Gather Around the Fire, and I’ll Tell You a Story
By: Connor Dobson
Tags: Culture, Hollywood, Storytelling, Movies, HBO

With movie theaters being on the verge of extinction, so too are the places humans gather with a shared purpose.

The COV-19 pandemic has altered our lives in ways that won’t truly be discernible for years, possibly even decades, to come. But each day the death toll tragically reaches new heights and stay-at-home orders continue their merry-go-round, the more Americans see communal spaces as irredeemable potential health hazards. That mentality won’t simply vanish with a vaccine, either.

And with social distancing being the name of the game for our foreseeable future, no other industry has had quite the baptism by fire this year as Hollywood. The continued distribution of content this year has arguably been the savior of sanity for all of us. As lovely as movie nights with friends and family are, they are not required to enjoy whatever new movie popped up on your Netflix queue.

While movie theaters will re-open and moviegoers will continue to fill their seats when they feel safe enough to do so, the mere option of staying cozied up in your pajamas and being able to watch the same thing as those who trekked to the theater will always be a siren song for those home-bodies amongst us. We are speedily reaching a moment in our culture where movies won’t be experienced like they used to. For some, going to the movies was seen more as a necessity to watch the latest Brad Pitt movie; a necessary hindrance to brace the traffic, crowds, and high concession prices. But for others, there are no movies without the big screen. The dark theater with its hypotonic glow is akin to a warm embrace of your creative and cathartic psyche; the world is quiet and you are uninterruptible.

But, HBO Max (the streaming service owned by its parent company WarnerMedia) has just fired the first shot that will have to be responded to in kind by all the other major studios. The other media conglomerates (Disney, ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, and Sony) will never allow a monopoly on shared release dates — of both theatrical and streaming — of the most anticipated movies of the year. The Walt Disney Co.’s online hub, Disney+ managed to skirt the issue by demanding an additional 30 dollars on top of the monthly cost of access to their service for its release of Mulan. This tactic was both a money grab and a temporary solution to what was supposed to be a temporary problem of shuttered multiplexes.

But by making this quantum leap, WarnerMedia is saying that it’s looking to the future, and the crystal ball their executives are gazing into tells an omen of seismic shift — after a year of couch watching and comfort viewing…there is no going back. For some in Hollywood, this can be viewed as a proverbial waving of the white flag; an abandonment of the crown jewel of the filmmaking industry. And by opening this Pandora’s box, they are all but lining each theater with TNT and pushing the detonator button themselves.

Warner’s decision is yet another nail in the coffin of the shared experience. But nothing will happen if audiences don’t want it to. Capitalism does provide the consumer with some semblance of power in that regard. And TimeWarner cannot be faulted for simply looking at the markets — aka us — and making what may show itself it be a sagacious business decision. The question moviegoers must now contemplate is: are we okay with movie theaters being yet another casualty in our current convenience at all costs culture?

Now, this shift may seem like the inevitable next step for an industry that has been growing — and bordering on over-saturation — for quite some time. But movie theaters are our last line of defense against hermit viewing. Theaters are the fire we gather around, and stories are (and have always been) more powerful when shared. The visceral, emotional impact of watching a movie in a crowded theater with fellow cinema-lovers is not the same if you can haphazardly hit the pause button every 20 min; that’s just simply not how movies are meant to be seen.

Is this an over-reaction? Possibly. Ultimately, movies exist to be enjoyed. The next blockbuster will still be watched individually by millions of people across the county, and the same movie will be seen by each and every one of them. But, I would ask, where’s the fun in that?