Monthly Archives: September 2025

Movie Reviews

One Battle After Another – Review

Paul Thomas Anderson is in a class of his own as a filmmaker.  I don’t think there is any other director who balances tone better than he does.  His films could feature some of the darkest, most disturbing moments ever put on screen and then within a single scene transition he can shift to something hilariously comical, and it still would fit together.  He’s made a career out of delivering some of the darkest comedies, with movies like Boogie Nights (1997), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Inherit Vice (2014) on his resume.  His movies have also either leaned more fully into the darker side, like There Will Be Blood (2007), or the more comical side like Licorice Pizza (2021).  But one thing that remains constant in his films is a sense of keeping his audience on the edge, making sure that they’ll never know which way his films are headed.  That has made him one of the most admired filmmakers still working in Hollywood today.  Every new film he puts out always garners our attention, because we know that it’s going to be unlike anything we have seen before.  And as a filmmaker, he’s done a lot of things that we’ve thought were impossible.  He’s the guy who showed us that Adam Sandler could actually give a great performance with Punch-Drunk Love, which we’ve now learned was no fluke thanks to the Safdie Brothers several years later.  Anderson has an eye for talent and visual storytelling that is truly unique, and it has earned him a strong place in the filmmaking community.  However, as beloved as Anderson is among filmmakers, his reach still feels a bit limited.  Because of the unusual nature of his films, his reach hasn’t really crossed into the mainstream in the same way that his contemporaries have like Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan.  While many of his films are big in concept and ambitious in execution, he’s still been playing with limited budgets and small art house premieres.  But that seems to have changed.

For his newest film, Anderson is getting something he’s never had before; a substantial budget.  With the financial backing of Warner Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time is making a film with a budget north of $100 million.  Thus far, we’ve seen him be a filmmaker who has done a lot with very little in the way of funds.  There Will Be Blood was one of the most impressive looking American epics of it’s time, and remarkably it was made for around $20 million.  While it does excite a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson fans to think about what he might do with a budget of that size given his overall track record, it also leaves a lot of people worried about what that might mean for his style of fillmaking as well.  Anderson has managed to thrive being something of an outsider from the studio system.  So seeing him working with a major studio and taking their money for a film budgeted over 5x more than his average film makes many of his fans worried that he might be selling out.  Will this new movie actually still feel like a Paul Thomas Anderson film, or will it be a soulless studio product?  One of the positive signs is that the movie is not a pre-existing IP, but rather a project of Anderson’s own choosing.  It’s a loose adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel called “Vineland” and it’s pretty clear that the reason he’s making this movie is not because he needed Warner Brothers money but rather because they wanted his new film.  Warner Brothers, despite some of their own misguided steps in the past, have actually been quite good at attracting prestige filmmakers to bring their big concept projects under their banner.  It’s something they did with Christopher Nolan for a while with his films Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017).  Just this year they also got a big win with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025).  So, they recognize that it’s worth the investment to give a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson the money he needs to make his big vision project come to life.  The only question is, does One Battle After Another prove that Anderson can still deliver on a much bigger scale, or does the movie fall apart under the weight of all those lofty ambitions?

The story of One Battle After Another is set in an America that’s been living under an authoritarian, militaristic regime that has been rounding up migrants and placing them in concentration camps.  Fighting back against this regime is a domestic terrorist group call the French 75.  Two of the members of this group are Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor).  The two revolutionaries have a fiery romance that builds while they conduct their many acts of resistance against the government.  But, their love affair and antigovernmental crusade hits a roadblock once Perfidia becomes pregnant.  Once their child is born, Perfidia begins to become unhinged and it results in botched raid that gets her arrested.  In order to save herself, and protect her daughter’s secret identity, she ends up naming names of the other French 75 members.  Bob ends up going on the run with his infant daughter, who will grow up believing that her mother died in prison.  16 years later, the young girl named Willa (Chase Infiniti) finds herself suddenly thrust into the chaotic world of her father’s past once an old adversary has picked up the trail.  Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an old enemy of the French 75 has now been given new authority to hunt down the remnants of the revolutionary group, and he’s got a personal matter involving Willa herself that he wants to settle once and for all.  While Bob is still very protective of his daughter, he’s also been out of the revolutionary game for many years, so a lot of his instincts are rusty.  He ends up seeking help from Willa’s karate teacher Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), who himself is involved in his own underground resistance movement.  As Willa becomes the target of this government crackdown, it becomes an endless race between two highly opposed forces; Bob using his network of revolutionaries to help him find his daughter’s safe house refuge, and Lockjaw using his military back might to get to her first.  And all the while, Willa desperately is trying to adapt to all the chaotic events that suddenly have been thrusted upon her.  With all that happens, it’s clear why this movie comes to us with the title One Battle After Another.

There is a lot that unfolds within the story of One Battle, but at the same time, the movie is very simple in it’s narrative.  In the end, it’s just a story about a father doing everything he can to save his daughter from a ruthless predator and the system that has propelled him to power.  A lot of people who have been worried that some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s style would get lost under the weight of a much bigger budget will be rest assured that this movie thankfully still feels like an Anderson film to it’s core.  It’s honestly kind of surprising that this movie actually cost as much as it did to make, because Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t really do much to flaunt the budget of this movie.  It still feels like one of his grounded, street level films that were made on significantly smaller budgets.  If expensive visual effects were used in the making of this movie, they are barely noticeable as the movie still feels like a very hand crafted film.  But, regardless of how the budget was used, this is undoubtedly another triumph for Paul Thomas Anderson.  It features all of the incredible filmmaking instincts that have made him one of our more exciting cinematic storytellers over the years, with perhaps a bit more scale to it.  I would also say that as entertaining as the film is, it also feels a bit slack in it’s pacing, especially compared to some of his much tighter films like There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love.  While the overall experience is still thrilling, you can feel at times when it slips into indulgence, which has hurt Anderson’s films sometimes.  But, it’s a minor nitpick on the film, because when the movie does get cooking it is an amazing thrill ride.  Again, Anderson’s skill with balancing tonal shifts is unmatched, and he does that a lot here.  At times you will be laughing hysterically at the absurdity going on in the film, and then a scene later the film will hit you with a gut punch of tension and gut-wrenching tragedy.  In many ways, that’s the biggest asset that this film has, because it is constantly leaving you unsure about what’s going to happen next, which is thrilling in it’s own way.  It’s a movie that only he can make, and that’s a rare specialty in cinema these days, especially when done on this scale.

What I especially love about what Paul Thomas Anderson does in One Battle After Another is the subtle world-building.  While there certainly are a lot of parallels in the film with regards to the state of the world today, the movie also creates this heightened world that only these kinds of characters could exist in.  The shadowy government organizations feel familiar to us, but Anderson also puts his own absurdist spin on them as well, making their secret organization a joke in of itself.  I also like how the revolutionary groups have become so entrenched in their routines, that their code speak way of communications has over time devolved into something like trying to reach customer service through a corporation’s hotline.  Everything is grounded and yet heightened at the same time.  There will probably be some discussion around this film that may make it controversial.  Certainly the mass incarceration of migrant people (primarily Latin American migrants as shown prominently in the film) is going to draw immediate parallels with the current situation in America.  Also the movie isn’t afraid to define the characters in clear black and white terms; the revolutionaries are definitely the good guys here and the white supremacists coded government figures are the bad guys.  The timing of this movie couldn’t be more prescient.  And yet, Anderson doesn’t use this movie to push any agenda either.  It’s merely the backdrop for this cat and mouse chase involving DiCaprio’s Bob, his daughter Willa, and Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw.  I do love that Anderson shows restraint here, because I can imagine this movie loosing all of it’s subtlety if it were given over to a less skilled storyteller.  Anderson certainly wants you to think about the injustices committed in this world and be conscientious, but at the same time he knows that the story must be engaging enough to guide us through this crazy world, and that’s why it remains focused on above all else.  It’s the thing that we all will engage with the most on our first watch of the movie, but I’m sure all the extra world details will help to make people want to revisit the film many times over in order to really absorb the world that Anderson created for this film.

The thing that I’m sure most people are going to take away from watching this movie are the performances.  Anderson has always been a great actor’s director, and he’ helped many of his performers deliver some of the greatest work of their careers.  He helped launch Mark Wahlberg’s career with Boogie Nights, showed us a different side of Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), made us believe in Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and got Daniel Day-Lewis the second of his three Oscars for There Will Be Blood. Now, for the first time he gets to work with one of the greatest actors of his generation, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the long awaited team up does not disappoint.  What I especially love is how loose Anderson allowed DiCaprio to be in this movie.  One of DiCaprio’s most under-utilized talents as an actor has been his knack for comedy, which we’ve seen used only sparingly in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).  Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson uses DiCaprio’s comedic chops to great effect here.  It’s especially hilarious watching how clumsily DiCaprio’s Bob steps back into the revolutionary game after so many years out of loop, and his growing frustrations with how the network operates now as opposed to when he was in his prime.  DiCaprio has some pretty spectacular freak-outs in this character role, and a lot of the fun of this movie stems from his character.  But, the true scene-stealer is Sean Penn as Col. Lockjaw.  This is one of Penn’s best performances ever, and that’s saying a lot for the two time Oscar winner.  His Lockjaw is a true transformative performance.  There are so many layers to this character that Sean Penn brilliantly gets to peel back.  I love how his tough guy exterior is so extreme that all it does is spotlight his insecurities that much more.  I especially love that Penn even worked out a unusual gait to the way Lockjaw walks, like every muscle in his body is clenched at all times.  And he’s also not afraid to make Lockjaw as loathsome as he possibly can be, and that in a way makes him even more absurd of a figure.  This is the kind of performance that I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot about come Awards season.  The movie also gives us a breakout performance from Chase Infiniti as Willa.  This is her first ever film role, and it is an impressive debut.  She has to carry so much of the film given that so much of it centers around her character, and she manages to have an incredible on screen presence for someone fairly new to this.  It’s especially impressive, given that she’s able to command the screen even in the presence of heavyweights like DiCaprio and Penn.  And while their roles are minor in comparison, Teyana Taylor and Benicio Del Toro also manage to shine in their performances as well.  In addition, like with so many other Anderson films, even the side characters have a ton of personality.

One thing that Paul Thomas Anderson has never failed to deliver on is making his movies look good.  He always works with the best cinematographers in the business, and the production designs on his movies are always incredibly detailed.  He’s also been a purist when it comes to shooting his movies on film.  He’s worked with 70 mm photography on many of his past films, but with One Battle After Another he decided to do something different.  Here he’s working with 35mm film, but he shot the movie utilizing a Vistavision camera.  Vistavision is experiencing a rather surprising resurgence lately after going unused for decades in Hollywood.  A precursor of the IMAX process, Vistavision allowed for larger image captures on 35mm film stock by running the film horizontally through the shutter of the camera rather than vertically.  This allowed for an image that was 8 perforations wide rather than the standard 4, making the image captured twice as sharp and large as usual.  Over time, the format went out of style, but gained attention again last year thanks to the Oscar winning camera work on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024).  While The Brutalist used Vistavision for parts of the film, Anderson made use of it for the entire movie.  The result is really impressive, as it give the movie some really breathtaking visual flair.  While Anderson doesn’t go overboard with the photography, he nevertheless allows for the Vistavision image to do interesting things with depth of field and focus in many shots.  There is a spectacular sequence involving a car chase near the end of the movie that is one of the most breathtaking uses of camera work I’ve seen in a while.  The placement of the camera in that sequence is truly inspired.  Anderson is working with cinematographer Michael Bauman for the second time after their collaboration on Licorice Pizza, and this is his most dynamic camera work that we’ve seen yet.  Another excellent part of this movie is the musical score from Jonny Greenwood.  The Radiohead band member turned film composer has written music for every Anderson film since There Will Be Blood, and this is yet another brilliant piece of work from him.  The score at times plays like a heartbeat that just keeps pounding through the movie, driving up the tension.  It’s minimalist in the right ways, at times only consisting of one note played over and over again, but it perfectly fits with the chaos that’s unfolding on screen.  Both of these elements, combined with a film production that still feels hand crafted and lived in really helps to show that even with a larger budget at his disposal, Paul Thomas Anderson still can craft a film that feels distinctively him.

While I still hold a couple of Paul Thomas Anderson movies above this one, especially There Will Be Blood which is one of my favorite movies in general, I can definitely say that this is one of the year’s best films.  It’s just great to see one of cinema’s greatest talents still taking chances as a filmmaker and coming out with his integrity as an artist still in check.  It will hopefully bode well for filmmakers in general if this movie does very well at the box office, because it will allow the major studios to see the value in giving filmmakers like Anderson the money they need to make their big original concept films knowing that there is an audience out there for them.  Not every filmmaker manages to do that working under the judemental eye of studio executives.  But Anderson has built a respected reputation over the years as a filmmaker, one that only a fool would try to stand in the way of in Hollywood, and it’s great to see a studio like Warner Brothers recognizing that too.  They know that Paul Thomas Anderson can deliver on his promises as a filmmaker, and that’s why they allowed him to have the budget that he needed for this film.  As someone who has enjoyed many of his films, it is great to see Paul Thomas Anderson succeed so well in maintaining his unique cinematic voice while working within the studio system.  It may be a costlier movie, but it still maintains his signature to it’s core.  The performances are certainly worth the ticket price alone, especially with Sean Penn’s completely transformative work here.  And there is some thrilling camera work on display as well.  It will be interesting to see what kind of replay value this movie has with audiences over time.  I’m certainly eager to see it again, hopefully to catch all the things I missed the first time.  And thanks to the Vistavision photography, this is a movie that demands to be seen on a big screen.  I caught it in IMAX, and it made the experience all the more immersive.  That aforementioned car chase is especially breathtaking on a true IMAX screen.  But even so, this is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that is indeed going to please his long time fans, while also at the same time hopefully drawing in a few new ones.  He’s a one of a kind filmmaker who certainly deserves more attention, and while One Battle After Another may not be his magnum opus, it is still a masterpiece that hopefully will add onto his already legendary status in Hollywood.

Rating: 9/10

Editorials

Beyond the Screen – The Wizard of Oz Sphere Experience and the Use of Gimmicks in Cinema

Las Vegas has done a lot to define itself as the Entertainment Capital of the World.  Started of as a hub for legalized gambling in a dry arid region with nothing else around, the city revolutionized casino operations and on top of that became a resort destination onto itself.  Beyond the slot machines and blackjack tables, Vegas catered to it’s clientele by attracting big name entertainers to come to their city and perform.  Frank Sinatra and his “Rat Pack” associates Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. became almost synonymous with the city after their long time residency.  Later on, Elvis Presley would come to Sin City and many others would follow in the decades to come, including Celine Dion and Adele.  It was also the place where illusionists like Penn & Teller and Siegfried and Roy would become international celebrities.  Vegas was definitely the place to go for live entertainment on the grandest scale.  And there were so many options too, with every Casino Resort on the Strip being home to at least one marquee theater.  But, as big as the live acts were on the strip, there was one form of entertainment that had failed to catch on in Las Vegas; the Movies.  Sure, like any city Las Vegas has it’s fair share of multiplexes scattered around, but there wasn’t a movie theater anywhere in town that fit with the larger than life character of the City.  The closest thing that Vegas could do to create a bigger than average destination for the movies in their town was an IMAX theater housed in the cavernous atrium of the Luxor Hotel; which has since closed and been replaced with a museum.  It just seemed like Vegas was going to just be a beacon for live entertainment and not be a destination for the grandest of movie experiences.  That was until 2023 when the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) opened up a theater venue unlike anything the world had ever seen near the Las Vegas Strip.  Called “The Sphere,” this new venue was not just going to turn the live entertainment world on it’s head, but also the movie going experience as well.

The MSG Sphere is a true engineering marvel.  The $2.3 billion spherical structure is 366 ft. high and 516 ft. wide and includes enough interior seating for 20,000 spectators.  But, what sets the venue apart from everything else is it’s colossal 160,000 square foot LED screen.  The screen projects at 16K resolution, making it not just the largest LED screen in the world, but also the sharpest as well.  And if the screen inside wasn’t impressive enough, the exosphere of the building is also it’s own LED screen, lighting up the Vegas skyline with a free show for all to see.  The venue is primarily designed for live shows, with the floor in front of the screen set apart from the grandstand in order to provide room for the stage.  But concerts in the Sphere are unlike anything ever seen before.  The MSG company spends months preparing a video package for the bands that perform at the venue to play on the massive screen.  The screen allows for the sensation of being transported away as a part of the show.  For the Sphere’s opening, the band U2 was given a residency and their best hits show had the giant screen display background settings as incredible as a desert landscape, a kaleidoscope of Vegas style icons, the datascape of a computer, and an angelic like dome that envelopes the entire audience.  The concert could pretty much feel like it could be set anywhere, with only what we can imagine being the limit.  After U2, other famous rock bands have come to the Sphere to perform, such as The Eagles and the Backstreet Boys.  And each of their shows includes those custom made video packages that deliver an experience like no other.  But, a year after blowing the concert world away with the capabilities of the Sphere’s screen feature, the MSG company looked towards doing something even more state of the art.  There was always a plan to incorporate film experiences as a part of the Sphere’s rotation of acts.  While U2 had it’s concert program going, the Sphere also had an hour long nature documentary from director Darren Aronofsky called Postcards from Earth (2023).  But, MSG was looking beyond, seeking a movie going experience that already had a built in audience that at the same time would also take advantage of the capabilities of the venue.

Fast forward to this year where the Sphere debuted a new presentation of a beloved cinematic classic, The Wizard of Oz (1939).  One of the most watched movies of all time, Oz is a universally known film that has managed to remain a draw for audiences for over 80 years.  But, presenting it as is on a screen the size of the one in the Sphere is not so easy.  For one thing, as good as the restorations have been over the years to keep Oz looking pristine and sharp, the resolution of the movie maxes out at 4K resolution.  It’s limited by the fidelity of the film stock that was used at the time.  It also was made long before widescreen had gone mainstream, utilizing the standard Academy Ratio of 1.37:1. Blown up to play on a screen the size of the one inside the Sphere would also amplify all the imperfections built in to the original film stock.  The film’s grain, which helps to give it a healthy texture when played on a standard sized screen, would look very blocky on the Sphere’s screen.  So, here is where we get to the controversial side of the Sphere’s presentation.  In order to get the movie to match the 16K resolution of the screen, the movie was upscaled using AI programs to create extra detail in the image.  This is not unusual, as AI has been a tool used before in film restoration, though always with great care to retain the fidelity of the original image.  But, The Sphere team went a step further.  They used AI to not only upscale the movie, but to also add more image beyond the original dimensions of the film.  This was so they could conform the film’s image to the dimensions of the screen, which is much wider and taller than even the average IMAX screen, and also built with a curve to envelope the audience.  So, now audiences are not only watching The Wizard of Oz in a way they haven’t seen before, but in many ways also watching a version of the movie that’s never existed before.

It raises a lot of concerns about how AI should be used in the movie making process.  What is at issue with many people is that there is no one left alive from the making of the 85 year old movie, so none of them have consented to the alteration of their work with this version of the film.  Some of the demos of the making of this Sphere presentation show how AI has been used to add on to the original movie, and some of it is indeed borderline questionable.  One particular demonstration showed how they altered a scene where Dorothy is speaking with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry inside the farm house.  In the original film, we see the actor who played Uncle Henry walk off screen for a few seconds and return.  We don’t see what he was doing off screen in that time.  In the Sphere experience, the scene from the film, which included a lot of panning around to capture the action has instead been turned into a fixed shot.  In order to keep it fixed, as lot of the shots that panned across the room were stitched together to keep the image fixed in one place using AI.  And this includes the moment when Uncle Henry is out of frame for a moment.  We don’t know what he was doing offscreen, but the AI constructed movement that never existed before of the actor pacing around the room to fill those missing moments.  This is beyond just restoring an old film; it’s putting things in that never existed before at all. You can see why so many actors are concerned about how AI will use their images in the future, because here we have a clear example of new imagery being created using a long deceased actors image out of nothing.  Now, the MSG company’s explanation is that this version of the movie is not in any way intended to replace the original.  More than anything else, they are using The Wizard of Oz as more of a test subject for presenting older films on their record breaking screen, and using it as more of an experience than a true film presentation.

The question is; will what they are doing at the Sphere be the start of a new trend in filmmaking?  Are we looking at the future of cinema with the Sphere’s Wizard of Oz experience?  The one thing we do know for sure is that this presentation in particular has been an enormous success.  With ticket prices that range in the same ballpark of concert tickets (usually higher that $100 per seat on the low end), the presentation is selling out shows and with only one screen, the movie has amassed over $50 million in grosses so far.  People are turning out to see this one of a kind experience and it’s making Hollywood take notice.  It’s been reported that MSG is already starting talks with Disney and Warner Brothers over the possible use of their own catalog titles for this Sphere experience.  It probably won’t be long before we see movies from the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises getting the Sphere treatment.  At least with those films you still have the original filmmakers still around to approve and maybe even oversee the alterations to these films to conform them to the Sphere’s screen dimensions.  But, a large question arises about if this is where Hollywood sees film going in the years ahead.  Are we going to see more venues like the Sphere popping up across the country, and are audiences willing to pay extra for ticket prices to see films in this way?  Part of the reason why the Sphere in Vegas is doing as well as it is is because of the novelty of it all.  No other venue in the world has created an audio/visual experience on this scale before.  And that largely is why people are paying up to experience The Wizard of Oz in this format, even if it’s a movie that most people have likely seen many times before.  If you build one of these kinds of venues in every city, it will rob the original of some of that novelty, which is something that the MSG company probably is hesitant to do.  As the saying goes, what happens in Vegas is best left in Vegas.

But, we are at a time when movie attendance is down from where it was pre-pandemic.  This is largely due to economic uncertainty coupled with the ever rising cost of a movie ticket and also the dwindling number of movies making it to the big screen these days.  It’s not the first time that cinema has fallen into the doldrums.  Just as streaming is currently threatening the theatrical business there was a time when movie theaters also had to contend with the rise of television.  Theaters needed something more to draw in audiences beyond just a good movie.  They needed to create something that you just couldn’t do with television at home.  Thus came an era in the 50’s and 60’s when cinema tried to liven their movies up with gimmicks that enhanced the film experience.  One of the most famous filmmakers who revolutionized the use of gimmicks in movie presentations was a man named William Castle.  Castle worked primarily with B-movie thrillers and horror, but what he’s most famous for was the wacky gimmicks he would employ in the promotions of his films.  He famously gave out life insurance certificates to audience members in the case any of them would die of fright at one of his films.  He also implanted buzzers inside theater seats to jolt audiences members during the presentation of his horror film, The Tingler (1959).  Despite the mad science of all of Castle’s ideas, these gimmicks were still effective, as it helped to make the movie going experience more of a multi-sensory experience.  You can see the influence of Castle’s gimmicks today in the 4DX film presentations at select theaters across the country.  There were other like-minded gimmicks that also came out of that era as well, like the short-lived Smell-O-Rama.  But there were other gimmicks that managed to last much longer, like 3D, which improved over the years as the technology got better.  You could even say that Widescreen was a gimmick at first before it caught on and became a mainstream tool in filmmaking.  What movie gimmicks do more than anything is allow for innovation and experimentation with the artform of cinema, even if they sometime can come off as crude and distracting.  But, for an artform over a century old as cinema is, it’s also got to go through periods of renewal in order to survive changing times.  And using gimmicks is sometimes the best way to draw people back in after they’ve grown tired of the artform after a while.

There’s no doubt that what the Sphere is doing is another in the tradition of using gimmicks to draw people in to watch a movie.  And there are nods to the in theater gimmicks that William Castle was famous for.  In The Wizard of Oz presentation, the famous tornado scene is accompanied with in theater effects a well.  When the tornado glides across the screen, massive fans built into the auditorium will recreate the forceful winds of the twister, making it feel like a real tornado is blowing through the venue itself.  Not only that, but artificial leaves and smoke will also be blowing through the auditorium, further reinforcing the illusion.  It’s clear that MSG doesn’t merely just want to play the movie on their screen; they also want to make it come alive as well.  It could be something that supplants the theatrical experience as we know it now, or it could become something else entirely separate.  It’s an experience that uses the movie we already know and making it into an experience that we’ve never seen done before.  But, is it something that we should be doing with older movies.  If anything, what the Sphere has created is a new type of film experience that would be better suited for newer films.  The documentary made by Darren Aronofsky doesn’t have the controversy surrounding it as the Oz experience does, mainly because it was made from scratch for the venue and not enhanced with AI.  There are many filmmakers out there who might look at the Sphere and see a creative challenge that could lead them towards creating a whole new era of innovation in filmmaking.  There are also a lot of rising talent who may find the dimensions of the Sphere’s screen perfect for their revolutionary visions that they would like to immerse their audiences in.  Because of how new the Sphere is we don’t quite know how much of a lasting impact it will have on the future of cinema as a whole.  But what we know from history is that filmmaking thrives when the tools break new ground and change the way we look at the movies in general.

Speaking for myself, I have yet to actually see what the Sphere experience looks like with my own eyes.  I can only judge from a distance, and while the scale of the venue is awe-inspiring in of itself, the way they are using it could be disruptive for the art of filmmaking in general, and not all in a good way.  Taking a classic film like The Wizard of Oz, and “enhancing” it with AI as a lot of ethical red flags behind it.  If you are presenting it with a good chunk of the image added on artificially, it robs the original film of its artistic merit.  The brilliance of Oz is the unbelievable craft behind it, and a lot of the artistic intent was determined by the limitations of the film stock that was available to them.  You change things like adding on to backgrounds, removing edits, and crafting additional performances from offscreen actors that never existed before through AI technology, you have to wonder if it’s still the movie you grew up loving anymore.  The best thing for this presentation to do is to stay one of a kind, and be treated as nothing more than a gimmick.  The last thing that should happen is for Hollywood to take the wrong message and believe that the best way to re-release their films is to use AI to add on more movie.  It’s like those awful AI generated expansions of famous artworks that people began circulating on social media about a year ago.  Sure, AI is capable of filling in what could exist beyond the frames of these famous works of art, but without the original artists input to say so the artwork loses impact because their original limited frame of view was as the artists intended.  Filling in what’s not there misses the point of the composition. The same seems true for this Wizard of Oz experience.  It’s impressive looking, but it’s also not Oz.  Even still, there is potential for the Sphere to have a positive influence on filmmaking.  Imagine if other big scale filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve look at the Sphere’s massive screen and see it as a challenge that fits with their visions.  For now, it stands as a true achievement for the city of Las Vegas.  Finally, they have managed to gain the attention of the cinematic world and created a venue that could indeed change the theatrical experience for good.  We’ll see what the future of the MSG Sphere holds, but there is no doubt that it is one massive leap in innovation when it comes to the presentation of movies.  True to the city of Vegas, it’s a gamble of a project, and as is the case with their presentation of The Wizard of Oz, they seem to have hit the jackpot.

Tinseltown Throwdown

Tinseltown Throwdown – Megamind vs. Wreck-It Ralph

It’s a common theme in this series to see two major animation studios going up against each other with eerily similar films.  More often it’s a case where the two studios are looking at the same idea, but from different angles.  And then you have the very interesting case of Dreamworks’ Antz (1998) being purposely sped up in release to get out ahead of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998).  It wouldn’t be the last time those two would duel it out, with Dreamworks’ Shark Tale (2004) and Pixar’s Finding Nemo (2003) also making it to theaters in close proximity.  But, as both studios managed to find their footing after a decade in the business, they had the confidence to pursue their own directions as studios and not be in constant competition in the form of comparable ideas.  Perhaps the reason there was so much overlap in the early days of computer animation was because movies about bugs and fish were easier to animate under the limitations of the medium.  Both Dreamworks and Pixar have since shown that they could develop much more complex stories with grander scale animation like How to Train Your Dragon (2010) or Inside Out (2015).  But, in the 2010’s, Disney Animation began to find it’s footing once again with it’s own computer animation division, and they were making the market a lot more competitive as a result.  Disney of course still heavily relied on their tried and true formula of fairy tale fantasy, like with Tangled (2010) and Frozen (2013), but they were also branching out and telling original contemporary stories as well.  And one of their ideas for a new animated film seemed to have a lot in common with another film coming from Dreamworks around the same time.  In this case, we had two stories about “bad guys” who wanted to be good.  While both movies are similar in that theme, their approach to it offers some very interesting variations and it makes both of them equally rich in their explorations.  So, what is it that helps to make Dreamworks’ Megamind (2010) and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph (2012) unique from each other?

One of the interesting things that the two have in common is that the lead voice actor in both were the stars of the 2008 Adam McKay comedy Step Brothers; Will Farrell and John C. Reilly.  Not really relevant, but I thought it was fun little fact.  And actually, the two actors have appeared in a number of films together, making them a winning comedy duo.  But, here they are the stars of these separate movies.  Will Farrell plays Megamind, the diabolical super villain with supreme intelligence who is constantly attacking the citizens of Metro City, which is protected by a Superman-like hero named Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt).  John C. Reilly plays a video game villain by the name of Wreck-It Ralph, a Donkey Kong-esque adversary whose only job is to wreck buildings in a retro style arcade game called Fix-it Felix, named after Ralph’s Mario Brother-like opponent.  The two actors are perfectly suited for their roles, with Farrell really getting to ham it up with his hilariously operatic villain role.  Reilly by contrast plays Ralph much more subdued, but still nevertheless geared well to his comedic talents.  The first big difference between the two ways that these actors play their roles is that Ralph is aware from the start that his role as a villain is purely artificial.  It’s more or less just a job for him, and that’s the way that Reilly approaches the character; as someone who has a role to play but when the job is done, he feels bored by the rest of his existence.  For Megamind, his whole life has been centered around conflict, and that is how Will Farrell plays the character in the beginning.  Farrell perfectly captures the petty one-upsmanship that defines classic comic book villains, and he goes way over the top with his performance in the character’s intro.  But where Megamind and Wreck-It Ralph find their stride in their story is when the characters make that turn to change their direction in life, and that’s where you see the actor’s skills as voice over artists really help to give dimension to what normally would be stereotypical characters.  We see these characters grow and evolve into something very different by the end, while at the same time still retaining that menacing demeanor that defined them before.

“I’M GONNA WRECK IT!!”

One thing that splits the two films is where they start out.  For Megamind, when we first meet him, he’s still satisfied in his role as a villain.  It’s the cat and mouse game he plays with Metro Man that gives him purpose in life.  In the film’s prologue, we see the way he grew up, living a parallel life with Metro Man who has had all the luxury of a good life while Megamind literally is raised behind bars since he was a child.  Because Metro Man came to symbolize everything that is good in humanity by the time he matured into his super hero persona, Megamind had no other direction than to take the opposite route and be his adversary.  And then the movie posits an interesting twist on this traditional comic book story; what if the villain won?  It appears that Megamind got what he wanted and defeated Metro Man, literally blasting him away into dust and bones, and the movie then puts Megamind int the position of asking “what now?”  Megamind is the dog who caught the car that he was chasing, not knowing what course to take next after getting what he wanted.  And that is where the shift in Megamind’s character arc happens.  Wreck-It Ralph on the other hand starts his arc in a different way.  He’s already come to the realization that he’s not satisfied being a villain.  For him, villain work has become routine, especially when he sees how the “good guy” characters in his game treat him less like a co-worker and more like the villain that he has always been for his whole existence.  And this has fueled and existential crisis in Ralph.  He even has chosen to attend villain support group meetings with other video game villains like Bowser and Dr. Robotnik in the movie’s iconic opening sequence. It’s clear from the start that what will motivate Ralph is a desire to reverse his role in life and turn towards being a good guy.

“What’s the use of having it all, if there’s no one around to stop you?”

Of course, for both Megamind and Ralph, reversing their roles in life is not such an easy thing to do.  For Ralph, he merely thinks that jumping from one game to another and filling the role of a hero will do the trick, but heroism is not a field that one slips into quickly.  Ralph tries his hand at participating in a first person shooter game and immediately gets in over his head, and the resulting chaos puts him and the rest of the arcade games in serious trouble.  Ralph over the course of the film keeps getting confronted with the fact that despite his desire to “go good,” his selfish behavior still makes him adversarial to others, and he can’t just on a whim become a good person.  The movie Wreck-It Ralph explores that idea of what defines being a good person.  In the world of the arcades, everyone has that role to play, good and bad.  But people are more complex than that.  Ralph believes that a shiny medal for beating a game automatically makes him a hero, but as he soon discovers that heroism is not in pursuit of glory but rather in the action of doing good things in a thankless way.  One thing that definitely defines both Wreck-It Ralph and Megamind is that their selfishness have put them into their own existential crises.  But while Ralph’s has been built up over a lifetime of routine, Megamind’s manifests through a feeling of absence.  Once the hero is gone, what is a villain to do.  What does the Joker do after he kills the Batman?  Sure, like a lot of villains he continues to do dastardly deeds, but the acts feel empty for him because it’s not what motivated his actions before.  Before it was about using his intellect to destroy his enemy and now that has no outlet.  All the crimes thereafter doesn’t fill that void.  It’s a different starting off point to be sure.  Ralph knows that he’s not a bad guy from the start and is frustrated that no one else sees that, but Megamind used to relish his villain-hood until there was no need for it anymore.  And it makes him wonder if there was any purpose in it at all.

One of the interesting ways that the movies intersect is in how both Megamind and Ralph make their transitions from villain to hero through their interactions with an unexpected ally.  For Ralph, he ends up getting stuck in a candy themed racing game called “Sugar Rush” after his encounter in the FPS game goes haywire.  In there, he meets an obnoxious little girl named Vanellope Von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) who annoys him when he first arrives.  But, over the course of the movie, he learns that she is being bullied by the other characters in the game and grows more sympathetic to her plight.  He agrees to help her win her race if she agrees to help him get his hero medal.  And over the course of the story, Ralph finds purpose in helping someone else improve.  In the end, Ralph finds that he doesn’t need to be the ultimate hero to be satisfied; he just needed to find that one friend who would always look at him as their hero.  In a wonderful moment in the movie, Vanellope gives Ralph a sugar cookie medal, which he ends up valuing more than the gold one that he was so desperate to claim before.  It’s the value of friendship that ends up changing Ralph by the end.  In contrast, Megamind makes his turn through a different way.  After defeating Metro Man, Megamind has a run in with local reporter Roxanne Ritchi (voiced by Tina Fey), who is basically the movie’s equivalent of Superman’s Lois Lane.  In a desperate attempt to evade being exposed by her, Megamind disguises himself as her colleague Bernard, and it leads to an unexpected relationship thereafter.  Roxanne begins to have feelings for him, but that leaves Megamind distraught over being revealed because he starts to have feelings for her too.  What ends up motivating Megmind’s hero turn is discovering the fact that hurting someone that he actually cares for makes him feeling rotten inside, and that translates into discovering that a lot of horrible feelings he has had were of his own making.  It’s certainly different from Ralph’s transformation as his motivations are more out of romantic attraction, but ultimately the two find their purpose out of finally learning how to love someone other than themselves.

“Because if that little kid likes me, how bad can I be?”

One big difference between the two stories though is in how they respond to different threats.  Megamind, out of his own sense of insecurity, decides that he wants to start anew by creating a replacement super hero to fight against.  He ends up genetically modifying a regular guy into a super powered being named Tighten (voiced by Jonah Hill) and grooms him into becoming a replacement for Metro Man.  But Tighten proves to be just as petty and selfish as Megamind was, but without the self-awareness to reconsider his morals.  What Megamind ultimately learns is that his own insecurity has been his greatest enemy.  He’s only ever defined himself through adversarial conflict with Metro Man.  The film gives Megamind an extra bit of self-realization once he learns that (spoiler) Metro Man faked his own death.  It turns out Metro Man had the same existential crises that he had been going through and he saw that it was best for everyone to break the cycle by removing himself from the equation, hoping that Megamind would do the same.  Tighten only exists because Megamind refused to change and now that he’s become a major threat, Megamind has no other choice but to be the bigger man and fill that hero role.  The only disappointing factor in this is that there isn’t much to Tighten’s character other than to be that dark mirror for Megamind going through his own transformation.  This stands in contrast with Wreck-It Ralph’s antagonist who also is a black mirror of Ralph in the story.  We hear throughout the film that one of the worst things a video game character can do is to go “Turbo.”  What going Turbo refers to is an incident where a racing game character of that name got jealous of the brand new racing game that was installed in the arcade, and he responded by invading it himself which ended up not just breaking his game but also the new one as well.  Since then, it’s been a cautionary tale for all game characters.  But, as we soon learn, Turbo never went away, he instead injected himself into the Sugar Rush game and has been in disguise of a character named King Candy (voiced by Disney favorite Alan Tudyk).  He not only injected himself into the game, but he also changed it’s code, erasing the memories of all the other players, and excluding Vanellope who was supposed to be the main character.  He essentially is what Ralph has become, but with without the moral scruples to recognize that his selfishness was indeed the contribution to his problems.  What the movie does so well is that it makes King Candy a far more insidious figure; someone who not acts without shame, but in the end also seems to relish in his evil deeds.

Where Wreck-It Ralph seems to come ahead is through its ability to balance the multiple plots that unravel.  One thing that really helps to define Ralph as a hero is that he has that moral compass from the beginning.  It’s what helps him to ultimately recognize that something is off when he arrives in Sugar Rush.  A key clue comes when he notices that everyone says that Vanellope is a glitch that doesn’t belong in the game, but because he’s an outsider he is able to observe Sugar Rush from the view of his own game world and he notices that there is a contraction in that.  Why would she be a glitch in the game if her image appears on the arcade machine itself?  It’s that detective like instinct that helps to unravel everything else into an engaging final act for the story, where Ralph not only has to save one character’s life, but everyone else’s as well; albeit from a mess that he helped to create.  But, through his actions, he manages to undo a much bigger conspiracy that King Candy has been subjecting the people of Sugar Rush to for who knows how long.  Ralph didn’t need to be a hero to be a good person; it’s instinctually a part of him from the beginning.  That’s what separates him from someone like King Candy, who was noting without the attention that he he craved, even if he had to force it out of others.  It’s a different arc from Megamind, because he didn’t quite start out with that inherent goodness inside.  He does start out as petty and cruel, but indeed learns that there is value in caring about others.  The disconnect in his arc though comes from the fact that none of this matters in his confrontation with Tighten in the end.  Tighten is more or less just a mess of his own making that he needs to clean up.  Megamind becomes a hero more or less out of default because the people of Metro City need one in that moment, and he assumes that role.  He still shows some strong character development through it all, particularly in the way his relationship with Roxanne evolves, but the story ultimately is about self-acceptance rather than self-discovery, which is ultimately where Ralph’s story arc takes him.

“There’s a benefit to losing:  You get to learn from your mistakes.”

In the end, both Megamind and Wreck-It Ralph present very engaging portrayals of bad guys turning good, and are led by two very fun and engaging main characters.  But, it’s ultimately Wreck-It Ralph that comes out on top, thanks to its much more richly crafted world.  The strength of Megamind mainly stands with how strong of a character Megamind is.  Will Farrell’s over-the-top vocal performance really helps to make him a fun character to watch, but Farrell also nails the more subtle moments of character reflection as well.  It is also fun to see Megamind assume the role of hero by the end, while also still utilizing his talents as a supervillain.  Those theatrics end up being very handy when facing a threat like Tighten, and ultimately brain wins over brawn in that battle.  But what sets Wreck-It Ralph apart is that it doesn’t solely rest everything on Ralph getting his dues as a hero.  What he ultimately learns is that medals and cheering crowds are not the thing to make oneself happy; it’s knowing that there is someone whose life is made better by you being in it, even if it’s one person.  In the end, Ralph makes it count by putting others before himself.  In one of the film’s most powerful moments, Ralph attempts to sacrifice himself to save Sugar Rush from destruction, and in what he thinks are his final moments, he repeats the mantra from his support group meetings, “I’m bad, and that’s good.  I will never be good, and that’s not bad.  There’s no one I’d rather be than me.”  There lies the heart of being a hero, learning to like oneself, and when you learn that and accept all your flaws and quirks, you learn to be better to others as well.  Ralph needed to learn that the villain and hero dynamic of the gaming world was all superficial, and that he had value all along by just being himself.  Thankfully, after all the chaos that he started, the other characters come to accept him as more than a villain too, especially Felix who sees him much more as a friend through it all too.  And the movie really gives you a richly detailed look at the video game community as a whole too, with even Sonic the Hedgehog and several Street Fighter characters all appearing in cameos.  Both Wreck-It Ralph and Megamind are equally strong as characters, but there seems in the end to be a lot more to Ralph’s story than what we see in Megamind’s.  But overall, there’s a lot more good than bad for both of them.

”One game at a time, Ralph.”

Editorials

How Big is Big? – KPOP Demon Hunters and How Netflix Measures Success in Streaming

It’s difficult to believe that a movie released quietly in the month of June on Netflix would by the end of August that same year the biggest movie in the world, even to the point of reaching the top of the weekend box office in a short 2 day run.  That is the reality we have seen happen with the sudden phenomenon that is KPOP Demon Hunters.  The film made it to the streaming platform after it was abandoned by its original creators, Sony Animation, and right now Sony is probably kicking themselves over relinquishing this film to Netflix.  But success on streaming has come to mean many different things, and a lot of it isn’t exactly clear to most people outside of the business,  To be regarded as a success, a film needs to be measured with different kinds of barometers that assess it’s value.  For most of cinematic history, films have been judged by their box office sales.  The measure of a successful film traditionally has been based on if it can turn a profit in ticket sales, and this is weighed against the cost of making that film.  If the movie makes more than it’s cost, than it has justified it’s existence, and the goal thereafter is to maximize that profit even further.  But, the passage of time can also swing certain film’s fortunes from disappointing to successful, and this is based on ancillary factors like home video sales and tie-in merchandising.  But, streaming is a whole different kind of market that has changed the ways we judge a film’s success.  With streaming, you can calculate the value of a film based on individual sales, because there is no pay to watch factor.  With Netflix, entry is a monthly subscription fee and that opens the viewer up to watching anything they want when they want that’s available on their platform.  And the actual viewership numbers for each program is not independently measured but is instead reported by Netflix itself.  So, in that kind of market of on demand content for one nominal monthly fee, how exactly do we know what is a hit and what is not?

For KPOP Demon Hunters success was not immediate.  It released on June 20th without much in the way of fanfare.  Internally, Netflix was pleased with the viewership numbers that they were seeing, but it was not exceeding what they had gotten from other original animated films on their platform.  Films like Klaus (2019) The Sea Beast (2022) and Orion and the Dark (2024) were just modest successes for Netflix as an original animation producer.  More often, they were more successful being the refuge for small independent studios when their movies were in limbo after the studio either closed down like Blue Sky, which Netflix got the film Nimona (2023) out of, or were the place for more experimental fare, like Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022).  During the pandemic, a big studio like Sony looked to Netflix as the place where they could get their newest film released so they could avoid disaster with the theatrical market shut down at the time.  The film, The Mitchell’s vs. The Machines (2021), made it to the platform in this circumstance, and this likely helped Sony down the line determine where to send their other film that they seemed to have little faith in recovering their investment in.  KPOP Demon Hunters certainly had a built in audience with the rapid pop music fandom that would’ve certainly given it a chance, but Sony seemed more concerned with the direction that their more successful Spider-Verse was heading in.  Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (2023) was a massive success, but completing it’s follow-up sequel was becoming an issue and that’s where Sony Animations’ focus was being directed.  KPOP Demon Hunters would’ve been too much of a creative risk for Sony which was trying hard to compete with the top dogs like Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar, and they didn’t want a financial disappointment to derail that.  So, giving it to Netflix would help to shield them in case it didn’t work out.  Maybe there it would find it’s audience.  Little did they know just how much of an audience Netflix would help this little movie find.

It wasn’t immediate.  It premiered modestly at first, bolstered no doubt by KPOP super fans.  But the premiere numbers were not exceptional.  It’s first week viewership, based on Netflix’s numbers, paled in comparison to those of the Disney+ premiere of Moana 2 (2024), a movie that was also a huge success in theaters.  But, what Netflix started to notice that took everyone by surprise was that the viewership numbers for the film weren’t going down; they kept going up, week after week.  After a month, KPOP Demon Hunters had reached the top ten movies of all time on Netflix’s streaming charts and was still climbing.  But, there was another phenomenon that proved that the movie was more than just a streaming success.  The film’s soundtrack was rising up the chart in record sales.  One of the songs from the film, titled “Golden,” had even reached number one on the pop charts.  The last song to do that was Disney’s Encanto’s (2021) “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” and it was the first movie soundtrack to chart at #1 since Encanto too.  The success of a movie soundtrack is a pretty good indicator that your film is becoming a success outside of it’s streaming boundaries.  But, it also seems that even Netflix underestimated how big this would be as well.  When you know your movie will have broad cinematic appeal, you would want to maximize profit off of it with a lot of tie-in promotions.  But, Netflix didn’t think that far ahead.  There are no tie-in merchandise or cross promotions going on with this movie, and Netflix is having to play catch-up quick so that they don’t miss the opportunity while this movie is still on a hot streak.  But, one thing they could do was break their longstanding rule about not giving their movies a wide release in theaters.  As KPOP Demon Hunters fever was at it’s highest point, the streaming giant relented and put out a Sing-Along version of the film into 1,700 screens across North America for just two days.  And even though it was brief, the end result still gave Netflix their first ever #1 film at the weekend box office.

It wasn’t the first time Netflix had charted in the box office top 10.  Two and a half years prior, Netflix had put out Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion (2022) into theaters for a one week run; likely due to an obligation in their contract with the director.  The film was a modest success in that one week, and many wondered if it would’ve continued to perform well if given a lengthier run over the holidays.  The problem is that Netflix has never allowed themselves to pursue that question even further.  They have been, since the beginning, a streaming centered business model.  They have spent billions on production costs to build up their library of films and shows, but the only revenue that is generated for them is based on their monthly subscription revenue.  Their investment in quality shows and movies has seemed to pay off in the long run, as they are undisputed the kings of streaming, beating out even the competition from the major studios that all launched their own streaming platforms in the last couple years.  But, they at the same time seem to leaving a lot of money on the table by not putting their films out in theaters.  The movie theater owners are not against accepting their movies, even though Netflix has done a lot to drive down their business over the years.  Netflix seems determined to stick with their own business model, which is to make the movie industry conform to them and have their streaming first form of distribution be the new norm of Hollywood.  But, as we have seen play out in the last couple of weeks, there is still an appetite for watching movies in theaters when it’s the right kind of movie.  A movie like KPOP Demon Hunters certainly got it’s start on streaming, but it’s grown far bigger than that and perhaps Netflix is handicapping themselves by still sticking with their own business model.  They put the movie out on their own terms, just for two days, but all it has led to is more questions about their choices.  How much bigger would it have been had they kept it playing in theaters longer than they had?

Part of Netflix’s rationalization for releasing movies they way they have is that they believe that movie theaters are a dying business and that streaming is the future of entertainment.  There is some validity to Netflix’s claim in this sense, as movie theaters have been struggling in the last few years.  Of course Covid was a major factor in the downturn of the theatrical business, but there have been underlying issues that were present long before the pandemic.  The rising cost of tickets has been a particular sticking point with customers.  For many people, they feel like they are being priced out of the movie theater experience, with tickets on the low end costing upwards of $15 dollars in most places now.  This has become especially expensive for for families, with a day out to the movies possibly costing around $100 after tickets and concessions.  Paying Netflix or any of the other streamers a flat monthly fee between $10 and $15 just seems more economical by comparison.  But, there are still movies that are able to draw people to the theater.  The number of them are fewer than it has been before, but they’ve managed to keep theaters afloat in these difficult times.  Netflix makes the case that their platform allows for better visibility for movies that normally wouldn’t have a chance in competition at the movie theaters.  It’s probably why you see a lot fewer mid-budget movies in the theaters, because putting them on streaming has been viewed as a safer bet.  Previous box office titans like Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy almost exclusively premiere their films on streaming now.  But there’s also the argument that the reason movie theaters are struggling is because they don’t have enough in the way of movies that could boost box office, such as the ones that go to places like Netflix.  The slate of films playing in theaters are either low risk indie films like the ones from A24 and Neon, or big studio tent-poles.  What movie theaters need is more variety, particularly with the movies that have since left them for streaming.  Netflix may argue that people who go out to the movies are not the same as the ones that consume movies on their platform, but KPOP Demon Hunters just proved very definitively that there is definitely a lot of crossover that they have been ignoring.

One thing that has been changing recently is the mindset of the major studios regarding where they are choosing to premiere their films.  Disney in particular made a different judgment call with two projects that they initially planned for streaming on Disney+, and it led to some much needed financial success.  Moana 2  started off in development as a six part animated series, continuing the adventures of the characters from the popular 2016 original as an exclusive for Disney+.  But after a string of disappointments for the Disney Animation studios with Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023) falling hard at the box office, Disney needed something with a built in audience to help boost the ailing studio’s image as a box office contender.  The series was whittled down into a 100 minute film and was released in theaters in November 2024, and the result was a billion dollar grossing film.  Some complained that the film was uneven because of it being reworked in the eleventh hour and that it was not as good as the original, but that didn’t matter.  The film was a financial success because it was a movie that people wanted to see in theaters, including a lot of families.  A similar switch in release strategy also happened with the Lilo and Stitch (2025) remake, as that film was also originally developed as a Disney+ exclusive.  The lesson learned by Disney is that they should strategize which movies would have the best chance of bringing families to the theater, rather than trying to bank on just their brand giving them the boost they need.  The downside would be that studios like Disney would bank more on safer bets rather than big risks, but as well as Lilo and Stitch and Moana 2 have done, it’s counterbalanced with failures like Snow White (2025) and Wish.  What these successes have done is show that theatrical grosses are the most effective barometer for signalling how your brand is doing and it’s something that Disney and other studios are returning more often to now for deciding their future directions.  Had they gone all in on the streaming route, they would’ve missed out on $2 billion worth of revenue on those two films alone.  And premiering in theaters first has not cut into their appeal on streaming either, because Moana 2 has been one of the most streamed movies of the year; even in KPOP Demon Hunters territory.

Netflix can certainly think that monthly subscriptions alone can sustain their company.  It’s been a benefit to them so far, as they are one of the most valued brands right now in the entertainment business.  But, as KPOP Demon Hunters record-breaking weekend grosses have shown, they can make even more money if they wanted to.  The theatrical experience, given the right movie, can help a film endure far beyond it’s original release.  A lot of films benefit from audiences reactions, and that’s something that you can’t replicate just in your living room by yourself or with a couple friends and family.  KPOP Demon Hunters‘ brief but explosive run in theaters was a big deal because audiences finally had an opportunity to see this movie with a crowd of fans, all singing along with them.  It was like a concert experience for them.  Keep in mind, many of the people who sold those screenings out had already seen the movie over the two months that it had been playing on Netflix.  They already loved the movie, but they hadn’t experienced it in a way like this, and that was something worth leaving the house and paying a ticket price for.  KPOP Demon Hunters will undoubtedly be remembered far longer in pop culture because of that.  Most other Netflix films, even the ones deemed a success, have short life spans in the public conscious.  This is largely due to way that Netflix’s algorithm works.  Some movies are pushed to the top of the home page, especially the ones that Netflix wants you to see right away, but there are so many films that quickly disappear into the background if there is low interest in them.  Most people probably aren’t even aware that Netflix has had many other original animated movies on their platform, including another one from the same Sony Animation team that made Demon Hunters; The Mitchell’s vs. The Machines (which, personal opinion, I actually like a lot more).  Netflix honestly has nothing to lose and more to gain if they put their movies into theaters first before putting them on streaming; and I mean in wide release.  Something like KPOP Demon Hunters should have been playing on twice as many screens as it had and it would probably been hitting 9 digit figures in grosses by now.  It’s hard to make the argument that it’s the biggest animation success story of the year when the only thing you have to show for it is a single weekend gross and a chart topping soundtrack.

Netflix will almost certainly fall back on what has worked for them before, but I feel like KPOP Demon Hunters has challenged their business model the most out of all the other movies they have made.  There has to be some talk around the studio about what they’ll do when they inevitably make a sequel to the film.  It would be foolish not to give a sequel a wide release in theaters.  They’ll reap the benefits of a huge box office payday and see that same audience follow the film to their streaming platform.  In general, movie studios across Hollywood are definitely looking at theatrical first release strategies as a net benefit for their brands.  Some movies take more time to find an audience, but at least with a theatrical release you get that upfront monetary value to gauge the movie’s initial appeal.  You make a profit in theaters, then the rest is all an added bonus.  And we’ve seen that movies don’t lose their value by the time they make it to streaming.  If you place the movie on streaming first, there is a good chance that the film may get lost in the shuffle and buried in the algorithm.  At least when it’s put out in theaters it has a chance to generate some individual value.  Let’s not forget, Netflix has their controversial money losers too, including this year’s The Electric State (2025), which for some reason the studio poured over $300 million into.  Did Electric State drive any more traffic to Netflix? Unlikely, and after about a couple of weeks it was out of their top streaming chart and buried deep in the algorithm.  Even Netflix’s accounting couldn’t hide the wasteful spending that that movie clearly showed.  Would theatrical exhibition have helped?  Probably not, but at least you would have a clear dollar value on how audiences received the film rather than the internal number of viewership that they keep track of.  As the streaming wars have died down, the movie studios are looking at streaming as an extension of a movie’s life span more and more and not as the thing that’s going to take over the business.  They are diversifying, and Netflix should consider that as well.  They have a great many films that are sadly overlooked by most audiences, and a lot of those films would have generated more buzz if they were properly presented on a big screen from the start.  KPOP Demon Hunter’s phenomenal success could be the thing that shifts the way Netflix looks at exhibition, and hopefully we’ll see that bright red “N” logo on many more big screens in the future.