A very different world we live in over the course of just a few short weeks.  At the beginning of this month, I wrote out a review of Pixar’s new film Onward (2020) as I would normally do.  Little did I know that over the course of the next couple weeks, not only would that film be pulled from movie theaters after the briefest of runs, but that the theaters themselves would also close it’s doors indefinitely.  The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the biggest upheavals in recent human history, both financially and culturally.  To help stem the rapid spread of the disease, local, state and federal governments issued an unprecedented “stay at home” order, causing businesses across the country to cease operation.  Among those hardest hit by this order were movie theaters.  I already wrote about the long term effects this may have on Hollywood itself right here, but today I want to focus specifically on how this current situation may end up damaging the theatrical experience, possibly forever.  Movie theaters are one of those institutions that we often take for granted.  We’ve been going to them our entire lives, and for some of us, watching a movie in a theater is oftentimes a part of our weekly routine.  Not all experiences in a movie theater are positive ones, but I bet many of you can recall your own favorite theatrical experiences at one point, often tied to a personal favorite movie most likely.  Already leading up to this year, movie theaters were engaged in an uphill battle against television and more recently streaming.  So with this pandemic closing the doors to theaters for an uncertain amount of time is making people wonder, is this the death stroke to movie theaters as we know it?  It is a dire time for the industry, and also a time where we need to remind ourselves just how important and worth saving movie theaters are.

The most stressing thing right now is the fact that no one, not the experts nor the people in charge of the theater chains know what’s going to happen in the next few months.  As of now, the largest theater chains in America have all committed to a closure of up to 9-12 weeks in accordance with the recommendations of health officials.  That is an extremely long time for any business to close it’s doors, let alone movie theaters, and it also means a staggering loss of revenue from ticket and concessions sales.  The worst part of this is the labor cuts that are going to have to be made in order to keep the companies afloat.  AMC, the largest chain in America, had to furlough their entire corporate office in addition to making difficult staff layoffs.  Even their CEO is putting himself on furlough, just to keep some solvency in the company’s expenses.  It’s a sad reality for a once profitable company, but they were left with no other choice.  The government mandate could not be ignored, and you certainly don’t want your business to be responsible for the spreading of a potentially deadly virus.  Also, with the movie studios all pulling their movies off of the calendar for the remainder of the Spring season, there was going to be nothing worth showing regardless.  It’s bad for one company alone, but as we are seeing, it’s happening across the entire industry.  I especially feel for the theater staff, since I was one of them back in my college days.  You enter the month of March fairly secure in your position, only to find a few short weeks later that you have no job and the place you worked at may not even come back from this.  Movie theaters were one of those reliable open 365 days a year kind of places.  Even shopping malls that had fallen on hard times could always rely upon the movie theaters as an anchor that could bring in people daily.  Now, that has all come to a grinding halt, and it has many people, film goers and theater workers alike, worried that this might be the end.

The reason why people are believing this is because of the fact that streaming has developed into the fiercest competition yet in the field of distribution.  The rise of Netflix and it’s ilk has shown Hollywood a different model for exhibiting movies that allows for a wider variety of movies that normally wouldn’t survive long in the theatrical market to get more broad recognition.  So, a lot of movies that otherwise would have been buried in theaters end up gaining traction on streaming and perform better as a result.  With the “stay at home” order given out during this pandemic, streaming has now gone from an alternative option to presenting a new film, to being the only option at the moment.  The Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae comedy, The Lovebirds (2020), which was slated for theaters in April, suddenly made the move to premiering on Netflix instead, where to be honest it probably would have had a better shot to begin with.  Disney+ is also making moves as well, bumping up it’s premiere of Frozen II (2019) on the platform, and taking the extreme measure of premiering Onward on there as well in the first week of April, a mere month after it’s short lived theatrical debut.  The move is a necessary one for Disney, as they need to rely more heavily upon their still fairly new streaming platform for some cash inflow, considering that they not only have no movies playing in theaters, but their theme parks are also closed as well.  All this is making the streaming business more lucrative, while the theatrical market is stuck in the mud.  And that is worrying to the theatrical side of the business, because the last thing they needed was for people who could choose between one or the other to have no other option.  For Hollywood, it’s a shift, but not one that will stall their production; at least until it’s okay to restart filming again.  What the theater chains worry about in thus regard is that with people becoming more comfortable with watching their movies from home as opposed to going to a theater, it’s going to keep those audiences forever in that mode, and Hollywood will likewise move on to where the audience is.

Now, that’s not to say that when the theaters are eventually allowed to reopen that they’ll all be too far gone to ever reopen.  These chains have hundreds of locations nationwide, and if they had to downsize, it would take them several years to do so, and not every single one will be gone.  There is a passionate base of fans of the theatrical experience that will always return to the multiplexes no matter what; of which I consider myself one.  The only problem is, there aren’t enough of us to go around to support every single movie theater.  What I especially worry about are the independently run movie theaters that you find scattered throughout the country.  These often “mom and pop” run businesses are hurting very much right now, because they don’t have the deep pockets to maintain operations that the big chains have.  Sure, they have dedicated clienteles that will gladly return once they are allowed, but sadly, depending on how long this pandemic continues, those theaters may be too far in the red to ever return again.  It would be a major loss to see these kinds of theaters go under, because they are often the only ones presenting art house entertainment to communities that otherwise wouldn’t be able to have access to them.  But, the sad reality is that once the crest of this pandemic has thankfully passed us by, there will be far less movie theaters available for us to go to.  These independent movie theaters are sadly in survival mode right now, and in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation, where they have to stay closed to keep people safe to the peril of their bottom line.  With the recently passed stimulus bill, one hopes that those small business loans may include some much needed cash to help them weather through, but that remains to be seen.

More than likely, the road to recovery will take many years for the theatrical industry, and it will also be dependent on what Hollywood does as well.  For the film studios, moving their movies off the schedule was no easy move either, as it meant a lot of wasted marketing spent over that last few months plus it’s going to shake-up their long-term release strategy.  But, it was an easier move than say what the theaters have had to go through.  If anything, the outlook for movie theaters would be far more dire if Hollywood was coming out and stating that they were abandoning theaters altogether.  Thankfully, there have been commitments made by some of the studios to release their movies theatrically once the doors are reopened.  Warner Brothers publicly announced that Wonder Woman ’84 (2020) their big summer tent-pole, would still see a theatrical run, albeit much later in the summer than planned.  It stands to think that the other studios will likely also release their big tent-pole films into theaters when they are able to, mainly due to the already existing agreements that they’ve had with the theaters in the short term.  It’s the long term outlook that remains uncertain.  Once the theaters reopen, are they going to draw in the same crowds as before?  Will “social distancing” just become the new normal, and movie theaters will no longer be able to generate the same ticket sales in order to justify the enormous costs of the movies they are showing?  There are some filmmakers who will insist that their films be shown theatrically, like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, but in the end, they won’t have the final say.  For both the theaters and the studios, there needs to be a profit on the other end, and it won’t matter how necessary the theatrical experience is in the end; the theaters will need those audiences back in a big way in order to be seen as economically viable for the future of cinema.

So, what are they going to have to do?  For a short time, movie theaters may have to reduce their ticket prices in order to entice audiences to return to their venues again after such a long absence.  They were already moving in a direction where they were taking the now defunct MoviePass model and adopting it into their own business plan by offering a monthly subscription to regular patrons of their theater.  The subscription plan worked very well for the two biggest chains, AMC and Regal, and hopefully, they return that plan once the theaters reopen for those of us who used it.  That will certainly bring back a certain segment of their patronage, but how do you bring back the casual movie-goer?  Those lower ticket prices may be one option, but you’ve also got to convince the patron that their experience there will be wildly different than what they’ll get in their living room.  We may find ourselves in a bold, experimental time for the theater industry, which can either lead to a boom in business (like what Widescreen did) or lead to embarrassing failure (Smell-o-vision, anyone?)  It may also change the kind of movies that get screened in the theater as well.  For one thing, depending on how much contraction in ticket sales that might come about in the coming years, Hollywood may end up making movies on more modest budgets than we’ve seen in the past decade.  It’s happened once before, as the extravagant epics of the 1960’s like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Cleopatra (1963) gave way to smaller, grittier dramas in the 1970’s like The Godfather (1972) and Taxi Driver (1976).  And eventually, the blockbuster era arose out of this fallow season in the movie business, with Star Wars (1977) leading the way.  Periods of transition are turbulent, but not uncommon for the movie industry, and we’ve seen movie theaters rise and fall before.  It’s just that this time, the fall is coming hard and fast and in a moment when theaters were already suffering a blow.  It may take some ingenuity to get themselves out of this rut, but with so much uncertain, it’s anyone’s guess what might happen.

I have always been a strong proponent of the in theater experience and I feel that it is something worth preserving.  We all tend to focus on the pet peeves of watching a movie in a theater, all of which seem to be magnified in a time when the term “social distancing” has become a part of our daily lives.  Sure the people talking during a movie, or playing on their phones, or failing to manage their out of control kinds are annoying and they no longer become a part of your experience when you watch a movie from home.  Nor do you have to deal with the less than clean conditions of your theater after the ushers make the quickest of cleaning transitions before the theater can be ready for the next show.  Trust me, having cleaned a few theaters myself back in the day, we would be lucky to have more than a ten minute window available in order to get everything clean.  But, despite all this, I would gladly trade in a theatrical experience for a sit at home one any day.  And that’s because there are some movies that just never feel the same on a small screen as they do on a big one.  And seeing a truly rousing movie in a nearly full theater is one of those true delights that I cherish in life.  Just last year, I had one of the best theatrical experiences in my life watching Avengers: Engame (2019) on an IMAX screen on opening night.  Feeling the rush of the crowd reacting to what they were watching was just as entertaining as what I was watching on the screen, and that’s something that I never would’ve gotten at home.  I know that this won’t happen with every movie, but it is something worth preserving.  We are distancing ourselves on purpose right now for our own safety, but in doing so, we may end up losing the thing that most effectively brought us all together.

I heard Quentin Tarantino put it very well in a 2015 interview with the Hollywood Reporter where he said that, “movies are the art-form for the masses.”  In that statement, he means to say that movies were the one form of entertainment that spread across class, race, gender, no matter who the person was.  It wasn’t an expensive art-form of the elite like opera, Broadway, or professional sports.  Movies were available to most everyone for a reasonable ticket price, and that’s what made movie theaters such an integral part of our lives.  Now we are in a time when they’ll need all the help they can get just to survive the next few months.  Strangely, help has come from an unlikely place like Netflix, which has helped set up a fund to support furloughed workers within the industry.  Netflix’s creative head, Ted Sarandos has also stated publicly that his intention is not to have Netflix supplant the theatrical experience, but to work alongside it.  Hopefully, this experience may loosen the theater chain’s objections to Netflix’s model of distribution and we may end up seeing more of the streamer’s movies released into theaters in a wider distribution.  But, what’s most important in the weeks ahead is that we don’t forget the importance of the theatrical experience itself as a part of our connection with the movies.  Nothing can replace that, not even the most high tech of home theater set-ups.  The big screen is where most movies are meant to be seen, and the theaters are going to need us if they are going to survive.  We especially need to give our support to those small, independent theaters that provide their own one of a kind experience that can never be replaced.  Communities that otherwise don’t have much access to alternative kinds of media and film are dependent on these movie theaters’ survival, and it is very important that they continue to remain open after this crisis is over.  Movie theaters may not go away completely, but this pandemic crisis is certainly going to be a crushing blow that may take years to recover from.  But, my hope is that I can convince enough people out there to remember the value of our movie theaters and all the good they have brought into our lives.  Not everything about the movie theater business has been perfect, but I certainly don’t want to live in a world where I can never walk into a movie theater again.  So, once we are able to, please buy those tickets, order those buckets of popcorn and drinks, and please enjoy the show.

It’s the kind of thing that you always see play out in the movies, but never think it may actually happen for real.  However, this week, the entertainment world was faced with that unfortunate reality.  In the face of a worldwide pandemic, the movie industry enacted an unprecedented shutdown in order to help the containment of the highly infectious Covid-19 coronavirus.  This included the postponement or outright cancellation of many upcoming movies within the next few weeks, as well as further cancellations of media events across the world.  The South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, a major destination for independent filmmakers to premiere their new projects to the public, saw it’s first cancellation in it’s entire history.  Other key events like Coachella, CinemaCon, and various others also have put the brakes on their plans over the next few months.  Here in Los Angeles, things have also gotten seriously dire.  Many productions have been shut down until further notice.  Industry employees are now being told to work from home.  We even got the shocking news that beloved Hollywood star Tom Hanks and his wife, actress Rita Wilson, were among those infected with the disease.  Not only that but Disneyland and Universal Studios had to shut their gates to guests, disrupting a major source of income for both of their parent companies.  In total, this is a lock-down of an entire industry that was thought unthinkable before, and yet is happening before our very eyes.  That’s not to say it’s not warranted either.  It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared in a case like this, and no one in the movie industry, not the studios or the theaters, wants to be responsible for making a bad situation even worse.  But though the short-term situation is all about caring for the safety of the public, it also is leaving the industry in a wary position about how this will effect them in the long run.

Only a short couple of weeks ago, things looked like they were going to go on as scheduled in Hollywood.  The coronavirus was making the news, but it was a far off menace, effecting the Asian markets more than anything.  Then the first cases began to hit the United States and Europe, and it grew rapidly from there.  The landslide began with Sony deciding to pull the new James Bond film, No Time to Die, out of it’s planned April 2020 release and pushing it all the way to November.  It was a risky move, as advanced tickets had already been sold to customers, but Sony recognized that it was not worth the risk depending on how serious things were getting.  The worries were also mounting after Disney and Pixar’s new film Onward opened to tepid box office last week, leading industry professionals to believe that people were staying home to be safe.  And that led to the bottom falling out this week, with pretty much the entire slate of upcoming Spring movies either being delayed or taken off the calendar completely.  This included heavy hitters like the horror sequel A Quiet Place: Part II and Disney’s live action remake of Mulan.  Even Fast & Furious 9, which wasn’t slated to release until mid-May, moved itself back a full year.  It’s all in response not just to the outbreak that has occurred, but the threat that it could get even worse.  And that is why we saw the drastic measures that were taken this week.  Poor Onward is going to be left out in the cold having to try to make up what it can in a market that is all but shutdown.  As of this writing, many theater chains have yet to cease operations, but given how the studios have pulled so many of their upcoming releases from the schedule, I don’t know how much longer they can continue doing business like normal.

The ripple effects of these decisions will no doubt leave their mark on the industry.  This is almost certainly going to be the biggest disruption the industry has faced since the Writer’s Guild strike of 2007.  And in many ways, it could be far more disruptive than that.  The strike, even as protracted as it was, still didn’t effect the theatrical end of the business.  Theaters were still able to capitalize on the backlog of already completed movies to see them through the slowdown of production.  The strike more or less was more disruptive to the television end, which had to see many of their programs go on protracted hiatuses.  But this situation could be far more destructive to the theatrical side than anything else we’ve ever seen in the history of Hollywood.  If theaters do have to close over the next couple weeks, it will be a major loss of income for both the theaters as well as the studios that make money off of the box office returns.  And moving all these movies to later dates already signals to these theater chains that they are going to see far less business in general for quite some time.  It’s the tough call you have to make in a time of uncertainty such as this one, and no matter what, businesses are going to suffer.  For an industry that has already been struggling in the wake of the rise of Netflix and it’s competitors, the movie theaters are in their most vulnerable position yet, possibly facing the final blow to their industry in general.  Of course, that’s assuming that this virus can not be contained quickly, and that audiences will return in droves once the crisis is over.  As someone who has come out of the theatrical industry myself, my hope is that those who work in these theaters and are doing their best to help stop the spread of this disease don’t end up seeing their life and careers torn apart by a crisis that is fully out of their control.

That’s the first point where we may see the long lasting effects of this virus’ impact on the industry.  The movie studios can make the choice to hold back their films, but it also means that they will see a disruption in their revenue for the year.  No one is going to come out of this unscathed, and already many of the major studios are already looking at 2020 as a lost year for the industry.  Disney has already lost 20% of it’s stock value, even losing a big chunk before the virus hit our shores due to their closure of the Asian theme parks and loss of the Chinese market at the box office.  Disney is big enough to rebound eventually, but this will no doubt leave them wounded for some time.  Thankfully, Disney is not doing anything reckless to try to counter their losses, and are following every health guideline to ensure that no one is going to be further exposed to their viruses on any of their properties.  Yes, closing down nearly all of their theme parks is going to cost them millions, but it’s better than the millions more they might have lost due to bad publicity if an outbreak broke out on their watch.  This is a time for tough choices, and it may end up changing the industry in the long run.  Certainly, the short term money issues will affect what gets green-lit in the months ahead.  It may end up convincing executives to rethink their strategies for tent-pole features, especially those with out of control budgets and troubled productions.  We may see much less of the likes of Marvel and Star Wars blockbusters, because their enormous costs will not justify their productions in an industry where you aren’t certain if there will be any box office revenue on the other end of it.  This effect is something we might not see for a while, as most big budget films like Bond’s No Time to Die and Marvel’s upcoming Black Widow are already in the can and ready to go.  But, a year or two from now, we may see a much quieter and subdued slate of releases from an industry that is less willing to take costly risks.

That is to say, if the spread of the virus does get much worse in the weeks ahead.  The best hope that we can have is that these extreme measures taken by Hollywood and the theater chains do help to stem the tide of the outbreak, but at this point, no one knows what will happen.  The film industry is in uncharted waters right now.  This is especially true when you are dealing with the possible exposure of people within the industry to the disease.  The announcement of Tom Hanks having being diagnosed really put a face on the pandemic that hadn’t really hit home for most people up to that point.  And when it became apparent that anyone, even a movie, star could come down with the disease, than it essential for everyone to take this disease with complete seriousness.  The one blessing is that Covid-19, despite being dangerously contagious, is not as destructive as past pandemics like the Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, and Yellow Fever.  Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson will make a full recovery, there is no doubt about that, and so will most people who become effective.  The danger is not so much how badly it will make the person ill, but in how fast it will spread from person to person, and lead to infections of people unlucky enough to have weakened immune systems that can’t fight the disease.  This outbreak is putting us on a learning curve of what a pandemic in the 21st century can look like, and hopefully we will learn the lessons of it in order to be ready for when the really bad pandemic starts to span across the globe.  It’s the one silver lining that we can take from this; this outbreak is exposing the weak-spots in our disease prevention system, and will hopefully lead us to fixing them in the near future.  In many ways, the drastic measures taken by the film industry is a noble bit of sacrifice in order to make up for the other parts of the disease control system that have utterly failed us.

Though the theatrical market is going to feel the effects most directly, it doesn’t mean that Hollywood is going to shut down completely.  Once the disease is under control, the industry will start up production again.  And this is largely due to the more diverse market we now have with distribution.  This is going to be a boom time for streamers like Netflix and Disney+.  While people are staying away from the multiplexes, the streamers are going to benefit from increased viewership as people stay home.  This will no doubt lead to an increase in subscription, as people on the fence will be more wiling to commit to signing up.  For Disney, they certainly have this to look forward to as their much publicized streaming service is going to have to carry the load while the theatrical side takes a hit.  The streaming market may also be the only choice that a lot of smaller films will have left to be seen by a wide audience if the theaters start to close their doors.  The cancellation of SXSW and the possible postponements of the Tribeca and even Cannes Film Festivals could lead to the loss of exposure for many important movies that were hoping to get a boost and also distribution over the course of the year.  You really see how crucial the Festival circuit is to the industry as a whole when the possibility of it’s cancellation puts so many film’s futures in doubt.  These are the kinds of movies that are likely going to be up for the Academy Awards next year (like Palm d’Or winner Parasite ended up being last year), and getting the head start from the festivals is what helps to build the hype they need in the first place.  If the theaters do close, hopefully Netflix, Hulu, and the like will swoop in and give these movies the audience that they deserve.  At the same time, it will be another step towards streaming taking over as the dominant force that it is already becoming in the industry as a whole.  And that is why the theatrical side is especially wary about how this pandemic is going to affect the future of movie experience as a whole.

For the first time in a long while, Hollywood is not in control of it’s immediate future.  It is going to have to weather the storm and hope that it will come out of it in one piece.  Wars, terrorism, and even industry shutdowns have not made things as uncertain as it is now.  Hollywood has just done it’s best to just carry on as best as it can.  But with the spread of this disease already cutting deep into the profits that they have relied upon for so long, Hollywood is right now just hoping for the best outcome they can.  In truth, this will no doubt change the industry.  We’ll see a constraining of budgets over the next couple of years in order to make up for the lost revenue of this year.  The theatrical side will see it’s biggest disruption ever, which may end up closing many screens for good; a huge loss not just for the industry but for local communities in general.  We’ll likely see streaming emerge as the savior for a shaken industry when all is said and done, and the theatrical experience further become a shell of what it once was.  But, this is all uncertain as well, as no one can say exactly what is going to happen over the course of this year.  We just know that there is going to be an immediate economic cost to the industry with so much of it’s revenue sources being cut off.  One can hope that the studios are prepared for a scenario like this and that they don’t loose faith in the return of audiences to their films.  It’s just, how will those audience end up turning up in the end.  We are going to experience a quieter Spring, that’s for sure, and hopefully the measures taken today will ensure that the rest of the year doesn’t get disrupted either.

For me myself, I am taking all the needed measure that an individual should do to avoid getting sick.  I am washing my hands regularly, and keeping my living and working spaces sanitized.  The outbreak has reached my home-base of Los Angeles, and I have seen everything from the theme parks to the live entertainment venues all shut their doors over the course of the last couple days, leading to a decreased level of entertainment within the city.  Local theaters have also shut their doors, though the big chains have yet to close as of this writing.  It’s also unfortunately led to the cancellation of this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, which has been a staple of this blog since I started covering almost 6 years ago.   It’s a depressing time, but at the same time, necessary.  We have not seen an outbreak on this scale in a long, long time, and the drastic measures taken are to ensure that more people don’t get sick.  It’s not the worst disease we could be facing, but it’s certainly nothing to take lightly either.  Thankfully, because I write this from the comforts of my own home, it will not keep me from writing.  Expect to see more articles from me every week, even as the industry goes on lock-down.  I may end up spending my time catching up on what’s playing on Netflix or Disney+, and writing about stuff like that.  My worry is that whatever may happen after this pandemic, it’s going to lead to an increased diminishment of the theatrical experience.  I am one of those who still prefers that to sitting at home and watching TV.  There are worse things that will result from this pandemic, but to me, this will be the thing that hurts the most.  I hope that when the studios do start releasing their delayed films that they do so with a firm commitment to bringing people back to the cinemas.  We need the movies now more than ever to keep the world upbeat, and if it has to go away for a while for everyone’s safety than so be it.  But never forget, the greatest connection we have to movies is when they can bring us together as a community, and that is something worth preserving after a time that is forcing us into isolation.

The late 1990’s was an interesting transitional period for Hollywood, as the advancement of computer aided technology had opened many new doors for the industry.  Special effects extravaganzas like Twister (1996), Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998) were dominant at the box office, but were usually seen as little more than popcorn flicks that were rarely celebrated for anything other than their effects.  But, there was another interesting occurance that was happening during this time and that was a surprising resurgence of something that was once the dominant genre in filmmaking at one time in Hollywood; the historical epic.  Reaching a peak in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the historical epic became the defining example of what Hollywood could accomplish, taking full advantage of the new widescreen processes of the time and delivering larger than life recreations of legendary moments of the past.  Started off with the biblical epics of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), the genre would go on to be defined by other history based dramas like Spartacus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Patton (1970).  They were all grand in scale and with epic lengths to match their ambitious scope (a three hour run-time being the norm).  But with out of control costs also defining their productions, like the near cataclysmic Cleopatra (1963), the genre that would become known as the “sword and sandal” epic would not be able to sustain itself for long.  But once the CGI revolution of the 90’s began, filmmakers raised on those epics of the past found a new, cost effective way to bring movies on that scale back to grandiose life.  Movies like Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves (1990) and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995) began to reivigorate the long dormant genre initially, and then James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) pushed the door wide open.  But a true return to an actual “sword and sandal” epic wouldn’t happen until the turn of the century with Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), a movie that both revived the epic in a big way, but also began it’s inevitable second decline as a result.

Gladiator, now reaching it’s 20th anniversary, is a rather intriguing oddity in the history of Hollywood.  Feeling both modern and nostalgic, it’s a movie that really feels out of place in it’s time.  It is very much a throwback to the “sword and sandal” epics of Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” and yet every aspect of it’s cinematic style is thoroughly contemporary.  And even more surprising is how much it was embraced by audiences and critics alike upon it’s release.  Despite the fact that a movie set in ancient Rome had not been a box office hit in nearly 5 decades, Gladiator somehow managed to be one of 2000’s highest grossing films, bested only by Mission Impossible 2 (2000) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).  And it did so with no A-List stars at the time.  Australian actor Russell Crowe had only appeared in a handful of Hollywood films at the time, most notably in The Insider (1999) which garnered him a Best Actor nomination a year prior, but he was unproven as an action star.  Joaquin Phoenix’s career had barely just begun, as he had only recently moved beyond the child actor roles of his youth into more adult ones.  Plus, director Ridley Scott had been known more for his work in Science Fiction with movies like Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), and a lavish, costume drama was something that he had tried and failed at before with 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992).  But despite these limitations, the movie caught on in a big way and would go on to become one of the most influential movies of the decade.  It even rode it’s success to a Best Picture win at the Oscars, something that even most “sword and sandal” epics couldn’t do, coupled with a Best Actor win for Crowe.  It really leads you to wonder why this movie, above all the others, became the one to reach the top like it did in such an unexpected way.

Part of it’s creation no doubt was a result of a group of filmmakers wanting to indulge their nostalgia for the epics of the past, while at the same time finding a way to make good use of the new tools that could allow them to make a movie like it work.  The original concept came from screenwriter David Franzoni, who had been working on the story since the 1970’s, having been a fan of old fashioned epic movies and carrying an interest for Roman history his whole life.  Finding his way eventually to Dreamworks, and working alongside Steven Spielberg on the movie Amistad, Franzoni pitched the project to Spielberg, who himself had a long-standing interest in the genre.  Spielberg, who was too tied up at the time to direct himself, eventually gave the project over to his longtime friend Ridley Scott, who was more than eager to jump on board.  Scott certainly was also influenced by old fashioned epics, but he was far more interested in looking at this era through a more authentic vision; creating a Rome that felt less polished and more lived in.  Nevertheless, the movie would give him the chance of imagining Ancient Rome on a scale that old Hollywood would’ve only dreamed of, and on a more modest budget.  Aided with cutting edge CGI technology, Ridley could not only rebuild the mighty Colesseum, but even take you inside it, and span around looking at it from all angles, like in the now iconic 360 degree shot from it’s ground level.  After bringing on playwright John Logan and screenwriter William Nicholson in for rewrites to further match Scott’s vision, production began in earnest in the spring of 1999.  Shooting in places as diverse as Morrocco, Malta, and Northern Ireland, Gladiator was certainly one of the most ambitious projects of it’s time.  But even with a professional assembly of cast and crew on board, the movie still endured some unexpected hurdles.  Most notably, actor Oliver Reed, who was playing the role of gladiatorial trainer Proximo, suffered a fatal heart attack during the middle of shooting.  With the actor playing a crucial role in the final film, and without having completed his last scenes, Scott needed to find a way to bring his story-line closure without having to recast the actor and reshoot half the movie.  He made the controversial choice to digitally resurrect Oliver by placing his face artificially on another actors body in a groundbreaking visual effect.  Yes it’s a little ghoulish to do this after the actor has died and has no say over how his likeness is used, but in doing so, Ridley Scott managed to preserve the rest of his performance within the film, which is a wonderful final bow for the legendary character actor.

Though the movie is a magnificent showcase for Ridley Scott’s talents as a film director, the thing that I think really turned the movie into an iconic hit with audiences was the character at the center of it all; General Maximus Aurelius Meridius.  From the moment we first see Russell Crowe’s world worn but resilient face on screen as the character, we know that this will be someone who will command our attention for the next 2 1/2 hours.  Crowe absolutely owns as the charcter, being both physically imposing while also vulnerable in spirit.  And his journey through the film is no doubt what has captured the imagination of audiences around the world.  In the film’s tagline, it describes the character of Maximus as “the general who became a slave; a slave who became a gladiator; a gladiator who defied an empire.”  And it’s that undaunted drive to push beyond your limits and fight your way back to the place where you belong that makes his story so captivating.  After loosing everything, his rank, his home and his family, at the whims of a power hungry dictator, Maximus uses what power he has left (his fighting skills and knowledge of combat) to fight his way back to seek justice.  Russell Crowe is commanding in the moments that call for him to be larger than life, but I feel that his best work in the movie comes in the quiet moments in between, where Maximus becomes introspective and questions whether or not his path should lead him down this road towards vengence.  Of course, a hero is also only as good as the villain he faces, and Gladiator has a memorable one as well.  Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is one of the most depraved heavys put on screen in recent memory, and Phoenix does a wonderful job of capturing the slimy nature at his very core.  It’s a performance that hints at the budding talent that Phoenix would display in the 20 years and more than anything else has been the thing in the movie that has aged the best over the years. Whereas most historical epics portray their villainous figures as pillars of insurmountable strength, Commodus is defined by his insecurities; a sniveling man child prone to abusing his power to compensate for his lack of strength. In many ways, Commodus is a truer depiction of what a tyrant actually behaves like than anything else we’ve seen in movie before, and it’s a real credit to the power of Joaquin’s manic portrayal of the character. It also plays off of Crowe’s Maximus perfectly, centering the movie around a truly dynamic contest between idealic good and loathsome evil.

In the 20 years since the release of Gladiator, it’s very interesting to see what kind of legacy it has left behind.  One thing that may be surprising about it is the fact that while it did revive the long dormant “sword and sandals” epic, it only did so for a short time, at least in the general traditional sense.  The movie’s box office success and subsequent Oscar wins signaled to Hollywood that this type of movie was easy money once again, which is something that only in retrospect now looks like a foolish assumption.  As stated, Gladiator stood out because of it’s stellar story and unforgettable characters, and not just because of it’s spectacle.  But, what Hollywood believed was the key to it’s success was the ground-breaking visual effects that it used to tell it’s story, which made people believe that they could plant into any old historical event and make it work just as well.  This led to some rather misquided attempts at Gladiator clones.  Much like how Pearl Harbor (2001) tried and failed to capitalize on the Titanic craze from a couple years prior, these wannabe Gladiators also would pale in comparison.  Two of the most notable failures came from one studio in particular, Warner Brothers, who put their money behind a couple of bloated epics in the same calendar year.  First was Troy (2004) from Wolfgang Petersen, which mistakenly believed that vain, egocentric Achilles (played by a miscast Brad Pitt) could become the next Maxiumus; and then there was Alexander from Oliver Stone with an even more grossly miscast Colin Ferrall as the boy conquerer.  I already went into detail comparing the two movies in an article here, but suffice to say, both missed the mark completely in recapturing the spark of Gladiator.  Ridley Scott himself would also find it hard to repeat within the genre he helped to revitalize.  His Crusades era epic, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) was butchered by 20th Century Fox upon release, removing nearly an hour of run-time from his original director’s cut and creating a hollow shell of what it could have been.  Even a re-teaming of Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott in a new version of Robin Hood (2010) couldn’t even come close to the effectiveness of Gladiator.  Which really made people wonder if Gladiator really did in fact revive the “sword and sandals” epic at all, or was it just an anomaly.

In one way, I do think that Gladiator did in fact bring the “sword and sandals” epic back in a big way; just not in the way you would exepect.  The aesthetics of the genre were revitalized by Gladiator, but it managed to thrive beyond it in a entirely different genre.  Only a year after Gladiator’s release, Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema released the first film of their ambitious The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) in many ways took up the mantle of what Gladiator brought to cinema, making it’s fantasy world feel authetic in the same way that Scott’s film tried to recreate ancient Rome.  For Peter Jackson, he wanted to take J.R.R. Tolkein’s fantastic world of Middle Earth and film it in a way that felt like a historical epic.  Great attention to detail was called for, making the world that the characters inhabited feel like it’s existed for centuries, and not look like an obvious set on a soundstage.  Removing the staginess of the production is one thing that the movie has in common with Ridley Scott’s epic, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Peter Jackson was in some way inspired by the success of his predecessor while making his own epic.  He’s certainly not copying Scott’s style, but seeing Gladiator succeed with it’s own level of authenticity no doubt must have emboldened Jackson’s determination to do the same.  So, though the historical epic genre floundered in the 20 years since Gladiator, the same kind of epic grandeur still lived on in the fantasy genre, which saw it’s own Renaissance in the new century.  We are even seeing the super hero genre beginning to pick up the mantle, with moments in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame (2019) and DC’s Wonder Woman (2017) and Aquaman (2018) also emmulating the epic style of Gladiator and RIngs.  So, even if Gladiator didn’t make a lasting impact in the historical epic genre, it’s style still was able to live on in other genres that have only increased their epic grandeur.  Look at something like the arena fight between Thor and the Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and tell me that one of the first movies that you’ll recall in your mind is Gladiator.  Sure it may look different, but there are certainly echos that ring familiar at the same time.

One has to wonder though, is Gladiator the last of it’s kind as well.  It certainly is the last historical epic to have ridden a wave of success towards a Best Picture win at the Oscars.  In the 20 year since, the Oscars have favored contemporary dramas more than any other, with 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and 2013’s 12 Years a Slave being the rare exceptions.  The “sword and sandals” epic revival was pretty much over with by the end of the 2000’s, with even Ridley Soctt leaving it behind for a return to sci-fi in more recent years.  And it would seem that the once pinnacle of Hollywood filmmaking was no longer a viable artform in this vastly different market that we see today.  Nobody wants to invest in a lavish reproduction anymore of what is essentially a history lesson.  You do see modest attempts at it every now and then, but even so, they don’t have the majesty of something like Gladiator.  Netflix has recently attempted a couple tries at creating lavish period epics, like Outlaw King (2018) starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, and The King (2019) starring Timothee Chalamet as Henry V.  Though both films are more ambitious than most, you can almost feel themselves being restrained by a sense of not trying too hard.  I think that’s what made Gladiator hit so well with audiences.  It was the last epic of it’s kind to not only be lavish in it’s execution, but unapologetically so.  It was a movie that was not afraid to embrace the over-the-top nature of it’s genre while at the same time trying to modernize it with a gritty aesthetic.  It’s not just in it’s epic scale that it worked, but also in it’s characterizations.  Maximus and Commodus are iconic characters that capture the imagination.  You can give them the most absurd, old-fashioned dialogue possible and they will still capture the imagination because they are that interesting.  In many ways, it’s not that the style of genre went out of fashion, but the fact that Hollywood forgot to add substance to these epics, leaving nothing but production values to do most of the heavy lifting.  And that’s why the style that Scott’s Gladiator repopularized moved on into genres that had far more interesting characters.

So, what we take away from the legacy of Gladiator is that it had a profound impact on the movies of the new century, but in a way that I think Hollywood and even the filmmakers involved probably didn’t expect.  Most of the industry expected the “sword and sandals” epic to just pick up right where it left off thanks to the movie, but that just wasn’t the case.  We ended up seeing a short lived revival, while other genres would end up prospering, picking up the aesthetic that had served the historical epic so well in the past.  But, though the movie may not have given it’s own genre the kick that it needed, it still holds it’s own as a fine epic that stands the test of time.  It did a lot of things for Hollywood as well; it reinvented Ridley Scott as an epic filmmaker, broke new ground in visual effects, made Russell Crowe a star and shed a spotlight onto a young Joaquin Phoenix. Legendary character actors like Richard Harris, David Hemmings, and Oliver Reed were also well served by this movie, with Reed’s final performance thankfully maintained even while being incomplete. But I think what works best for the movie is in how it inspires audiences who see it; reminding them of a time when historical epics set the high bar in filmmaking. Sure, Gladiator is far from historically accurate, as most films like it are, but it shows just how incredible a window into the past can capture our imaginations on the big screen.  During a rousing pre-battle speech early in the movie, Maximus tells his soldiers that, “what we do in life, echoes in eternity.”  It’s a profound statement that not only hits a personal core, but also reflects well on the legacy the movie leaves behind.  By being the bold artistic vision that it is, and striving to hold up the high standard of grand epic movies in the past, Gladiator continues a whole new generation of filmmakers to keep that tradition going on into the future, and hopefully inspire a desire to see more movies like it made in the future.  Strength and honor indeed.

Something peculiar and unprecedented happened in the film industry last year, and it came from the unlikeliest of places.  When Paramount Pictures delivered a first look trailer for their big screen adaptation of the video game Sonic the Hedgehog, it was received with a fair bit of outrage.  Long time fans of the character were quick to point out how terrible looking his new “enhanced” character model appeared, and they flooded social media with their complaints.  But what shocked many people afterwards was the fact that Paramount quickly pulled the movie off their schedule, stating that they were going to “fix” the animation and change the model of Sonic to better reflect the demands of the fans.  This is something that is pretty much unheard of in Hollywood, that a movie studio halts the release of a movie after the backlash it received from the trailer.  Originally slated for a holiday season release, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is now being released in theaters with it’s new “refreshed” animation and, as of this writing, it is looking like it’s going to have a better than expected opening weekend.  Which raises the question; did delaying the movie actually improve it’s chances.  I haven’t seen it myself yet, but by judging the progression the movie went through from that original trailer to the final product, it looks like Paramount might have indeed salvaged what could have been an embarrassing train wreck.  I’ll definitely say that the new and improved model is a step up from the grotesque version we saw in the original trailer.  He at least looks like the character from the video game now.  But, what does this tell us about the film-making process in general.  Does it actually benefit a movie to have a delay in production in order to fix supposed problems?  Is meeting a deadline actually counterproductive to making a film better?  Is it right to take the response to a trailer as a motivation to re-work a movie?  In a blockbuster driven market like the one we are living through now in Hollywood, the questions raised by Sonic the Hedgehog’s troubled production provides some clues to problems that stem far and wide throughout the business as a whole.

So, what was the issue with Sonic the Hedgehog being delayed a few more months.  The answer is it’s something that just does not happen in Hollywood; at least not this late in the game.  One of the longest running mechanics of the studio system in Hollywood is a planting of a flag within a release schedule.  It’s a way of the studios telling the industry that they plan to have a movie ready for release  on a specific date many years in advance, even if they don’t quite know what that movie is yet.  It’s mainly done to assure business with the theater chains, who want to know what to expect over the next several years so they can make their long term plans.  Normally, these tent-pole dates occur during important periods of the year where both the studios and the theaters expect bigger than average audiences, like Memorial Day weekend or Thanksgiving or the Holiday Break.  And by planting their flag on these busy weekends, the studios can assure themselves that they have stood out among the other competition that weekend.  After that, then the pre-production planning begins, where studios figure out what they’ll actually fill those dates with.  Some studios know exactly what they’ll put there; Marvel for example has laid claim to the first weekend of the summer season every year for more than a decade.  But, other times the date exists there just for the studio to have a claim to a lucrative time frame, and then they sometimes fill it with a movie that they hope will benefit from that.  Regardless of what that movie is, the studios have that date set, and the focus from there out is making sure that a movie is ready on that date.  Once it’s determined what movie will fill the slot, then it up to the production team to make that goal.  And, as we’ve seen with Sonic, sometimes a movie just isn’t ready for prime time.

There are different classes out there with regards to how deadlines are viewed within the industry.  Some people, mainly writers, view deadlines as a positive, because it helps to sharpen their focus and allows them to get things done without too much second guessing.  On the other hand, there are other people in Hollywood, mainly on the production side, who view deadlines as cumbersome to the creative process.  Film directors in particular like to have as much time to work on a project as they possibly can, because it allows them to be experimental and shoot a scene from every possible vantage point.  Without the constraint of a time limit, they can also accommodate their production to deal with delays that occur, such as with the unpredictability of the weather.  The same goes in the editing process, where more time allows for a more thorough search for mistakes and oversights missed on the days of production.  But, a movie studio can’t allow for film crews to have all the free time in the world; because then you end up having runaway productions.  This is one of the things that ultimately ended the era of the New Hollywood in the 1970’s.  When Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) both went over-budget and over-schedule, the studios intervened and put an end to these projects that seemingly were going to continue going on without end.  Ambitious visions are a valuable thing for a filmmaker, but at the same time, there has to be accountability with the budgets, as well as an end point in place, and thus, that’s why studios have become more reliant on those tent-pole dates to ensure things don’t spiral out of control.

But even when you have a well oiled machine that is able to fire on all cylinders towards meeting those deadlines, it can cause friction along the way.  Some filmmakers find that meeting those demands from the studio ends up diminishing the finished product.  In a tweet delivered shortly after he parted ways with Marvel Studios, Doctor Strange (2016) director  Scott Derickson described studio release dates as “the enemy of art.”  That led to what he and Marvel mutually described as creative differences that led to his being let go from the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel.   And it’s a trend that we are seeing happen more and more in Hollywood as blockbusters are becoming more like an assembly line product in service of ongoing franchises.  Some filmmakers are able to work under those conditions, while other feel stifled by it.  Marvel has benefited from a long line of stable productions throughout it’s run, but the same can’t be said about it’s sister company under the big Disney umbrella; Lucasfilm.  Multiple productions on that side have faced upheavals in recent years, with several filmmakers like Colin Treverrow, Benioff & Weiss and Lord & Miller all either being let go from a project or exiting out of their own choice.  Creative differences likely played a part in these shake-ups, but also the fact that many of them recognized that delivering under a tight schedule would’ve negatively affected their projects.  This seems especially to have manifested with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).  The movie was almost completely started from scratch once J.J. Abrams stepped in to take over from Treverrow’s previous direction, and yet it still needed to make that December 2019 deadline.  It became clear, with an unfocused narrative and far too many plotholes left open, that the movie needed a few more months to polish out it’s story problems.  But, parent company Disney was insistent that it be done that specific year, because the release was going to coincide with the opening of Galaxy’s Edge in the parks as well as the launch of the Disney+ series that tied into the universe.  And thus, we got an unfinished movie in theaters that not only was the least popular of the new batch of films, but in some ways also tarnished the brand.

And out of that, you see why Scott Derrickson views deadlines as the “enemy of art.”  But at the same time, a project run amok has it’s downside too.  What the Star Wars,  and for that matter Sonic the Hedgehog shows us is that there should be more assessment over how much time a movie actually needs to be ready.  This can usually be examined early on in a film’s development, and oftentimes you do see film studios halt production well beforehand in order to keep a movie from going off the rails.  There are often many movies that get announced, but are never made.  Some people wonder why these movies never get off the ground and it’s because the studios assess the risks involved if they continue to head down the same road, and sometimes those risks are not worth the investment.  There’s the example of Warner Brother’s Superman Lives, which was going to be Tim Burton’s own spin on the famed comic book character, after he had already famously brought Batman to the big screen.  The movie went through a fair amount of steps in pre-productions including casting (with Nicolas Cage playing the man from Krypton) and location scouting, before the studio ultimately pulled the plug.  And the result usually comes from either the executives balking at the budget or because of a lack of enthusiasm from the public in general.  There are probably more examples of movies that died in development than there are ones that made it into theaters, and that includes projects from some of our greatest filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, or Francis Ford Coppola’s Megaopolis, or Ridley Scott’s Tripoli.  But these projects never end up hurting reputations for their creators, because they stalled long before things got way out of hand.  Perhaps what makes a case like Sonic the Hedgehog so unique is the fact that it changed course so far into production.

The unfortunate result of doing that kind of course correction so late is that it put extra pressure on the people working on your film.  In Sonic’s case, the visual effects team pretty much had to throw out months worth of work and effectively star over again.  This is especially problematic because the visual effects industry is notorious for over-working their artists, as well as adding a substantial amount to the budgets of the movies.  When a film is reaching that crunch time before a release date, it’s the pot-production crews that feel that crunch the most.  And with the case of Sonic the Hedgehog, they were saddled with having to work overtime on a project that they thought was nearly in the can already.  Having them go back and re-doing their work meant that it was going to take extra time away from their families in order to make the new deadline, and over the holidays no less.  To add more salt in those wounds, the visual effects company responsible for the Sonic redesign, Motion Picture Company (MPC), closed it’s Vancouver location shortly after, where all the Sonic work was done.  So, not only did the effects artists have to work through the holidays, but they were left without a job right after.  This speaks more to the volatility of the visual effects industry which is a whole other story, but it’s indicative of the growing problem where movie productions fall victim to their own inability to plan things out effectively.  Usually, movie studios haven’t taken the responses to movie trailers as seriously before, but in this case, the response had become so severe that Paramount had to intervene.  But, was it worth putting artists through a tough time for.  Many people get into the business for the love of creating movie magic, but when it’s becomes an arduous task to reverse a problem that should’ve been caught long before hand, that allure of creativity doesn’t seem so bright anymore.

The question remains, should movies be so beholden to set timelines.  In many ways, cinema is the only art-form that has to conform to such a demanding schedule.  Literature, for example, sometimes takes years to make it to the bookshelves from when they are announced to their ultimate publication.  We’ve been waiting how long now for George R.R. Martin to finish his next book in the  “Song of Ice and Fire” series?  Music also premieres in a different way, with singles often pre-releasing before a complete album; usually as a way to drive up hype.  The video game industry, like film, also uses release dates to gain attention for their products, but as they often fall prey to delays almost across the board, the gaming consumer base has become more lenient when it comes to receiving a video game far longer than what was expected.  So, why is it that movies are held to such a constraining time limit.  No doubt the history of out-of-control productions may have influenced it, but does holding onto it actually diminish a final product that ultimately needs more time to prepare.  It’s something that should become apparent when a major disruption happens, like a complete overhaul of the script or the team in charge of the production.  Otherwise, you are left with a movie project that either becomes a problem far too late into production like Sonic the Hedgehog, or a movie that lacks an identity because it had no time to evolve into something different like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.  The worst thing a movie can do is to waste it’s potential, and sometimes it needs just that little extra time to finally meet it.  Otherwise, you run into the embarrassment of having a movie that fails at what it was supposed to do, because there wasn’t enough time to fix it.

Ultimately, there are many films that are far beyond fixing.  I don’t think that a post-release clean-up of the movie Cats was ever going to save that film from embarrassment.  But, at the same time, we may have seen another film like Sonic the Hedgehog possibly turn around it’s fortunes.  Sure, it’s not going to become an all-time great, but it may have saved itself from the train-wreck that it looked like it was heading towards.  A last minute delay like it’s was still not without it’s costs though, as the poor digital effects artists will tell you.  But, a better box office performance for the film may teach Paramount and other studios in Hollywood that rushing towards a release date is not always a good thing.  Some movies need to incubate a little longer, and the studios need to recognize exactly when is the right moment to change course.  It certainly shouldn’t happen as late as post-production, where you have to completely redesign a character because of the immediate backlash you faced from the trailer.  At the same time, a deadline also keeps a project in check, so it shouldn’t so much be a removal of all boundaries as just a re-positioning of the goal post.  If Star Wars hadn’t been so strict with their unmanageable release schedule, they wouldn’t have been forced into a hiatus like they are now, with so much personnel being shifted around.  At some point, a movie will let you know how much more time it will need, or even if it’s going to ever happen at all.  Overall, I don’t think Scott Derrickson is right when he says that deadlines are the “enemy of art,” because I see a lot of people become more driven when they know they’ve got an end point they need to get to.  It’s probably just the writer part of me that thinks that, but having a deadline in front of me allows me to keep my mind focused on a goal and eliminates all distractions.  But, there should be precautions allowed for any case where a project gets de-railed by unforeseen forces.  I don’t blame movies like Spider-Man (2002) and Zoolander (2001) delaying their release so that they could make a last minute edit of their films to remove the World Trade Center immediately after the events of 9/11 for example.  Sometimes, deadlines are a necessary evil, but it’s one that should be flexible enough to allow movies to become the best that it ultimately can be.