One year and one week ago, the unthinkable happened.  Like every other part of life, and like so many other nations around the world, American cinema ground to a screeching halt due to the imminent threat of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Movie productions halted.  Studios sent their employees to work from home, or even worse laid them off entirely.  And even more wider reaching for the industry, the entire theatrical market shut down.  It was unlike anything we had ever seen in the history of cinema, and even more worrisome, we didn’t know exactly when it would end either.  As we were adapting quickly to realities of living in a pandemic, it became clear that this would be more than just a temporary pause; this was going to be a long lasting disruption that would leave an immediate impact on society.  I know that the problems it gave the movie industry are trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it is nevertheless interesting to see how cinema culture was forced to evolve quickly under these unprecedented circumstances.  It’s nothing that the movies has ever faced before, since the last pandemic of this size occurred over 100 years ago in 1918.  Cinema was still in it’s infancy then; there was no Hollywood, no multiplexes.  There was no standardization back in 1918 and movies were nothing more than a roadshow attraction like the circus or vaudeville.  But once COVID-19 arrived in 2020, Hollywood and cinema had reached a point where it had become a multi-billion dollar a year industry that was dependent on drawing the biggest crowds possible.  And when you have a catastrophic pandemic that is dependent on large crowds to spread more quickly, well you can see where the movie industry ran into a bit of a crisis.  Thus, we witnessed a full shut down of an entire industry that up until now, for generations, we just took for granted, and it seriously made us wonder if there would indeed be a future for the movie industry going forward.

Being the cinephile that I am, I was certainly devastated when I learned that all movie theaters across the country would be shutting down for an indefinite amount of time.  The first signs came when some of the studios began to move their tentpole features off of their original release dates and pushed them further back into the year.  Once the shut down began, then the worry became whether or not the theaters themselves could survive being closed for a lengthy amount of time.  For a while, the desire to reopen led to a level of cooperation that many hoped would help speed up the process.  Masks, hand sanitizers, cleaning supplies, though scarce in the beginning, became essential tools in the fight, and people began to take their personal health more seriously in response to the virus.  But, almost predictably, people grew tired of following the guidelines and were demanding a return to normal, despite the fact that nothing was normal just yet.  Misinformation began to spread and it prolonged the pandemic beyond what would’ve normally been a downward trend had everyone banded together.  And this continued to plague the movie industry further.  Though movie productions found a way to safely restart filming under health guidelines, movie theaters remained perilously close to the edge of oblivion throughout the rest of the year.  The movie theater chains had to take on a exorbitant amount of debt just to pay the rent while their doors remained closed.  Had they not managed to adapt and even get lucky with their finances (like AMC did with an unexpected stock boost thanks to Reddit), the industry itself was likely to have died.  Movie theaters did slowly reopen throughout the country wherever they could, but the largest markets of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco remained closed for nearly an entire year, and this made the recovery of the business almost impossible to predict.  Only now are theaters almost all back up in operation, with necessary social distancing measures in place, but there is still a sense that normal is still far out of reach and possibly even unobtainable.

Cinema’s woes due to the pandemic could not have come at a worse time for the industry, as streaming began to come into it’s own throughout 2020.  Leading off from Disney+’s meteoric launch in late 2019, the following year saw enormous growth in the streaming market as audiences were forced to stay home and watch nothing else.  Disney+ benefitted from the head start, as well as their catalog of exclusive content, but Peacock, Apple TV, HBO Max, and the rebranded Paramount+ all managed to gain a strong foothold thanks to the attention that the pandemic driven market brought to their platforms.  Even established players like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu saw an increase in activity through this time.  And these platforms were also the beneficiaries of the need by the studios to unload their increasing backlog of movies that they couldn’t show in theaters.  In a year that many of these platforms would’ve been lacking in original content they now suddenly had exclusive rights to the most sought after movies coming down the pipe from the film industry.  In many ways, 2020 has forced us to reconsider what makes up a blockbuster, because the dynamics that we judged movies on were suddenly changing.  With movies like Soul (2020) an Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) premiering on streaming as opposed to a wide release in theaters, do they still count as a blockbuster success.  The streaming revenue is not measured in the same way that box office receipts are, so how do we judge the success of a film with these metrics now?  Sometimes, these movies will be behind a pay wall like Disney+ offered with their premiere access, but for the ones that are no additional cost like Soul, you would have to believe that Disney is pointing to the increase in membership as their metric of success.  Soul certainly did find an audience, as evidenced by their Oscar nominated status, but considering that it’s predecessors in the Pixar canon have been billion dollar grossing films in the past, is it safe to call it a blockbuster success  in the same breath as those films.  This is true of all the movies released to streaming in the pandemic era.  Given that there was no other choice but to release movies this way, do all of them need to be judged as successes by different measures now?

The fact that we didn’t have a blockbuster in the traditional sense this last year really does have an impact on many different aspects of cinema, apart from exhibition.  It’s pretty striking that the highest grossing film of 2020 in the domestic North American market was a film released all the way back in January; the movie sequel Bad Boys for Life (2020).  And that movie’s $200 million box office gross pails in comparison to past years.  Only the year prior did we see Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame climb to the top of all time global box office.  With movie theaters closed through most of the year, and almost the entire year in the biggest markets, we witnessed another significant shift within the industry as a result, which is the changing paradigm of the global market.  While North America was languishing in a prolonged pandemic response, other nations around the world reopened much faster and as a result were able to get their theatrical markets to reopen sooner.  And for the first time in the history of cinema, the United States was eclipsed as the world leader in box office sales.  Ironically, the nation that most successfully was able to recover it’s theatrical industry post pandemic was China, where the outbreak first began.  Through some very draconian methods of population control, China managed to limit the effects of the virus on their economy and as a result, they were able to keep industries like movie theaters alive once they were allowed to reopen.  And not only have they recovered, but they are thriving right now in China.  Domestic Chinese cinema is now seeing box office numbers the likes of which you normally would see happen to a Marvel or Star Wars film here in America.  This is also garnering the attention of Hollywood and is mainly the reason why you are seeing so many movies move to streaming at this moment.  The movie studios want to capitalize on this robust market right now happening in China, and to avoid bootlegging that could also affect their business here in America, they are simultaneously releasing their movies globally.  So while the Chinese are enjoying entertainment on a big screen, we here in America have to make due with seeing the same kinds of blockbusters on a smaller screen.  What was thought unthinkable nearly a decade ago now seems to have become a reality thanks to the effects of the pandemic:  that North America is no longer the dominant market in the global box office.

And this worries a lot of creatives within the industry.  By appealing more to the Chinese market, Hollywood is also compromising values that it otherwise would stand up for.  Contrary to the attitudes of the modernized people of China, the Chinese Communist government still holds an iron grip on the cultural values of the nation, and as a result they are meticulous about what movies are allowed to play in their cinemas.  Anything with pro-democratic stances or messages of tolerance for different races or sexual orientations are strictly prohibited, as they run contrary to the totalitarian platforms of the ruling Chinese government.  And given that China is an enormous market for all industries, we are seeing a troubling amount of Western corporations compromising their own values in order to appeal to the Chinese, including rolling the rights of women, people of color, and queer individuals backwards.  Representation in media particularly is a troublesome point with regards to how studios are shifting their focus to the Chinese market.  Big budget movies are making it easier to remove a gay character from their movie, while still having it both ways by touting their blink and you’ll miss it queer representation here in America with an easily trimmable clip.  This issue already existed pre-pandemic, but it was certainly exacerbated by COVID, and made more troublesome by the fact that America has lost it’s box office dominance.  For decades, American cinema was a powerful force for changing cultural attitudes around the world, but when the box office paradigm has shifted to favor a country with a shaky record on human rights, the worry becomes whether or not Hollywood is going to turn it’s back on the marginalized that it long has given a voice to.  If the North American box office can recover to pre-pandemic levels (and that’s a big if), maybe the Chinese government’s influence on creative decisions in Hollywood can be neutralized, but if not, we may be seeing a troubling impact that this pandemic will have on cinema for year and possibly decades to come.

On the bright side, there are silver linings that the pandemic year of 2020 has left on Hollywood, and that’s a much improved presence of diversity in this year’s awards season.  In a year without blockbusters taking up all the attention at the box office, smaller indie films were able to flourish.  And in particular, we saw a significant increase in movies made for and by people of color garner attention in ways that wouldn’t have happened in previous years.  This year’s Oscars, which had to extend much further out than usual into the following year, especially has benefitted from this.  Only a couple years after the Oscars So White controversy, we now have the most diverse field of nominees ever in the Academy Awards.  This includes the first time ever that more than one woman is nominated for Directing (including one who is the likely front runner in the overall race).  And the nominees run the whole gamut: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern.  It’s also a largely international assemblage, and one with a fair amount of first time nominees.  Had a more competitive, studio driven race occurred like any normal year, things might have been different, as more established movie stars may have been at the forefront.  It’s unfortunate that it had to take a pandemic to change the playing field to make things more diverse in the Awards race, but even still, it’s a change long overdue.  Sure, there are likely contenders in there as well, like David Fincher’s Mank (2020) and Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), and even those movies represent a change in the industry as they were Netflix productions.  This streaming focused year put a spotlight on movies that otherwise would not have been able to thrive in a more competitive race, and that makes this year’s awards seem like such a turning point because not only does it represent a huge change with the movies that are getting recognized, and how we are able to access them, but also with the people involved in making them gaining attention in ways that they never have been able to before.

A more diverse field of nominees also means a lot more attention is being devoted to the stories they are telling in this very much changed industry.   The nominees of this year’s Oscars have largely one thing in common; they are telling stories that speak to their own experiences.  Unlike past years when movies like Green Book tackled racial injustice from a very white Hollywood perspective, this year we have movies about race and gender equality with uncompromised, personal perspectives that feel more truthful and less desaturated.  Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) for instance tells the shocking story behind the betrayal that led to Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton’s assassination, and it doesn’t hold any punches with regards to how institutional racism played it’s part in leading to Mr. Hampton’s fate.  It’s a black American story told by a black American  filmmaker with the intent of sharing the truth about what happened, unvarnished to make it more acceptable to “mainstream” audiences.  The same holds true for more uplifting movies like Minari (2020), where director Lee Isaac Chung drew inspiration from his own childhood to create a movie about the Korean immigrant experience in rural America.  The pleasing thing about Minari is that Chung avoids the typical Hollywood clichés that you would often see in a movie of this type as it tries to be Oscar bait, and instead he creates a more honest portrait that trusts it’s audience.  The thing that I hope happens with this year’s Oscar race is that Hollywood begins to respect these kinds of perspectives more, and chooses to invest in voices that otherwise would’ve gone unnoticed.  The pandemic, as disruptive as it is,  did bring a wall down that enabled more interesting voices to be heard, and hopefully it grants more diversity in the future to projects that otherwise would have tapped people from Hollywood’s usually insular and homogenized community.

So, one year later and the movie industry is in a far different position than it was a year prior.  A mere 12 months ago, I was looking forward to a new James Bond movie, and a summer full of new blockbusters from the likes of Marvel, DC, Pixar and the like.  Since then, most of my consumption of movies has not been on the big screen but rather the small one in my living room, and nearly 80% of all those eagerly anticipated 2020 movies that I was hoping to see have still not been released.  It’s an era that I hope doesn’t repeat again, with the culture suddenly having to slam on the brakes in order to prevent an even more catastrophic result.  There have been some interesting things that have resulted from the last year that I do see as a silver lining.  Before 2020, I had never attended a Drive-In movie theater before, and now I have many times over, including earlier this month.  In addition, the already discussed breaking down of barriers in Hollywood due to the increased representation at this year’s Oscars is another positive sign.  But, it is also crucial that the film industry must bounce back in order to make that progress a long term effect post pandemic as a result.  Movie theaters are in dire need of being saved, and hopefully we can see them steadily recover over the course of this year, because it’s important that Hollywood needs to still see the more progressive North American audience as being the more worthwhile market to cater to, instead of falling into becoming a propaganda wing for a totalitarian regime like China.  Cinema has always been one of the world’s most valuable cultural exports, and it’s important that the power structure within the film industry that it is in the world’s best interest to increase representation and not suppress it.  The Covid-19 pandemic was a learning experience for all, and for Hollywood, it became a turning point the likes of which it has never seen before on nearly all fronts.  Normal may not look the same as it did before the storm happened, but we are beginning to see the clouds finally thin out.  Movie theaters are once again re-opened, and it’s up to us to decide whether or not we want it to be a part of the future of cinema.  I’ll be supporting my local theaters, and I encourage everyone else to do as well; safely of course.  Cinema is what we decide to make it, and in a post pandemic world, let’s make the movies better than they were before, with an eye to a hopeful and harmonious future.

The decade of the 2010’s will no doubt go down as the era of the Super Hero movies.  No other genre captured the imagination of audiences around the world as much as it did in those 10 years, and the worldwide box office saw record breaking numbers thanks to movies with comic book origins.  In particular, Marvel Comics led the way with their seemingly indomitable line-up of interconnected films, all culminating in the release of the film Avengers: Endgame (2019) which capped a decades worth of on-going storylines and became the biggest box office hit of all time.  While this was going on, Marvel’s chief rival, DC Comics, was trying to repeat the same success with their line-up of super hero movies, though the success rate was not quite as consistent as what Marvel was churning out at the same time.  Though some movies performed well (2013’s Man of Steel and 2017’s Wonder Woman, for example) other films that were meant to go toe to toe with Marvel’s line-up were falling embarrassingly short.  Director Zack Snyder, an established filmmaker within the Warner Brothers stable who had successfully adapted complex comic books into movies like 300 (2007) and Watchmen (2009), was tasked with setting the overall tone for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) with his Man of Steel being the bedrock on which they were going to build.  After Man of Steel’s success, the studio embarked on the next phase of their DC franchise, which was the first ever crossover meeting between two of their biggest Super Hero icons, titled Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).  Though expectations were high for BvS, the end result was lambasted by critics and left many comic book fans upset as well, which didn’t bode well for the future of the next project in the pipeline for Zack Snyder and crew; the ill-fated Justice League (2017).

The history of what happened behind the scenes of the Justice League movie has almost become more fascinating than the finished movie itself.  Essentially, the ultimate failure of Justice League 2017 was in the fact that it was a movie torn apart by a lot of second-guessing as well as quite a bit of hubris.  There was a deep sense of inferiority going on behind the scenes at the Warner Brothers lot, as they were seeing Marvel and their parent company Disney turning into this juggernaut before their very eyes.  Warner and DC had to go big, or otherwise concede defeat to longtime rivals, so a lot of big money went into building up the DC catalogue for the big screen.  Unlike Marvel however, DC decided to not develop their individual franchises first and instead began to build towards the big epic super hero team of the Justice League as their jumping off point.  Origin stories, a staple of the genre, were not to be bothered with, as the studio believed that these characters were already well established in the public’s eye up to this point.  Only Superman (played by Henry Cavill) was given a backstory on screen in Man of Steel.  By the time Batman v Superman came around, the road to Justice League was already in high swing.  Ben Affleck’s Dark Knight and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman were introduced at this point and central to that film’s story, but Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Ezra Miller’s Flash, and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg only got the briefest of Easter eggs.  The way that DC and Zack Snyder were setting up their universe was upsetting to fans, because it seemed like it was showing less reverence for the characters themselves and more showing how these character could make a hefty profit for Warner Brothers.  This, in turn, led to an underwhelming return for Batman v Superman, which despite making $300 million domestic, it was not enough to justify the enormous cost of it’s production, and performed under what Marvel made that same year with Captain America: Civil War (2016).  And this is where the second guessing began.

Justice League was already in the middle of production once BvS premiered, and the latter’s mixed reception did not sit well with Warner Brothers executives who were expecting DC to be competitive with Marvel.  Sadly, around this same time, tragedy struck Zack Snyder’s family, as he lost his daughter Autumn to a suicide.  Realizing that he needed to be there for his family, Snyder was granted a leave from the production by Warner Brothers.  This left the Justice League movie unfinished with a November 2017 release date looming.  Though Snyder had left a specific blueprint for his vision of the finished movie, Warner Brothers instead took the opportunity to “fix” what they perceived was the “mess” that Snyder had left them with and decided to bring someone in from the outside to change gears for the entire direction of the DCEU.  Joss Whedon, who had previously helmed the first two movies of the Avenger franchise over at Marvel, was hired on to complete Justice League in time for it’s release.  And not only was he completing what Zack Snyder already shot, but he was injecting his own style that was very contrary to what Snyder had been working on.  The new Justice League was lighter in tone, with each character being more quippy and irreverent (a Whedon trademark).  It also cut out a significant amount of story in order to meet a mandated two hour limit by the studio, something that would’ve been a struggle for Snyder, a filmmaker who likes to work long form.  So, despite delivering the movie on time, Joss Whedon’s Justice League did not feel complete.  It seemed like two movies with opposing tones mashed together and at odds.  And with costly reshoots to conform to the Whedon-esque style, the ballooned budget left little time and money to complete the complex visuals of the movie.  The finished film’s visual effects are notorious for their cheapness, especially the much lampooned Superman upper lip, because Henry Cavill was unable to shave off his mustache during shooting because of another movie.  Suffice to say, what should’ve been a shot across Marvel’s bow from DC, announcing them a powerful force in the genre, ended up a colossal embarrassment that further made them slide behind their rivals at the box office.

When Justice League crashed and burned at the box office, making less in grosses ($220 million domestic) than it’s estimated production budget ($300 million), people were immediately trying to perform an autopsy on what exactly went wrong.  For many DC comic book fans, this failure immediately reeked of studio interference, and it’s a fair assessment to make.  Warner Brothers wanted their movies to perform like a Marvel movie, so they second guessed their strategy and decided to make their DC movie more like a Marvel movie, hence the hiring of Joss Whedon.  But that didn’t stand well for fans of DC, because despite the gloominess of Zack Snyder’s filmmaking style, it does differentiate itself from Marvel.  It just further fueled the view that Warner Brothers and DC were falling way short of their rivals, who almost looked like they were brushing off the DC universe without a single thought.  A lot of fans online began to wonder what might have been different had Zack Snyder been allowed to complete his vision of Justice League.  Would it have been more coherent? More engaging?  Would it feel complete?  Would it even outdo Marvel?  The speculation was further fueled by statements by Zack Snyder after the film’s release that what ended up on the screen was not the movie he intended to make, despite him getting sole directorial credit.  Combined with people’s perceptions that they received an incomplete film in theaters, these new revelations from Zack Snyder led rise to the belief that there was a hidden away “Snyder Cut” of Justice League somewhere in the Warner vaults.  And when the internet gets a hold of some mysterious lost relic worth talking about, it often begins to take on a life of it’s own.  Suddenly in chat rooms and social media posts, people were speculating about the Snyder Cut, and why Warner Brothers was not making it public.  In turn, it became a trending topic, and DC fans began the petition #ReleasetheSnyderCut online in the hopes it would get the studio’s attention.  Unfortunately, like most things on the internet, something started with good intentions often can turn into something ugly.

The Release the Snyder Cut campaign began small with many DC comics fans spear-heading the march.  But, over time, as more time passed after the disappointing Justice League release, the Release the Snyder Cut campaign began to become a forum for something other than the movie itself.  It became a place to air grievances about the cultural divide in general, and in many cases, became pretty ugly.  Some online trolls used the Snyder Cut campaign to promote their often racist and misogynistic points of view, seeing Snyder’s DC films as the idealized presentation of their hyper-masculine worldview.  The Snyder Cut soon became a recruiting tool for more extremist views online, as it became a touchstone for what provocateurs proclaim as proof of “Cancel Culture” run amok.  The sad thing is, this toxic discourse began to cloud the Snyder Cut movement as a whole, and reflected badly on those who were trying to promote it.  Thus, pushback began against the Snyder Cut movement, because it was believed that it would be giving a victory to these online agitators who were trying to push their extremist points of view, which had nothing to do with the movie itself.  The truth is that these online extremists only usurped the movement, and were in no way involved in the actual organizing of the movement itself.  Their views were not reflective at all of what Zack Snyder actually believes, nor the organizers of the Snyder Cut campaign, nor the vast majority of those who support campaign itself.  Sadly, the Snyder Cut campaign became an unwilling participant in the ongoing and rather stupid “Culture Wars” that the media and the internet likes to formant, using anything as benign as Justice League to Dr. Seuss as a sign of societal decay and oppression, and as a means of pushing forth an agenda that has nothing to do with the subject itself.

Despite the weird turn that the Snyder Cut campaign took in the years since it launched, it did surprisingly capture the attention of Warner Brothers themselves.  Seeing how the campaign had taken on a life of it’s own, Warner’s decided to take another look at what was left on the cutting room floor with Justice League.  Indeed, there was a lot (almost double what ended up in the final movie), and it became possible for their to be enough content to see Zack Snyder’s original vision to completion.  The only question was, would it be worth it.  The answer came once Warner Brothers began their first stages of launching a streaming service, which would ultimately turn into HBO Max.  Naturally, if you are going to go big into the streaming wars, you need a project that is going to generate a lot of buzz for your service to justify the subscription price.  So, seeing the frenzy around the Snyder Cut, Warner Brothers saw it as a possible good investment to invite Zack Snyder back to complete his vision of Justice League.  This immediately grabbed everyone’s attention, because after years of fervent and sometimes ugly discussions online, we were given not just the confirmation that the Snyder Cut was real but that we were actually going to see it for ourselves in the near future.  This benefitted the studio, because it brought much needed buzz to their struggling launch of HBO Max, and it was able to take some of the heat off them, as they no longer looked like the bad guys for ruining the film in the first place.  Zack Snyder did graciously take back the role, but with the caveat that he be given full reign over the complete film.  This involved even further reshoots, as well as money to complete the half finished visual effects from the original movie.  But, in the end, he got what he needed, and the pressure was not as heated this time, because there was no danger of how it would perform at the box office.  This was something meant to bring people to HBO Max, and it no longer needed to be made to please everyone; it just needed to be unique enough to drive people to subscribe.

The timing for Zack Snyder’s Justice League to launch on HBO Max comes at an interesting time, because the fallout of the original movie is still causing a major rift within the studio to this day.  Ray Fisher, the actor who portrayed Cyborg in the movie, has had a particularly contentious relationship with Warner Brothers after his experience working on Justice League.  Part of why the Snyder Cut movement had wings for such a long time is because Fisher was championing Snyder’s work on the film and he stated that most of his performance is what got cut from the theatrical version.  Not only that, he has publicly called out Warner Brothers for what he considered to be a hostile working environment during the reshoots, going so far as to accuse some at the studio of racial discrimination.  In particular, he called out Joss Whedon for what he states were unprofessional and hostile behaviors directed to people on the set, including himself.  Further accusations were also leveled at DC Films execs Geoff Johns and Walter Hamada, stating that they continued to promote the toxic work environment around the making of the film, and ignored his past complaints.  While a lot of this is still under investigation, Fisher’s revelations have opened up a larger discussion about how cast and crew are treated on set, and in particular those who are people of color like Fisher.  He found it very peculiar that of all the characters in the movie, the one whose story got the axe the most was the one POC member of the Justice League team, whom Snyder originally intended to be the heart of the film.  Some of Fisher’s complaints about Whedon have also been given more weight, as past actresses on some of Joss’ TV programs have come forward with their own experiences of abuse on his sets.  Sadly, the contention between Fisher and Warner Brothers has severed any further creative relationship, as Ray has since been fired from reprising his role as Cyborg in a future Flash movie.  Couple this with the fact that Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill have already said farewell to their own roles as Batman and Superman, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League has now become a relic of a past DC universe that is no longer relevant.

But, for all the trouble that it took to finally get here, the Snyder Cut is a reality and is now playing on HBO Max.  And boy is it a behemoth.  Running 4 hours long (that’s right) it is a full hour lengthier than the next longest film in the genre (Marvel’s three hour long Avengers: Endgame) and double the original theatrical cut.  Zack Snyder originally intended this to be a two part saga, and for a while, he and Warner Brothers were looking at turning it into a limited series for HBO Max, until ultimately deciding to release it as one full block.  I watched the entire thing earlier this week, and in lieu of a full review, I can say that the Snyder Cut is better than the original theatrical cut of Justice League, but not a whole lot better.  The same flaws in the overall story are still there, and I think that Zack Snyder’s own stylistic indulgences continue to hamper whatever momentum he can get out of this story in general.  It’s very fundamentally flawed in that way, no matter how complete it now feels.  Even still, there are significant improvements in a lot of aspects of the movie.  The visual effects for one feel more complete and look much better.  Zack Snyder still relies a little too heavily on CGI, but thankfully the time and money was put into this version and it doesn’t have the cheap feel of the original anymore.  The villain, Steppenwolf, is also much better both in animation but also as an element of the story.  He now has motivation and he is far more menacing a threat now.  And perhaps the best addition of all is that we finally get Cyborg’s complete story, and see that Ray Fisher was indeed justified in his anger over how he was treated in the original cut of the film.  Zack Snyder may not be everyone’s cup of tea as a filmmaker, but as we’ve learned he is respected enough to be championed by his cast and crew and defended by his fans, so much so that he rode this goodwill towards seeing his vision to completion.  Not only that, but as shown in the final credits, we find that Snyder is able to finally put to rest a painful chapter in his life with a sense of triumph in the end.  He dedicated the finished movie to his late daughter Autumn with a sweet memorial in the credits.  In the end, the road to completing Zack Snyder’s ultimate version of the Justice League movie is going to stand as one of the most peculiar journeys any movie has ever taken.  Originally butchered in a moment of desperation by a studio, and using the director as a scapegoat for a mistake in direction that they set in the first place, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is no longer a mystery but now a reality.  It still may not be pretty, but it is triumph in a way to seeing a past cinematic injustice being righted.  Though the DC Universe has largely moved on from where Zack Snyder was intending it to go, which does feel awkward now as his Justice League ends with some sequel baiting, his full complete vision may indeed stand as the high point of DC films, at least with regards to it’s attempt to deliver the biggest possible DC movie possible.  In addition to the film finally being complete, we also have a finale to the tumultuous story of the Snyder Cut and it’s one that in some ways feels a bit triumphant to some people.  While there are still many problems surrounding the movie to address, especially in the larger cultural sense and with Warner Brothers corporate practices, we can finally see the full version of the movie for ourselves and judge it accordingly.  And for Zack Snyder, he can finally put to rest one of the worst chapters in his life and show the world what he wanted us to see.  The Snyder Cut is released; now we can finally move on from it.

Everybody’s childhood was no doubt influenced by the movies they saw.  Whether they were vague memories or vivid, we can recall the feelings we had when we first saw some of our favorite movies, and if you are able to recall a first time viewing that happened in your early childhood, than that means the movie must be extra special to you.  For me in particular, the fact that I can remember what the first films I ever saw in a theater were to this day is probably why I am the way that I am.  Movies, even at a super young age, grabbed a hold onto me and didn’t let go.  It propelled me to explore film more deeply, led me to pursue filmmaking as a career, took me to film school, and has kept me active in writing about movies on this very site.  It all started with my mother taking me to the movie theater to watch films from the likes of Disney, Spielberg, Don Bluth and anything else that was age appropriate.  Exact memories may be buried too deep now to be vividly remembered today, but I do know for sure what that first movie was that I saw in a theater.  It was the Walt Disney classic, 101 Dalmatians (1961).  Now reaching it’s 60th Anniversary this year, 101 Dalmatians was already an established hit before I was born.  But, because this was the early 1980’s, and home video hadn’t come into it’s own just yet, studios like Disney were continuing a long standing tradition of re-releasing their past classics into theaters again, roughly every 7-10 years.  101 Dalmatians had already enjoyed a couple of these re-releases, each of them wildly successful before it came out just in time for me to see it.  I was only 3 years old when my Mom finally took me to the theater for the first time in December of 1985, and unbeknownst to her, she was about to open up her little boy’s world to something that would define the rest of his life.

But, why 101 Dalmatians.  It’s possible that any movie would have awakened the inner cinephile in my 3 year old sensibilities.  What made Dalmatians so unique that it stuck with me all these years later.  Probably as I’ve put together the pieces of the movie’s place within the whole grand story of the Disney Company’s history, as well as with Hollywood in general, 101 Dalmatians becomes a more fascinating oddity that more than ever captures the imagination even after multiple viewings.  I am certainly not alone in holding up Dalmatians with such high regard.  The film, with all of it’s multiple theatrical releases, ranks as one of Disney’s highest grossing movies ever; with a lifetime gross of just over $900 million adjusted for inflation.  In it’s 1995 re-release alone netted it $71 million, which is better than most first runs for many films, animated or not.  One thing I have learned about the film in it’s long history that I find fascinating is that the success was even a surprise to Walt and company.  Disney was coming off of a decade of huge gambles and many financial headaches.  Disneyland had opened to mixed results in 1955, only just finally turning a profit at the beginning of the new decade.  The studio began to grow with the successes of Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan (1953) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), but the animation department fell into the red again as Sleeping Beauty (1959) went massively over-budget and over-schedule.  The fact that Sleeping Beauty soaked up so much of Disney’s time and money led Walt to make the unfortunate choice put a lot of his future big plans on hold, so that his company could recoup.  Sadly, time would run out on Walt in the 60’s, and a lot of those plans would never come to pass.  Instead, he had to reorganize and keep his company going with projects that in many ways ran contrary to his own personal tastes.

On the heels of Sleeping Beauty’s premiere, Walt greenlit 101 Dalmatians as his next feature, which would be a wild departure from the movies that he was known for.  Based on the children’s novel by British author Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians did not have a fairy tale, medieval setting that so many of Disney’s past animated features took place in.  Instead, the story took place in contemporary London, England, in a world not too set apart from our own.  It was probably the first ever Disney movie to feature a TV set within it for example.  Not only did the setting feel more modern for Disney, but the visual design of the movie was altered to reflect this change.  For most of the post-war years, the Disney style became very refined and naturalistic.  Starting with Sleeping Beauty, and continuing through Dalmatians, the visual style of Disney became rougher and more graphic.  Gone were the clean, fine lines of the drawings, and in it’s place were characters and environments that looked more like they were etched roughly out of pencil.  This is partially due to the fact that in order to save on costs, Disney had embraced a new Xerox process to transfer the animator’s drawings right off the page on onto the animation cel.  This was a process that made the animator’s rough pencil drawings translate for more definitively into the final image, which gave the animation that rough, textured look.  The background likewise were designed with this new style in mind, drawing in more abstract inspiration from ad artwork from the time, and it would dramatically change the way Disney animation would look for many years after.  There was no doubt about it, 101 Dalmatians would be an entirely different movie for Disney than what they had made before.  And in typical Disney fashion, it would be the movie that nobody expected big things out of that would have the bigger impact in the long run.

Walt most likely approved of what 101 Dalmatians turned out to be, but it is clear that it wasn’t exactly something that he held up as one of his proudest achievements either.  Unlike Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959), you’ll be hard pressed to find any media out there at all of Walt Disney speaking about what 101 Dalmatians meant to him.  It was one of the biggest hits of his career, and he barely talked about it.  It’s probably because he never had a deep personal investment in the movie the same way that he did with Sleeping Beauty.  Beauty was meant to be his crowning achievement as a filmmaker, and when it disappointed at the box office after costing so much, it hit Walt personally.  Seeing another one of his movies that he had less investment in personally far exceed it in success probably even rubbed salt in his wounds.  But again, Walt never openly disdained Dalmatians either, like say he did for Alice in Wonderland (1951).  Dalmatians probably gave him the financial cover to make his next big project (Mary Poppins, for example) so he could have appreciated that it did that.  Despite what he thought of the movie itself, the film was embraced by fans of all ages pretty much immediately.  Audiences and critics lauded the unique visual style of the movie and it’s charming story.  In terms of the story itself, it is amazing how well it holds together when you take into account that it stars literally 101 individual dogs.  It probably works as well as it does, because of the theme of family and the lengths that we go to keep those bonds together.  Whether it’s between a man and his pet dog, a couple welcoming new life into the world, or a community coming together to help one another, the universal theme of familial love rings out through the whole movie.

But what also defines 101 Dalmatians as an all time classic is that it features what many consider to be one of the greatest villainesses in cinema history.  Apart from the titular Dalmatians themselves, the movie’s other star attraction is the incredibly evil and diabolical Cruella De Vil.  Cruella is an icon in every sense, with her billowing fur coat and her trademark white and black hairstyle (not to mention a trail of green cigarette smoke that follows her everywhere), she just pops right off of the screen.  Certainly she was meant to be a pointed satire of the fashionistas of the era, with personalities that often were just as monstrous, but her presence in the film takes on an even more sinister purpose.  Her desire is to not only take Dalmatian puppies away from their rightful owners and parents, but to also kill and skin them for their fur, just because she’s obsessed with making a spotted Dalmatian coat.  This demented level of animal cruelty makes her an especially memorable baddy in the Disney canon, and her outsized personality even further cements her within the halls of Disney Villain infamy.  Voiced with incredible zeal by veteran actress Betty Lou Gerson, and animated by Disney Legend Marc Davis (in what would be his final film assignment before moving to the Theme Parks division), Cruella immediately jumps onto the screen in her opening moments.  She intrudes on the Radcliffe home shouting “Anita, Dahling,” and spend the next scene lording over all around her, like a storm passing through the neighborhood.  If there was ever a textbook example of how to perfectly introduce your villain into a story, Cruella’s introduction scene would be it.  And throughout the movie, she commands every moment she’s on screen.  Capable of being funny and menacing at the same time, you don’t find more entertaining villains than Cruella De Vil, and she is absolutely one of the reasons why the movie has maintained a dedicated following over the years.

One great indicator of the film’s long held popularity is that it has spawned so many renewals over the years.  Long before it became a trend at the Disney studio, 101 Dalmatians became the first Disney classic to receive a live action remake.  With a screenplay by John Hughes, the 1996 remake focuses much more on the human characters of Roger and Anita Radcliffe (played by Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson, respectively) with the dogs themselves being speechless this time around.  Of course, with the Dalmatians taking more of a backseat, it allows for the other star of the film to shine brighter, which would be Cruella herself.  The remake’s biggest strength was in casting an actress like Glenn Close for the part.  Close delivers a delightfully campy performance that brings out all the potential of the character into live action, and in many ways helps to elevate the film overall, which sadly sees Hughes relying a little too heavily on his Home Alone (1990) style antics, which is not a good fit.  Still, the remake was a big success, earning Close a Golden Globe nomination in the process and even led to creation of a sequel, 2000’s 102 Dalmatians, also starring Glenn Close.  In the years after, 101 Dalmatians also inspired a couple of animated series, as well as an animated sequel that went straight to DVD like so many others from Disney at the time.  And to show that the original movie still has legs to this day, we are about to get the Cruella origin movie this summer with Oscar-winner Emma Stone starring as the titular villainess.  All of this is pretty incredible, considering that it was a movie that was originally believed to be a cheap filler in Disney’s production schedule that Walt himself didn’t really care much for.  But like other B-Movies in Disney’s long history, like Dumbo (1941) and The Lion King (1994) never underestimate the power of a good story.

So what does the movie mean to me personally.  Well, I don’t know exactly how it took a hold of me when I first saw it; I was only 3 after all.  But I have always remembered that it was the first movie I ever saw in the theater.  And as a small child, I was keenly aware of how Disney stood out from everything else I would watch.  I knew which movies I saw were Disney films and which ones were not, without even knowing where those other movies came from.  It’s probably because I had such a distinct picture in my mind of what a certain type of movie should be, and how Disney had a style that stood out from the rest.  I knew very early on that Walt Disney and Don Bluth were two very different people who made very different movies, and I could tell their movies apart from one another.  Most kids under the age of 10 probably didn’t have that kind of brand recognition developed so early on, because so many of the kids I grew up with just thought the name Disney was synonymous with all animated movies.  I was just always born to be a film buff, and I recognize that it probably started with my obsessions over Disney animation back when I was very little.  I was commonly referred to as the Disney kid at school, but that was partly due to the fact that I had yet to broaden my knowledge of cinema beyond just what the Disney had been making.  Today, I am indeed more than just that Disney kid, though it’s still there at the core of identity.  And I always return back to 101 Dalmatians as the genesis of my journey through  cinematic life.  It’s no longer my favorite movie, and at times I don’t even recognize it as my favorite Disney movie anymore.  But, it is still held in special regard as the movie that started it all for me.

With the movie now hitting that 60 year benchmark, it is interesting to see how strongly it has managed to hold up all these years.  What is special about it is the fact that it broke new ground for both Disney and animation in general.  It broke the mold with how an animated film should look, with it’s modern aesthetic and rough, sketchy animation, thanks to the new Xerox based transfer.  It also endeared so many people to these characters throughout the years.  How many dog owners do you think have named their pets Pongo or Perdita, after the Dalmatian parents at the center of the film.  The movie also effectively vilified the practice of animal slaughter for the sake of fashion.  I don’t know if the movie directly led to the downfall of the fur trade, but if it did move the fashion world in that direction, than it’s something that the movie should definitely be honored for.  And of course, Cruella still remains as popular a Disney villain as ever.  I hope the upcoming movie doesn’t go the Maleficent (2014) route and tries to find a sympathetic side to the character.  Cruella is defined by one of the most dastardly deeds a human being is capable of, and to diminish that is to be dismissive of a real world problem that should not be glorified.  Of course, the effect it has had on this one film fanatic is immeasurable.  Seeing it for the first time on the big screen led to me cuddling at bed at night with a stuffed Dalmatian doll as a little child, to sleep overs at my friends’ houses in my 101 Dalmatians sleeping bag as a kid, to buying the movie over and over again on different formats as a teen, to finally watching the movie again on the big screen as an adult on Hollywood Boulevard at the El Capitan theater in Los Angeles.  101 Dalmatians and I go way back, and it has always been a part of my journey deeper into the business of film.  And with the movie making it to a momentous 60th year, while also still maintaining the same level of popularity this whole time, I find it hard not to celebrate all those years together, particularly the ones that mattered so much to me.

It is perhaps one of the most unexpected success stories of the last half century.  A down on her luck author manages to publish a novel that becomes a world wide phenomenon and turns her into the figurehead of a billion dollar franchise that continues to reap in the riches every year.  J. K. Rowling discovered that dream come true when she brought the adventures of Harry Potter to the world, making her not only a success within the literary world, but the world’s first ever billionaire writer.  Fueled by an equally successful film franchise based on her books, she entered the new millennium as the head of the biggest new intellectual property since Star Wars, and with the residuals continuing to come in, she has embarked on developing more and more projects based on her writing, both tied to the Harry Potter wizarding world and to her own separate side narratives.  But, in addition to being the mind behind a popular franchise, her fame has also turned her into a public figure; a figure whose voice suddenly carries much more weight in society.  And unfortunately for many, she has chosen to use her voice to put down a marginalized group in society.  In the last couple of years, Ms. Rowling has expressed some controversial opinions about the trans and non-binary communities, stating that she felt their growing status in the culture was a threat to the rights of women.  Her critical words suddenly were met with a backlash from the LGBTQ community, who shot back at her statements, labeling her dismissively as a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist).  And while Rowling remains defiant in her beliefs, she has had to face the reality over the last couple of years that her words matter, and that what she says may not be in the best interest of the empire that she has built for herself.

What we’ve seen play out with J.K. Rowling and her conflict with the trans community is indicative of a larger struggle with the limitations of free speech that we are trying to figure out in a society that is more media driven and also more polarized than ever before.  Rowling’s hardline stance on feminism to the exclusion of non-biological woman is indicative of how people have been driven to take stances on subjects these days that are increasingly partisan and closed minded.  Regardless of the merits of her position, it shows that politics and culture has turned far more tribal in recent years and that anyone who doesn’t pick a side in the fight is treated as problem instead of as someone with an open mind.  The problem, however, is that once a person like J.K. Rowling takes a clear stance on a subject, as controversial as that is, it suddenly reflects back on all the other things that she is associated with.  This is the dilemma that everyone associated with the Harry Potter franchise suddenly found themselves in after Rowling made her controversial statements.  To no ones surprise, most of the cast did not share Rowling’s opinions.  Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, even publicly went out of his way to repudiate her statements and declare his own support for the trans community.  What’s more, all this friction suddenly makes things more problematic for Rowling’s relationship with Warner Brothers, the current rights holders to Wizarding World franchise that is the creative head of.  They have many future plans for the Potter WW brand, including a continuation of the Fantastic Beasts spinoff and a possible HBO Max series.  And with Ms. Rowling antagonizing a sector of the LGBTQ community, a sector of the audience that has been a loyal part of the fanbase and that Warner would like to continue to tap into, then it creates a conflict that puts the future of the franchise in an awkward place.  The problem is, where do we as a society draw the line at limiting what a person is allowed to say, no matter how powerful they are.

That is an issue that we face in a world where social media has made it possible for anyone to have a public platform in order to share their opinions.  Rowling is one of many public figures that has had to face the wrath of backlash for opinions they have made on their social media pages.   Some celebrities have experienced some benign pushback for making ill-informed statements or a poorly timed joke, but there are others that have also seen their careers and reputations abruptly terminated because of something they shared on social media.  Deserving or not, we are seeing high profile figures face consequences for their own statements or actions, and it has significantly increased the polarization of the discourse of ideas in our society, because people become more pushed into different teams for or against a person based on the fandom surrounding them.  In particular, what happens to celebrities who are “canceled” has been taking on a more politicized connotations, as one side sees it as a sign of persecution and the other sees it as justice being served.  This has developed into what people refer to now as Cancel Culture, where it’s become something of a sport to find anything a person has done that is deemed objectionable and use it as a means of de-platforming them or stripping away their livelihood as punishment.   The extant of Cancel Culture as a greater societal problem is debatable; in some cases it seems a little extreme, like trying to ban movies and books that are deemed objectionable based on modern sensibilities, while other times it feels like Cancel Culture is being touted by individuals who want to feed into their own persecution complexes and want to have a boogeyman to crusade against that actually doesn’t exist.

J.K. Rowling is just one of the cases of people that have become the face of the growing aura of Cancel Culture as a part of our societal dialogue. However, to say that she is being cancelled is a gross exaggeration.  She is a billionaire with a firm grip on control of the empire that she was instrumental in creating.  She is in no danger of seeing her livelihood come apart.  But other public figures lower on the pecking order can suddenly see their fortunes reversed with unexpected speed.   It’s emblematic of the way that we treat celebrities in the first place.  Regardless of the severity of their transgressions, we often give the celebrity with the higher public profile more of a benefit of the doubt.  Some of that firewall protection was thankfully dismantled when the MeToo movement gained speed and brought many abusive players within the entertainment industry to justice.   But what MeToo also started was this feeling of satisfaction in bringing down powerful people, and it did fuel the drive behind Cancel Culture to find the next big power player to take down.  In a way, Cancel Culture became trophy hunting, and it began to drift away from the actual purpose of holding people accountable for their actions and instead became about seeing the mighty fall.  As a result, Cancel Culture became a new flashpoint in the ongoing culture wars between left wing and right wing values.  The right believes that Cancel Culture is being used to silence conservative voices in the media, and that it is part of a new blacklist, reminiscent of McCarthyism.  Though Cancel Culture has led to some questionable actions, it is ludicrous to believe that it’s impact is the same as the censorship of the Blacklist era in Hollywood.

A little historical refresher.  When Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, started his crusade against what he believed to be an infiltration of Communist influence into all fabrics of society, it began a scary time in America known as the Red Scare.  McCarthy sparked the House Un-American Activities Committee to weed out suspected communist sympathizers from every sphere of influence in society, including Hollywood.  It led to what became known as the Blacklist, as those to be known or even suspected of Communist sympathies were barred from receiving work within the film industry.  This included anyone who supported anything deemed radical left, like support for the Civil Rights Movement or strong support for Union workers; basically anything deemed left of center.  People were also encouraged to name names, which also disgraced many people within Hollywood who were desperate to just hold onto their jobs.  It was a dark moment in American history, but to compare it to the Cancel Culture of today misses one crucial thing.  McCarthyism and the Blacklist were invasive measures to curtail freedom of speech enacted by the federal government itself, with the assistance of corporations and major studios.  Eventually, the Blacklist was broken by saner minds in the years after and McCarthy’s own paranoia eventually got the best of him, alienating himself from even his Republican colleagues.  Modern day Cancel Culture, as pervasive as it is, is entirely mechanism of the culture itself, and is not an overreach of government.  So to say that what we are seeing now is the same thing is really misreading the lessons of history.

I certainly don’t want to think that we are only one tweet away from facing censorship, and that the best course of action is to watch what we say and conform to a single way of thinking.  But those decrying Cancel Culture should also keep in mind that freedom of speech is also not freedom from consequence.  Just because we have the freedom to say what we want doesn’t mean that others can’t hold you accountable for what you say either.  The nature of the free market is that separate entities are able to operate the way that they see fit, and that includes setting their own standards of what kind of speech is acceptable.  While corporations can set their own expectations of conduct and speech within their organizations, it is constitutionally important that the Federal Government are not the ones setting those standards.  Do media companies have too much power over an individuals freedom of speech, which has made things like Cancel Culture so problematic; certainly, but as it stands, they have the constitutional right to cancel or de-platform anyone they deem a problem to their bottom line.  I find it a little ironic that the political figures that are currently decrying the power that big tech and media conglomerates have over the limitations of speech are also the same figures that granted these corporations those powers in the first place, with the defanging of regulation and ending of net neutrality.  It’s just unfortunate for them that media companies want to cast their nets wide and appeal to groups of all kinds, including the ones that people on both sides want to keep silent.  The power that media companies wield is problematic, but the fact that they are in the business of diversity makes the complaints of Cancel Culture being one sided politically a little moot.  What matters to these corporations is that their profiles remain free of controversy, and that is why they cancel some people the way they do; not because of their nature of their politics, but because of the hostile direction that some people take their speech.

There are plenty of celebrities that span the political spectrum who remain perfectly free of controversy, and that is mainly because they know to deal with their differences in a civil way.  For some people, their cancellation is more of a self-inflicted wound.  Take the example from this week with Mandalorian star Gina Carano, whose transphobic and anti-Semitic tweets finally became too much for Disney to handle and they decided to fire her from her high profile role on the hit show.  Naturally, she played the victim, and tried to get the American right on her side with the complaints of Cancel Culture, but the fact that she was able to immediately line up another project only a day after shows that her complaints of being blacklisted are a little nonsensical.  The truth is she was fired because her words and actions became increasingly threatening and hostile, especially after her co-star Pedro Pascal publicly supported his trans sister’s decision to come out, and also because of Carano’s unapologetic support of violent extremists who stormed the nation’s Capitol.  At that point, it became more than just talking politics; it became openly encouraging hostility, and Disney was not having it anymore.  It’s a dilemma that we face with the limits that we deem acceptable for free speech.  Where Cancel Culture seems to cross the line is when it becomes blurry when a person is joking or speaking with sincerity.  Comedians in particular walk the fine line, and often them falling victim to cancel culture is where the movement takes things too far.  We saw director James Gunn lose his job momentarily because of such a backlash, with 10 year old offensive jokes on Twitter coming back to bite him, and it was this example that did make people reconsider how militant they should be taking the Cancel Culture as a whole.  But as we’ve seen, accountability for what a person says, and more importantly what they do, reflects back on the public persona that try to procure for themselves and in the end, you get the fanbase that you deserve and what you do will determine what kinds of fans those will be.

We also have to take in the notion that everyone is flawed in their own way.  The best among us are the ones that can carry their flaws well enough and rise above them.  It’s a little unfair to expect that every celebrity has to be perfect in every way.  In some cases, underneath the exterior, a celebrity may in fact be a rotten person to their core, and it becomes more incumbent on the fan to decide whether or not they want to continue to support that person when they find what they do to be problematic.  Cancel Culture may just be a culmination of so many years of people getting away with abhorrent behavior because we’ve allowed them to, and now with social media, it’s become so much easier to hold the powerful accountable.  The unfortunate thing is, art has become more centrally tied to the people responsible for creating it.  If you are a fan of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter but also either a trans person or someone close to a trans individual, you’re having a hard time maintaining that fandom.  By supporting this franchise, you are financially supporting J.K. Rowling, and her financial stability is giving her the confidence to say whatever she wants publicly without consequence.  One can boycott as much as they like, but there comes a point that some individuals become so insulated that they will never face any backlash, and will continue to spread their controversial opinions, and that can be dangerous to society.  It ultimately comes down to the power of money, and the better way to hold people accountable for their hurtful actions is to hold the power structures that prop them up responsible.  Cancel Culture’s big mistake is probably believing that the individual needs to be uniquely made an example of, while the corporations and power structures that propped them up are taken off the hook.  In the end, we have to look at what the actions of the artist means for us.  If what they say overwhelms the good art that they make, then it’s within your right to refuse to support them.  The ultimate level of consequences that a person face should reflect the harm that they have inflicted on others, but freedom of speech is a two way street that we must respect.  People can say anything they want, but people who object to that speech are also within their rights to withhold support for that person, and the greater the numbers in that pushback, the more it may cause the other person to reconsider the power of their own words.

The year of 2020 was not kind to a large portion of the economy, but it proved especially apocalyptic for the movie theater industry.  With the out of control spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the world, the theater industry had no choice but to shut it’s doors in order to mitigate any further spread.  Likewise, Hollywood had to reshuffle it’s entire calendar an either push back all their big releases, or go straight to streaming, which further put pressure on the theatrical market that was left with few options for it’s survival.  Nearly a year after the shutdowns began, the theatrical market has yet to settle and begin the long road to recovery.  Some areas of the world are returning to business as normal, but in the largest theatrical market in the world (North America), the pandemic still is causing mayhem, and potentially could even lead to a collapse of the theatrical industry itself.  There has been a lifeline handed out by the government to assist smaller, independent theaters through the stimulus, and it will indeed help ensure that they can survive this storm.  But, the ones left out of the stimulus package were the big theater chains that are publicly traded, and their survival is crucial to the actual survival of the theatrical market, because they are the ones that account for the most box office grosses that Hollywood banks their investments on.  The fact that they are on their own in search for a way to survive the pandemic gives very little doubt in the likelihood of a full recovery for the pandemic ravaged theater industry, and this is very much reflected in the economic woes of it’s largest player in the market; AMC Theaters.  Starting off this new year, no matter what they’ve managed to do thus far, it looked like AMC was almost certainly going to face bankruptcy.  But like many of the movies that they’ve screened for audiences over the years, their story suddenly found itself in a late hour plot twist.

The sudden reversal of fortune came with this week’s chaotic stock trading upheaval.  Fueled by the Reddit community WallStreetBets, several nearly bankrupt stock listings saw their value skyrocket, with a sudden influx of share buying from the Reddit users.  Done mostly as a means of gaming the system to force a significant loss of revenue for hedge funds that have been aggressively short selling stocks in order to ensure that they fail so they could profit over their collapse, the WallStreetBets community disrupted the power dynamic of Wall Street while at the same time giving a temporary boost to stocks that were being pressured to fail by these vulture-like hedge funds.  And one of those stocks just so happened to be AMC Entertainment.  Up until this week, AMC’s stock value had dipped down to nearly $3 a share, which is as close to rock bottom as you could get for a company once valued much higher during the peak of the theater business.  Prior to this week’s unexpected turns in the stock market, AMC was facing almost certain bankruptcy, as their capital was almost going to run out by the end of the month.  In a last ditch effort to save the company, CEO Adam Aron pushed for a large sale of stock to the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, whose much larger investment in the company gives them further leverage over the future prospects of the company.  It’s a risky effort, but Aron was left with little other options left.  And then, suddenly, thanks to Reddit, the stock saw a giant spike in value within a single day of trading, rising to nearly $20 a share.  After buying all that stock so cheap earlier, Silver Lake Partners now suddenly saw a 300% increase on their investment, and began to sell back their shares at a massive profit.  Of course, none of this Reddit fueled investment is going to last long, but it was enough to give AMC a short term boost that helps to settle some of it’s massive debt and remain solvent for a few more months, and possibly even the rest of the year.

So, the good news for AMC is that because of this sudden and unexpected turn of events, they are no longer in immediate danger of bankruptcy.  However, they are not out of the woods yet, because their long term fortunes are still going to be determined by the recovery of the theatrical industry in general.  The fact remains, normal is still a long ways off, with Hollywood still unsure about the prospects of box office totals ever returning to it’s record breaking highs of the past.  A lot has changed in the past year, with so many compromises having to be made just to keep theaters from going under in the wake of the pandemic.  There was the controversial shortened window deal made between AMC and Universal Pictures last year, which allowed for the studio to start streaming their movies after a short 3 week theatrical run.  It was an unfortunate shift in the power dynamic favoring the studios, but it was also essential for the survival of the theaters that were open, since Universal’s movies were often the only ones driving any significant box office grosses over the last year, like with Dreamworks’ The Croods: A New Age (2020).  And then came the highly controversial decision by Warner Brothers that they were going to do same day releases of their movies in both theaters and on their streaming service HBO Max; a move they decided on without consulting the theaters themselves first.  It’s been moves like these that the theater industry always feared as streaming became a stronger competitor over the last couple years.  And that’s a genie that can’t be put back into a bottle.  The sad reality of 2020 for the theatrical market is that they’ve lost ground to a competitor that they are likely never going to get back.  The only way to move forward now for the theaters is to convince both audiences and the studios that the best option to watch a new movie is on a big screen with a large gathering of people.  And in a pandemic driven shift away from social gatherings in general and more towards getting people to stay home, that proposition is going to be a hard sell.

Indeed, AMC theaters was in hot water long before the pandemic took hold, and it was largely due to their unsustainable desire to become the industry leader.  The company oddly enough started small over a century ago.  The Dubinsky brothers of Kansas City, Missouri began their company with the purchase of the Regent Theater in the downtown district in 1920, where they would stage melodramas for the community.  As the newly emerging artform of motion pictures began to take the world by storm, the Dubinskys, now called Durwoods, shifted to showing movies at the Regent to great success.  Over the years, the Durwood family began to buy more theaters in the greater Kansas City area, and with the Paramount Decision in the 1950’s, the Durwood chain began to grow further with the competition from Hollywood studios being taken out of theater ownership.  By the sixties, the Durwood family chain had spread across all of Missouri, Kansas, and several other Midwestern states.  By this time they rebranded to American Multi-Cinema (AMC) and began their next big contribution to the theatrical industry, which was the mulit-plex model.  Opening the first multiple screen venue in North America, AMC sparked a revolution in the way people went out to the movies.  The multiplex brought movies out of downtown and into the suburbs, with malls and mini malls becoming the new homes for cinema.  And with that steady growth over time, AMC withstood the ups and downs of the industry, as different chains came and went, but could never top AMC’s dominance.  By the turn of the millennium, the theatrical market was defined mostly by the big three: AMC, Tennessee-based Regal, and Texas-based Cinemark.  Nearly 80% of all movie screens in America are run by these three competitors alone.  A boon for the theaters on top, but a negative aspect for diversity within the business as a whole.

And when there is little competition at the top of the market, it creates a lot more havoc once that market becomes destabilized, like what we’ve witnessed over the last year through the pandemic.  A large reason why AMC was in such a dire situation is because a large part of their finances became tied up in mounting debt.  As the company began to go international, thanks to backing from China based mega-corporation Wanda Group, they had to amass a lot of capital in order to expand, remodel or build entirely new theaters in order to grow their market reach.  Now, it’s not unusual for companies to function while holding onto a great amount of debt; Netflix for instance has operated entirely while carrying billions of dollars in debt for almost it’s entire period of existence.  The only thing is, in order to operate while in debt, you’ve got to prove to yur creditors that you remain profitable in the long run.  It’s a good thing when your company sees sustained growth over time, but it can be disastrous when the market suddenly changes, and there is no hope of recovery.  That is the position that AMC suddenly found itself in last year, and it could not have come at a worse time for them.  In addition to their expansion, the company was also investing heavily in a video rental service of it’s own, as well as a membership plan similar to MoviePass.  Both could prove beneficial to the company, but required a large upfront investment in order to lay the groundwork.  Once the pandemic cut off their box office and concessions sales, AMC was left with no other revenue stream to pay for these expensive new services that they were hoping to sustain with the profits from their theaters.  So, even before the pandemic hit, AMC had already put themselves in a rocky position that left them perilously close to collapse.  And it was all driven by a desire to grow their business at a time when the cracks were already starting to show in the dam.  All it took was a sudden pandemic to make the deluge happen.

And AMC’s woes are not just exclusive to their own company; it is industry wide to varying degrees.  Regal, the number two theater chain, made the unprecedented move of just closing their entire chain for the time being in order to save on finances for the rest of 2020.  Cinemark, is also financially struggling, but not at the same level as they hold much lower debt than their competitors.  And the smaller chains and independent theaters were also on the brink of closing before the pandemic stimulus package was passed to provide relief.  And there are many theaters that were sadly too far gone, and closed for good in the last year.  There is no doubt that the theatrical industry is going to look far different in the months and years ahead; diminished and likely to be contracted even more.  They’ve even given up much of their leverage in the business just so that they could survive another day.  Even with the lifelines extended (miraculously in the case of AMC), we’re likely going to see the closure of many theaters still in the coming year.  I don’t really see AMC holding onto as many of their locations that they held pre-pandemic.  In my local area in the San Fernando Valley, AMC has no less than 4 locations within a five mile radius of my apartment, and that’s even with competition from Regal and Cinemark.  Downtown Burbank alone is home to 3 AMC theater properties, with 30 total screens.  Now, Burbank is a busy enough market that they can sustain 3 separate theaters, but in other communities, that would be overkill.  In order to raise further capital, AMC and other big chains may have to look at either selling off their properties, closing them, or maybe even breaking their company up altogether into smaller blocks.

The hard truth is that the long term survival of AMC and other movie theaters is dependent on the confidence that Hollywood is going to have to have with them.  And that is all dependent on whether or not audiences do return back to the numbers that were seen pre-pandemic.  I highly doubt that we are going to get back to normal any time in 2021.  The state of the industry may still have to depend on these special measures and hybrid releases in order to generate any box office this year.  There are some pleasing signs of commitment from big studios like Disney, Paramount, and Sony towards still premiering their movies on the big screen.  But, those same studios are still hedging their bets and that has resulted in them further delaying the releases of their movies towards the back end of the year.  Disney for one seems to be favoring the hybrid model for now, as their latest animated feature Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) is still marked for a March release on both Disney+ and in theaters, though the premium access pay wall does at least give theaters a competitive break.  It remains to be seen if this is only temporary or just ends up becoming the new normal.  We’ll know more when Disney decides what to do with their big Marvel tentpole Black Widow (2021), which was originally slated for last summer.  The hard truth is that with a lot of people staying home during this pandemic, they became a lot more comfortable consuming media from the comforts of their own living room.  Movie theaters need to convince the public that they are the ideal place to watch movies again, and that is going to be hard as a lot of people have turned away from theaters for a long time.  A lot of people’s pet peeves about going out to the movies (high ticket prices, disruptive patrons, lack of sanitation) just make the stay at home option all that much more appealing.  But, there is a case for the communal experience being a part of the entertainment, like the experience of watching a audience pleasing Marvel movie that makes the crowd cheer and applause, or the fact that some movies are just too big to be fully appreciated even on the largest of TV screens.  It’s that case that needs to be made by the theatrical industry, and hopefully by seeing the near collapse of the industry over the last year, movie theaters are going to be far more focused on showing why we need the movies now more than ever.

So, what we saw this week on Wall Street was much less a new lease on life for the ailing AMC and more of a stay of execution.  Reddit users’ crusade of taking down predatory hedge fund short sellers by investing in AMC gives the theater chain some much needed breathing room, but what it does now is going to be crucial for it’s long term survival.  They need to convince audiences to come back and believe that the theaters are the best home for the movies once again.  The unfortunate thing is that the pandemic entrenched so many of us with only one option to watch our movies in the last year, and that’s a foothold for streaming that they are likely going to hold onto for quite a long time.  And that’s a dire prospect for movie theaters across the board.  Just in order to survive the year, movie theaters had to cut compromises that they otherwise would never have done before, and while it did keep some of them afloat for a while, it also ceded more ground to streaming in the process.  At the same time, particularly in the case of the big three chains, it is a case of turnaround.  They turned their nose up at Netflix for years, refusing to screen their movies in theaters because of Netflix’s desire for a short theatrical window before premiering on their service.  But, as the pandemic raged, AMC relented and granted such a deal with Universal just so they could survive the year.  One thing that could be a plus is that now Netflix can indeed screen their movies in the big chains, and Netflix has indicated that they still want to.  Like I said before, we have only begun to see the change within the industry happen, and it’s going to change the way we view what it means to be box office hit under this new dynamic.  For AMC, I’m sure that this last year is not at all how they wanted to celebrate their centennial anniversary, but it’s something that was well out of their control.  The crazy thing we learned this week is that even their good fortune was completely out of their control as well.  I hope that AMC’s benefit from these Wall Street shenanigans, as short-lived as they may be, does spur on a renewed commitment to revitalizing the theatrical industry and making it better and more sustainable.  It’s a crazy plot twist, but hopefully it’s one that does open a new, and better chapter for the story of AMC theaters and the cinematic experience in general.