Say you want to see To the Wonder. Do you relax on your couch and watch it on your TV or spend some extra cash and fight traffic to see it on a big screen with a group of people?
YES: Home viewing is cheaper and more fun
If I wanted to watch To the Wonder next weekend, I’d have two options.
I could open up Amazon, pay $9.99 and stream the movie using my PS3.
Or I could get on the Metro, cough up $10 for transit fare, make my way to the Landmark E Street Cinema in time for the 7:20 p.m. showing and cough up another $12 for a ticket. That’s if Metro track maintenance doesn’t screw me over and the showing doesn’t sell out. Had I driven there, I would have worried about traffic and paying exorbitant parking fees.
Ever since video on demand became a viable platform for new releases, movie theaters have been dead to me. There are, of course, some experiences you just can’t replicate at home — such as watching an IMAX 3D flick at the Smithsonian — but the majority of films play just as well on a television as they do in cinemas.
The technology is already here. Surround sound systems and high-definition televisions have never been cheaper. Amazon’s 1080p resolution comes close to that of common 2K digital movie theater projectors. Video streaming and compression software have improved drastically at reducing and eliminating unsightly artifacts. Broadband connections (at least in major metropolitan areas) are fast enough to sustain these high-quality streams.
It simply makes more sense to watch new, independent films and catch up on old blockbusters at home instead of lining up outside the multiplex. What we lose — the ambiance and a little bit of picture and sound quality — we more than make up for in convenience and savings.
And frankly, most movie theater experiences are miserable. For every time I’ve watched a movie with an appreciative audience, there are at least half a dozen or more trips to the theater marred by texting moviegoers, poorly cleaned and maintained seats, lousy projection or the bass from the action movie next door drowning out the sounds from mine.
Conversely, with home video, I know what I’m going to get. I also have far greater control over the quality of the presentation, the food eaten during the movie and the audience with whom I watch it.
It’s telling that movie attendance patterns reflect the changing landscape. Attendance rates last summer were the lowest they’ve been since 1993. While last year as a whole marked a slight improvement, the number of movie tickets sold had been steadily declining for several years prior.
Movie theaters, as a concept and as institutions, will probably live on in the form of art installations or galleries, but the age of the theater as the predominant mode of cinematic distribution is over.
Cinema is dead. Long live cinema.
—Warren Zhang
NO: It’s an essential communal experience
The hallmark aspects of the movie theater — liquid butter dispensers, overzealous poster ads, sticky floors and creaky seats, the constant pleas to silence cell phones — are almost as vital to the cinematic experience as the film itself.
Seeing a movie has always been a communal ritual, something requiring an instantly recognizable destination. If you take away the art house — that particular destination — the art may ultimately still survive. But it will leave all lovers of that art homeless and collectively directionless.
Luckily, though, movie theaters are too intertwined with our culture to wither away and die, despite Netflix, streaming sites and illegal downloading.
First off, the short-lived fad of owning physical films is essentially over. The claim that “I’ll miss it in theaters and wait to buy the DVD on the $4 shelf at Target” is hardly an excuse anymore. There’s nostalgic charm in owning VHS copies of your favorite John Hughes movies, but that should have no effect on whether you choose to sample current cinema or not.
Also, in terms of a sensory film experience, nothing compares to a movie theater, a belief both cinema buffs and casual viewers can agree with. According to IGN, 10 out of the 15 highest-grossing box office films of all time have premiered since 2009. Four of them came out just last year. People are still going to theaters in droves and if modern trends are correct, that won’t change anytime soon.
In fact, you can probably predict that in the next year or two, something new will usurp 2009’s Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all time.
For me, movie theaters present a haven detached from the real world. As a critic, I often travel to places all over D.C. — usually on weeknights — for screenings. Sometimes the train commute is more than an hour. I’m often mentally bogged down; there’s the mound of uncompleted schoolwork, the impending trek from the Metro station through the crowded city streets and the eventual trip back at some unholy hour of the evening.
Yet at first glimpse of the marquee and the bright neon lights, there’s this wonderful, soothing sense of comfort. The movie itself may be worthless — and if you’re familiar with my work, I sometimes tend to feel that way — but it doesn’t matter. For a few hours, I’m sealed off from reality, enveloped in a world where art is proudly enshrined.
I wouldn’t want to see a film any other way.
—Dean Essner
diversionsdbk@gmail.com
