. In an essay for The Washington Post, Nolan calls movie theaters a “vital part of social life” that not only provides entertainment for everyone, but also jobs for many people.

Nolan, whose new movie “Tenet” is due July 17, has always preferred the traditional theatrical experience over streaming. He was once critical of Netflix, saying their straight-to-subscriber process was “mindless,” but later apologized and called the streaming giant “revolutionary” in an interview with Variety.
 
niki said:
filmmaker Christopher Nolan urges people to show their support when they reopen. In an essay for The Washington Post, Nolan calls movie theaters a “vital part of social life”.
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He is so disconnected.

Time has past for the 90’s era movie theater. It has to evolve.

And i for one will not be jumping to spend time in a closed room with a hundred or more people for 3hrs (because he only makes long movies now), just not going to do it.

If art is to be an essential part of society, then it has to have some relevance.... movie theaters do not hold that value at this time, pandemic or no.

I remember going to the theater prior to the internet, and before HD. Definitely was an important part of society back then.

Now? I like it, but i don’t see it as essential in its current form. The model for theaters and the content is far too commercial to be worth saving. Like newspapers, if we all carry a reading device, why waste the resources to make giant paper sunday papers?

Movie theaters should not be trying to hold onto the glimmer of cultural relevance it once had. And the insult is that the business model has not changed, but doubled down on 90’s theater experience.

In the 90’s, it was the pinnacle of technology and a way for the masses to share in a cultural experience and ideals. But the business aspect was lazy because it knew we had no other option, and prices began to go up, while experiences didn’t. Shortly after the internet and cellphones altered the way we shared information, and that made the theater experience just a preference, and no longer essential.

Now here we are in a pandemic aware society and theaters are still trying to get hundreds of people to hot box in a closed room together.

Consider this, if a movie theater experience with popcorn and a drink can cost roughly $25, and one could buy a sound system for $500, and get 90% of the theater experience from their home on the 60” tv they already own, then what exactly is a film shot a year or two ago going to help us feel when we have so many other ways of experiencing shared experiences? $25 in 20 times will afford some one a fairly good sound system. And you don’t even have to worry about bedbugs or some stranger talking over the movie.
 
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James0b57 said:
I remember going to the theater prior to the internet, and before HD....
Now? I like it, but i don’t see it as essential in its current form....

In the 90’s, it was the pinnacle of technology...

Consider this, if a move experience with popcorn and a drink can cost roughly $25, and one could buy a sound system for $500, and get 90% of the theater experience from their home on the 60” tv they already own, then what exactly is a film shot a year or two ago going to help us feel when we have so many other ways of experiencing shared experiences? $25 in 20 times will afford some one a fairly good sound system. And you don’t even have to worry about bedbugs or some stranger talking over the movie.
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Technology and the experience that can be had at home now, is the big thing. For the average person, the 'at home' experience was always going to be very sub-par 20-30 years ago. Small SD CRT's, VHS tapes, internal TV speakers. Few people had laser discs. Then we got DVD's and quality jumped, but most people were still watching on small SD CRT's. Things improved again with HD, Blu-ray and affordable surround sound, but the average person's home experience was still far from the movie theater even though it had jumped exponentially over what we had in the SD days. But now, with very large affordable UHD flat panels and even larger affordable HD/UHD projectors, you can get an excellent experience with minimal cost and effort, now. No, most people will never have a screen in their house as large as what the average commercial movie theater has, but the average commercial movie theater now has much less to offer over the home experience compared to the 90's. For most releases, there is almost no reason for me to go to the theater vs. watching at home.
 
What you don't get at home is the communal experience that you get when watching a film in a theater. While I rarely go to the theater, I do go to film festivals, which tend to be the venues that show the types of films I am most interested in. I usually find comedies to be funnier, and thrillers to be more thrilling, suspense films more suspenseful, when seen in theaters and sharing the experience with many other people. (However, I will concede that for straight dramas and documentaries, there seems to be decidedly less of an effect on the viewing experience. On the other hand, since I have only a 50 inch screen at home, I do at times miss the 30-60 foot screens in theaters...)
 
James0b57 said:
Consider this, if a movie theater experience with popcorn and a drink can cost roughly $25, and one could buy a sound system for $500, and get 90% of the theater experience from their home on the 60” tv they already own, then what exactly is a film shot a year or two ago going to help us feel when we have so many other ways of experiencing shared experiences? $25 in 20 times will afford some one a fairly good sound system.
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Cause you can't make out with the girl your parents don't even know you've been seeing ?

Said half in jest and half in truth.

Going to the cinema is a whole experience and it's about who you go with.

I for one love the anonymity of going into a darkened room and sharing a viewing experience in an audience with a bunch of strangers.

It's not really the same but you're kind of arguing that you can stay home and listen to a good record or streaming version of a song on a decent HiFi. Or you could go out with a friend or mates and listen to what's often a worse sounding (technically) version of the same song but played live with the vibe that only a live audience of 100 or more other like minded and invested individuals can bring to that space. You're going to talk to them or bump into them in that space, your people. Strangers drawn together by a common interest.

it's funny you say 90's cinema because I think that dates you.

They've been saying cinema is dead for decades, way before the 90's that you're pointing to as some golden era. Firstly with TV, then home entertainment like VHS, then DVD then home projectors became affordable and now streaming.

Cinemas aren't going anywhere because there's nothing that replicates that experience. While you personally might not enjoy that, I don't think the idea of us gathering around a fire to hear stories is going anywhere. Yeah you can make your own fire and stay in your own bubble, but the bigger fire with the bigger audience of random people is a very different experience, especially if its your kids and you don't know what they're up to.

I enjoy streaming and I like that HDR TV's give me such a great viewing experience, but if you go to a good cinema, it's hardly the same.

I saw Roma in a sold out audience in London and it was a completely different experience in viewing to watching it at home on Netflix. They're just different. One isn't better than the other. They just offer different things to different people.

I'd even argue watching a FILM print is quite a different experience to watching a digital projection. I recently saw a rare print of Se7ven that had been chemically altered for it's US theatrical run. The cinema was completely sold out and after watching the film at home before and then again in the cinema, I know which version I prefered. The one where I was jammed in with hundred os strangers palpably all having the same reactions I was to certain scenes on what's arguably a technically inferior medium if you listen to some. That shared cinema experience isn't something you replicate at home. Nor should you try to.

JB
 
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John Brawley said:
Cause you can't make out with the girl your parents don't even know you've been seeing ?

Said half in jest and half in truth.

Going to the cinema is a whole experience and it's about who you go with.

I for one love the anonymity of going into a darkened room and sharing a viewing experience in an audience with a bunch of strangers.

It's not really the same but you're kind of arguing that you can stay home and listen to a good record or streaming version of a song on a decent HiFi. Or you could go out with a friend or mates and listen to what's often a worse sounding (technically) version of the same song but played live with the vibe that only a live audience of 100 or more other like minded and invested individuals can bring to that space. You're going to talk to them or bump into them in that space, your people. Strangers drawn together by a common interest.

it's funny you say 90's cinema because I think that dates you.

They've been saying cinema is dead for decades, way before the 90's that you're pointing to as some golden era. Firstly with TV, then home entertainment like VHS, then DVD then home projectors became affordable and now streaming.

Cinemas aren't going anywhere because there's nothing that replicates that experience. While you personally might not enjoy that, I don't think the idea of us gathering around a fire to hear stories is going anywhere. Yeah you can make your own fire and stay in your own bubble, but the bigger fire with the bigger audience of random people is a very different experience, especially if its your kids and you don't know what they're up to.

I enjoy streaming and I like that HDR TV's give me such a great viewing experience, but if you go to a good cinema, it's hardly the same.

I saw Roma in a sold out audience in London and it was a completely different experience in viewing to watching it at home on Netflix. They're just different. One isn't better than the other. They just offer different things to different people.

I'd even argue watching a FILM print is quite a different experience to watching a digital projection. I recently saw a rare print of Se7ven that had been chemically altered for it's US theatrical run. The cinema was completely sold out and after watching the film at home before and then again in the cinema, I know which version I prefered. The one where I was jammed in with hundred os strangers palpably all having the same reactions I was to certain scenes on what's arguably a technically inferior medium if you listen to some. That shared cinema experience isn't something you replicate at home. Nor should you try to.

JB
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Thankyou John
 
KMR said:
What you don't get at home is the communal experience that you get when watching a film in a theater. While I rarely go to the theater, I do go to film festivals, which tend to be the venues that show the types of films I am most interested in. I usually find comedies to be funnier, and thrillers to be more thrilling, suspense films more suspenseful, when seen in theaters and sharing the experience with many other people. (However, I will concede that for straight dramas and documentaries, there seems to be decidedly less of an effect on the viewing experience. On the other hand, since I have only a 50 inch screen at home, I do at times miss the 30-60 foot screens in theaters...)
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Publimix said:
Is that good or bad? :)
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Another reason to watch at home...

I've been to a few sold out premiers of big movies and in a way it was cool, but by far and large, I'm fine without it. That's why I always like to go to late shows in the middle of the week. I get the prime seat that I want and I don't have to worry about someone talking or walking and sitting in front of me or any of the other myriad number of things that happen in a public movie theater. I'm actually fine with it when my GF doesn't want to watch something with me so I don't have to field questions that I may not know the answer to, because it may be the first time I'm seeing the movie, as well or otherwise unfamiliar with the story.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want theaters to go away, but I don't think they are the necessity they were nor do they have the vastly superior "experience" advantage that they once did(outside of IMAX and the like). Sure, there are some movies every now and again that will just be "better" in a commercial theater with a hundred other people to experience it with at the same time, but those are few and far between, today.
 
John Brawley said:
Cause you can't make out with the girl your parents don't even know you've been seeing ?

Said half in jest and half in truth.

Going to the cinema is a whole experience and it's about who you go with.
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Lord only knows how much money I spent in Jr High and High School going to the movies with a girl and never saw frame one from the previews through the end of the credits. I remember one time in maybe 9th grade(early 90's for those curious), my GF's mom picking us up afterwards and then asking us about the movie. Talk about not studying for the test...
 
Oh boy. This is a tough one.

I fear that I've become "part of the problem", because I have really slacked off on going to the movies in recent years. A certain amount of this is due to having a 100" screen and projector and 8 in-wall speakers, so watching a movie at home is immersive. And I can't complain about the lessening of the moviegoing experience in recent years due to people misbehaving in the theatre, because when I do go it's generally to a higher-end spot like Arclight Hollywood. So yep, I am part of the problem.

But that said, I do go to festivals and special screenings and love the experience of a classic moviehouse like the main screen at the Chinese Theatre and the Cinerama Dome. I saw a preview of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood at the Dome with Tarantino sitting two rows behind me (could hear him laugh during the movie) and of course we all cheered when the exterior of that theatre came up in the movie itself. So, maybe there is life in this old boy yet.

I can easily see why people are staying home more though. Tickets are expensive and many theatres are not as vigilant with the QC as they should be (never have been). This is a tough road to follow, and obviously it will now be many months before packed moviehouses becomes a thing again. I do wonder if this will be the tipping point and what percentage of theatres will still be open five years from now.
 
Don't much care if they stay open as I don't frequent them. Have never liked crowds. I do the pay for view thing when new movies come out.
 
Even Fellini noticed more than 30 years ago that people were not going to theaters, other than extravaganzas like 'Star Wars'. So, true cinema has been "dead" for a long time. Whatever art or cultural significance Nolan pretends to be preserving has little to do with what cinema meant before the 90's.
 
John Brawley said:
Cause you can't make out with the girl your parents don't even know you've been seeing ?

Said half in jest and half in truth.
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Ha! Well, I don't think we need theaters for that.

Going to the cinema is a whole experience and it's about who you go with.
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Yes, but you have to understand the CONTEXT, that for the next year, we are in a pandemic state, and going into a closed room with a couple hundred people eating Popcorn with our hands sitting in chairs occupied by another set of people a few hours earlier....

it is a different time. Maybe next Summer. Not right after lock down is lifted.


I for one love the anonymity of going into a darkened room and sharing a viewing experience in an audience with a bunch of strangers.
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Sure, but it isn't the experience that is the problem, and it isn't the cost, and it isn't the competition for audiences, and maybe it isn't even the content.... it is all of the above. something has to change.

When Movie pass was at its peak, I started seeing people going on a whim again. Yet, it isn't a viable business model.

I know theaters don't make money from the ticket sales, so I always buy pop corn and a drink. Not sure that movie companies are going to lower ticket sales for theaters to save them. No, the whole thing is weird. I see families stressing out about money in theaters. Exhaling when they purchase 5 tickets, because now that family just dropped $100, and still have to go get food and drinks. And these are NOT good food and drinks, these are the cheapest food and beverages we can come up with. Yet they cost as much as a fancy lunch at a boutique cafe.

The sense of community and watching in the dark is replaced by stress and "was it worth it" for a lot of lower income people. So, movies are for the middle class and up now. Great. Cool, let them save theaters. They won't, because the middle class is shrinking too. But movie theaters are still getting more expensive and not adapting in other ways.

It's not really the same but you're kind of arguing that you can stay home and listen to a good record or streaming version of a song on a decent HiFi.
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Here's the thing, you know I am not arguing that.

Or you could go out with a friend or mates and listen to what's often a worse sounding (technically) version of the same song but played live with the vibe that only a live audience of 100 or more other like minded and invested individuals can bring to that space. You're going to talk to them or bump into them in that space, your people. Strangers drawn together by a common interest.
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Music is not the same. If we had rooms for people to go sit and listen to music together in silence for a couple hours for $20, not sure how often most people would go.

Music is a performance art, and most often there is at least a DJ. Also people are interacting with music usually. Even the opera is not common for most people, because it isn't interactive, and it isn't cheap enough to go regularly. But metaphors are a slippery slope, and very easy to derail an argument built around them.

it's funny you say 90's cinema because I think that dates you.
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Why? I mentioned it as the last decade before wide spread internet. By 2008, people were watching quite a bit of content online and on their phones.

They've been saying cinema is dead for decades, way before the 90's that you're pointing to as some golden era. Firstly with TV, then home entertainment like VHS, then DVD then home projectors became affordable and now streaming.
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Words like "cinema" in English mean a few different things. important to distinguish what exactly we are talking about, I suppose. "Cinema" can be the art form, the industry, the product, and the theaters. What we are talking about right now, is theaters. It can be argued that "cinema as an art" as a living vibrant art, has been passed by a long time ago. Perhaps the 70's was the last decade for it. Maybe TV killed cinema as an Art.

Cinemas aren't going anywhere because there's nothing that replicates that experience. While you personally might not enjoy that,
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in the context of a pandemic, I don't want to be in a closed room. You have to factor in the context of what I am saying.

I don't think the idea of us gathering around a fire to hear stories is going anywhere.
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Now, I definitely am not bashing sharing Stories as a general concept either. I went from saying theaters should adapt, and during this pandemic I am not paying to be in a confine space.... to I don't think people need to share stories? Give me some credit.

Yeah you can make your own fire and stay in your own bubble, but the bigger fire with the bigger audience of random people is a very different experience, especially if its your kids and you don't know what they're up to.
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That's a bit extreme. It isn't movie theaters or isolation. And it isn't movie theaters or the death of share stories. It is that movie theaters have to adapt. Because for most movies, people just aren't going. It is all about tentpole films now.

I enjoy streaming and I like that HDR TV's give me such a great viewing experience, but if you go to a good cinema, it's hardly the same.
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WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC SITUATION.

I saw Roma in a sold out audience in London and it was a completely different experience in viewing to watching it at home on Netflix. They're just different. One isn't better than the other. They just offer different things to different people.
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Not too long ago, I got to see a print of 'Star Wars' with some of the film makers and a huge audience of super fans. There was no CGI, and it was projected through film. Really fun. I also remember the pretty fantastic reaction to crowds of audiences during the last Avengers movie. Huge sense of community...

...But that doesn't happen enough to keep theaters in business.

I'd even argue watching a FILM print is quite a different experience to watching a digital projection. I recently saw a rare print of Se7ven that had been chemically altered for it's US theatrical run. The cinema was completely sold out and after watching the film at home before and then again in the cinema, I know which version I prefered. The one where I was jammed in with hundred os strangers palpably all having the same reactions I was to certain scenes on what's arguably a technically inferior medium if you listen to some. That shared cinema experience isn't something you replicate at home. Nor should you try to.
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Saw a documentary from the 80's, that was shot and printed on 16mm. Really felt more connected that the materials were analogue. Felt a more direct physical connection to the images, know how real and primal it is. not seperated by the translation of digital code.

JB
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Well, JB, you may be reading the fact that I am unsympathetic to the business model of theaters, as if I dislike the idea of sharing stories with community, but that is because I only wrote a few paragraphs quickly. And, because you don't know me, or make note of me on these forums. Which is fine.

DVXuser is just one of the places I share stories with a community in anonymity. ;)
 
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James I think you're vehemently defending a strange position. You're saying cinemas shouldn't be "saved" and they are no longer relevant (i'm paraphrasing) i think.

And then you're conflating that ideology with a temporary state that COVID has brought about, which is to say that we can't gather in public.

That's only a temporary moment in time, at some point in the not to distant future, we're going to be allowed to go back into movie cinemas again. The market will of course decide if they are to be saved, but I think there's more than 100 years of going to movies through many economic and social upheavals that says they will still be doing business.

I'm positing that we will always want to gather in public and watch stories, that cinema has long fought off predictions of it's death and I expect it will do the same here because it offers a unique and very HUMAN experience.

We're all locked in now, effectively living the alternative utopian dream of watching movies at home and not going to cinemas. I suspect people will be pretty stir crazy before long and be aching to go out and have a cinema experience as soon as it's permitted. I'm sure some will be afraid of gatherings. I'm sure some permanent changes to social behaviours will be in evidence. But I think cinemas are still going to be a place people will pay to go. Because as is all too painfully obvious, we don't do well staying at home even when we have everything we need.

I think your argument about tentpole movies is a bit misleading. It's also very US centric.

WORLD cinema is still out there. It's always been out there. It's just really really hard to see it in a cinema in the US. I was living in Atlanta for a couple of seasons of a show and there were dozens of tentpole movie theaters out there, but almost none that would show a film like Mustang or "A Prophet" or even "Pontypool" or "Silent Light" which are all films I saw in cinemas in Australia. Maybe in LA or NY I could see those films in a cinema, but most of the rest of the US, no way.

Australia is still pretty bad for having mostly CHAIN theaters, but they do have fiercely independent cinemas and they only survive because people go to those cinemas. Many of them closed between 2000 and 2010. I remember seeing Salo and "Irreversible" in Melbourne during those years, both incredibly difficult movies in cinemas that are now closed. But there are still cinemas in that town that screen those kinds of movies. And I just don't see the same appetite for that kid of breadth of cinema in the US where the focus is far more culturally internal and...frankly vacuous. While shooting in Vancouver I found a great korean cinema and without even looking up trailers I walked in and I saw both "The Tunnel" and "Last Train to Busan" and they were both great films.

Americans don't seem that curious about world cinema or seeing world cinema IN a cinema. Many of the places I've worked in the US either do not have an independent cinema, nor do they have even art house cinemas in many "big" cities. I think that's really sad. I was just working in the UK and even the 15 cinema chain multiplex in the local shopping center as well as AMERICAN studio / tentpole films, also screened indian language films regularly. Not just once off. The whole 6 months I was there.

I just can't imagine that happening in the US. Maybe it does, but I've never seen it.

I can't even image easily seeing a domestic US film like "American Honey" or "Spring Breakers" though Spring Breakers was interesting to a certain crowd i'm sure given the imagery.

Cinema is a HABBIT. As Charles mentioned he fell out of the habit. If you only have a fast food diet of tentpole movies, which I agree, are mostly dreck then you're going to need to change your eating habits and eat at home.

Cinemas will certainly have to adapt to new circumstances, but I'd like to think I think the American audience can adapt as well and broaden it's cultural horizons. Perversely, I think it's streamers that have started to break though the old US stereotypes of an audience that can't be bothered reading subtitles on a show, but the theatrical market is filled with chains that sell the same culturally bland stuff. I mean franchises are what's really wrong here. Both in terms of storytelling forms AND in terms of the mega corporations that control what films are actually programmed into these cinemas.

Maybe I'm being idealistic and assuming "the masses" want to broaden their cultural exposure ? I've never really thought about class with regards to who goes to a cinema, based on a price.

I also see a lot of other prolific film making countries that have some of the poorest humans on this world and they all still go and watch movies in a way that outpaces the US. Is it just economics that are keeping "working class" people away in the US or is it the fact that most working class Americans seem to be working three jobs ?

JB
 
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John Brawley said:
I'm positing that we will always want to gather in public and watch stories, that cinema has long fought off predictions of it's death and I expect it will do the same here because it offers a unique and very HUMAN experience.
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No one is arguing with that.


Nolan wrote about saving theaters specifically. And a lot of this is in part because of the extreme losses theaters experience in a pandemic. That is what started this thread. No one is arguing against what you are saying.


I am mainly just trying to get you to stop making me sound like i am anti cinema or something.
 
James0b57 said:
I am mainly just trying to get you to stop making me sound like i am anti cinema or something.
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James, I'm only going by your words. Someone posted an article actually written by Chris Nolan advocating that we remember to support cinema (Theater's in your vernacular) WHEN IT'S SAFE to do so.

Your first response was your opinion about cinema going, especially during a pandemic, which Nolan wasn't arguing for....

James0b57 said:
Time has past for the 90’s era movie theater. It has to evolve.
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James0b57 said:
movie theaters do not hold that value at this time, pandemic or no.
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James0b57 said:
The model for theaters and the content is far too commercial to be worth saving.
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and then this

James0b57 said:
if a movie theater experience with popcorn and a drink can cost roughly $25, and one could buy a sound system for $500, and get 90% of the theater experience from their home on the 60” tv they already own, then what exactly is a film shot a year or two ago going to help us feel when we have so many other ways of experiencing shared experiences?
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I was trying to suggest that there's a bigger picture here about cinema and cinema going generally, not viewed through your 90's-skewed US centric nostalgia for what you think is the glory days of cinema...

Nolan himself answers you in his article...

"Maybe, like me, you thought you were going to the movies for surround sound, or Goobers, or soda and popcorn, or movie stars. But we weren’t. We were there for each other."

I'm not trying tp pick on you, we're having a discussion or even a debate about what cinema means to people. You're seeing it as a personal attack and I'm just debating your OPINION. If you didn't mean to make those statements, or want to argue something different then isn't that why we're here ? My views are also just my opinion. We're both equal here.

JB
 
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