The Current Cinema
In a recent article for The Guardian, Smash hit or total turkey? In the age of streaming it's impossible to tell, journalist Steve Rose posits: "With the box office closed and only secretive viewing figures to go on, gauging a film’s success is becoming a tricky proposition."
Writing with all the conviction and integrity of a man that's been asked by his editor to turn in 500 words on literally anything to get readers clicking and commenting (thus generating that all important advertising revenue), Rose – using the limited cinema release of the recent superhero spectacle Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) as a point of inception – asks: "Here is the question: was Wonder Woman 1984 a hit movie? How did it compare to the first Wonder Woman? Or how about Soul, or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom? Were they hits? How can we tell?"
Rose continues, his disinterest in his own question(s) palpable in the snark needlessly injected into every sentence. "In ordinary times we wouldn’t have to ask; we would have box-office figures to go by. Now, the pandemic has hobbled cinema-going, and for most of us the only way to access new movies is via streaming services, which tend to guard their numbers as if they’re nuclear launch codes."
There is an interesting conundrum at the heart of Rose's article that's worth engaging with. The way audiences engage with cinema, and with media in general, has been changing for some time. But discussing the changing trends of popular culture isn't of interest to writers like Rose, who merely churn out clickbait considerations they don't even agree with. No, the real crux of Rose's writing comes, like a lot of recent Guardian articles about the state of cinema, from a place of deep, professional fear.
You see, what Rose and his cronies like Peter Bradshaw and Mark Kermode are really terrified of, is that in an age where audiences get access to a work before journalists and reviewers, where box office figures become meaningless, and where audiences are able to cultivate their own personal and private cinema free of influence or the condemnation of would-be tastemakers, the only way to really write about and promote a particular work is by investing our own subjective thoughts and opinions into the experience of it.
Writing about whether or not a film is a "hit" or a "turkey" will be replaced by deeper considerations of what the film means to the viewer on an individual level; how well it engages the personal and political, how well it employs form and aesthetics. The noise of the industry and the corporate concerns and consensus-shaping that hack journalists have made their bread and butter over the past two decades will be entirely irrelevant.
Rose exposes himself and many of his similarly minded contemporaries completely when he writes: "one of the great things about box-office figures is that they offer nowhere to hide. There is no disputing a franchise-spawning smash such as The Matrix or Avatar, or disguising a bomb such as Cats. We celebrate those successes and revel in those failures together. It’s Darwinian but democratic. It binds us as a society. With streaming, we might get exactly the same good and bad movies, but served as more of an algorithmically curated mulch of “meh”, which nobody consumes in the same way. That doesn’t bode well for the future of movies as popular culture."
Writing with all the conviction and integrity of a man that's been asked by his editor to turn in 500 words on literally anything to get readers clicking and commenting (thus generating that all important advertising revenue), Rose – using the limited cinema release of the recent superhero spectacle Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) as a point of inception – asks: "Here is the question: was Wonder Woman 1984 a hit movie? How did it compare to the first Wonder Woman? Or how about Soul, or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom? Were they hits? How can we tell?"
Wonder Woman 1984 [Patty Jenkins, 2020]:
There is an interesting conundrum at the heart of Rose's article that's worth engaging with. The way audiences engage with cinema, and with media in general, has been changing for some time. But discussing the changing trends of popular culture isn't of interest to writers like Rose, who merely churn out clickbait considerations they don't even agree with. No, the real crux of Rose's writing comes, like a lot of recent Guardian articles about the state of cinema, from a place of deep, professional fear.
You see, what Rose and his cronies like Peter Bradshaw and Mark Kermode are really terrified of, is that in an age where audiences get access to a work before journalists and reviewers, where box office figures become meaningless, and where audiences are able to cultivate their own personal and private cinema free of influence or the condemnation of would-be tastemakers, the only way to really write about and promote a particular work is by investing our own subjective thoughts and opinions into the experience of it.
Writing about whether or not a film is a "hit" or a "turkey" will be replaced by deeper considerations of what the film means to the viewer on an individual level; how well it engages the personal and political, how well it employs form and aesthetics. The noise of the industry and the corporate concerns and consensus-shaping that hack journalists have made their bread and butter over the past two decades will be entirely irrelevant.
Rose exposes himself and many of his similarly minded contemporaries completely when he writes: "one of the great things about box-office figures is that they offer nowhere to hide. There is no disputing a franchise-spawning smash such as The Matrix or Avatar, or disguising a bomb such as Cats. We celebrate those successes and revel in those failures together. It’s Darwinian but democratic. It binds us as a society. With streaming, we might get exactly the same good and bad movies, but served as more of an algorithmically curated mulch of “meh”, which nobody consumes in the same way. That doesn’t bode well for the future of movies as popular culture."
Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]:
Cats [Tom Hooper, 2019]:
Of course, Rose doesn't explain why this development doesn't bode well for popular culture. Having fulfilled his word limit, he simply ends his argument on a cliffhanger, his total indifference and disdain for his own readership obvious throughout. But the future he describes is really not that dissimilar to our own recent past.
Just over 20 years ago, before the internet became such a pervasive part of both our lives and the way we share and access information, most audiences didn't follow box-office trends. Unless you were an industry insider, had a subscription to Variety or other high-minded film publications, or approached the cinema as an investment opportunity, most audiences had little to no idea how much a film cost or how much it made. Unless it became an infamous failure, like Heaven's Gate (1980) by Michael Cimino, or a box-office phenomenon, like Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), it simply wasn't a part of the conversation.
For context, a film like Misery (1990), which cost $20million to produce and made $61million at the box-office, nonetheless became a genuine event movie. It had a massive impact on popular culture and was widely parodied and referenced in a variety of other media. Similarly, a film like The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which cost $25million and made $58million, was considered a box-office disappointment, despite finding a more appreciative audience on home video and now being seen as one of the best American films of all time. In the days before sites like Box-Office Mojo, The Numbers and even Wikipedia logging a film's budget and box-office from the off, a work was still able to have a life and find an audience and legacy beyond its opening weekend.
Similarly, before the introduction of the aptly named Rotten Tomatoes, which Rose himself acknowledges as flawed in his own article, there was no way of knowing for certain whether or not a film had an overwhelming critical consensus. Most people would trust the word of a couple of critics that they read or listened to regularly, or they'd take the word-of-mouth recommendations from video store employees or the endorsements of friends and family.
Before Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic, films weren't assigned a number or percentage based on the subjective opinions of a small handful of reviewers. Nothing was set in stone. Which is why films like Blade Runner (1982), The Thing (also 1982), Scarface (1983) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) could divide critical opinion, and still go on to become considered genuine modern masterworks by subsequent generations of critics. Stanley Kubrick’s landmark horror film The Shining (1980) received worse reviews than many M. Night Shyamalan films, but as it was never defined for subsequent generations as a 40% or even 20% "rotten" movie, it was able to be discovered by unbiased audiences unfamiliar with its critical legacy. Something that isn't possible for Shyamalan's masterworks, like The Village (2004) and Glass (2019), which have been firmly canonized and recorded as failures.
Just over 20 years ago, before the internet became such a pervasive part of both our lives and the way we share and access information, most audiences didn't follow box-office trends. Unless you were an industry insider, had a subscription to Variety or other high-minded film publications, or approached the cinema as an investment opportunity, most audiences had little to no idea how much a film cost or how much it made. Unless it became an infamous failure, like Heaven's Gate (1980) by Michael Cimino, or a box-office phenomenon, like Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), it simply wasn't a part of the conversation.
For context, a film like Misery (1990), which cost $20million to produce and made $61million at the box-office, nonetheless became a genuine event movie. It had a massive impact on popular culture and was widely parodied and referenced in a variety of other media. Similarly, a film like The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which cost $25million and made $58million, was considered a box-office disappointment, despite finding a more appreciative audience on home video and now being seen as one of the best American films of all time. In the days before sites like Box-Office Mojo, The Numbers and even Wikipedia logging a film's budget and box-office from the off, a work was still able to have a life and find an audience and legacy beyond its opening weekend.
Misery [Rob Reiner, 1991]:
French and Saunders: Misery [Bob Spiers, 1993]:
Family Guy: Three Kings [Dominic Bianchi, 2009]:
Before Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic, films weren't assigned a number or percentage based on the subjective opinions of a small handful of reviewers. Nothing was set in stone. Which is why films like Blade Runner (1982), The Thing (also 1982), Scarface (1983) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) could divide critical opinion, and still go on to become considered genuine modern masterworks by subsequent generations of critics. Stanley Kubrick’s landmark horror film The Shining (1980) received worse reviews than many M. Night Shyamalan films, but as it was never defined for subsequent generations as a 40% or even 20% "rotten" movie, it was able to be discovered by unbiased audiences unfamiliar with its critical legacy. Something that isn't possible for Shyamalan's masterworks, like The Village (2004) and Glass (2019), which have been firmly canonized and recorded as failures.
The Shining [Stanley Kubrick, 1980]:
The Village [M. Night Shyamalan, 2004]:
So, Rose's summation is complete bullshit. The way we approached movies changed massively in the age of the internet, and it indeed continues to change and evolve as both the technology and generational viewing habits change with it.
For my generation and older, there's a clear delineation between cinema and television; between the videos we watch on social media and those produced by professional broadcasters. For younger generations, this isn't the case. The "movies", as a medium, occupy a very narrow window of their interests. They compete with social media, TikTok and YouTube creators, Instagram, video games and facetime with friends. Whether young people see the latest Star Wars or Pixar movie at the cinema, at home on the television, or on laptops and mobile devises, is irrelevant. All that matters is that they're able to see the film as soon as it's available, regardless of the platform or method of delivery.
Personally, I find this new development exciting. Removing unnecessary conversations around box-office and critical consensus removes the barriers that previously denied certain works a space for discussion and analysis. Now we can watch the latest film by Marvel, DC, Pixar, or Disney, alongside films and serials made specifically for Amazon or Netflix, or more interesting and experimental works released on MUBI or via Blu-ray by companies like the BFI, Second Run, and others. We don't have to go into a work with our expectations already tainted by some website calling the film a "hit" or a "Turkey", but can go in fresh, deciding for ourselves what is a hit, and cultivating our own network of trusted movie-watchers to point us towards works of real interest.
There's no longer a need to draw a line between something accessible and mainstream, like Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul (both 2020), and a film like the Spanish-language Netflix production The Invisible Guardian (2017), the British, refugee-themed horror movie, His House (2020), or the difficult to categorize Bertrand Bonello art-house movie, Nocturama (2016), all of which are currently available to stream. Removed from the necessity to discuss budgets and box-office, awards and critical consensus, all these works are simply films, there to be watched and ranked and discussed, and valued entirely on their content, their stories, and their aesthetics. It's like an act of liberation.
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Fin de cinema [08 October 2020], The Current Cinema [09 January 2020]
For my generation and older, there's a clear delineation between cinema and television; between the videos we watch on social media and those produced by professional broadcasters. For younger generations, this isn't the case. The "movies", as a medium, occupy a very narrow window of their interests. They compete with social media, TikTok and YouTube creators, Instagram, video games and facetime with friends. Whether young people see the latest Star Wars or Pixar movie at the cinema, at home on the television, or on laptops and mobile devises, is irrelevant. All that matters is that they're able to see the film as soon as it's available, regardless of the platform or method of delivery.
Personally, I find this new development exciting. Removing unnecessary conversations around box-office and critical consensus removes the barriers that previously denied certain works a space for discussion and analysis. Now we can watch the latest film by Marvel, DC, Pixar, or Disney, alongside films and serials made specifically for Amazon or Netflix, or more interesting and experimental works released on MUBI or via Blu-ray by companies like the BFI, Second Run, and others. We don't have to go into a work with our expectations already tainted by some website calling the film a "hit" or a "Turkey", but can go in fresh, deciding for ourselves what is a hit, and cultivating our own network of trusted movie-watchers to point us towards works of real interest.
There's no longer a need to draw a line between something accessible and mainstream, like Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul (both 2020), and a film like the Spanish-language Netflix production The Invisible Guardian (2017), the British, refugee-themed horror movie, His House (2020), or the difficult to categorize Bertrand Bonello art-house movie, Nocturama (2016), all of which are currently available to stream. Removed from the necessity to discuss budgets and box-office, awards and critical consensus, all these works are simply films, there to be watched and ranked and discussed, and valued entirely on their content, their stories, and their aesthetics. It's like an act of liberation.
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Fin de cinema [08 October 2020], The Current Cinema [09 January 2020]
