By George Robbins
Movie theaters have been in a strong state of decline ever since the start of the pandemic back in March of this year and that hasn’t changed as time has gone on. Things have been nothing short of just straight complicated for theaters ever since this pandemic began and they’ve had nothing to do. When this pandemic began, theaters were just trying to figure out when they would be able to open their doors once again and eventually, they had to figure out how they would open. Theaters were originally just in the same boat as any other business that was forced to shut down at the time and they couldn’t do anything other than stay shut down. With that in mind, they immediately started facing pressure which involved them not being able to bring in revenue and it is still a problem now.
Due to the pandemic, people have been trying to figure out exactly what they could do to keep themselves busy while they wait to be able to go out. Despite there still being a lot of risk involved with going out in general, businesses have managed to bring people back as time has gone on. This is because a lot of businesses function off the principal that they can draw people in for a specific reason for short periods of time. This is not something that movie theaters are really capable of because they function on bringing people in to sit still near other people for long periods of time. In order to try and make up for that fact, movie theaters have come up with new rules they put in place to follow the new health guidelines.
The new health guidelines are rules that have been put into place in just about every single business out there and they are almost the same everywhere you go. Basically, those new rules state that businesses have to have some kind of limited capacity and they must ensure that everyone remains a certain distance from one another to enforce social distancing policies. While these rules may be the same wherever you go, the effect that it has on each individual type of business varies wildly based upon how that business functions as an entity. Therefore, it is no surprise that movie theaters are among those businesses that have suffered the worst as a result of being forced to follow these rules. After all, the main point of being at a theater is to sit with many other people and watch movies for hours at a time.
It is due to the fear people have when it comes to sitting in a theater for hours with others that we have seen the rapid decline in attendance since they have reopened their doors. Taking away the fact that movie theaters haven’t really had any new movies to show, they have been stagnating heavily and it has affected them all for quite some time now. Even when they got their hands on the new blockbuster movie ‘Tenet’ things did not end up going very well for them over the following weeks. The movie started off strong but then lost all of its appeal over the following weeks due to people not wanting to go out and risk their health in theaters. This only further cemented the fact that theaters are in a decline with no way out in sight, especially after studios decided to delay their films.
After the perceived failure of ‘Tenet’ at the box office due to the lack of patrons going out to movie theaters, studios decided to pull their upcoming movies from the line-up. These movies are being pushed into some time next year, and although many now have releases dates, those schedules are still tentative until they figure out exactly when they can release to a market with a lot of customers. After this decision was made, Regal Cinemas decided to once again close all of their theaters in an effort to save money and prevent themselves from going bankrupt for awhile. AMC on the other hand has been staying open, but they will most certainly reach a state of bankruptcy by the end of the year. It has already been reported that they have already lost a total of 90% revenue for the year, so it isn’t looking great for the company.
At this point, movie theaters have lost almost all of their business and it has become a much more dangerous venture to be in the movie theater industry. For the time being, it would appear that movie theaters are slowly starting to inch closer to the point where they may never actually end up recovering even after this pandemic ends. This is a reality that they must now face as we move closer to the end of the year and as the new year begins. There isn’t really very much that theaters can do right now because they have no choice but to continue following along with the pandemic hoping that things get slightly better soon. Unfortunately, with a possible second wave of the virus essentially here, it seems unlikely; so those losses are likely to just continue racking up as time goes on.
By George Robbins
The ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise is one that has strongly affected action movies as time has gone on and it has earned its place in pop culture since its original inception in 1996 with the first ‘Mission: Impossible.’ While not every movie in the franchise is one that will be fondly remembered by the public, it is no doubt impressive that they are now working on a seventh film in the franchise because not every franchise is so lucky. After all, they managed to make an incredible start with the series and while there was a dip by the third film in popularity, they managed to turn that around. They actually made a complete U-turn and made films that have had a steady stream of viewers that have nothing but good things to say about the films. While there are undoubtedly a lot of people who have something to say about the film, there are more people who have liked everything they have seen done with the films.
With any action film out there, especially spy-action films, there are a lot of faults to be found solely because there is only so much that can be done with those films to make them interesting. Following that formula, there is a lot that happens to repeat itself in the movies that really can’t be controlled because tropes exist for a reason and they have managed to make them work. The Mission: Impossible’ franchise manages to set itself apart from any other form of spy movies solely because, in most people’s minds, it is heavily action focused. The action focus of the franchise has actually helped to make it a film that differentiates itself from other films in both the action and spy movie genres. Most of this can be attributed almost entirely to the fact that Tom Cruise is an absolute madman.
Tom Cruise is well known throughout pretty much every single community as perhaps the most pervasive action actor on the market. He appears in some of the biggest and most popular action films out there and he is the reason the ‘Mission: Impossible’ films easily remain at the top of action movie lists. Despite being mainly spy movies, they focus much more on the action side of things and Tom Cruise brings out that aspect of things with his stunts that he does for the films. While many people who are working on films usually have stunt folks working for them that do their stunts, Cruise instead does his own stunts. While this is certainly not the norm, some actors do this because they enjoy actually doing the stunts themselves. The difference between those actors and Cruise is the fact that Cruise goes just that little step further and he does things some stuntmen won’t even do.
Stuntmen will do whatever stunt is necessary for the movie they are working on, but there are limits to what they can do as people in general. There are a lot of stunts for movies that, if done wrong, could result in serious injury or death which is why stuntmen are important. Cruise takes that and throws it out of the window when he does his stunts and, while it certainly makes the final cut of the movie interesting for the public to watch, Cruise is certainly at risk. This has been made all the more apparent by Cruise’s co-star Simon Pegg who has said the it can be terrifying seeing him work on his death-defying stunts on set. Considering that Cruise is now willing to take his stunts to space, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that he is doing all of these crazy stunts now.
By George Robbins
Animated movies are always a polarizing source in regular culture as their are plenty of B-Grade or worse films that are made on a regular basis. This isn’t really anyone’s fault as people do want to create a work of art, but they might have their own limitations put in place which usually revolve around budget. It is due to this that we only ever hear about larger studios when we see really beautiful animated movies being made, but even those studios had smaller starts. That being said, Pixar did something incredible even early on as they managed to make something incredible with ‘Toy Story‘ back in the 90’s. The fact of the matter is that they completely changed the way that CGI was used from that point forward and they helped mold animation into what it now is.
When the first ‘Toy Story’ released back in 1995, the movie immediately caught people’s attention as it wasn’t a traditional animated film. In fact, it was the first major CGI 3-D animated film and it was so different from anything that came before that it immediately caught the attention of just about everyone. On top of the advertisement that the movie was an incredible looking animated film, the plot of the film was one that drew people in and made people feel emotions for toys of all things. Of course the latter part was all made possible due to the incredible animation which made the titular toys feel so real to begin with. This was something no one had even really thought possible and they have only improved their craft as time has gone on.
After the first ‘Toy Story’ movie released, it was no surprise that we eventually were gifted with a sequel aptly named ‘Toy Story 2.’ By the time we received the second film in 1999, we had already seen an improvement in the animation just within a few years and we grew ever more excited about the films Pixar worked on. They continued telling an engaging story and while it would be many years until ‘Toy Story 3,’ we grew attached to the characters we’d seen and worried for them. Eventually, we even questioned whether the toys on screen could legitimately die because of our worry for them. All of this stemmed from the original release of the first movie and it changed the way we saw animated movies from that very moment on.
Even though it is mainly Pixar that works on these movies that we see, it is no doubt important to recognize that many other studios turned to their type of animation after ‘Toy Story.’ Why wouldn’t they though because it became vastly popular with the public as time went on and people found their attention being drawn heavily to these animated films. It wasn’t just the animation that changed after that though as animated movie stories just got better overall and have drawn people in as much as the animation itself. This is why so many animated movies nowadays have stories that are compelling instead of just being bad story-good animation movies. After all, what is the point in animating a bad movie that won’t grab anyone’s attention. Unfortunately this still happens, but they are only really made by cheap budget studios trying to make a quick buck.
‘Toy Story’ helped change animated movies in the modern media and while there may be companies who took advantage of this popularity to make a quick buck, many animators took the opportunity to start working on incredible films. Pixar managed to hire more animators and improve upon their own technology over time, Disney managed to eventually start making incredible 3-D animated films, and other companies made their own animation departments with 3-D capabilities. This was just the start for the newest generation of animated films and now 3-D animated films are the most common form of animation. Before ‘Toy Story’ 3-D animation was very rare and hand-drawn animation was king, but after it released we saw the inverse of this happen now to the point where 3-D is king. It is hard to think that it has already been 25 years, but it has been a period of time that truly transformed animated films.
By George Robbins
Zack Snyder’s upcoming rendition of the ‘Justice League’ movie is one that fans have been looking forward to for quite some time now as it is a movie fans petitioned for since the original film’s release. When the original theatrical release of ‘Justice League’ was seen by the general public, many fans who had been looking forward to the movie ended up being disappointed by the end result of the whole thing. This was because a vast majority of what people originally thought was going to be in the movie ended up either being left out or changed in the final cut of the film. Therefore, fans immediately decided that they would petition so that they could get their hands on the version of the film that they originally wanted to view in theaters. Eventually, they would get their wish and now we will eventually be getting our hands on the version people wanted.
The new version of the film, aptly named the Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League,’ is a director’s cut of the original movie that is being worked on by the film’s original director Zack Snyder. Snyder was known for having started the DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, when he made the ‘Man of Steel’ movie. When he made that movie, he started the DCEU as a whole by giving it a central focus character that could be followed in a way that is similar to Iron Man and the MCU to some extent. Though, unlike the MCU, the direction taken by the DCEU was vastly different with the way that everything ended up playing out. The DCEU doesn’t necessarily have a build up like the MCU did and this immediately led to movies like ‘Batman v. Superman’ and ‘Justice League.’
Regardless of how those movies turned out or how they were received by the public, the fact remains that Zack Snyder is the director responsible for starting all of this under Warner Bros’. banner. He was meant to be the director for ‘Justice League’ but he unfortunately had to drop out of the movie after a certain point as his family was dealing with a tragic loss which affected him very much for a long time. After he had to leave the director’s chair, the chair was taken up by director Joss Whedon who has become the subject of a lot of backlash back then and even now due to information coming out about his apparent conduct on set. If it was not for the unfortunate loss Snyder suffered, he would have remained the director and we would have probably received a movie more in-line with what fans were expecting. Now though, we are getting an even bigger and more spectacle based version of the film we probably would have never had otherwise.
Back in May, earlier this year, we found out that the new version of ‘Justice League’ would be making its way to the public by some time in the earlier part of 2021. What we didn’t know was that the movie would actually be an entirely new experience for us to bear witness to as it isn’t just a movie anymore. In fact, the movie has now been turned into a four-part miniseries TV Show that will play in one hour increments, effectively making it a four-hour film that no one would have ever expected. Beyond just making the film longer with unused footage or something though, the movie is being made longer with what is essentially entirely new content. Unfortunately for fans who want to see the consequences of all of this that is going to happen in the movie, it will apparently not be made canon. The movie will be considered a standalone film where the original theatrical cut will be considered the canon film for simplicity’s sake.
This news that the new Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League’ is not going to be canon is a disappointment to many fans before the movie has even had its premiere because they have heard enough about the film where they think it should be the proper continuation. The main villain of the film is meant to be Darkseid who is known as a good DC equivalent to Thanos from the MCU and many believed he was going to be the main villain of the theatrical cut. Unfortunately this did not end up being the case and he was only mentioned in the original cut whereas his lieutenant Steppenwolf became the main villain. Now that he has played the role of Darkseid in the upcoming cut, actor Ray Porter is hoping that they change their minds and decide to make more content that follows this cut’s continuity so he can play the villain once again in some way. Needless to say, this is an idea I’m sure many fans would love to get behind and maybe we will hear something about this after the Snyder cut releases to the public.
By George Robbins
It is not really news to anyone at this point that movie theaters are in trouble due to the pandemic we have all found ourselves trapped in and this has only gotten worse as time has gone on. Movie theaters were immediately put under threat when the pandemic began because they were easily one of the most populated types of businesses out there. Of course with a pandemic, as we’ve all learned by this point, people are supposed to stay away from one another and not get within a certain distance to prevent disease from spreading. Unfortunately, there are many people who are choosing not to listen to this advice from medical experts and it is resulting in more and more people contracting the virus and getting sick. This has made it all the more difficult for theaters to actually open up their doors to the public and simultaneously stay open for any decent length of time.
Back in March, theaters had to shut down without any kind of concrete certainty as to when they would have to reopen their doors to the public to resume making some kind of revenue. As a result, there were questions as to what would come first, a vaccine or theaters being able to reopen with restrictions. Obviously, most bets were on the latter option and eventually that was what happened and theaters were able to reopen their doors to the public but with heavy restrictions which limited capacity. On top of limited capacity, theaters were also forced to adhere to the new rules that were put in place which also made it so that people had to follow social distancing rules. All-in-all this is what was expected to happen, but the problem quickly became how theaters would actually get people to come back as they had nothing new to show.
Theaters only really thrive off the fact that they get people to come in by showing off new movies in what is essentially an exclusivity deal with studios. They get movies from studios to show in return for exclusive windows where the only way people can see those movies is by going to theaters. On top of this, they sell concessions to make up for the fact that they only get a percentage of what is made off every ticket as the studios take a good portion of the money made from each ticket. Needless to say, they needed movies to get people in seat in their theaters, but they had no real way of doing so as studios weren’t sure about releasing films even if theaters were open to the public. It took AMC theaters saying that they were opening in mid-August regardless of what happens to finally give studios the chance to release their films.
Even with the announcements that there would actually be theaters opened up to the public everywhere, studios were still hesitant because of the pandemic as a whole. The studio that ended up taking the leap was Warner Bros. in the end because they really wanted to get their new movie ‘Tenet’ out into the world. What Warner had planned was that they were going to release the movie to international audiences first and then they were going to release the movie domestically next. The thing that many people were unsure of was when exactly they would end up doing that and when AMC made their opening announcement, Warner told people their plan. The end of August would see the international release of the film while the next week would see the domestic release. The first weeks were great for the film as they brought in about $150 million, but the following weeks ended up being nothing but a let down as the movie only brought in a few million domestically.
While a few million may not sound all that bad to the general public, it is actually pretty bad for the movie industry after taking into account the fact that all of those profits are split. With those profits being split, Warner Bros. needed the movie to bring in about $500 million before marketing costs to cover the overall production of the film. After all of this happened, other movie studios finally had all the proof they needed that this is most certainly not the climate to release their films in and they all pushed back the release dates of their films. With that, theaters essentially lost all of the upcoming blockbusters that could bring people through their front doors and they just started hemorrhaging money to try and stay open. It was after all of this that Regal Cinemas just decided to keep their doors shut to the public for the foreseeable future in order to try and save as much money as possible.
Movie theaters everywhere are sharing the same fate as they are all losing money hand-over-fist with no new movies to show and some aren’t even allowed to sell concessions, adding to the pain. Now it would seem that domestic theaters are not the only ones suffering as it would seem that movies theaters in the United Kingdom are going to be shutting their doors as well. Just like domestic theaters, theaters in the U.K. have been losing money trying to stay open and with this new wave of virus cases coming up, theaters there have decided to shut their doors. That being said, movie productions taking place in the U.K. will not be shutting down as they are in their own enclosed environments where they don’t really interact with many other people. So the fact remains that we will still have plenty of movies on the release line-up after the pandemic ends, but we may not have theaters as many are going under now.
By George Robbins
Over this past weekend we saw the passing of yet another Halloween, though this year was far different from anything that we’ve seen before. With the pandemic, this year’s Halloween was much more complicated than any previous year’s and it most certainly shown through. This is because people had to do things far differently this year as opposed to any other year, but this isn’t any kind of actual surprise to anybody. We expected things to be complicated and people made the appropriate plans to hang out and spend time together, if possible. Those who couldn’t found other ways to relax and enjoy the holiday instead of just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Of course that usually involves watching spooky and scary films which is a good alternative to doing nothing.
Over the holiday weekend, plenty of news has come out in regards to horror movies in general and it has been interesting to see what may be in the works in the possible future. Without a doubt the biggest one on everyone’s minds has been the teaser for ‘Halloween Kills‘ that released over the weekend. While not too much was shown about the upcoming entry to the ‘Halloween‘ franchise, there was plenty enough shown to make potential audiences excited for the film. Unfortunately, while the film was originally planned to have its release this past month, it couldn’t release because of the pandemic. Therefore, they did the only rational thing they could, they pushed it back an entire year to next October so that the movie’s release would fit into a fitting time slot.
Although there was over a year’s delay for the film, that doesn’t change the fact that the movie is still very much one that people are looking forward to seeing. The ‘Halloween’ series is one that horror movie buffs have loved for years, but no one can deny that the quality of the films had degraded severely over the years. This was just the tradition of slasher movies as there was little that could really be done with them in future sequels. There was plenty of popularity with those films which led to many different sequels being made over time, but you can’t really change the stories all that much as the entertainment value just became how people were killed in the film. It isn’t like people went to go see those movies for the plot, but things just kept getting more and more ridiculous in horror movies as time went on.
The ‘Halloween’ series is a prime example of a series where the main villain of the film just became something insanely powerful and un-killable as time went on. Michael Myers was just a man who suffered from psychosis which led to him essentially becoming obsessed with someone and trying to kill them and everyone else who got in his way. Although this is scary enough on its own, he was also tough, but originally not tough enough not to be stopped. The thing is, he was still a man no matter how people decided to look at his character, but in order to keep the story going in multiple sequels they essentially made him an immortal being that couldn’t be killed. This resulted in an eventual reboot for the series in which he was no longer this un-killable being, but he was kept just as terrifying. After all, the scariest part about him is the fact that he was just a normal man with a terrifying psychosis.
After the first reboot however, there was still not really any interest in the character by fans of the series because the story just wasn’t all that great. What changed since the original movies’ releases was the fact that people were no longer interested in the ridiculous ways in which horror movie plots played out and plots became more intrinsic to horror movies over time. This is where Blumhouse Productions came into things; and the movies they have made have helped shape the new generation of horror films. Blumhouse is responsible for the creation of numerous horror films which have been made on low budgets which have turned out to generate an incredibly high amount of revenue as time has gone on. Not only have the films been spooky in their own right, but their stories have caught people’s attention and brought people in to see them.
Blumhouse has been the company that is responsible for helping bridging the gap between the old style of horror movies and the newest generation of them. These new-school horror films have drawn countless attention from people over the years now and it has helped Blumhouse to be able to do bigger things in the horror industry. Perhaps the biggest thing they have done recently is take ‘Halloween’ and bring it back to the public properly with ‘Halloween‘ 2018. This version of the film is a direct sequel to the original 1978 film and instead of following the ridiculous storylines told in the older films, just goes back to the original story of the character. This time, the horror was ramped up as it brought back everything that made people fear the character to begin with.
Needless to say, Blumhouse has done something incredible with the characters they were given to work with and this reboot revitalized the franchise so well that they were allowed to make a new trilogy. ‘Halloween Kills’ is only the second film in this new trilogy and while we may now have to wait for it, people are nothing but excited for it due to how well Blumhouse had done the reboot. This made it extremely apparent to anyone who was skeptical of the studio that they know how to also handle existing properties and not just new ones they’ve made up themselves. With this in mind, Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum has been trying to convince people that his studio can now handle other existing properties. He’s been putting forth the notion that not only can he handle them, he can handle them well enough to make people proud of the work being done.
With all of this in mind, Blum has been trying to get his hands on the rights to reboot the ‘Friday the 13th‘ franchise that so many people have loved over the years. The original movie was made as a way for people to cash in on the original ‘Halloween’ after it was discovered that there was plenty of money to be made within the slasher genre. While the movie itself was nothing the write home about, the movie ended up having a twist that nobody saw coming. Also, while the actual acting left much to be desired, there was an interesting plot tucked away in that slasher film that led to an entirely new experience being birthed out of it in the future. The first film was at least somewhat realistic because it was similar to ‘Halloween’ with someone with a terrifying psychosis being the killer. What followed in future ‘Friday the 13th’ films was something that suffered from the same fate as the ‘Halloween’ movies.
The ‘Friday the 13th’ films brought in a supernatural element to them, but unlike the ‘Halloween’ films, this was something that actually kind of helped the movies. When people think of the ‘Friday the 13th’ series, they don’t really think of the original slasher, Mrs. Voorhees, and they instead think about the iconic Jason Voorhees. While Jason was not originally this unbelievably powerful being that couldn’t be killed, he evolved into that as time went on and this version of him became the most popular. The original version of him is popular as well, but the most popular version that people remember is Voorhees as the supernatural monster he was. Unfortunately the plot of those films declined which is saying something since the plots were never played out very well anyway.
Jason Blum has said that he would like to take on the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise in the future when asked what project he would like to take on next. He still has a lot of work ahead of him with the remaining ‘Halloween’ reboot films over the next couple of years, but he has said he would love to work on a reboot of the iconic slasher franchise. The biggest problem that arises when talking about working on an upcoming reboot for the films is the fact that there have been a number of attempts since Michael Bay’s 2009 version of the film, but legal rights issues keep cropping up when talking about the series. This would be a massive obstacle that would need to be overcome, but it would be one that I’m certain Blum would try to get through to make more films from the beloved slasher franchise. Hopefully in the not too distant future we get to see news where Blumhouse will be able to work on the film.
Get Some Strange!
