The summer movie season is almost over, the maturation phase has begun, and everyone in the industry is doing their best to read it. Should we be optimistic? Fearful? Or somewhere in between?
To recap: This summer has seen a lot of blockbusters (Deadpool & Wolverine, Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, Twisters, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, A Quiet Place: Day One), and that's cause for celebration. The good news: People still love going to the movies!
but… The box office total has lagged behind 2023's, so there's reason to be cautious. but…the impact of the strike is still being felt this summer, with not enough products to meet demand. That's good news. It means demand is there, and the situation can be corrected in 2025.
However, if you stand aside and look at the big graph showing how often people go to the movies, you'll find a key piece missing.
In the 1990s, when the blockbuster era was at its peak and the independent film revolution was happening, I knew who I was rooting for on a weekly basis. I admit that I sometimes considered short film fans to be the “bad guys,” and independent and foreign film fans to be the “good guys.” The bad guys kept the escapist engine going. But the good guys helped sustain cinema as an art form. That may sound arrogant or unfair, but that’s how I thought of it.
But what I never expected was for this formula to be turned on its head. In my eyes, the audience that had enjoyed this summer’s blockbusters with “Inside Out 2” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” had become the villains. They are Those who keep cinema, or at least a version of it, alive. But what about the good guys of the 90s—the adventurous moviegoers whose enthusiasm was fueled by the rise of independent film? Have they all disappeared? No, but alas, they have become the bad guys. Because they are the ones who stay home.
We know why. The rise of streaming… the pandemic headaches… the big TV screens… the 25-minute commercials you have to endure in theaters… and so on. The problem with these familiar chants of a changing culture is that we tend to accept them as truth, when the reality may be more malleable. The real truth is that millions and millions of people, many of them with big TVs, still go to the movies. The question is: Why aren’t there more people among them who say they love movies?
As the fall movie season (festivals! awards! quality!) approaches, we’re gearing up to see some of the best films of the year. But increasingly, these films are hanging on by the skin of their teeth at the box office. In 2023, audiences showed up to see “Killers of the Flower Moon” (and earlier in the year, “Air”), yet many films that were supposed to be more exciting, like “Poor Things,” “Priscilla,” or “Anatomy of a Fall” (or, the year before that, “Tár”), have now found themselves relegated to high-end thriller status.
You might say: These films are doing what they are doing. There is no other world where these films could be bigger. But I say that we need nothing less than collective cooperation. Rediscovery Commercial filmmaking means a lot. Yes, it means hurricanes and bad boys; it means Marvel movies and horror; it means romantic comedies and animated games. But can’t we imagine a world, again, where it could also mean…drama? (Just look at the work that “It Ends with Us” is doing.) Where can a big screen accommodate two people talking in a room and make them larger than life?
This is partly a business proposition. The need to cut production costs is real. The decline of primetime television, which once stole the magic of the cinema, is real. This summer proved beyond doubt that movies are still a hot commodity. The real question—not just now, but also 20 years from now—is: What exactly is a movie? It’s time for the people who say they love movies the most to answer that question by going back to watching them.
