Required viewing: Who Is Killing Cinema

Patrick H. Willems is not just some guy on the internet talking about movies, he's a guy on the internet who has been talking about movies for over a dozen years. That's all it takes to get your credentials, right? Persistence?

Note: Toasty and I have been doing this for pretty much the exact same amount of time.  We're not Patrick Willems.

I'm newish to Willem's work, I only started watching his youtube channel at the start of this year, but I quickly latched on because he is a critical thinker, and his long-form video essays are well produced, well constructed, well researched, well reasoned and entertaining.  Looking back, he started out as a satirist, making short parodies or riffs off films or tropes, but this mode of essayist seems to suit him well.

Recent videos included coining the subgenre of "vibes movies", a dive into A.I. filmmaking, and a beginners guide to film criticism (also mandatory viewing for any amateur film reviewer) but it's his latest video, "Who is Killing Cinema - A Murder Mystery" that is required viewing for anyone who is interested in the health of the film industry.

If you read, listen or watch almost any form of film criticism (even our own) there's can be a lot of bemoaning of the state of the cinema today, how the "purple suits" make decisions that seem less interested in the art form and more about capitalistic greed, not realizing that it's more the art than the form that we're interested in as filmgoers.  I know I have done my fair share of defending Marvel movies over the years as well, as for the half decade they've been typecast as "the Doom that came to Hollywood" when I think it's been an unfair label, and an easy scapegoat.

This new video from Willems, posted above he breaks down the key suspects that are killing Hollywood, and he nails it. Not perfectly 100%, but, like, 92%.

You should watch the video but if you don't have the 85 minutes to spare, I'll do a quick recap...
The culprits are : 

1. Franchise movies
2. The fall of movie stars 
3. Studio Executives
4. Social media
5. Streaming

Spoiler alert: it's all of the above.  It's a perfect storm of calculated self-destruction. The purple suits, Willems notes, have shifted from being film lovers to business people, or, like, lawyers. In the end they care about the bottom line and not really making movies. The executives, in their endeavour to "Moneyball" filmmaking have glommed onto franchises based off existing IP as the most sure-fire way to make money. In doing so, the IP, the characters, have become the stars, not the performers.  Where once we would go see an actor or actress do their thing in different roles, now we want to see the same thing done by different actors or actresses. The purple suits may not have intentionally neutered the power of film stardom, but I bet they're not crying at all about it. Also part of this whole trend, Willems posits, is how studios have trained their audience to watch movies... in moving away from offering and promoting almost anything else, they've trained the audience that the only destination film, the only thing worth going to the theatre for, is a big, expensive blockbuster.

If there's a bigger nail in the coffin than any of the others it's streaming. Willems gets into Netflix's business model over the years and how it destroyed not just rental shops but physical media sales altogether. The decline in physical media sales meant that many films, which would have proven commercial successes on the post-theatrical market from sales and rentals, now just remain bombs. It reinforces their decision to not invest in mid-budget films or in promotion of them, because there's more risk.  Hollywood gets trench-head, and can't get out of their one-route way of thinking.  But Netflix's early success has led all the other major studios and networks to try their hand at a streaming service over the past half-decade and it's absolutely butchered the perceived value of both film and the cinematic experience.

Willems prior essay was on "Content", the term now used to describe everything and anything produced for one's illumination, education, or pleasure. It's all just "Content".  This utter flattening and devaluing of artistic forms, putting an unboxing video on the same playing field as a music video on the same playing field as a guy reacting to backyard wrestling fails on the same playing field as The Office, a tiktok dance video, a thoroughly researched polemic on NFTs, a student film, Love Island, a comic book review, the latest Wes Anderson vehicle.... when it's all "Content" these things all wind up being the same thing... being worth the same amount of one's time and attention and investment.  Netflix's Ted Sarandos, HBO's David Zaslav and even just youtube in general refers to everything being made for their services as "content" no matter how disparate the effort and artistry required.  To them it's all about eyeballs. If you can get the same amount of eyes, or more, by producing a supercut of cats falling off off shit, then why bother spending $25million on a comedy or dramatic film?  Willems glosses over social media and youtube as "competition" for seeing films in cinema, but I think that's primarily because it'd just restate his diatribe on "Content".  It is competition, it does divide attention, and the kids of social media age are less piped into traditional storytelling, so they're not going to the movies.

Willems is absolutely right. Cinema is in a bad state. Certainly in North America. I can't speak for the rest of the world.  I can attest (this blog can attest) that I fell out of going to the cinema for almost anything but a blockbuster film for the past dozen years.  I've put a lot of thought and mental effort into relaying how I feel about those films, and frankly, they are what I wanted to see when I was younger and still what I want to see now. I like my drama and humour and social introspection delivered by way of genre pieces. But I get people bemoaning the loss of the mid-range drama or comedy, and the surprise when one becomes a huge blockbuster. Quote films for grownups unquote.  But Willems may be right that in the proper promotion of a film, in re-establishing film stars, you can entice an audience, you can entice me to see a film that doesn't feature spandex or lasers.

The one major piece of Willems' puzzle that is missing from the video is television. In the past 20 years, TV has absolutely changed. No longer confined by "decency laws", TV shows can swear, have nudity, show all manner of gore or other disturbing images, things that were previously the domain of the movies, subject to audience control under a ratings system.  An in that loosening of constraints, TV got good. Real good. If Hollywood isn't making dramas or comedys for the cinemas, it's in no small part due to the sheer volume of great comedies and dramas and dramatic comedies and comedic dramas that have been on TV and streaming services in the past couple decades.  There's always been some really good TV, but it's never been like this. Especially since streaming started getting into the peak TV game, the investment into these productions is unprecedented.  TV looks cinematic, it drawing in film stars, and it's creating appointment television. Why go to the theatre when you just have to see the latest episode of one of the best shows ever made (as, at any given time now, one of the best shows ever made seems to be dropping a new episode)?

Is this, again a training? Have we been conditioned to view things serially? Is our attraction to franchises also part of our desire for ongoing narrative? Can stand-alone stories have a place?  

The answer is yes to all of these. But the value on stand-alone narratives is a lot less, because the investment is less.  For an audience the perceived value, for both serialized and stand-alone narratives, is in the artistry and the entertainment. If a stand-alone piece, a film if you will, stimulates the audience enough, eliciting a reaction (and it seems the purple suits don't even want any kind of reaction out of people anymore), it can spur interest, conversation, investment. If it entertains enough, people will go back to get that same dopamine hit again and again.  What used to be the Hollywood model was finding this balance between artistry and entertainment, now, it's largely "how do we not shake people up too much. We just want their eyeballs, and their money."

Like other American industries, the capitalists have taken over. For the people at the top, it's become about nothing but money. In their short-sightedness, the purple suits are cutting themselves off at the knees to strap what remains of their legs to fat wads of cash, not realizing that without legs you can't walk very far.  I don't have much hope the major studios, like so many major American industries, will find any value in investing in people and taking creative risks with their money.  When it's all about share value, nobody wins but shareholders.  It'll be the smaller production companies, the Blumhouses and A24s that start to fill the void as the big legless birds flail, wondering what happened.  As we can see the decline in franchise filmmaking already, the dwindling returns on Marvel, the negative returns on DC, repeated failures to resurrect established IP, the current business-minded execs won't think creatively enough to get them out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

I went off, much more than I should have, but it's a fascinating subject and a fascinating video.  If you care about cinema, give it a peek when you have time.