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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ve probably heard about a group of people called the “Disney Adults.”  A Disney Adult is a super fan of anything and everything made by the Walt Disney Company, as well as someone who outwardly expresses their fanhood to world.  The reason some people have singled out this group by giving them a label is because a large part of what the Disney Company produces is primarily meant for younger audiences, and a Disney Adult seems to be out of line with the target audience for their products.  To outsiders, seeing this group expressing themselves through their Disney fandom comes across as bizarre behavior, making a lot of them feel like there is something wrong with Disney Adults.  But, being a Disney Adult is not any different than most other fan communities out there.  One of the reasons it seems that Disney Adults are being singled out and in some cases ridiculed is just because of the sheer enormous reach that the Disney Company has on our culture.  In reality, fan culture has reached maximum level within human culture in general, built up over decades of blockbuster entertainment in film, television and music and spread even further throw the internet.  The rise of the Disney Adult community has been a result of this new era of pop culture being brought to the mainstream and having fans brought together through online spaces.  A lot of people who grew up with certain forms of entertainment are more and more likely to retain that fanhood well into their adult years and beyond.  That’s why you see more people these days gleefully showing off their identity as a fan.  But there are many critics who look at this as something insidious, particularly with communities like Disney Adults, who outsiders think are behaving abnormally for someone their age.  Like all fan communities there are good and bad people among the Disney Adults, but the fact that some people find the very idea of there being a community like that at all being a negative is absolutely a very closed minded way at looking at it.

I should stress this from the outset that I myself would probably fall under the Disney Adult category.  Disney Animation was the first thing that I ever latched onto as a kid, and it’s followed me throughout my life all the way into adulthood.  If you have been following this blog over the years, you can tell that it still fills a big part of my life, given my reports from the D23 events in Anaheim and my many editorials, reviews, and Top Ten Lists based around the House of Mouse.  But, as I’ve grown older, I’ve also let in a lot more influences enter my life from all corners of cinema.  My favorite film isn’t even a Disney film anymore, but rather one made by Columbia Pictures; that being Lawrence of Arabia (1962).  But, even as I’ve branched out, Disney still holds a special place for me.  How that translates into me Disney Adult?  Well, my encyclopedic knowledge of the Disney Company’s history is extensive, and I do exceptionally well with Disney based trivia.  I’m also have every Disney and Pixar Animation film in my home video collection; and I’ve repurchased many of those same titles with every format.  I’m also a Disneyland pass-holder and a D23 club member, and I attend many Disney related events in the Los Angeles area, including the already mentioned Expos.  But, where is my bar in Disney fandom.  I’ll confess I do have blind spots when it comes to the company’s history.  I know almost nothing about most of the Disney Channel Original Movie library, nor do I watch any of the programming on that network as well.  I also am not afraid to call Disney out when they do something that I don’t like, such as their heavy reliance on remakes and sequels in recent years to cash in on nostalgia, as well as some of their anti-labor practices, especially towards their theme park employees.  I’m also a fan that doesn’t outwardly show off their fanhood.  I don’t wear mouse ears when I’m in the parks and I only own a couple of T-Shirts with Mickey Mouse on them, which I also hardly ever wear.  I’m subtle with my fandom, but I also don’t look down on those who choose to be more outwardly expressive with their love of Disney.

When I visit Disneyland, I do see the phenomenon of Disney Adults playing out in front of me.  There are a lot of adults who dress head to toe in Disney gear, and many are doing so alongside their children as a fun little thing they bond over, but there are adults without children who do it too.  And these are adults of all age types getting deep into their fanhood.  I’ll see people as young as college age all the way to seniors in their mobile scooters proudly wearing their Mickey Ears and lining up to collect that newly released souvenir popcorn bucket.  I’ll see just as many enthusiastic fans of all ages at club events as well, especially at D23.  And there is variety in the Disney Adult community, with other fandoms now being added to the mix like Star Wars and Marvel.  People of all walks of life: race, gender, sexuality, you name it, Disney Adults is a big tent community.  Are there bad apples in the group?  Of course, just like any other.  I’ve read accounts from former Disney Parks employees that they’ve had some bad encounters from Annual Pass Holders who felt entitled to special treatment and often took their frustrations out on them.  Internally, these bad apple park guests have been dubbed by some parks cast members as “Pass-holes.” Also, there is a part of the fandom that unfairly uses their privilege as a pass-holder or member to horde special event merchandise, making them unavailable to the casual buyers, and some even do this as a means of re-selling those souvenirs on eBay or other online marketplaces.  But these are less fans and more opportunists than anything, often taking advantage of fans who are less privileged than they are.  This also gets into another downside of this fandom, which is that some will become too deeply involved in this kind of fan culture, and it will cause them to spend outside their means, which is where the predatory practices of the re-sellers becomes a major problem.  And this goes to another issue that people can have with Disney, even amongst fans.  Disney, like most other corporations, wants to milk as much money out of their customers as possible, and that’s why they don’t put much effort into the oversight of this re-seller market and in some cases fan the flames of the situation by creating false scarcity.  This isn’t indicative of the fandom as a whole, but it does show that there are indeed some problems that need to be addressed, amongst fans and also with Disney itself.

To outsider observers, being Disney Adults seems to come across as a bit like a cult.  But, this is a very narrow view of what the community is actually like.  The bad apples aside, there is a lot of harmony and fun to be had when interacting with other fans, no matter the age group.  What a lot of people seem to mistake about the Disney Adult community is that they think this is Toxic fandom.  What I observe in circles at Disney events like D23 is the very opposite of toxic.  Everyone is open and welcoming in those spaces, and it’s a place that brings people together regardless of how strongly they feel about any given aspect of the Disney company.  This is honestly what most fan based meet-ups are like, from comic and anime conventions to simple table top game groups at your local comic book and hobby store.  True fandoms want to bring more people into their orbit and you’ll find so many people eager to share their time with outsiders and hopefully find common ground.  When a fandom turns toxic is when they practice gate-keeping.  Beware any fan who tells you that you have to follow certain rigid rules or believe the way they do in order to be considered a true fan.  There are the odd Disney Adult who looks down on others because they don’t have the same fan bone fides as they do.  But this is a very, very tiny minority of the people that I have encountered amongst the Disney Adult community.  Some of the best discussions I’ve had at D23 were when we were all just waiting in line to get in.  I get to share all my thoughts about what I liked and disliked from Disney in the last couple years, and the people I shared that with did the same, and never once do we ever shame each other for thinking differently.  Unfortunately, if you live in an always online world where toxic fandom seems to reign, these kinds of positive conversations never get to be seen, and it leads many so-called “fans” to position themselves as being authority on what constitutes a good and bad fan.  This is where the idea of Disney Adults being a toxic group of cult like man-children has taken fruit, from these online spaces that feed on negativity, and pass judgement from afar without looking at the community from a grounded point of view.

Disney Adults are not the first to face this kind of scrutiny from critics.  Many years prior, another devoted fanbase was also looked at as being abnormal.  They were called Trekkies; a term referring to hardcore fans of the beloved sci-fi franchise Star Trek.  Star Trek was a mainstream hit television series from the 60’s that everyone was familiar with, but over the years it’s fanbase developed into something far more elaborate than what most other pop culture phenomenoms had seen.  Trekkies began to show off their fandom by appearing at fan conventions in costumes based on the show.  People were giving the Vulcan hand gesture to each other, and quoting lines like “Live long and prosper” in their everyday life.  Some even went as far as to learn the entirety of the Klingon language, and could converse with other Trek fans in that language fully if they wanted.  Back when the Trekkie community was beginning to become a larger presence in fan circles, many outsiders found a lot of this extreme fandom a little unsettling, believing that this was cultish behavior.  For a while, Trekkies were looked down upon.  A lot of critics would falsely assert that Trekkies were lonely and friendless, and probably virgins as well.  A famous Saturday Night Live sketch, in which Captain Kirk himself William Shatner appeared, had the actor speak in front of a group of Trekkies, telling them to all “Get a Life.”  This condescending attitude towards Trekkies changed over the years however as not just Star Trek fandom became more mainstream but also fan culture as a whole.  Now, people of all walks of life proudly declare themselves a Trekkie, including even some heads of state.  And fans of all sorts of other popular culture properties likewise freely express their love for the things they are drawn to.  It’s all part of the cultural shift over the last couple decades, where what was considered the lower artforms like comic books, TV shows, and video games are now getting more recognized as high art.  It’s no longer childish to be considered a fan.

But, some will still associate extreme expressions of fanhood with immaturity.  At the moment, the Disney Adult seems to be the type of fan that many people spotlight as the epitome of immaturity.  One complaint that I hear a lot is that many people consider adults without children visiting Disneyland as a sign of creepy behavior.  It follows the misconception that spaces like Disneyland are meant for families with children only.  Disneyland, nor any other theme park for that matter was never meant to be just for kids and their parents only.  Walt Disney himself scoffed at the assertion that his company only made stuff for children.  Walt intended for his movies and his theme parks to be for people of all ages; as he put it, “the young and the young at heart.”  The reason Disneyland exists today was mainly because he wanted to share in the fun with his own children, and not just watch them have all the fun on the rides.  That’s the great allure of all the best things that have come out of the Disney Company; they remain timeless, and you never grow out of it.  But the best thing that has come out of this multi-generational appeal is that the community of Disney Adults has grown out of it.  Just like Trekkies and many other fan communities, Disney Adults have found fun together through their own modes of fanhood.  At Disneyland, there are special fan organized events that have risen up over the years, such as Dapper Days where people dress up in retro, dapper style clothing when they visit the park.  Disney doesn’t put on these events, but they allow them to go on within their parks as long as the fans don’t break any park rules.  One such event, the annual Gay Days where LGBTQ Disney fans gather at the parks, became such a big deal each year that Disney itself embraced it and now they organize their own Pride Event in the park alongside the unofficial Gay Days that fans put on.  Sure, theme parks are a great place for families to vacation and have fun together, but adults who are there by themselves are just as deserving of having fun there too.

For a lot of adult fans of family friendly entertainment, a major reason they are drawn to these things is because of the way that it helps to soothe the soul.  For a lot of adults, these types of fandoms are an escape; a way of holding onto something they cherish at a time when life can be hard.  We work long hours and have to deal with the hardships of growing old and seeing a lot of the things that we took for granted suddenly turn into a problem.  When things like that happen, it becomes therapeutic to cuddle with a stuffed animal that you kept since childhood, or re-watch that cartoon you liked from years back that brings back warm memories.  It’s more than just finding comfort in nostalgia; it’s keeping a part of you grounded in the things that make you happy.  Sure, people can sometimes take nostalgia too far and become obsessive with it.  But for the most part, being a dedicated fan of something that was special to you in childhood is not a signifier of immaturity.  A person is not regressing into a childlike state just because they still like things from their childhood.  If anything, fandoms are showing a remarkable amount of complex ingenuity in how they go about showing  their fandom, particularly in lengths they go in contributing to the economy.  There are adults out there that are perfectly willing to spend lots of money shopping for toys on eBay that they remember having when they were young.  Also, a lot of toy companies cater just as much to adults as they do with children.  LEGO produces special lines of model sets just for the adult crowd alongside their ages 3 and up toy sets.  Also, the Funko company sees the majority of their sales coming from adult collectors for their vinyl figure dolls.  It’s a positive sign that the culture no longer looks down on fan communities but instead is actually finding ways to cater to them.  You will still see the occasional YouTube channel try to shame one fan base over the other as a means of stirring controversy as clickbait.  But, in general, adult fans of cartoons and the like are just as mature as any other group.  From CEOs who have action figures displayed in their office to a construction worker who spends their break time playing Pokemon, every adult has that little piece of their childhood they hold onto for comfort in their personal spaces.

So, while Disney Adults are currently finding themselves ridiculed by corners of the internet, they should not be discouraged from continuing to love the things they love.  If anything, they have been unfairly maligned for the perceived sins of the Disney Company itself.  Sure, Disney has it’s fair share of things to be scrutinized and condemned for in it’s history, but none of that should reflect back on the people who still consider themselves devoted fans.  A lot of these Disney Adults are aware of the bad things that happen in the orbit of the Disney Company, and you will find that a good many of them will be among the first to express their displeasure at what Disney has done.  It doesn’t make them any more or less a fan as a result.  Disney Adults are not naïve people, nor are any other fan communities like the Trekkies or several others.  I’ve seen it myself as a Disney Adult, with Parks fans in particular always being suspicious whenever a ride gets replaced at Disneyland or any of the other theme parks.  What I don’t see in the Disney Adult fan base is immaturity.  If anything, there is actually a greater showing of sophistication coming out of the Disney Adult community than I have seen with most other fandoms.  Disney Adults are well informed and active, often showcasing a wealth of knowledge about the entertainment industry as a whole, framed through the lens of Disney.  With my own positive experience within this fan community, it has allowed me to avoid judging other fandoms that I am not a part of harshly.  I am far from being a devoted fan of the Star Trek franchise and will probably never become a Trekkie myself, but I would never begrudge anyone who was one themselves.  In fact, I actually do admire the Trekkie community itself, even as I don’t understand it.  And that’s what fan culture as a whole should be; free of tribalism.  Even when we don’t belong to a certain fan community we should never look down and shame anybody who does belong.  There are so many worthwhile fandoms to be a part of, and in many cases you might find a community that actually helps to make your life better as a whole.  I’ve been a fan of Disney since childhood, and it’s given me a great many memories to cherish, like my first visit to the Disney Studio Lot in Burbank when I was 12, or the many times I’ve gone to the D23 Expo and met other fans just like me.  The best part of fan communities is finding that you are not alone and that there are many people out there who will share that enthusiasm with you.  So, this Disney Adult hopes to convince many of you out there reading this that you should be proud of the things you love, even the stuff that makes you come off as a little childish.

On July 17, 1955, the gates were opened to a place that would change the world of entertainment forever.  After a full year of construction and over $17 million in costs (over $200 million adjusted for inflation) the happiest place on Earth known as Disneyland was ready to meet the world.  In the 70 years since that day, the theme park industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry that has been not just been a boon for tourism and leisure, but also a place to showcase new technological advancements.  Nestled in a Southern Californian suburb called Anaheim, Disneyland may no longer hold the title of the world’s most visited theme park (which is held by Disneyland’s Florida based equivalent Walt Disney World), but it still stands out as a trailblazer and trendsetter in the parks industry.  The Disney company not only looks at the original park as a proving ground for the layouts and implementation of all of the worldwide theme parks they have created, but nearly all other theme parks out there also take a page from the Disneyland textbook.  But, even with all that success, Disneyland was not a success overnight.  It took several years for the park to finally recoup it’s costs, and it almost went under in it’s opening months. The survival of the park is a testament to Walt Disney’s original intent for vision.  In his own words, “As long as there is imagination left in the world, Disneyland will never be finished.”  The park has evolved over the years, replacing outdated attractions with new cutting edge experiences, and in 70 years they have managed to make use of every inch of those 63 original acres of land, and even after all this time they are still not done.  What looked at the time to be Walt Disney’s greatest gamble has turned into his greatest achievement, and perhaps the greatest gift he left for the world in his lifetime.  Of course, beyond just being any old amusement park, Disneyland brought the art of cinema to life, as Walt Disney used his showmanship skills to telling stories in a new way that allowed all of us to visit to actual be a part of the adventure.

Of course Walt Disney didn’t invent the idea of theme parks altogether.  Amusement parks had long been a staple of American culture, dating back to the turn of the century.  The Grand Expositions, including the one held in Chicago in 1893, became these extravagant playgrounds for visitors of all ages, as well as places to demonstrate cutting edge technology.  In the early 20th century, new attractions like the roller coaster started to be become staples of these amusement parks.  While Walt Disney was starting up his fledgling studio in early Hollywood, Californians were frequently going to the beachfront piers, where roller coasters and Ferris wheels were built over the water.  One of the most famous of these, the Santa Monica Pier still operates today, though the original wooden coaster has long been replaced by a newer steel coaster.  Similar parks of that era like Coney Island in New York and Kennywood in Pittsburgh have also withstood the test of time.  But, there were a few specific inspirations that fed into Walt Disney’s imagination when he first conceived of his own park.  One was a trip he made to the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark.  On his trip there, he was stunned by the way that the gardens incorporated it’s rides and attractions around carefully cultivated landscaping; a far cry from the carnival atmosphere of the amusement parks in America.  The second inspiration was Griffith Park in Los Angeles.  The large green space that lies just south of the city of Burbank, where the Disney Studios is located, is nestled on the slopes of Mt. Lee, the mountain that’s home to the Hollywood Sign.  In addition to numerous hiking trails and the Los Angeles Zoo, the park is also home to a now century old carousel.  Walt would frequently bring his two daughters to the park and watch them ride on the carousel.  Walt stated in interviews that while he was happy to see his daughters having fun in the park, he also found that he was bored just sitting on a nearby bench watching them have all the fun.  This prompted him to dream of a place where both the kids and the adults could have fun together.  Now, what Walt was dreaming of making was not impossible to make a reality; but was he the right person to do it.  He was a movie maker; what did he know about how to build theme park?  But as the world would soon learn, theme parks had a lot to learn from him.

At first, Walt Disney looked to build the park in the strip of land between his Burbank studio and the nearby Los Angeles River.  However, it became very evident right away that the land itself would’ve been too small for what Walt Disney had in mind.  Instead, Disney looked across the entire Los Angeles metro area for a plot of land big enough for his park.  He found that piece of land 40 miles away in Anaheim, where an orange grove was being put up for sale by the Dominguez family that owned and operated it for many years.  The grove was just in the right spot, with the construction of what would be the Santa Ana Freeway passing just north of the property.  The land was also big enough for future expansion and a colossal parking lot.  Though it undoubtedly made Walt’s brother Roy nervous, given that he was in charge of all the company’s finances, he nevertheless did what he could to make his brother’s dreams a reality.  The Dominguez farm was purchased and Walt was ready to build.  But he needed something to help get the banks behind his proposal.  Thankfully, being in charge of an animation studio was a great benefit to Walt because he had some of the greatest artists in the world on his staff.  In 1953, he selected one of his artists named Herb Ryman to draft up a rough concept of what this park would look like.  While there are some key differences, it is astounding just how much Ryman’s early concept actually translated into the park we see today.  It’s an ingenious design.  The park is shaped much like a wheel, with one entry lane (which would become Main Street U.S.A.) that leads guests into a central hub and then the spokes of the wheel would be lanes extending from that hub out into all the other sections of the park; or as they would be called Lands.  And at the north end of the hub, a Castle that would be the centerpiece of the park.  The overview map that Herb Ryman drew up would be the blueprint for everything that followed.  While Disney was busy getting things ready for the construction of his park, he realized that things were quickly going to outgrow his operations at the Burbank studio.  So, he set up shop for a new department of his company in nearby Glendale that would solely be devoted to the design and development of his theme park.  This new department would be called WED Enterprises, but over the years we’ve come to know it by it’s newer name, Walt Disney Imagineering.

Construction began in earnest in the Summer of 1954.  Not a moment was wasted as Disney was hoping to have the gates open the following summer.  For the residents of Anaheim that would pass by, they were seeing strange sights as they were seeing things like castle turrets and space rockets appearing in the skyline.  But while construction moved at a frantic pace, Walt Disney needed to ensure that there were going to be people lined up to see his new park.  It just so happened at the same time that he was approached by ABC television to consider producing something for this new medium called television.  They certainly hit Walt at the right time, since he was eager to get the word out about his park.  What came about from this new deal was that Disney would produce a weekly anthology series that broadcast new and classic productions from the Disney studios.  And while Disney was filling that airtime, he could also bring awareness to the public of his park project.  This was one of the first ever examples of cross promotion ever on television.  But, Disney didn’t just treat this show like an hour long advertisement.  Each program would be made under the highest quality standards that Walt himself would approve.  In addition, he would be personally involved, acting as the host of the show himself.  Naturally, he would name this show Disneyland, and it would themed around the different lands that he was planning for his park.  Episodes themed around Fantasyland would be where classic Disney cartoons and feature films would be broadcast as part of the show.  Adventureland would present nature documentaries, including Oscar winning ones that Walt had previously produced.  Frontierland would present new original stories based on historical legends and tall tales, including the story of Davy Crockett which in itself became a cultural phenomenon when it first broadcast.  And Tomorrowland would be a showcase for scientific explorations, including shows that presented ideas about how to get us to the moon.  The show premiered in October 1954 and was a huge success.  Over the years it would go by many different names in it’s long run including The Wonderful World of Color and Walt Disney Presents.  But, the original title of Disneyland did the trick, because by the time the Summer of 1955 rolled around, people were already aware of the name Disneyland, and the many lands it housed.  Towards the end of the first season. Walt finally used his opportunity to showcase what was in store for Disneyland, and the world was ready to finally see it.

The park opened to the world on July 17, 1955, with a nationwide live broadcast to celebrate the occasion, hosted by Art Linklater and future president Ronald Reagan.  In the Town Square of Main Street, Walt delivered his address to officially open the park to guests, declaring, “To all who come to this Happy place, welcome.  Disneyland is your land.”  From then on, the park earned it’s nickname as the happiest place on Earth.  But, it wasn’t all happy at the beginning.  Opening day saw the park overwhelmed by guests, many of whom got in with counterfeit tickets.  There were also a lot of parts of the park that remained unfinished, including spots where the cement pavement hadn’t quite dried.  But, Disney was able to get over the hump of it’s bumpy opening, and in a couple of years Disneyland was one of Southern California’s biggest tourist destinations.  In 1959, Disneyland saw it’s first of many upgrades, with an overhaul of it’s East end that saw the introduction of iconic attractions like the Monorail and the world’s first tubular steel coaster, Matterhorn Mountain.  But Walt Disney wanted to do more than just have Disneyland be an amusement park like so many others across America.  He wanted to use the park to experiment with new technologies that not only would enhance guests’ experience, but would also be useful in the movie making process as well.  A big opportunity came when WED Enterprises was given a commission to develop attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair.  This not only gave a huge boost to the budget for WED, but it also granted them a perfect testing ground for a new experimental technology they were developing; Audio-Animatronics.  These Audio-Animatronics gave the Disney Imagineers the chance to program robotic figures with incredible lifelike movement, and have their movements programed onto an automated computer system that ran on audio cues.  The audio-animatronic characters were a huge leap forward in theme park engineering, and after the World’s Fair concluded, Walt brought the attractions home and implemented them into Disneyland.  They included the shows Carousel of Progress and Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, as well as a true icon with the catchiest of theme songs, It’s a Small World.  But Walt Disney had even bigger plans.  An expansion of the park’s west side themed to the city of New Orleans was being planned, which would included two massive rides that heavily featured the audio-animatronic technology; Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion.  And then there was his most ambitious plan yet for a “Florida Project.”  But sadly, in December 1966, Walt Disney passed away after a losing battle against cancer.

By the time of Walt’s death, there was no doubt in the world that Disneyland was a resounding success.  And the theme park industry was never going to be the same ever again.  Walt’s brother Roy guided the company through the years immediately after his passing and saw his final dream become a reality when Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida in October 1971.  Shortly after that Roy himself would be gone.  But Disney’s Imagineering never stopped working through all the changes, and since then the Disney company has opened four more resorts around the world, located in Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively.  Disney World has also seen 3 more theme parks added to it’s sprawling property, including Epcot, the Disney Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.  Meanwhile, Disneyland itself gained a sister park built in what used to be the parking lot called Disney’s California Adventure, opened in 2001.  But, the Disneyland effect would be felt industry wide.  Amusement parks like those wooden pier beachfront attractions fell out of style, especially in California with the Santa Monica Pier being a rare survivor.  Now parks had to be carefully planned and themed, offering not just a place for cheap thrills, but rather a true escape from the outside world.  A great example of this was just up the road from Disneyland.  Boysenberry farmer Walter Knott saw his little farm grow in popularity over the years, especially after his wife Cordelia’s Chicken Dinner restaurant became a huge draw for the community.  To accommodate the crowds, he built a themed western town attraction next to the restaurant which he called Ghost Town.  After several years, Ghost Town expanded to include rides, including a mine train and log flume, designed by some former Imagineers from Disney.  Further expansions added more and more rides, and soon there was no berry farm left, but instead a theme park in it’s place.  But the name still stayed and today Knott’s Berry Farm has become a beloved theme park in it’s own right.  But the interesting thing about Disneyland’s influence is that more movie studios didn’t jump into the theme park industry like Walt did; instead choosing to license out their IP rather than build a park itself.  The exception though was Universal.  Universal, which long had drawn tourists to it’s studio lot for tours, expanded out and created a theme park of it’s own adjacent to the studio in Hollywood.  It’s also been a catch all for all the IP properties not held by Disney, including Harry Potter (Warner Brothers) Transformers (Paramount) and The Simpsons (formerly Fox and now ironically held today by Disney).  In the theme park industry, Universal has become second only to Disney and are continuing to grow; even in Disney’s back yard nearby in Orlando.

But one thing that Universal’s competition with Disney has managed to do is to increase the presence of IP based themed attractions across the theme park industry; which has been both a good and bad thing.  One thing that unfortunately has been sacrificed over time is the way that theme parks could create their own unique stories; ones that didn’t have to be based on a familiar movie or television show.  But, in recent years, theme parks have increasingly latched themselves onto characters that already have a built in familiarity in order to spotlight their new rides and attractions.  Disney of course drew upon it’s own vast library of titles to inspire new attractions; including one unfortunate case where they used one of their most controversial movies, Song of the South (1946) as the inspiration for one of their most popular rides; Splash Mountain.  And while their new park technology was advancing even further, the studio executives were more comfortable trying the tech out on brands with built in recognition rather than giving it to original ideas.  Disney even sought outside their company for potential brands to take a chance on their new tech.  One of those interested parties was filmmaker George Lucas, who was very interested in a flight simulator concept being devised for the park.  He believed that it was a perfect way to bring his Star Wars universe to life by having guests feel like they are really flying through space.  In 1987, Star Tours officially brought George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise to life at Disneyland.  A few years later, Lucas would collaborate with Disney again on an enhanced motion vehicle concept that would of course be developed for an Indiana Jones ride in Adventureland.  The worlds crafted by George Lucas seemed to perfectly fit within Disneyland, and after Disney gained control of Lucasfilm in 2012, it wasn’t long before an entire land was designed to fully immerse guests into the world of Star Wars, which became Galaxy’s Edge, opened in 2019.  Other sectors of the Disney company have also been given lands of their own in Disney Parks, including Marvel and Pixar.  But there has been a decline over time for attractions that stand on their own independent of IP influence.  Even the stuff that was developed as original ideas for Disney theme parks have inspired their own movies, such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and Jungle Cruise.  Over time, parks have become less worlds of their own and more living advertisements for the sake of corporate synergy.

But there is no denying that Disneyland is more than just any theme park.  There is an aura about the place that still endures even after all the changes it’s gone through over time.  You can still feel the love and care that went into every wall, every pathway, and every little surprise around the corner.  It’s a place for all of the senses.  The way the texture of the faux rock work feels on your skin as you place your hand on it while waiting in line for Big Thunder Mountain.  The sound of the Mark Twain’s bell and whistle echoing throughout the park.  The smell of popcorn wafting in the air from the carts along the pathways.  The taste of churro or a Dole Whip on a hot summer day.  And of course all of the sights that our fondest memories are built on.  This is what sets Disneyland apart.  It’s the one and only park with Walt Disney’s personal touch.  And though many parts of it was recreated in parks around the world, you can definitely tell that Walt’s inspirations were what made this park special to him.  His favorite hobby was building model trains, and what else would be encircling the park than a full sized steam locomotive.  There of course is a carousel at the center of Fantasyland, just like the one Walt took his girls to in Griffith Park.  And if you look above the fire station in Main Street, as well as above the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean, you’ll see secret apartments that Walt built just for himself when he would pay a personal visit.  Though the man is long gone, his influence still reigns over both the Disney parks as well as theme parks around the world.  And the world is better for it.  Theme parks are escapes, and the better the illusion the better the fun.  Walt Disney and his Imagineers used their know how from the world of film-making to improve the theme park experience, from set design influencing the architecture of the parks to using visual effects tricks like animatronics to make the rides all that more immersive.  It helped that many of Walt’s favorite film artists managed to transition so seamlessly into working on projects for Disneyland, like Mary Blair, Marc Davis and of course the songwriting team of the Sherman Brothers.  70 years and still going strong, Disneyland truly has earned that title of the happiest place on Earth.  Though there are many like it, Disneyland is still the gold standard on which all other theme parks today are judged by.  It’s both a place for cutting edge advancement, but also a shrine to a much simpler time.  You can still see much of the original park still standing there today, including the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle that still sits in the heart of it all.  As a long time guest myself, having gone there almost every year since I was little, it still hasn’t lost it’s aura for me.  Above it’s entrance a plaque reads, “Here you leave today and enter the worlds of Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy.”  For me and many others, Disneyland is the closest place we can get to seeing the impossible become possible.

You’ll never go in the water again!  That was the tagline of the monumental blockbuster film Jaws (1975) when it first premiered, and was there ever a tagline that hit it’s mark exactly as it did.  Hollywood was no stranger to creature features.  The whole B-Movie Sci-Fi craze of the 1950’s and 60’s was littered with movies about mankind battling the forces of nature as they run amuck.  But, Jaws was very different from those classics of the past.  It was grounded and devoid of campy cheapness.  It was a film that managed to transcend the the creature feature genre and grab a hold of it’s audience in a way that the industry likely did not expect.  It was a movie that made it’s premise feel real, and for a time, it did in fact make people afraid to go into the water.  Jaws was adapted from a novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, who had a part in adapting his own book into the screenplay alongside screenwriter Carl Gottlieb.  While the story had some of the same tropes as many other creature feature stories, Benchley’s novel rooted it’s premise in a far more grounded story about the people charged with saving their town from a rabid great white shark.  It’s a simple story, but enriched with not just the man vs. nature aspect but also with the friction that occurs between the people involved as they embark on their quest.  It’s just as much a character study as it is a story about hunting a shark.  While the movie had a lot of potential to be a fun action adventure, it would achieve a much greater status in the annals of movie history by falling into the right hands at the right time.  Jaws status as a classic is inexorably tied to the personal growth of the filmmaker who made it; Steven Spielberg.  Jaws was the movie that propelled him to the next level as a filmmaker and he wouldn’t be the icon that he is today 50 years later had it not been for the trials the he was put through in the making of this movie.

Steven Spielberg was an ambitious go-getter right from the start of his career in Hollywood.  Legend has it he snuck off of the famous Universal Studios tour when he was a teenager and wandered around on his own.  He was spared from disciplinary action after a film librarian at the studio was impressed by his ambition and he was granted a three day pass to revisit.  That three day pass expanded into a full time gig as Spielberg became a regular assistant on the studio lot.  He used his odd jobs to help finance a short film called Amblin‘ (1968), which got him noticed by a Universal executive named Sid Sheinberg, who signed the then 20 year old filmmaker to a 7 year contract.  Spielberg would direct several episodes of TV series made on the Universal lot, and he won high marks for his professionalism and ability to run productions on time and on budget.  Spielberg eventually got his chance to direct feature films for Universal, which included the critically acclaimed films Duel (1971) and The Sugarland Express (1974).  But while these movies were well regarded, Spielberg hadn’t had that big break out hit that would turn him into a household name and give him the creative freedom to do what he wanted as a filmmaker.  Thankfully, he still had the favor of Sheinberg, who by 1971 had elevated to the position of President at Universal Studios.  And it was not long after that the novel Jaws was optioned by the studio.  Based on Spielberg’s success with the movie Duel, which featured a story about a man being hunted by giant freight truck, Sheinberg believed that Steven had what it took to make this story about a killer shark work on the big screen.  Spielberg was more than happy to take up the challenge, but given what happened over the next couple years, Spielberg may have had some second thoughts about the assignment.

The making of Jaws was to put it lightly a bit of a “shit show.”  As skilled as Spielberg was up to this point, he had yet to make a movie as complicated as this one.  For one thing, half of the film was going to be set out in open water.  While you could do some of that on a studio controlled flood tank, of which Universal actually has one of the largest in the world, Spielberg believed that you needed the authenticity of being stranded out in the middle of open sea to really convey the terror of the shark’s presence.  So, the production set up shop in Martha’s Vineyard, with the small island community playing the part of the fictional Amity Island from the novel.  The sleepy, tightly knit community provided a good setting for the production of this movie, but it also was a crucial lifeline for the film once it moved into it’s oceanic phase.  In order to make it look like they were out in open water, they had to film several miles out in order to make the island disappear over the horizon.  But Martha’s Vineyard also had the benefit of having shallow waters all around it in a twelve mile radius, with the bottom being only 30 feet below the surface, making salvaging much easier if something went wrong.  And that it did.  Not only were they confined to filming on boats for most of the film shoot, but they were also dealing with three mechanical sharks that would be playing the monster.  Two of the sharks were open on opposite sides in order to create greater mechanical movement depending on the shot and the angle they were capturing it from, while the third was fully skinned and meant to bob up and down in the water, mainly for the shots showing it swimming.  But these sharks would prove to be a nightmare to maintain.  Filming out in the open sea meant that the salt water would constantly wreck havoc on the mechanical instruments puppeteering the sharks, and the sharks would constantly experience multiple issues that delayed shooting for extensive lengths of time.  Salvaging the sharks from the sea floor was also a common occurrence.  The shark problems being a constant nuisance throughout the film shoot caused Spielberg to jokingly name the sharks Bruce, which was the name of his lawyer.

Given all the production woes, Spielberg was constantly worried that he might have the project taken away from him.  He had gone from delivering on time and on budget to massively going over schedule by weeks.  But, it was through these trials that Spielberg really found himself as a filmmaker, developing skills that would carry him through the rest of his career.  While the sharks were giving him trouble, Spielberg used this opportunity to become a problem solver.  He would fill the down time between shooting with the sharks by working on shots that would build the atmosphere of the movie.  His team devised a scene that was not in the original script where Richard Dreyfuss’ character Hopper conducts an underwater investigation of a boat that was potentially attacked by the shark.  The scene is famous for a jump scare as a severed head pops out of one of the holes in the haul of the boat.  So while the scene doesn’t show the shark itself, you still get a sense of the terrifying power it holds after seeing what ends up to it’s victims.  And through all of this, Spielberg learned that it actually worked to the movie’s benefit to show as little of the shark as possible, which helped to make the shots later in the film when he does appear have a lot more impact.  They would only be able to get a handful of shots of the sharks actually working, but they would not be wasted, and thanks to the expertly handled building of dread throughout the film, Spielberg achieved his goal in making the shark absolutely terrifying.  It’s all a trick of signaling the presence of the shark without actually seeing him.  There are several underwater shots that signify the shark’s point of view as we see him swim up towards his victims who are bobbing around on the surface.  Then the movie cuts to the actors as they react to the shark capturing them in it’s razor sharp bite.   Couple this with John Williams’ iconic pulse-pounding musical score that signals the dreaded presence of the shark, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for making us forget that this is just some mechanical shark.  In the end he becomes almost as terrifying as the real thing, and we only ever get 4 total minutes of screen time with him.

But it’s not just the shark that makes Jaws an iconic movie.  Steven Spielberg also lucked out in getting the right actors for the part.  An interesting side note about the director’s history with the source novel is that when Spielberg first read it, he found himself rooting for the shark because he found the human characters so unlikable.  One of the great things about this movie adaptation is that Spielberg managed to make the human characters relatable and worth following to the end of the story.  And it mattered to have the right actors in the rolls too.  Roy Scheider was already a well respected up to this point in his career, having already garnered accolades for his work in the Oscar-winning The French Connection (1971).  He would provide the perfect everyman element to the character of Sheriff Brody.  Rising star Richard Dreyfuss would also bring a wonderful kinetic energy to the film as the cocky, self-made shark expert Hooper.  The working experience between Spielberg and Dreyfuss must’ve really been fruitful as Spielberg would cast him as the lead in his next film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).  But perhaps the most memorable character to come out of the film was the mysterious Captain Quint, played by an absolutely magnetic Robert Shaw.  Quint enters the film with one of the most memorable introductions in movie history, scrapping his nails across a chalk board in order to get the townsfolk’s attention at a community meeting, and with his salty Irish brogue he delivers a character that’s as tough and mean as the shark he hunts.  With echoes of Moby Dick’s Ahab, Quint becomes just as much of a wild card in the story as the shark, and his dynamic in contrast with the two more pragmatic heroes helps to give the movie personalities that are indeed capable of being interesting, independent of the shark.  One of the greatest additions to the film’s story is the scene where the three men have a bonding moment in between shark attacks and share their own stories to each other.  Here, Quint tells the other two about his time on the ill-fated U.S.S Indianapolis; a ship famous for sinking in shark infested waters after delivering the atomic bomb to the navy posted in the Pacific.  The monologue Quint delivers, which was written by an uncredited John Milius, is chillingly told by Robert Shaw, creating one of the movie’s most iconic moments.  Through that and many more moments like it, Spielberg managed to make this more than just a creature feature, but a truly human story about survival in the face of overwhelming terror.

In the end, the movie went overschedule by a staggering 100 days.  Spielberg was worried that this would be the movie to end him, just as he was finally starting to get a foothold as a filmmaker.  No studio would ever hire a director who ended up going three times over schedule like that.  While he still had the favor of Sid Sheinberg at Universal, that might’ve ended as well if the movie failed to recoup it’s costs, which also went massively over budget.  This was going to be the final film on his contract anyways, and there would be no need to renew if they couldn’t trust him anymore.  So, with a lot weighing on his shoulders, Spielberg would assemble his film together in the editing room, hoping that all that hard work translated into a coherent film.  The movie was orignally slated for a Holiday 1974 release, but because of the delays that the film shoot suffered, Universal had to push the release to Summer of 1975.  This was seen as a bad omen for the movie.  Back in those days, summer was seen as a dumping ground for the movie studios as films that were always considered valuable were released towards the end of the year, hoping to garner awards attention.  Summer movies were the throwaway genre flicks that the studios didn’t see much value in since they never grossed as much as the prestige films.  But, things would be different for Jaws.  The delay almost became a blessing in disguise because it not only gave Spielberg the right amount of time to assemble a stronger movie out of his edit, but by the time the film was released, it would be playing in a less crowded field at the box office with no relative competition.  The film opened on June 20, 1975 in one of the widest releases seen up to that point.  Initially wide releases were reserved for maximum saturation for films that studios had no faith behind, but for Jaws, a movie that received instant critical acclaim and wide audience interest, it would be a foundational shake-up for the industry as a whole.  Jaws became a monumental success at the box office, shattering every record in the books, including becoming the first film ever to cross the $200 million mark in it’s original release.  Jaws not only was a success story, it also fundamentally changed Hollywood forever.

If there was anything that has come to define Jaws in the annals of movie history, it’s that it started what would later become known as the era of the Blockbuster.  While Jaws wasn’t the movie that helped to coin the term blockbuster, as previous films like The Sound of Music (1965) and The Exorcist (1973) also were given the label, it was nevertheless seen as the movie that would usher in a new era where movies like it would be the driving force in the commerce of Hollywood.  After the fall of the old studio system and the rise of New Hollywood, the driving force in Hollywood through much of the 60’s and 70’s was auteur driven films from the newest crop of maverick filmmakers like William Friedkin, Brian DePalma and Martin Scorsese.  Spielberg came up through this generation, but he was also set apart from it given his studio connections.  With the success of Jaws, the studios began to fall out of favor with the auteur driven cinema of New Hollywood, which was already starting to see declining returns due to out of control productions like Sorcerer (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Heaven’s Gate (1980).  Now they wanted to have the next Jaws.  There were plenty of cheap copycat movies that tried to capitalize on Jaws success, like Orca (1977) and Piranha (1978), but it wasn’t another Jaws clone that would continue the Blockbuster era into the next decade.  Spielberg’s friend and colleague George Lucas would follow Jaws’ example by releasing his new space opera adventure film Star Wars (1977) in the summer season, and in the end, he too would see a phenomenal success during it’s release, even surpassing the record setting grosses of Jaws.  In the years that followed, the Summer season was no longer viewed as Hollywood’s dumping ground, but would instead be where Hollywood would premiere their biggest tentpoles, capitalizing on audiences off all ages that were out of school and looking to cool off from the summer heat.  And both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg would continue to feed the studios’ appetite for new blockbusters, delivering more in the coming decades with big franchise like Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park.  But all of this change was the result of the turning point that Jaws marked with it’s massive success in the face of all the factors that worked against it.

Steven Spielberg may have been the man who sparked the beginning of a new era in Hollywood, where the Blockbuster would come to dominate, but Jaws was also the movie that forged him into the kind of filmmaker that would continue to survive and grow in the changing Hollywood landscape as well.  The challenging and mostly frustrating production of the movie would be his trial by fire as a filmmaker, and out of it he developed problem solving skills that have made him the most consistent and reliable filmmaker in the business.  Spielberg became the great instinctual storyteller that he is today thanks to the creativity he had to rely upon in order to make Jaws come together.  And even after 50 years, Jaws still is the thrill ride that brings you to the edge of your seat and hasn’t lost any of it’s, shall we say, “bite” over the years.  It’s gone on to have this legendary aura around it, becoming one of the most oft-quoted movies in Hollywood history, especially with Roy Scheider’s now iconic ad-libbed line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  You can still see regular screenings of this film in cinemas all over the world, including a recent one at the TCM Classic Film Festival in April where it played with a pristine 35mm print at the Egyptian.  It also has managed to become a mainstay at the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood, where the Studio Tour has a brief encounter with Bruce the Shark as a part of it’s showcase.  But that’s not the only lasting legacy of Jaws at Universal.  While Spielberg has gone on to make movies at every single studio in Hollywood, he still considers Universal his home base, and when he set up his own production company Amblin Entertainment, he chose to set it up on the Universal lot, next to the bungalows that he once worked out of as a page boy and assistant all those years ago.  You can still see Amblin’s offices just off the main route of the Studio Tour to this day.  Jaws made the Spielberg that we know today, and though it may have been a nightmare at the time, there’s no doubt that Spielberg is proud of what he accomplished with the film.  Those grueling 150 days of shooting set the stage for the next 50 years of Spielberg’s life and he’s still not done yet.  We may have been afraid to go back into the water that fateful summer, but we’ve always returned back to this movie again and again, and that will continue for the next 50 years as well.

It is really quite interesting looking at a movie like Brokeback Mountain (2005) in the context of the 20 years since it’s release in theaters.  For a lot of things, it was a pivotal film for many different things.  It solidified director Ang Lee as one of the industry’s greatest filmmakers, earning him his first Oscar for directing, a landmark as the first Asian filmmaker to win that prestigious honor.  It was also a crucial film in the budding acting careers of Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams.  It was also a major touchstone in the all too brief body of work for actor Heath Ledger who sadly would be lost to us in a short couple of years after his appearance in this film.  But, above all else, Brokeback Mountain stood as a monumental step forward for queer themed movies in Hollywood.  In the 20 years since this movie came out, there have been many social progressions in queer representation in cinema, with the presence of queer characters and storylines no longer being niche, but rather a natural part of the fabric of the culture.  But, 20 years ago, things were quite different, and Brokeback Mountain stood out much more as a provocative statement in it’s time.  Over the years, we’ve seen attitudes change, and it puts Brokeback into a different frame now in retrospect.  Does it still resonate with a culture that has seen so much change in 20 years, or is it becoming more of a relic of it’s time.  There are many ways to dissect Brokeback Mountain as a work of cinema, but it’s place in queer cinema is where it has stood out the most.  It certainly wasn’t the first movie centered on queer themes to be made, nor even the first mainstream film to center on queer characters.  But it perhaps was the most profound statement made in it’s time about how Hollywood as a whole wanted to deal with queer rights in society which was to be fully supportive of it.  And that was crucial as the fight for queer rights in America were reaching a breaking point.

One of the  most provocative things about Brokeback Mountain was that it was telling an overtly queer story in a genre that typically was associated with hyper masculinity; the Western.  The movie was adapted from a short story written by American author Annie Proulx.  It covers the story of two cowboys named Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist who are hired to herd sheep in a grazing range near the titular Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming.  Out in the middle of nowhere with only each other for company the two form an attachment which eventually turns into sexual desire.  After the weeks long assignment ends, the two men go their separate ways.  They both find new lives and jobs, get married and have children.  But, there’s always that nagging draw in the back of their minds about the time they spent alone at Brokeback Mountain.  They eventually reunite, and sneak away on camping trips which cover for their romantic flings.  Over time, this secretive arrangement they’ve made for themselves takes it’s toll on their relationship as well as on their marriages.  They know that if their secret gets out, it’s more than just public shame for them; in certain parts of the country it also means death.  For the sake of their sanity and what’s left of their relationships with their broken families, they part ways for good.  Years later, Ennis learns that Jack did in fact run afoul of the wrong kinds of people who looked down on their love, and it leaves an empty place in his heart now with no one else to share his secret love with.  Annie Proulx wrote her story as a reflection of what she observed in rural North America.  She would spot lonely men in country bars who often appear to be looking at the other men, but had to put on a rugged exterior in order to throw off suspicion.  She didn’t know for sure what these men were hiding, but it gave her the inspiration for writing about cowboys who had to hide their secret homosexual desires behind the aesthetic of a rugged outdoorsman, as she stated herself in an interview, “I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.”

Her short story was acclaimed when it was first published and immediately garnered the attention of screenwriter Diana Ossana.  Ossana sought Annie Proulx’s approval to adapt the story into a feature script, which Proulx agreed to despite reservations about whether it could be done.  While Ossana was an accomplished writer in her own right, she also had a writing partner on this screenplay that would be crucial for the adaptation; acclaimed writer Larry McMurtry.  McMurtry was very much the godfather of modern Westerns with an impressive body of work that included dozens of novels and short stories.  He’s perhaps best know for his Lonesome Dove series, which was turned into an acclaimed TV mini-series starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.  Movies that were based on his novels have also become classics, including neo-Westerns like Hud (1963) and The Last Picture Show (1971).  McMurtry and Ossana had collaborated on a few novels before and they had a great rapport together.  Larry loved the story that Ossana brought to him with Brokeback Mountain, and he had the Western bona fides to give it that genuine rugged American cowboy flavor.  They completed their screenplay almost a year after the original publication of the story in 1998, but the film would languish in development for a couple years.  Hollywood was still hesitant to invest in a provocative and unapologetic story about gay love, especially as the conservative Bush administration was coming into power.  New Queer Cinema icon Gus Van Sant expressed interest in the script for a while, with the intent of casting Matt Damon and Joaquin Phoenix in the roles of Ennis and Jack.  That eventually fell through as Gus became more intent on filming his Harvey Milk biopic project instead.  Eventually, producer James Schamus at Focus Features decided to take a chance on the film, and he handed it over to his long time collaborator Ang Lee.  Lee was an interesting choice to tackle this project, as he was very versatile filmmaker.  In between this and his Oscar nominated martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Lee was just coming off his failed attempt at a Marvel super hero movie, Hulk (2002), proving that he was open to making any kind of movie regardless of genre.  It wasn’t Lee’s first attempt at a queer themed storyline, which was 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, but it would be his first attempt at a Western.  Still, Brokeback Mountain had extraordinary luck in not only having a team of prestige writers and filmmakers in their corner, but with Focus Features involved they were getting the backing of a major studio as well.

Brokeback Mountain was released at a very crucial time in American society.  We were entering a hotly contested debate over the matrimonial rights for gay and lesbian couples in the United States.  In 2004, Massachusetts became the first US state to recognize same-sex marriage as a legal right for it’s citizens.  This set off a firestorm from the religious right, saying that it was an affront to “traditional marriage,” and they began to push back on this groundbreaking advancement in gay rights.  Unfortunately for many in the queer community, the anti-gay right wing had the political muscle to get push back.  Republican president George W. Bush and his administration used this as a wedge issue in their re-election campaign and were pushing for more bans on same-sex marriage across the country.  Sadly, the majority of states did ratify these bans into law, including deep blue California with their controversial Proposition 8.  There was even a move to write a ban of same-sex marriage into the Constitution with a “traditional marriage amendment.”  This was the flashpoint that Brokeback Mountain was brought into; a moment where the debate over same-sex marriage was the primary focus of the American “culture wars.”  In a way, this was both a blessing and a curse for the movie.  One, it was a prestige film that was going to garner more attention because the subject it was tackling was very much a focal point of the cultural conversation at the time.  But, it was also going to become the poster child for this same era of conflict, and become the target of the same backlash that the queer community was facing during this time.  The movie would be the talk of the town, but also the focal point of a debate that it may not have been built for.  Regardless, the movie premiered to critical acclaim when it first released in the Fall of 2005, and it was for the longest time seen as the clear front runner in the Oscar race for that year.  It’s eventual loss to Crash (2005) of course would set off another firestorm of it’s own.

The Oscar controversy aside, Brokeback Mountain would have a more lasting effect on the industry that did lead to profound change not just in Hollywood, but in the culture as a whole.  With a solid box office and substantial collection of awards to it’s credit, Hollywood was finally seeing that queer themed films were actually quite valuable and worth investing in.  This was helpful for Gus Van Sant’s previously mentioned Milk (2008), which became an Awards season success just a few short years later.  But it wasn’t just with prestige films that we were seeing this change happen.  The stigma of queer representation in movies became less and less of an obstacle and more of a feature of the industry.  Gay characters were popping up more and more on the silver screen and on television, and not just as a stereotype there to be made fun of.  The same evolution was also happening across the country, with a backlash starting to grow against the backlash to queer rights.  The incoming Obama administration took a much different approach towards the LGBTQ population.  While initially playing things down the middle, then Vice President Joe Biden stirred the conversation again by rightly pointing out how absurd these same-sex marriage bans were.  Eventually the administration embraced the idea of decriminalizing same-sex marriage, and California’s Prop 8 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, thereby nullifying all bans on the books and making it legal in all 50 states.  How much Brokeback Mountain had a hand in this change is uncertain, but the movie certainly put focus on the conversation that was desperately needed, and perhaps helped to strengthen the resolve of Hollywood to no longer ignore this very vital community in the culture at large.

It is a much different world now than it was back when Brokeback Mountain was first released into theaters.  Attitudes towards same-sex relationships have certainly changed.  The stigma around same-sex marriage is almost completely gone, with now a vast majority of Americans having a positive opinion about it, with only the most rabid religious fundamentalists having any issue with it today.  Even still, there is still a lot of people out there trying to silence and erase queer voices in media.  The Trump administration in particular has courted many people intent on rolling back queer rights into his government, while also hypocritically proclaiming himself to be an ally for the queer community.  The times have changed, but a movie like Brokeback Mountain faces a challenge in trying to remain a relevant factor in this conversation.  Does it hold up in these changing times.  One thing that has negatively effected it’s place in queer cinema is surprisingly the way it deals with the relationship between it’s two characters.  One of the ways that Hollywood has dealt with garnering sympathy for the rights of queer people in society is to turn their stories into tragedies.  It does play into the underdog aspect of wringing sympathy from the viewer towards the plight of this persecuted community, but it does also send the wrong message to people who are still struggling with their identity.  This is what a lot of people today identify as the “kill you gays” trope, where a gay character is often doomed in the narrative as motivation for the plot.  Queer people don’t deny that the hardships of their struggle for rights need to be documented, but they also believe that these stories should also be balanced with stories of affirmation and triumph as well.  The fact that Brokeback Mountain ends on such a downer may be crucial for it’s own story, but what kind of message does it send to a young viewer still struggling to come out to see that queer relationships often end in heartbreak or tragedy.  It’s perhaps why much more queer themed movies today try to show more triumphant stories about love and adversity than the tragedies that often flavored their presence on the big screen before.  It also helps that many more of these movies are coming from a more insider perspective, made by queer filmmakers for the purpose of being inspirational.  Annie Proulx, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurty and Ang Lee are all well-meaning in telling this story, but they are also coming at it from an outsider perspective, which comes across as being more about pity than anything else.  It’s a good thing that we are moving beyond movies like Brokeback Mountain and presenting queer characters and storylines that don’t have to be marked by tragedy in order to be successful.

It works much better to look at Brokeback Mountain on it’s own merits as a story about love blossoming in the unlikeliest of places.  Ang Lee’s involvement serves well here, because he is never once trying to thrust the message of the movie to the forefront.  He presents the film as an unexepected love story framed within the aesthetic of the American West, and how that contrast plays out.  There’s no cinematic flourish to the love-making scenes in the movie; they play out in a very realistic way, with both men not really knowing exactly what to do in the situation.  There’s a naturalistic flow to Ang Lee’s direction, with him playing the scenes out as honest to life as possible.  It’s not a titilating movie or a preachy one either.  He’s concerned first and foremost with the lives of these characters, and how the forces of society are weighing down on them.  It helps that his actors approached the material with the same kind seriousness.  The film’s most standout performance, however, belongs to Heath Ledger.  Ledger, who had been a rising star in Hollywood for some time, was finally given the oppurtnity to play a role with great emotional depth, allowing us all to see what he really was capable of as an actor.  And we saw the making of a superstar with this performance.  Ledger’s performance as Ennis del Mar is a total transformation, showing emotional depth and command over a character that is truly impressive.  You also don’t even feel like he’s acting, as he just embodies this character wholly.  It’s through his performance that we especially feel the schism between the way a man like him presents himself publicly, with a stoic cowboy exterior, and how he feels internally with his desire to embrace the man he loves.  Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance is a bit showier and doesn’t quite stand up as well as Ledger’s, but the chemistry between the actors still works.  The real surprise though is Michelle Williams as Ennis’ lovelorn wife Alma.  The actress, who up to that time was most well known for the primetime soap Dawson’s Creek,  was finally given the chance to act in a film where she could really show her dramatic chops, and she has since become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and awarded actresses.  Sadly, Heath Ledger was unable to see the legacy of his performance play out after his untimely death in 2008.  But there was one positive outcome of his work in this movie that still literally lives on to this day.  Both Ledger and Williams fell in love during the making of this movie, and they had a daughter together named Matilda who was born in 2005, right when the movie was hitting theaters.  Now 19 years old, Matilda is carrying on the torch of her late father and keeping his memory alive.

It’s undeniable that Brokeback Mountain is a pivotal film in the history of queer cinema, but it’s also a good thing that Hollywood has also moved past it.  As queer themes have become more mainstream in movies not just on the outskirts of Hollywood, but by the actual studio system itself, the more provocative films of the past now look like time capsules of a different time period, when things were not so great.  But, that also doesn’t mean that these films should be forgotten either.  We need to still see where we once were to know how far we have come.  Brokeback Mountain was made to make a statement at a crucial time when it almost looked like we were about to enshrine discriminations against same-sex relationships into the Constitution itself.  With gay marriage now not just the law of the land, but also embraced by the vast majority of Americans, the statement made by movies like Brokeback now seem quaint and irrelevant.  But, complacency often leads us to forgetting the importance of our hard fought for rights and it can lead to an erosion of those rights over time if we are not careful.  That’s why movies like Brokeback Mountain are still important, because it reminds us of the struggle and what it took to get where we are as a community.  When it first came out, Brokeback Mountain was undeniably provocative and stirred a conversation worth having.  As a young twentysomething closeted gay man when this movie first came out, I too struggled with how to respond to it.  I shamefully tried to dismiss it too, running away from my own feelings because the movie was very much showing me the struggle that came with being queer in America.  But over time, I saw why the struggle was necessary and I was able to accept who I am without fear, and in turn, I accept the movie much more now as a cinematic milestone.  I acknowledge that I am a better man today, and while I still have some reservations about the movie (particularly with it’s tragic gay tropes), I do now wish to celebrate it for what it did for queer representation in cinema.  Back then, some of us wished we could quit Brokeback Mountain, but now with the world once again challenging our rights in the queer community, we need this movie and the many more films of the Queer Cinema movement to inspire us to fight for a better future again.

Hollywood, like the rest of society, is prone to major moments of upheaval whenever major breakthroughs are made in technology.  Just look at the history of cinema and how it responded to new things like synchronized sound, television, and the internet over the last century.  Some corners of the film industry manage to find their footing by embracing new technology, but there are others who are not so lucky.  The advent of sound put a lot of actors out of work because they didn’t have the right voice for cinema and their style of performance that was geared towards acting through silence was seen as old fashioned.  Computer Animation in the digital age also shook up the world of visual effects, where craftsmen and women who developed elaborate practical effects that were shot live on set were suddenly replaced with blue screens that would later be filled in with CGI by technicians working at a computer stand months later.  Not to say that these new technologies were all a bad thing.  New tools allowed cinema to grow and evolve, which was in the long run a positive for the industry.  But, disruptions aren’t accomplished without a cost to the old ways of doing things, which in of themselves were also instrumental to helping to build the artform.  Sound helped the movies talk, but we also lost the bold experimental storytelling of the silent era movies.  Computer animation brought some amazing visuals to the big screen that couldn’t have been done with just practical effects, but it also has led to a lot more movies feeling artificial compared to the tactile physical effects that were hand crafted.  And the biggest cost of all, big disruptions also put a lot of people out of work; many of whom who were specialized in some fields that sadly phased out.  It’s unfortunate, but that’s the cycle that Hollywood has gone through in it’s entire history.  And there are more disruptions to come in the future.

The one that is especially worrying the industry right now is the beginnings of what is being called an AI Revolution.  Many start-up companies, and also ones with ties to already established tech giants like Google and Meta, are making significant advancements in the development of Artificial Intelligence.  This is far more than the Siri and Alexa assistants on our smart home devices.  The newer AI programs are starting to perform more complex functions including autogenerating text responses to any prompt you give it.  ChatGPT has become a widely used app that people now use for content creation, which can be anything from a text response to a full length speech.  These text prompts are now finding their way into many different written documentation, including term papers, website pages, and most worrying to professionals in the film industry, screenplays.  At the moment, the technology isn’t perfect and some of the robotic sounding phrasing of ChatGPT’s text prompts betrays it’s artificiality.  But, like most artificial intelligence, it learns as it develops, and the imperfections are getting harder to detect.  The presence of an AI that can produce long form amounts of text is one thing, but what is especially worrying is the advancements made in visual AI technology.  Now a text prompt can generate a visual image and more recently, we’ve also seen it create moving images.  There’s talk that this will be the technology that will ultimately destroy Hollywood and the film industry as we know it, and the sad reality is that there is a possibility that it could, depending on how it is used.  It should be noted that AI isn’t advanced enough yet to replace the actual art of physically making a movie, but it’s also a technology that’s still in it’s infancy and growing up very fast.

For those wondering why Hollywood was brought to a standstill 2 years ago with the dual strikes of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, this was a big reason why.  The guilds of Hollywood were seeing what Silicon Valley was doing with their big push into AI, and they wanted to establish some guardrails before it put a lot of current and future careers in jeopardy.  Thankfully, the studios and the guilds agreed to new standards when it came to due compensation if someone’s likeness or written work was used in any AI programming, but development into AI technology within the industry was still allowed to continue.  It’s not just the main guilds that are getting affected by this new tech, but every other below the line profession as well.  If you could just make a movie in a computer that looks about as real as anything that was shot on a set, well that risks the jobs of camera operators, lighting technicians, set builders, make-up and hair dressers, truck drivers and caterers, all whose livelihoods are dependent on there being a steady stream of new films and shows being made.  But, the big movie studios would also like to cut their costs, and making movies and shows with fewer people involved is something that sounds appealing to them.  The rise of streaming saw a giant ramp up in production across the industry, but it also blew massive holes into the budgets of the companies that own the platforms as they were all in an arms race to have the most “content” available for their customer base to watch.  The promise of AI being a cheap alternative is something that would appeal to lot of studio execs who have had to write a lot more paychecks over the last decade.

There’s one big issue with trying to use AI as a replacement for physical filmmaking, beyond the obvious one that AI made films still look fake.  Artificial Intelligence, in order to function, must assemble data from the internet in order to create the desired product of it’s prompt’s request.  It’s the one thing that AI still is incapable of accomplishing which is an original idea.  It can imitate, but it can’t create something whole cloth that is new.  So, when we see something that resembles a movie that was developed using AI, there’s a noticeable lack of visual ingenuity.  The image we see is a cobbled together amalgamation of many other things.  There was a demo released on the internet a couple months back of a cinematic car chase that was entirely made using AI.  Some AI enthusiasts said that this was the death of Hollywood, but closer inspection of the visuals in the clip showed how visually inconsistent the actual clip was.  The driver behind the wheel changed appearance multiple times and even the model of the car differed in various shots.  And the streets that it was driving through also had various weird things going on in the background.  The technology may advance to a point where these inconsistencies may be smoothed out, but it doesn’t address the big problem all together.  There’s a general lack of authenticity to the visuals that AI creates.  To make a story that connects with an audience, it takes a human touch to know things like the Mise en Scene of the shot they are constructing and how to edit the shots together for emotional impact.  AI only follows what it’s instructed to do, which doesn’t follow an emotional current.  That’s why it’s visual language is random.  Also, by combining data off of the internet, AI also runs the risk of cannibalizing data that was created by other AI programs, and that often leads to corrupted results that can sometimes appear nightmarish.

The big question is, will audiences care if they are fed more content that is AI generated.  We are seeing a test run of this phenomenon play out currently in our media landscape.  Social media has been flooded with a ton of AI generated images.  Many of them are absurdly artificial and can be easily identified, but the worrying ones are the ones that are trickier to spot.  The especially worrying aspect of AI is how it’s seeping into the world of politics.  Many bad faith actors are using AI for propaganda purposes, creating false images that can feed into misinformation campaigns.  A lot of altered images are easy to swat down now, but as technology improves, it will be more difficult and we will find ourselves living more in a post-truth world.  It becomes even scarier when moving images come into play.  Are people more discernable when it comes to noticing things that aren’t real in visual media?  There’s this thing in computer animation known as the “uncanny valley” where the animation that’s created in a computer attempts to feel as lifelike as possible but reaches a state where the likeness becomes off-putting and repulsed by the viewer.  This was a big reason why motion-capture animation never was able to take off; at least as a replacement for standard computer animation.  The brief period where Hollywood tried to make motion capture a thing, which was spear-headed by filmmaker Robert Zemekis with films like The Polar Express (2004) and Beowulf (2007) is not looked back upon with favorability and thankfully died off pretty quick.  But, motion capture does survive in a way as a tool to mix realistic digital characters with live action ones; such as those in the Avatar movies.  AI’s future could run a similar course where audiences reject it as a full replacement for the art of cinema and instead sees it used as a tool in the arsenal of digital artists in the future of visual effects.  The future either way is still uncertain, but for everyone’s sake, it’s better if AI on it’s own is not a catch all fix for all of Hollywood’s problems.

The thing with AI technology is that it’s only bad when used in a bad way.  There are ways that Hollywood could implement AI technology in a beneficial way.  Streamlining the visual effects process is one example where it’s benefits can be useful.  One of the big problems facing the film industry today is the overworked and underpaid labor in visual effects.  So many digital artists are forced into this “crunch” culture of digital rendering, meaning that many of them are working round the clock in order to deliver their rendered shots on time under sometimes unrealistic deadlines.  Many digital artists find it difficult to work under these conditions and it’s only gotten worse in the rise of streaming.  Over time, it’s led not just to a downgrade in quality visual effects for many projects, but a workforce that often has succumbed to bad health due to the long hours as well as a more toxic work environment.  Some AI programs that can carry some of the workload in limited areas could indeed help many of these digital artists meet their deadlines without there being a dip in quality as well as giving them a better work experience as a whole.  There are a lot of applications where it does seem like a little AI assistance could be beneficial, but because people in the industry are wary of what the introduction of these tools may end up replacing, it’s difficult to be nuanced about the good aspects of AI.  We saw one controversy erupt last year when it was revealed that AI was used by the film The Brutalist (2024) in it’s production.  The Brutalist, which was a mostly hand-crafted low budget film, used AI for one specific reason, which makes sense when you learn more about it.  The film’s editor, David Jancso, wanted to have the lead actors sound more authentically Hungarian like their characters should.  Jancso, who is Hungarian himself, used an AI program named Respeecher, which allows someone to mask their own voice with another one entirely.  This is a program that has been used before by Lucasfilm to replicate James Earl Jones’ voice for new lines for Darth Vader, and in The Brutalist’s case, Jancso used his own correct annunciation of Hungarian vowels to fix the line readings of Adrain Brody and Felicity Jones in the movie.  Their performances are still authentically their own, but Respeecher allowed their Hungarian to sound closer to what it should be.  Still, this stirred a bit of controversy and it’s a small possibility that it might have cost the film the Best Picture award at the Oscars.

It is healthy for the Hollywood community to be skeptical.  This is something that if put into the wrong hands could end up ruining cinema as we know it.  The big concern is that the studios are going to do whatever they can to make more money, and the belief is that investing more into AI would be worth it in the long run if it meant that they would have a tighter control over how much money they’ll be spending.  But there are a massive amounts of unseen costs that could lead to more trouble down the road.  To replace the amount of production that is involved in making a full length movie, it would take a massive amount of data processing, which means using a significant amount of server space in data centers across the world.  Using data centers is not cheap, and it also uses up a lot of energy to run them, which could also lead to significant environmental impacts as well.  And all this for something that is not going to be new and original, but rather a faint reproduction of many other things that we’ve already seen.  It all depends then on if the audience is eager to buy the product they are serving up.  It’s hard to say what that result may be.  We are already in a moment of cultural stagnation where the majority of new movies out there are either sequels or remakes.  Hell, we just witnessed A Minecraft Movie gross nearly a billion dollars at the global box office, which kind of tells you that we may be already primed to accept AI slop at our local movie theaters.  But, there are signs that people have more discerning tastes than that.  Take a look at the rise and fall of other tech advancements in the last couple years.  The NFT market thankfully died a quick death after people realized that owning digital art was fairly pointless and also a scam, and people are also opening up their eyes to the fraudulent nature of crytocurrency as well.  We’ll have to see if people call the bluff of those pushing AI generated media on us as well.  What may ultimately decide things one way or another is how many creative people may end up using the technology.

Strangely enough, we have been programmed to distrust AI over the years by Hollywood itself.  From HAL 9000, to Skynet, to Ultron, Hollywood has made AI feel like a very sinister force that often intends to eliminate humanity altogether.  And it’s understandable to be fearful of the technology.  The biggest threat that it currently possess is the possibility that it may replace us in the workplace, and in many professions it already has.  The sad thing is, we are largely responsible for all of the threats that AI poses for our future because we are addicted to convenience.  We like using self-checkouts at the grocery store and using Google to help us with our research instead of going out to the library.  Streaming has also caused us to move away from attending the movie theater, and pretty soon it will try to replace the very act of movie-making itself.  But, it’s something that we can still have the power to push back on if we still value movies as they are.  There are thankfully many filmmakers out there who are still making movies that are as practically constructed as they can be and are still able to find their audience.  The recent success of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025), a fully original film made by real artists and utilizing actual, physical film stock in it’s making and presentation is a good sign that audiences are still hungry for true cinematic experiences.  Even with a million detailed prompts AI could never make something as new and original as Sinners because it took a lifetime of human experience to craft that kind of story and make it connect with audiences.  There’s hope that this will convince the studios that they need to still invest in original films made by actual people.  The AI encroachment will always be there as the technology continues to be refined.  But like how music lovers rediscovered the beauty of vinyl in recent years and the steadily increasing loyal fan base of physical media shoppers out there, there will always be an appetite for something that’s real and that’s what will ultimately be what drives the future of cinema.  AI at best is a tool that can help the business improve beyond it’s shortcomings, but it can’t motivate change in the same way that a new voice and original idea can.

The Disney Renaissance ushered in a Golden Age for the art of animation.  After many decades of being a niche market for little kids, animated movies were suddenly becoming big blockbusters once again; films that all ages were enjoying equally.  But it wasn’t just on the big screen that Disney Animation was succeeding.  Their TV animation department was also blossoming alongside the Renaissance films of the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Disney had developed a number of hugely successful Saturday morning cartoon shows that also became highly influential.  They often featured already established Disney characters, such as Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers and Tail Spin, which starred Baloo from The Jungle Book (1967).  They were also developing hit shows with original characters too, like Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles.  One show in particular, the Scrooge McDuck centered Duck Tales became such a huge hit that it even spawned it’s own theatrical film.  Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990) was certainly more ambitious than the average episode of the show, but it was also limited by a slightly larger than TV sized budget that the studio allocated for it.  Needless to say, the Duck Tales movie didn’t light up the box office the same way that the TV series had on the airwaves.  But, the attempt to make it work did garner the attention of the new regime that was in charge at Disney during the 1980’s.  In particular, Animation head executive Jeffrey Katzenberg believed that the popularity of the shows made for strong contenders of a new plan he had for his animation feature department.  As the studio was buzzing with the development of their A-list projects like Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), Katzenberg was looking for a way to put more films in development that were smaller in scale but still retained that high quality Disney style to them, essentially creating a B-move department.  There were plenty of good shows to choose from to jumpstart this new project pipeline at Disney, but which one would be the movie to get the first green light.

The block of Disney cartoon series became so popular that even the programming block it spawned was given it’s own name: The Disney Afternoon.  The Disney Afternoon block of shows would switch once a new program was launched each year, keeping the line-up fresh over many years.  The first new show to jump into the line-up was very unlike the others.  After giving the spotlight to many secondary characters from the Disney stable, or entirely new ones as well, it was decided to give one of the Fab Five Disney characters their own show.  And who better to headline a new series than Goofy himself.  The character, who first launched in 1932 with the name Dippy Dawg, had been a popular mainstay in Disney’s many theatrical shorts over the years.  And Goofy was also a character who could be re-molded for any time period as well, which has helped him to stay relevant all these years while still maintaining his core characteristics.  His new show would be called Goof Troop, which followed the everyday adventures of Goofy and his son Max, as well as their neighbors, the Pete family.  Goof Troop was very different from all the other Disney Afternoon shows, which were often more action adventure based.  Goof Troop by contrast was much more grounded, choosing instead to be a domestic, situational comedy.  It was a show about the quirks of suburban life, with Goofy often getting himself and others into some very silly situations.  And it was a huge hit for the Disney Afternoon.  While people enjoyed all of Goofy’s trademark goofiness, it was also the relatable day to day issues that the characters dealt with that helped to make it a favorite with audiences.  And what’s more, it was a premise that could easily translate into a theatrical story as well.  And that’s what the newly formed B-team at Disney thought as well.  It all depended on if Jeffrey Katzenberg thought the same way they did, so a story team was assembled to pitch the idea of a Goof Troop movie.

Some of the earliest people involved on the project included producer Brian Pimental and story writer Jymn Magon.  Magon had worked as a writer for Disney Television for some time, including on Goof Troop, so he was an ideal choice to put together the first draft of what would be the script for the movie.  Eventually, the team had the script storyboarded out and was ready to present to Katzenberg.  However, it didn’t take very long for Katzenberg to see the problems with the story right away.  The initial story was too close the original show, and Katzenberg thought it lacked heart.  It was just a 80 minute collection of shenanigans with Goofy, and Jeffrey wanted something deeper that he believed would connect more with an audience.  So, despite feeling dejected, the Goofy movie team went back and streamlined their script even more.  Eventually, most of the side characters from the animated series would be excised from the story, including Pete’s wife Peg and his daughter Pistol.  In the end, much of the Goof Troop elements would be left out and this new movie would become more of it’s own entity, with only the characters of Goofy, Max, Pete and his son P.J. being the connecting threads.  And even they would be different to their TV counterparts.  The character who went through the most significant change was Max.  Max has more or less been around since the 1950’s in Disney cartoons, where he was known as Junior in his earliest appearances.  He was renamed Max for the series Goof Troop, was was given a very contemporary, 90’s style personality.  But for the movie, he would be changed even further.  The movie aged Max up to his teenage year, made him less self confident and more at odds with his father.  And it was in exploring this aspect of Max beginning to mature and growing in more contrast with his father that the filmmakers found the heart of the film they were looking for.

What was important in getting this story to work was having a vision that could make the more dramatic themes feel natural, which was not easy for a film that starred a character like Goofy.  A rising star in Disney’s animation department, Kevin Lima, was tapped to direct the film.  This wouldn’t just be his first time directing a feature; it would be his first time directing anything ever.  To make it even more daunting, he would have to supervise production across three different studios in three different continents.  The Burbank studio would be the main base of operations, but most of the animation would be done off-site at Disney’s international animation studios in France and Australia.  While this would’ve normally been a recipe for disaster for a first time director, Kevin Lima proved that he could indeed pull a project like this together.  One thing that helped to make him an ideal choice in guiding this project was the fact that he had a personal connection to the story.  As revealed in the recent Disney+ documentary about the making of the film, Lima had an estranged relationship with his own father, who abandoned him and his family when he was still young.  Taking on this story about a father and son reconnecting through a road trip experience was therapeutic in a way for him, and it motivated him towards getting that sense of bonding across in the story.  He also had the benefit of a team of animators who wanted to show that they were more than just the B-team at Disney.  While it didn’t have the same budget as say Aladdin, the Goofy Movie would still have some of the best rising talents at the studio eager to show off what they could do.  The French studio in fact had a team of twin artists named Paul and Gaetan Brizzi who would later go on to create some of the studio’s most artistically daring sequences in the years ahead.  With a story that had emotional resonance in place and the full blessing of Jeffrey Katzenberg, A Goofy Movie was finally set into motion.  But it’s success wasn’t always a guarantee.

Unlike all of the other animated features made by Disney at the time, A Goofy Movie was not a fantasy or a grand adventure.  It was a road trip movie.  The story involves Goofy wanting to take his son Max on a fishing trip in the hopes that it will mend their strained relationship.  Meanwhile, Max has become increasingly resentful of the traits he’s gotten from his father, fearing that he’s going to grow up to be just like him, so he’s been trying to reinvent himself in the pursuit of impressing a girl that he a crush on at school; Roxanne.  The majority of the movie has the two of them at odds over how they should deal with their relationship; Max wants to break free and Goofy wants to stay connected.  Eventually things come to a head when Max deceives his father, having them steer away from Goofy’s plan to go fishing and instead pointing them in the direction of a concert for Max’s favorite singer that he lied to Roxanne about knowing personally in a desperate ploy to impress her.  But, through the friction, Goofy and Max come to a realization that they can’t stop either from being who they are. Goofy realizes that Max has his own path in life to follow, and Max realizes that his father is always there for him and that being his son is not a curse like he believed it was.  Kevin Lima pointed out one scene in particular where we see this dynamic really coalesce in the story, and that in what he calls the “Hi Dad” soup sequence.  In that scene, where the two are forced to take refuge in their car after an encounter with Bigfoot, they start to break down their defenses and find common ground for the first time.  It’s a scene that you rarely see in any animated feature, let alone one from Disney.  It’s just a parent and their child reflecting on their relationship and getting to the root of why they’ve grown apart.  The fact that they managed to make a scene like this work with a character as inherently cartoonish and silly as Goofy is really a testament to how well the filmmakers handled tone and character in their film.  It’s not too serious, or too silly; it’s just like a conversation you would see in real life, and that was kind of revolutionary in animation.  There’s no wishing on a star to solve these characters problems; this was as true to life as any Disney Animated movie ever got in terms of their storytelling.

One of the major contributors to making A Goofy Movie work as well as it does was the voice cast assembled.  Strangely enough, this is also where things could’ve gone disastrously wrong as well.  Jeffrey Katzenberg had seen what putting Robin Williams in the role of the Genie in Aladdin did for that film’s record-breaking box office, and he believed that the best way to sell a animated film was to put a celebrity name behind it; something that he would pursue more when he left to start Dreamworks Animation years later.  Kevin Lima revealed in recent years that there was a possibility for a while that Goofy was going to be given a celebrity voice.  In particular, he had Steve Martin in mind.  This distressed Goofy’s official voice at the time; veteran vocal artist Bill Farmer.  Farmer had been voicing Goofy since 1987, including in every episode of Goof Troop.  He was hoping to also carry that over into A Goofy Movie, but this plan to change Goofy’s voice left him shocked, making him wonder why someone didn’t want Goofy to sound like Goofy.  A test sample was made, with Bill voicing Goofy in his normal voice to show Katzenberg how it would actually sound in practice, and thankfully Jeffrey saw the error in his plan and allowed Bill Farmer to continue playing the character the right way.  And Farmer’s performance is really extraordinary  in the movie, with him finding nuance in Goofy’s voice that no one had even heard before, allowing him to excel in the film’s more dramatic moments.  His performance also works perfectly against the vocal performance of Jason Marsden as Max.  Marsden was a budding teen actor at the time and Max would be his second major voice role after Binx the Cat in Disney’s Hocus Pocus (1993).  What’s great about his performance is that it feels so natural against the shiny personality of Goofy.  He doesn’t take the teenage angst too far, nor does he try too hard to sound like a cartoon character’s son.  He plays the part naturally, and it makes Max a fully rounded and relatable person.  You really get the sense that you would’ve known someone like Max in school or were him yourself.  In addition to the leads, voice acting veterans Jim Cummings and Rob Paulsen carried over their roles as Pete and P.J. from Goof Troop without missing a beat, and were joined by an impressive collection of character actors like Wallace Shawn, Kellie Martin, Jenna von Oy, and an uncredited Pauley Shore in the cast.

However, there was a speedbump in the film’s road to the big screen.  Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had been the film’s biggest ally at the studio, abruptly left Disney after a succession dispute with CEO Michael Eisner.  Apart from Katzenberg, there was no one else at the Disney Studios that was enthusiastic about having a B-picture production line, so little effort was put into marketing the movie.  The film was too far along to cancel, so Disney ended up treating it as an obligation rather than a movie to be treasured as a well as any of their others.  The film was quietly dumped into theaters in April of 2025 to little fanfare, and this resulted in low box office results.  Critics were also split, because they weren’t sure what to make of it because A Goofy Movie didn’t fit the typical Disney Animation mold.  At least their Spring 1995 release helped them to escape the long shadow of the previous year’s hit, The Lion King (1994), which would have buried the film even more.  But, even with it’s lackluster launch, this was not the end of the movie’s story, but rather it’s beginning.  The movie slowly developed a following during it’s home video release.  People gravitated to the more grounded, realistic story at it’s center, especially in the way it tackled the issues of family and fatherhood.  The fanbase for this movie grew steadily over the years, and in some surprising demographics as well.  One of the biggest areas of support for this film was found in the African-American community.  You’ve got to remember that this was long before The Princess and the Frog (2019) and Disney still had not featured any significant character of color in their movies up until the 90’s.  Despite all of the characters having a Goofy like appearance, black audiences still saw themselves identified in this film, particularly with the pop singer character in the movie named Powerline, who was primarily based off of singer Bobby Brown, with a little Michael Jackson and Prince thrown in.  This was also the first Disney film to ever feature hip hop in it’s soundtrack, which probably also contributed to it’s popularity in the black community.  The soundtrack overall is another factor in the movie’s success over the years.  It’s a musical, but not in the standard Disney fairy tale style.  Each song is unique, mixing rock, country, hip hop, and pop all into one.  The finale song, I 2 I, sung by Powerline (who was voiced by recording artist Tevin Campbell) in particular has become one of Disney’s biggest hits over the years, receiving it’s own fair share of remixes and covers in the YouTube era.  What is especially great about the re-discovery of this film is that it has shown Disney that not every animated classic needs to be based on a legendary story.  Sometimes, a simple father and son road trip is enough to yield a great universal experience for everyone.

Over 30 years the movie has grown in esteem in Disney history; greatly over-coming it’s B-movie status.  It’s especially funny seeing how much Disney’s own social media machine is spotlighting this film’s anniversary this year, and not even mentioning once the anniversary of their “A-list” movie from the same year; Pocahontas (1995).  It shows that even the B-team could create something that could lay claim to being a masterpiece.  And indeed, over time the B-team got to be rewarded for their efforts.  Kevin Lima got to move on to directing an “A-List” feature as co-director of Tarzan (1999), and afterwards he even found success as a live action filmmaker, getting the chance to direct the film Enchanted (2007), starring Amy Adams.  Though their Paris based studio was closed shortly after the making of A Goofy Movie, the Brizzi Brothers would get to direct some of the most beautiful moments in future Disney features, including the “Hellfire” sequence in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and the “Firebird Suite” segment of Fantasia 2000 (2000).  Bill Farmer continues to voice Goofy exclusively to this day and has been honored as a Disney Legend for his efforts over his 37 years in the gig.  Jason Marsden also continues to voice Max occasionally, and has been an in demand voice actor all of these years as well.  One of the pleasing things about this anniversary in particular is that it’s showing just how big this movie has gotten.  Disney was especially taken by surprise 10 years ago when they held a 20th anniversary panel at the D23 Expo in 2015.  Demand was so high that they had to turn away hundreds of people at the door after the room had reached capacity, and the audience that did make it was electric.  After attending last year’s D23, I can tell you that the fanbase has grown even stronger since then.  Powerline was an especially popular cos-play at D23, even rivaling people in Jedi or Mickey Mouse dress-ups.  It makes sense because all the children who grew up over these 30 years with the movie are now having children of their own, and they are probably re-watching the film with them in a new perspective.  Those who originally identified with Max are now finding more in common with Goofy.  And one of the greatest legacies that this movie has had is that it’s helped people from multiple generations, fathers and sons, learn to communicate with one another.  It’s more than just a goof, it’s a movie that brings people together and that’s why it holds such a special place in Disney history.  And that is definitely something worthy to “hyuck” about.

When we entered the year 2020, global box office was at it’s peak.  Carried by major franchises like Marvel and Star Wars as well as a flurry of rising markets in places like China, global box office receipts hit a total of $42 billion in 2019.  And the movie theater business was thriving as a result.  The only thing at the time that theaters had to worry about was the rise of streaming, which was about to explode into the new year.  Netflix had dominated the market through the decade, but both Disney+ and Apple TV+ made their big launch in the Fall 2019 season, and HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount+ were gearing up for theirs in the months ahead.  Indeed, were things to remain the same in 2020 it was very likely that Hollywood was going to see yet another big year of generated revenue off of multiple modes of entertainment.  Unfortunately, history had other plans, not just for the movie business, but for everyone and everything.  There were news stories of a novel coronavirus starting to rapidly spread across China in the latter months of 2019, and while medical professionals were raising alarms about what they were seeing, it remained business as usual through the start of 2020 here in America.  The new year rang in without incident.  We had a Super Bowl and an Oscars ceremony that were exciting but normal.  And at the box office, the most noteworthy thing to happen was the surprising turnaround success of the Sonic the Hedgehog (2020).  But, the news of the virus spreading began to go from the back page to the front page, and suddenly the fear of the virus coming to our shores no longer seemed remote, but certain.  Eventually, all quarantines failed and the Covid-19 virus strain had reached North America and soon after it would be a global pandemic, the likes that our world hadn’t seen in over 100 years.  People suddenly growing ill and even dying was horrible enough, but the necessary step we had to take after in order to stop a bad situation from getting even worse would themselves have a harsh effect on everyone.  No one was spared from the fallout of this new pandemic reality, including the movies.

On March 16, 2020, it was announced that the three biggest movie theater chains in North America would be closing all of their location, and independent theaters followed suit, bringing all of cinema to a complete standstill, something that it had never experienced before.  The last time a global pandemic happened that reached all corners of the Earth, it was in 1918 with the influenza pandemic, also commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu.  Movie at that time were still in their infancy; a novelty that had yet to reach every town in America.  The incubation rooms of movie theaters just didn’t exist in those days, so Hollywood and the theatrical industry just never had to think about such a event happening that would affect their business in such a profound way.  It’s kind of astounding to think of the passage of time it was in between these two monumental pandemic events, that the whole of cinema history from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of the Nation (1915) to the aforementioned Sonic the Hedgehog happened in between them.  All the movies of Charlie Chaplain, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Billy Wilder, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino, were seen in between these pandemics.  And also how much the movie experience changed within those 100 years, going from small screening rooms to giant movie palaces to the the multiplexes we see today.  The movie business had seen it all, except a global threat that brought all life to a standstill.  But, the movie theaters had no choice.  In order to prevent our medical system from being overwhelmed by this rapidly spreading virus, all businesses had to conform to the recommended guidelines set by the CDC, which said the best way to mitigate the spread was social distancing and wearing of masks.  This left virtually all non-essential businesses unable to function as is, especially movie theaters and other entertainment venues that compact a lot of people into a confined space.  In the months ahead, there would be flexibility with these guidelines in less populated areas, but considering that the hot spots for the virus were in densely populated centers like Los Angeles and New York, the very markets that the movie business was reliant upon, it became very clear that this pandemic was not going to go away so quickly.

To give you a sense of the impact that living through a pandemic had on a movie lover’s experience, I’m going to share my own personal journey through this uncertain time.  I live in one of those big city markets (Los Angeles to be exact) and March 2020 was a pretty surreal time.  It wasn’t just the movie theaters that shut down, but all production in general.  Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world, with many residents here reliant on there being an active industry continuing to make more movies.  But, those studio lots also were emptied of non-essential workers, and the industry quickly had to adapt to a new “work at home” normal.  For me, as an avid movie goer, I had to adapt to one of my favorite past times now being unavailable for an unknown amount of time.  It would be five whole months before I would see the inside of a movie theater again, and it wasn’t even my local theater either.  Just to show how much I value being in a movie theater, I drove 120 south to San Diego just so I could watch Christopher Nolan’s Tenet in the brief window that movie theaters were allowed to re-open in parts of California, with San Diego being the closest one.  Eventually, closer theaters would re-open in Ventura and Orange County, but anything in a short driving distance remained closed for an entire year; finally re-opening in March 2021.  But, even with those restrictions in place, I still went out of my way to get as close to having the theatrical experience as I could.  One of the things that saw a surprising revival in the midst of the pandemic was the Drive-In experience.  Two such drive-in theaters still existed in my area, the Vineland Drive-In in the City of Industry and the now demolished Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair.  They may have been further out than my local theaters, but they were always open every night, and I managed to make my way to these places at least once a month through the pandemic period.  For the sake of my sanity during that time, these places were life savers because they filled that need to see movie on the big screen.

But if there was anything to also fill that void, it was streaming.  I already had a Netflix account long before the pandemic, but I was fairly new to Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ as I became an early subscriber to those services.  Little did I know that they were going to be the sole outlet for Hollywood movies for quite a while before theaters re-opened.  While I still went out of my way to see a movie first on the big screen, there were other movies that I had no other choice but to watch them at home.  A lot of studios had to offload their 2020 releases onto streaming platforms, while the bigger films were pushed further back on the calendar.  Streamers were the beneficiaries, but such a drastic measure would have downstream repercussions, especially when it came to compensation for actors and filmmakers who had theatrical percentages written into their contracts.  But, with box office so depressed by the pandemic, movies either had to wait a bit longer for their release, or go straight to streaming, and a lot of movies ended up in the latter column.  Apple TV+ for instance landed the Tom Hanks war flick Greyhound (2020), while Disney made the controversial choice of releasing their Pixar film Soul (2020) on Disney+.  There was also the Premium VOD model where movies were made available to rent at a premium price on platforms like Amazon, Apple, and Vudu, which is how Dreamworks chose to release their sequel Trolls World Tour (2020).  Studios were desperate for any revenue they could get and the streamers could leverage that by getting them to agree to shorter theatrical windows.  Nevertheless, the number of movies that could get released, either through streaming, theatrical, or a combination of the two was limited.  Hollywood was just uncertain about what the future was going to be for their industry.  The pandemic would pass in time, but what would be left of the theater industry?  Was streaming indeed the future of exhibition and movie theaters obsolete?  Just like all the rest of us waiting on the vaccine to help speed up a recovery, the movie theater industry was just taking things one day at a time.  Movie production finally started again, but under a new normal of constant testing and safety protocols, which led to lengthy productions and bloated budgets.  But, as time passed, things would clarify itself as the pandemic finally passed.

The outbreak of Covid-19 was a shock to the system for every aspect of life; one that we hopefully won’t have to repeat in our lifetimes.  Going into 2021, after a year of masking and social distancing, we were finally able to start the recovery once the vaccine became widely available.  Movie theaters took a while to recover, however.  Even with movie theaters in the major markets of Los Angeles and New York allowed to operate again, there were still social distancing measures put in place.  People had to sit with empty seats on either side for the first couple months.  And even in that situation, the choices of movies was still fairly light.  All the blockbuster films were still being held back until later in the year, so what we were getting in early 2021 were low risk movies that the industry was comfortable with playing in half full theaters.  But, there were some movies that managed to shine through.  Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) managed to be the first post-pandemic movie to cross the $100 million mark, even with a hybrid streaming/theatrical release.  A Quiet Place: Part II also became the first movie since March 2020 to have an opening weekend above $30 million.  But, even as blockbusters started to return to the market, it was still evident that the pandemic took it’s toll on the theatrical industry.  Between 2020 and now, it is estimated that nearly 3,000 screens have been lost due to the after effects of the pandemic across the country.  Small, independent cinemas were hit the most by the lockdowns, and the big chains barely scraped by.  AMC, the largest chain, may have fallen into bankruptcy by now had meme stocks not come to their rescue.  But even five years out, some theater doors remain shuttered and a few of them lost forever.  One of the crown jewels in Los Angeles’ collection of movie theaters, the Arclight Hollywood (home of the Cinerama Dome) still sits empty to this day, with it’s door boarded up like an abandoned home.  In terms of returning back to the heyday of the theatrical market of the 2010’s, it would be impossible given the fact that there were just fewer venues in general to host these movies now.

But, the last five years have also shown us that the theatrical market is not on it’s way out either.  If anything, the theatrical model has proven to be surprisingly resilient in the face of cataclysmic change.  One of the surprising signs emerged during the Holidays of 2021.  Right before Christmas, Marvel and Sony put out their film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), their highly anticipated sequel that not only performed as well as the other films in the series, but also broke records, even in the midst of some lingering Covid protocols.  Movie theaters by this time had been loosening their social distancing standards so that they could finally fill all the seats in an auditorium, but masking was still enforced.  None of this stopped people from seeing No Way Home, and the film went on to have a #2 all-time opening weekend of $260 million and an eventual worldwide total of $1.9 billion.  It defied all protocols and showed that a movie could indeed perform like it used to before Covid.  But, it wouldn’t be the case with every movie.  Apart from Spider-Man, there weren’t a whole lot of movies that played to sold out crowds.  But, the right kinds of movies would come in the years that followed, including Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Barbie (2023), Oppenheimer (2023), Inside Out 2 (2024), and Wicked (2024).  What these movies showed more than anything is that there are just some films that can only play on a big screen to be fully appreciated, and it was motivating the studios to reconsider their decisions in what movies they wanted to focus on.  A lot of films that were once green lit as a big draw for streaming were now being looked at as a possible theatrical release instead.  The recent success of Moana 2 (2024) is an especially good example of the trends shifting back in theatrical’s favor.  Had Disney moved forward with their Disney+ Moana project, then they would’ve missed out on a billion dollar worldwide gross; a cash flow that they can now benefit from that they otherwise would not have seen from streaming.

And the streaming market has also changed dramatically in the last five years after Covid.  In the immediate months of the lockdown, streaming was the only game in town, and it saw a rapid growth as people were now stuck in their homes with no other outlet than to watch whatever was on TV.  It was a strange confluence of events with the global pandemic happening just as the streaming wars was about to ramp up.  And in that time, we saw some bold moves made by the studios to bring more eyes to their platforms.  Some of those moves, however, would prove to foolish in the long run.  Warner Brothers’ decision to release their entire 2021 schedule on HBO Max day and date alongside theatrical in a program called “Project Popcorn” proved to be a disaster, because it clearly diminished box office while bringing only a scant few subscribers to their platform.  That failed experiment is largely the reason it’s called Warner Brothers Discovery now.  Disney’s decision to release three Pixar movies in a row on Disney+ without a theatrical release also proved to be a foolish move because it diminished the once valuable Pixar brand and caused them to underperform once they finally put the beloved studio’s movies in theaters with Lightyear (2022) and Elemental (2023).  It wouldn’t be until Inside Out 2’s record performance that Pixar finally found their way back after their parent company neglected them.  But what the streaming wars also showed us is that a crowded market also has drawbacks of it’s own.  While there were good things to watch on all the platforms, the total cost of having to subscribe to all of them proved to be too much for a lot of people whose wallets were hurt by the pandemic and the inflation that followed it.  Churn has been the worst enemy of streaming platforms, as people are choosing to subscribe only when they see one particular show or movie they like, and then they cancel immediately afterwards.  The viewership numbers were just not justifying the enormous costs the studios were putting into creating exclusive content, and that led to a bunch of the Hollywood studios starting to reign things back in and playing it more safe.  Ironically, all of these potential Netflix killers failed to do just that, as Netflix still remains the top performer in the market, though even they felt a bit of the contraction in the market post-pandemic too.  One important thing that Hollywood also took away as a lesson is that box office returns are a better way to gauge the success of their movies, because it’s a definitive sum that tells you how much a single project is worth in the market, as opposed to the lump sum of a streaming subscription that’s spread across the entire catalog.

Now that it’s been five years since the initial beginning of the lockdown, I can tell you that I still have terrible memories of that experience, but I also memories of the bright moments that helped me get through it all.  Had my desire to see movies on the big screen not been so key to my happiness in that time period, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to go out to the Drive-In theaters in my area.  Sadly, their revival during the pandemic was short lived.  The Mission Tiki in Montclair has since been leveled and turned into a housing development for the city, while the Vineland Drive-In is only open for special events and the occasional summer program while mostly operating as a swap meet during the day.  During the pandemic, I may have watched 20 or more movies between the two of these venues, so I am eternally grateful for what they gave me in that lost year and I’ll miss that part of the experience for sure.  Even though the lockdowns lasted the longest in my area compared with every other part of the country, we were lucky to not see many closures in the wake of the pandemic.  All of my local theaters managed to re-open, with some of them being salvaged by new ownership.  Sadly, the Arclight Hollywood is still in limbo, and despite some promises made by the property owners to eventually get it up and running again, the theater still sits empty with their screens still dark five years later.  In terms of the theatrical experience itself, it does feel like things are back to normal, except when it comes to the choices in movie itself.  Hollywood still is suffering from a post-pandemic identity crises as it tries to figure out what’s worthy of theatrical and what’s worthy of streaming.  This unfortunately is leaving the movie theaters themselves with a slim selection of movies to put in their theaters.  It’s either a choice between low risk indies or increasingly hollow blockbuster films based on established IP.  The mid-level movie is all but gone from the multiplex, and that’s making the range between the movies all the more greater.  Movies either need to break the bank, or be so small that they don’t risk losing money.  It was said that it would take a few years for the theatrical market to make a full turnaround, and I believe the last few turbulent years have proven that.  But, movie theaters still endure, which is astonishing given the near apocalypse that they faced during Covid.  The movies faced a test they were never prepared for with the pandemic, and though there were casualties along the way, somehow we found a way to get us close to normal again.  I feel closer to the theatrical experience even more now after having my local theaters closed for a full year.  Hopefully it will remain with us for quite a while longer, and that cinema itself will be able to find that happy medium between what belongs on the bog screen and what does not.

One of the most audacious movies to come out las year was the new film from Brady Corbet called The Brutalist (2024).  Starring Adrian Brody as an immigrant Holocaust survivor and architect, the movie tells the story of one man’s experience striving for the American dream by way of gaining favor with a wealthy benefactor who wants him to build a megastructure using the titular architectural style.  The movie is a complex character study about the faults lying within the pursuit of the American Dream and what toll it takes on the artist, but that’s not what makes the movie audacious.  The film is a staggering 3 and a half hours in length, which is not uncommon for a period set drama, but for this particular film, the director incorporated some long dormant Hollywood traditions that help to make the film feel even more monumental.  Baked into the film’s runtime itself is a 15 minute long Intermission, and the movie even opens with the announced Overture.  These elements are not used very often today in movies, but those who watch classic films from the 1950’s and 60’s will instantly know what they are.  They are throwbacks to a style of film exhibition known as the Roadshow format.  The use of the Roadshow format is certainly intentional on Brady Corbet’s part, since the whole movie is a throwback to a different time period, one in which this kind of movie experience existed.  In addition, to filming the movie in the classic and rarely used Vistavision format, the movie revitalizes the Roadshow style of presentation, even if it’s not quite the full Roadshow experience as it plays in local multiplexes.  But, why is the Roadshow such a novelty today compared to the Golden Era of cinema when it was used very frequently.  The answer reveals a lot about the way cinema itself has evolved over time, and it shows that even movies like The Brutalist will not bring it back to it’s full glory ever again.

The cinematic experience was much different 60 years ago than it is today.  From it’s early days and up through the post-War years, going to the movies literally meant “going to the movies” in the plural sense.  You paid a ticket at the box office, and then the cinema would be open to you for the remainder of the program that day.  That’s why people would just come and go throughout the day.  Unless there was a sell-out, audiences had free reign to choose what they would choose to watch that day.  In many cases, the availability of movies depended on how many theaters there were in town, and for some small communities that sometimes meant only one.  So, theaters practiced would run multiple films on the same bill, with one movie being the main attraction, while another smaller movie would be scheduled right after that.  This is where the terms “B-Movie” and “Double Feature” that still exist in movie lingo today come from.  In between the films, there were other short programming to fill the time, including news reels, animated cartoons, movie trailers, and various other shorts.  The heyday of the studio system stuck with this format for a long time, but as movies got more ambitious and lengthy, the industry was looking to a different kind of way to exhibit their films in a way that spotlighted the cinematic experience as something special.  What helped to inspire them was a form of entertainment that Hollywood had over the years been supplanting; which was live theater.  Shows performed on the Broadway stage, or in opera halls across the country used intermissions to break the performances into different acts, giving both the performers and the audiences a break.  Operas, musicals, and stage dramas by this time were considered prestigious forms of entertainment compared to the more provincial entertainment that cinema provided to the masses.  So, Hollywood looked to what the theater community was doing to create their own kind of prestige cinematic experience.

The Roadshow movie experience was meant to create a unique experience that emulated the feeling of attending the opera or any other high brow form of entertainment, but within the confines of a movie theater.  Roadshow films were often presented in a limited fashion, playing at only the most elite theaters in town, and at a premium ticket price.  To emulate the experience like you were going to the theater for a stage performance, the movie would open without trailers or any accompanying shorts attached.  Instead, the speakers would play a specifically orchestrated Overture before the film started; mostly with the screen blank, unless a specific preshow artwork was meant to draw the eye.  Then, depending on which theater you were at, the curtains would be drawn back as the studio logo was projected on the screen and the movie would play through.  If the film was longer that the average movie, there would be an intermission that would break the film into two acts, giving the audience time to either hit the bathrooms or to get more snacks at the concessions.  And at the film’s conclusion, once the words “The End” fades out the curtains close and another track of Exit Music would serenade the audience as they left their seats and walked out.  In whole, it made watching the movies that much more special.  The movie being projected on the big screen would be the same, but aura would be different.  To make the experience even more worthy of a premium ticket price, special souvenir programs would be handed out to you by an usher as you entered, just like you would receive at the theater.  It was a lucrative way to add an extra bit of revenue for the film, and also to help generate extra buzz and prestige around a movie before it was released to the wider market.  But, you couldn’t just do this with any kind of movie.  The films that would receive the Roadshow treatment had to be worthy of such a classy style of presentation.

What set the trend for the modern Hollywood Roadshow was the release of producer David O. Selznick’s Gone With the Wind (1939).  While Gone With the Wind was not the first film to use the Roadshow format for it’s release, it was definitely the one that set the trend for all the movies that came after.  Selznick’s gargantuan Civil War epic really could not have been released in any other way.  At a staggering four hours in length, the longest studio film ever made up to that time and for several years after, Gone With the Wind had to be presented in a Roadshow format no matter where it played.  The Roadshow fit well into Selznick’s zeal for showmanship, and the demand was there for a premium movie experience with the film.  After premiering in Atlanta in 1939, the movie sold out in every large market it was presented, shattering every conceivable box office record, and this was even before receiving a wide release after it’s Roadshow run.  But, while the Roadshow proved to be a valuable source of revenue for some films, the success of Wind was still something that Hollywood found difficult to replicate.  That was until the 1950’s, when the advent of widescreen helped to make cinema feel like a prestigious experience again.  This revitalized the Roadshow format for a new generation, as big screen sword and sandal epics like The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959) benefitted from the larger than life experience that the format offered.  The Roadshow experienced offered something that you couldn’t get from watching television alone in your living room.  It made going to a movie palace feel as enriching as going to an opera or concert hall.  And the experience wasn’t just made for biblical stories either.  Historical dramas like How the West Was Won (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965) also adopted the Roadshow format for their prestige releases.  But the Roadshow’s rise in success throughout the widescreen boom would face a different challenge as viewership patterns changed.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) fundamentally changed the way people went to the movies, as it’s shocking first act twist made people realize that they had to watch a movie from beginning to end, and not just casually dive in like movie goers would do in the past.  The way movies were released changed accordingly; movie trailers would still play prior to a movie’s start, but double features along with accompanying shorts and newsreels were a thing of the past.  One ticket meant one movie, and the appetite for lengthy 3 hour plus Roadshow features dried up.  Cinemas wanted more showtimes, which meant leaner movies without all the bells and whistles of the Roadshow, including Intermissions.  The ballooning budgets of the Hollywood epics, which used to be justified because of the Roadshow’s premium ticket prices, also became a problem.  The end seemed near for the Roadshow format as a means of theatrical release, especially after 20th Century Fox’s colossally expensive Cleopatra (1963) nearly drove the studio into bankruptcy.  But an unexpected reprieve came for the Roadshow format with the remarkable success of movie musicals in the 1960’s.  Fox was able to recover from their financial woes with the monumental box office of The Sound of Music (1965), becoming the biggest money maker in Hollywood since Gone With the Wind.  Disney and Warner Brothers likewise saw great fortune in their releases of Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady around the same time in 1964.  But what the movie musical also did was use the Roadshow format to perfection.  It harkened back to what inspired the Roadshow in the first place, which was musical theater.  The musicals even had their Intermissions already baked into the show itself, making it easy for Hollywood to know where to put them in their film adaptations.  For a time, this worked out well, and the Roadshow format would survive a bit longer.  But, it unfortunately would be short lived.  The success of Sound of Music and My Fair Lady made Hollywood mistakenly believe that there was a widespread appetite for these prestige Roadshow musicals that actually wasn’t there, and the resulting glut of Roadshow movies in the back end of the 1960’s spelled disaster for the format as a whole.

While Hollywood was rapidly changing, with counter culture films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) becoming all the rage, the Roadshow format was representing all that was wrong with the industry at the time.  Big budget musicals that were trying to emulate the success of The Sound of Music were continuing to fail at the box office.  These included musicals like Doctor Doolittle (1967), Camelot (1967) and Hello, Dolly (1969), the latter of which almost wiped out all of the profits that 20th Century Fox had recovered with their Sound of Music success.  Going into the 1970’s, Hollywood was weary of using the Roadshow release format to generate buzz for their tentpole films.  A couple movies of the era did cautiously try to use it, like Patton (1970) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971), but when the big epic of the era, The Godfather (1972), released to great success without using any of the Roadshow features, it all but killed the format.  Hollywood still put out 3 hour plus epics in the decades that followed, but they would run like a regular movie would without an overture or intermission.  This includes some major prestige films that went on to awards season success, like Schindler’s List (1993) and Titanic (1997).  Neither film has any of the same features of Roadshow epics despite sharing their epic lengths.  The rise of the Hollywood blockbuster also changed the movie going experience as well.  With higher demand for blockbuster franchise films like Star Wars (1977), Back to the Future (1985) and many other crowd pleasers, the multiplex supplanted the movie palace as the primary destinations for movie goers.  Hard to replicate the same prestigious experience on the same level of attending a musical or opera when it’s in a small dark box of a room next to many others just like it.  After being the pinnacle of Hollywood prestige at it’s best, the Roadshow was reduced to being a relic of the past.

But the memory of the Roadshow format managed to survive through an unexpected avenue; home theater.  As Hollywood began going through their archives to find movies to release in the rising home entertainment market, they found these longer versions of films that were made in the Roadshow format that they could put out on video as a collector’s edition.  Spotlighted as the “Roadshow Edition,” these home video releases gave cinephiles the oppurtunity to see these movies in their original format, complete with the Overtures, Intermissions, and Exit Music included.  It was like rediscovering all of these movies again, seeing the way that they were originally meant to be seen instead of the truncated versions that were either re-released in multiplex theaters or aired on television.  It renewed an interest in the film enthusiast community towards the bygone era of the Roadshow.  Movies like Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Ten Commandments would subsequently be given restorations that re-incorporated the entire Roadshow format into their home video releases, and those same restorations would likewise be used in all future theatrical exhibitions as well.  The same went for all of the movie musicals released over this same period.  In some cases, the people who worked on the restorations would include graphic art for the Overtures and Exit Music, as modern audiences are not as familiar with these features and would probably be confused why they are included in the presentation.  While Hollywood hasn’t fully reembraced the Roadshow format completely as a part of their film releases, it’s at least worthwhile that the memory of it is being preserved with the restorations of these older films.  It’s probably a good thing that the Roadshow format is not used for every epic length movie; hard to imagine it being used on something like Avengers: Endgame (2019) or Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).  It’s a special kind of format to be used on certain kinds of movies; ones where the use of Intermissions to break the film into two acts is essential to the experience.

Which brings us back to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist.  Corbet could’ve released his film without the trappings of a Roadshow style presentation, but he included them in his movie because of the way it evoke the era that the movie takes place.  It’s a film that has the feel of an old school epic, while still being fairly modern in it’s sensibilities.  The Overture and Intermission are integral features of the experience and not a necessity of the presentation because of it’s colossal length; though I’m sure audiences are pleased to finally have a long movie with a bathroom break.  It’s all the more astounding that Corbet was able to make a movie that felt like an old Hollywood epic on a miniscule $10 million budget.  My belief is that using the Roadshow format features helps to reinforce that evocation of grandeur, even with the movie being small and intimate in true scale.  And while Corbet is getting a lot of attention for his expert use of the format, he’s also not the only one that has attempted to revive the Roadshow style in recent years.  Quentin Tarantino famously put out his film The Hateful Eight (2015) in a Roadshow style version that played in select theaters nationwide.  It included the same Overture and Intermission features you would find in Roadshow movies, which Tarantino specifically paying  homage to, especially with regards to the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone that released in the format.  In select screenings, you would even receive a souvenir program, just like they used to give out in the old Roadshow days.  And while both The Hateful Eight and The Brutalist both are loving recreations of the format, they are unlikely to make the format reach the heights that it once held within the industry.  The way people go to the movies these days has changed too much to support such a format now.  We’re even seeing epic productions like Dune and Wicked choosing to release as two separate films a year apart rather than a single two act Roadshow style film, and it’s working pretty well for Hollywood that way.  Could there still be Roadshow style releases in the future; probably, and with any luck more frequently thanks to The Brutalist’s success.  But it’s future will still likely be that of a novelty rather than the norm.  And that in a way is what’s best for the format.  The Roadshow was the pinnacle of Hollywood prestige and the rarer the treasure the better.  With the industry recognizing the special quality it brings to making the art of film feel as important as that of the high arts of theater and opera, it’s a good thing that it stands as the high water mark of cinema at it’s peak.