I’ll add the overwhelming amount of canned and processed Star Wars and Marvell slop that’s been pushed on us.

The fact that there’s barely any movies worth watching anymore is a real problem for theatres. There’s 2 movies this year that I might watch

There’s just a lot of competition for your attention these days.

I can’t even remember the last time I felt boredom. The sort of boredom that motivates you to just go out and look for something to do.

There is so much in fact, that I’ve started putting artificial constraints on things that hold my attention. Phone apps lock after 60 minutes of use, only one episode of a tv series per-day, etc.

I love watching movies at the theatre, but it’s got a lot going against it. It’s expensive, it’s full of other people, occasionally the movies suck, and traveling there and back is a pain since we stopped investing in transportation infrastructure.

Here’s the exact same clip on the standard YouTube Watch page. (Just change the /shorts/ to /watch?v=, or use the YouTube-shorts block extension to do that automatically.)

I mean… yeah.

We’ve seen this exact pattern happen in other industries. Bookstores were largely massacred by amazon et al. Which meant that the major publishers no longer controlled what we could buy (at a reasonable price). So rather than stand in an aisle and skim the Warhammer 40k books or see what had a cool cover, we read online reviews and even started reading (gasp) self-published books… in large part because other aspects of technological advance meant those self-published books could still be professionally edited.

And… that was awesome because it meant we got a constant feed of new voices rather than just the people who had enough connections to get a publisher’s “slot”.

And while there is very much something to be said about a nice crisp hardcover (just look at how ride or die I am on Michael Sullivan’s kickstarters…), the vast majority of my books are ebooks that I read on my (as of late) onyx boox. Which is basically the hardcover and mass market paperback model of olde.

And we saw the exact same happen with PC gaming. I don’t know the exact steps that led to it (and now realize I really want to) but in the late 00s/early 10s we rapidly noticed our stores that had became aisles were rapidly becoming single shelves on a rack that was mostly the latest Warcraft expansion.

And at first that sucked. I remember rushing to Gamestop the day that KOTOR 2 released only to have to basically fight the goblin at the counter to get the one copy they had and the number of times I had to explain that I did not want Halo instead. But, once we no longer had the ability to browse in stores, we saw various digital distribution platforms rise up and we started to have games like Warlock that shockingly launched at 30 USD instead of 50. And, much like above, we started to see a lot of new voices in a way that was reminiscent of the golden age of the 486 where you might buy access to an FTP server on a BBS because you liked a game that dev/studio had put on one of the 101 game CDs.

And we are seeing the same with film. COVID took away theatres. So a lot of people either started focusing on tv/netflix for a more convenient version of the big budget stuff. Or they went basically “indie” which led to the massive youtube/twitch boom. Or they realized that they could get “good enough” with a medium sized TV, some blackout curtains, and a soundbar (or a 5.1 setup if you are fancy). It wasn’t quite as good as a movie theatre but you also had fewer people screaming along with the movie or ordering grubhub in front of you.

Which is why I very much think that movie theatres as we know them are going to be gone before 2028 (maybe even 2026). And it will be replaced with a very limited selection of “alamo drafthouse” level theatres that people rent for events and watch parties. Instead of “Hollywood” deciding that everyone wants to watch Mission Impossible 20 in theatres, it will be enthusiasts deciding they want to buy screen time to show the new Sailor Moon OVA and either selling tickets on their own or crowdfunding it.

I think the change in business model from theatre-exclusive for a long period of time to direct-to-streaming or fast-tracked streaming is related, which IIRC he/Dan mentioned in the full podcast. But I don’t think this theory about trailers is correct. I’ve never known someone to get excited for a movie based on seeing the trailer before another movie. They find out in the news or on social media, and see the trailer on YouTube.

Streaming is just not as profitable as theatres, but it’s a much more convenient way for people to watch. I’ve seen some people make suggestions on how to make the theatregoing experience better to entice people to go, but the biggest thing IMO is just the fact that it’s on streaming early at all. From a personal perspective, I hope they don’t do this, but I do think it would benefit movies’ profitability to lock in much longer theatre-exclusive periods.

But also, less crappy studio-run films pls? Almost nothing Disney is putting out these days is worth seeing, because it’s all lame remakes and sequels. We need studios to be brave and just trust good filmmakers to make good films, not constantly try to chase industry trends.

curtesy of zagorath

fyi, you mean courtesy - curtesy is an old legal term.