Could a new type of movie theatre survive?

There is a fairly well known story about Alfred Hitchcock and the release of Psycho. With little studio support and his personal finances at stake, Hitchcock made a spectacle of the release by ordering theatre owners to close the doors when the film started and not allow late arrivals admittance. All for the buzz created around the film's shocking ending. People had, up until that point, been used to walking into films half way through. The film and the new structure was embraced and theatres have never looked back.

When cinema's dominance for people's attention was threatened by television in the 50s, the industry responded by pushing for widescreen technicolor cinemascope extravaganzas. It was an attempt to woo audiences back with the one major asset that television couldn't offer: big screens. Also colour, but television had that within a decade. The current trend of 3D has been seen as a similar move. Better television options with HBO and Netflix, bigger televisions, surround sound systems, and blu-ray interactive features have pushed the industry to go bigger and broader to keep the box office running.

I've read several articles in the last few months predicting the end of the current age of Hollywood. Some are predicting the collapse of the Superhero bubble while others predict the implosion of the entire system, or at least a chaotic paradigm shift. It would be foolish to say that the status quo will remain, but I'm not as confident in my predictions of the future as Spielberg and Lucas are, so I've been refraining from too much prognosticating.

Something that I would like to see is a new theatrical experience. Industry giants like Spielberg and Lucas predict the movie theatre will go the way of the classical theatre; higher ticket costs for a more elite form of entertainment. No longer for the masses, the movie theatre will be a blockbuster evening out on special occasions. That, to me, would be tragic.

But I have an idea. And I have hope for that idea. Currently the Cineplex theatres are offering semi-regular screenings of classic films. For two nights they play Some Like It Hot, The Shining, Lawrence of Arabia, or Alien on a big screen for $6. I've gone a few times now and there are never more than ten people in the audience, but the films have all been surprisingly improved by the theatrical experience. I jumped when Jack slammed his axe into the bathroom door. I cringed when John Hurt's chest burst open. And I recoiled from the screen when Norma Desmond reached out to me at the end of Sunset Boulevard.

What if a theatre were designed to operate like in the days before Psycho? It would have a lounge/cafe atmosphere in the lobby, quiet doors hidden around the corner so people in the theatre aren't disturbed by late arrivals, and an all-day stream of films, cartoons, news headlines, shorts, and even television series on a big screen. And the whole schedule would be available through an app on your phone, which could even remind you when something interesting is coming up.

You could pay a single admission, something comparable to a cheap ticket to any movie today, but you could stay in the theatre as long as you'd like. Come and go as you please. And if the experience was agreeable, perhaps you'd like to buy a one-month pass for $20? A full year for $60? Depending on the economics of licensing old films and operating a cafe, the subscriber prices could end up being a cheaper option than most cable packages.

Several revival theatres exist in NYC. But these places still operate on the one-ticket-one-movie format. I'd like to see a theatre that takes advantage of the new go-to entertainment option of binge-watching seasons of Mad Men or Breaking Bad. Give film students a place to have their shorts seen by real audiences on the big screen. Make a theatre that is free of the car commercials, cell phone commercials, and commercial blockbusters that have desecrated the sublime experience of sitting in a darkened theatre with strangers to watch a silver screen.

This is unlikely to happen, of course. It is the sort of thing that would only come about because of an eccentric millionaire deciding to take a risk. And it would only survive in a metropolitan location with lots of independent hipster-like film buffs to support it. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to consider alternative, retro businesses being able to survive in the modern world. As soon as CDs supplanted tapes and records, a new niche market of "purists" who prefer LPs popped up. As long as popular culture goes one way there will be stubborn people going the other. Should I one day find myself as an eccentric millionaire, I hope to join those stubborn people in my theatre.

WORLD WAR Z

Max Brooks' book "World War Z" is a masterwork thriller. It drips information about the zombie apocalypse to the reader through short stories, so that as you read the survivors' accounts you piece together a much bigger story. It would make a brilliant anthology series on HBO. They could hand chapters off to individual filmmakers to adapt into hour-long episodes.

But that is not what happened. Rumour is that there was an earlier script that would have made this film 3+ hours and hewn much closer to the book's structure. The rumour also says that it would have been the first Oscar-worthy zombie film.

But that is not what happened. Instead, the filmmakers behind World War Z, including producer Brad Pitt, have looked at the macro-political story that Max Brooks wrote and wrote a Hollywood hero into it. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former UN agent who is drafted to find a cure. Forced away from his family to globe-trot the apocalypse, he deals with a variety of situations borrowed equally from zombie films and apocalypse disaster movies.

Plenty of fans of the novel will be disappointed by this. But the fact that the movie follows a new character while (roughly) following the bigger story of the book means that the characters of the novel are out there. They are facing their own apocalypses. They just didn't cross paths with Brad Pitt. Sequels or (hopefully) an HBO series could give them their time on screen, but for now we have this film starring Brad Pitt.

As far as films starring Brad Pitt go, this one is quite good. It didn't try to be funny, which most zombie films do, and the resulting tone was closer to Contagion than Dawn of the Dead. Brad Pitt is a solid leading man as usual. Mireille Enos (The Killing) is his wife, and in her short time on screen she manages to be a competent survivor.

Something that often sinks apocalypse films is a transparently manipulative character. The screaming blond in Jaws 2 should have been the first one eaten, but she stubbornly survives to annoy the audience to the end. Fred Astaire's part in The Towering Inferno was specifically designed to break your heart. 2012 was hemorrhaging selfish and annoying characters to hate. These cheap emotional manipulations reveal bad scripts more often than bad actors, so it was nice to see World War Z did not burden its good cast with cheap tricks.

Perhaps we will see a WWZ adaptation some day, but for now there is a solid zombie thriller starring Brad Pitt that happens to use the same title.

MAN OF STEEL

The undeniably great Christopher Reeve ushered in the first generation of superhero blockbusters with 1979's Superman: The Movie. That generation brought us the Tim Burton Batman and little else of any success. The second generation kicked off with Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. With the reboot of The Amazing Spiderman, the re-invention of the epic blockbuster in The Avengers, the critical and commercial success of The Dark Knight trilogy, and a new team in X-Men: First Class, we have entered a third generation of superhero films.

Man of Steel is Superman's return to relevance, and his first truly great screen appearance since 1979.

An extended look at a much more realistic Krypton opens Man of Steel, and successfully sets the tone in a much darker way. Despite being Zack Snyder's film, the impact of Christopher Nolan is felt throughout; and although this sacrifices some of the light charm that Reeve's films were known for, it is a firm statement of independence that works in the film's favor.

Unlike previous incarnations, the backstory of Krypton is key to the entire film, and true motivation is developed for Superman's Kryptonian parents and the film's big bad, General Zod (Michael Shannon). Slight alterations to the technology, physics, and explanations of Superman's Kryptonian DNA are brilliant manipulations of the classic story that bring it up to date for a modern superhero blockbuster. Batman Begins started the reset where audiences would not accept a superhero without logic and reason. Man of Steel's creative team, including David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, have brought the same respect for the character that rebuilt Batman so effectively.

Henry Cavill, the man who was almost cast as Aragorn then Batman and then James Bond, has finally found his blockbuster franchise. He fits the suit that few mere mortals are physically qualified for, and he manages to pull off the reluctant hero without appearing mopey or frigid. A downside to the origin story that this film tells is that we don't get much of his human alter ego. Part of what made Christopher Reeve's Superman so likeable was his bumbling Clark Kent, but we'll have to wait until the next film to see if Cavill's awkward journalist is as good as his bulletproof hero.

Even though the film revolves around Krypton's destruction, Clark Kent's childhood development in Kansas, and General Zod's escape from the phantom zone for revenge, Man of Steel carves a very original path from the first two Christopher Reeve films. By the credits it has established a new Superman in the same way that JJ Abrams established a new Star Trek. All the characters and elements are present, but they have not been dropped in front of us for no reason. By the end of the film we believe in them, and we see the connections that make them cohesive.

If rumours are true and Man of Steel is the first step towards a larger DC Universe, then it is my hope that the end of the sequel to Man of Steel will tease a new Batman. Then, in The Dark Knight Rises of this franchise, a dual Superman/Batman story can be told. If Warner Brothers is intent to copy Marvel's success, they would be smart to not front-load their franchise. There will be time to introduce Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern (again), and even Aquaman, but the world they have built here is delicate. Realism and logic were put front and center in The Dark Knight trilogy, and now the same has been done for Superman, which many people (including me) did not expect. Hopefully good writing and forward thinking will win out over immediate greed.

Hollywood Meltdown?

Predicting the future is like sex; everyone wants to do it, lots of people think they are good at it, but nothing is certain until you can examine it in the past at which point it turns out Nostradamus was weak in the sack. I may have stretched that simile too far, but my point is that predicting the future is a tricky business. It always helps to be well-researched and in a position of expertise talking about what you are predicting.

That is why the recent E3 Q&A with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas was a bit concerning. Here are some of the highlights:

Spielberg: "The big danger is that there's eventually going to be a big meltdown where three or four, maybe even a half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground. That's going to change the paradigm again."

The "again" that Spielberg mentions is likely the late-80s blockbuster crash where films like Waterworld and Michael Camino's Heaven's Gate (which is returning to theatres curiously enough) sent some of the big production houses into bankruptcy and sent Hollywood scrambling for the next new thing. This resulted in careers for people like Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and John Lasseter, and made the 90s an art house response to the 80s blockbuster mania.

Spielberg: "You're at the point right now where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a real shot at the brass ring than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal projects that may get lost in the shuffle."

Sad but true, the budgets of some of the upcoming films are staggeringly huge. $180 million for Pacific Rim or $225 for Man of Steel. Compare that to the $8 million it cost to make Pulp Fiction or even $63 million for SFX-heavy film The Matrix. And Life of Pi was proof that if you are willing to screw over the SFX artists who make the movie so good, you can cut costs even more, but that is a rant for a different article.

The point Spielberg and Lucas are trying to make is that the bubble will soon burst, just like it did before, but they also cite VOD streaming services like Netflix and specialty programming channels like HBO as being a new factor in the paradigm shift.

When the blockbuster bubble broke in the 80s there were small film studios, emerging artists, and opening foreign markets to build the Hollywood system back up. They were starting to see the beginning of digital filmmaking, but the technology to replace celluloid wouldn't arrive until the next decade. This meant that for film-like entertainment the public still had only one option. This is no longer the case with thousands of specialty channels, multiple streaming services, and endemic piracy. If Hollywood were to stop operating tomorrow there would still be the last season of Breaking Bad, the next HBO biopic movie, and whatever Netflix decides to release next as exclusive content. I'd also point out there are films made in countries all around the world, but getting North American audiences to watch something with subtitles is something only Quentin Tarantino can manage.

These giants of Hollywood, the men who literally invented the summer blockbuster, are predicting doom for the industry where movie theatres will be reduced to expensive special occasions and the dominant cinema screen will be the TV in your living room. It's a sad thought, but they seem to be underestimating the next generation of artists and rebels. A common problem for men their age.

The reason Spielberg and Lucas got to be the titans of industry they are today is because they were both extremely motivated and inventive artists. Spielberg overcame the adversity of shooting with a robotic shark on the ocean to make the first real summer blockbuster. And Lucas overcame decades of stigma towards science fiction to make a Best Picture-nominated classic. There are still people like them around. Young artists who have a vision and stick to it are able to overcome miraculous odds. And as long as some of them still love the 2-hour, 3-act Hollywood-style film, they will continue to make them.

Lucas: "The Lincolns are going to be on television."

What Lucas is referring to are the "passion projects" like Spielberg's Lincoln or his own Red Tails. These are the films that don't necessarily fit the pattern of A-list actors, big effects, and happy endings. Personally, I think they are underestimating what could qualify as a passion project, but both films were mired by distribution difficulties. Lincoln was nearly an HBO miniseries, but Spielberg, the man behind Band of Brothers, shouldn't be so negative about what a miniseries can be. I would argue that Band of Brothers qualifies as one of the greatest WWII movies ever made. It just happens to be 10 hours long. But that doesn't reduce the artistic value and storytelling power; it only redirects it.

Anyone who is a fan of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or The Wire will understand that being on a smaller screen does not reduce the potential impact. It changes it, of course. A powerful theatrical experience like The Lord of the Rings is not the same as a powerful television experience like The Wire. But there are markets for both, and people like me who will seek out equal amounts.

As long as people have technology to distract them from going outside (and I pray we always do), there will be a market for narrative content. The access routes will change; for every movie theatre that closes there are new channels, new streaming services, and new video hosts like Vimeo. The content will change too. New forms like the webisode emerge and write new rules for length and cinematography and editing, but old forms will continue to be reworked by the artists who love them. Michel Hazanavicius' silent cinema tribute, The Artist may have been seen by very few people, but it is proof that no artform dies as long as someone still cares about it.