The 2020 pandemic left a devastating impact on all sectors of the culture, with a particular razor’s edge situation that nearly brought down the whole theatrical industry that has been a staple of entertainment for a century now.  Movie theaters across the world barely held out being shut for months, and in some cases for over a year, but the tide is turning and the industry is getting the chance now to finally welcome guests back in.  Whether or not audiences return to the numbers they used to is another question, but the doors are finally open again.  Or, at least some are.  The biggest chains, AMC, Real, and Cinemark have gotten all their nationwide locations back open, but the situation for the smaller theaters and chains has been very different.  For them, reopening has been more of a struggle, due to unpaid rent and broken leases that has forced contentious relationships between the theaters and their landlords.  Some can argue the case that the pandemic left them without any source of income during all this time and they can renegotiate a new lease if the property owner sees the value in having them continue to operate on their land above all other options.  But the case needs to be made by the theater that a recovery is inevitable and good for long term success in those particular locations, and this is a case that’s a lot harder to make.  We at this moment don’t know if the movie theater industry can recover quickly enough to reach those pre-pandemic levels.  It certainly won’t happen by the end of this year.  So, at this point, it’s a case of who will blink first, the theaters or the landlords.  In most cases, some smaller theaters don’t have the capital available to mount a fight for continuing to operate, and that sadly has left many of them with  no other choice than to close their doors for good.  2021, and for the next couple years, we are going to see a contraction of the movie theater industry as a whole as many of these independent theaters cease operations and fade away, and that in itself is one of the most devastating outcomes of this pandemic on our culture as a whole.

What is particularly devastating about so many smaller theaters closing like this is that it reduces the outreach of cinema as a whole.  One of the great things about independent cinema is that it brings the movies to communities that otherwise couldn’t support the movies before.  Small town America usually falls outside of the gaze of the bigger chains, who target larger communities where more movie going audiences typically live.  But, because demand is there for watching movies as a communal experience in all corners of the globe, people in these smaller communities also want that as well.  My own father, who grew up in a small town on the Oregon coast, told me that he often had to drive 20 miles or more out of town to go to the nearest theater when he was growing up, because his tiny hometown wasn’t big enough to support one.  This was also at a time when movies were run out of single screen venues that depended on hundreds of people at a time watching a movie in order to survive.  But, as the business expanded to favor multiplexes, the ability to reach out to smaller communities also changed.  Independent cinema rose to an increased level thanks to the era of blockbusters, as the big studios expanded their four walling outreach, allowing smaller exhibitors easier access to their catalog of films.  This further led to an increase in specialized cinema, which gave rise to the art houses, which heavily relied on independent exhibitors.  And with theaters converting to digital in the new millennium, it streamlined the industry even further.  Now it was possible for even a tiny one screen venue in a middle of nowhere town to have the ability to present the next Marvel or Star Wars movie on their screen.  And competition from smaller venues also put the bigger chains in a position where they had to increase their outreach as well, which made the last decade or so one of the most prolific in the history of cinema.  But, with the pandemic, that growth came to a crashing halt, and it’s one that affected the independents far more harshly than the bigger chains.

With the pandemic finally, hopefully, reaching it’s end, the movie theater chains are trying every trick they can to remind people of the value of their existence.  While it hit their finances hard, chains like AMC and Regal are likely to live on, even as a shell of their former selves.  Independents on the other hand are facing a more existential crises.  For some, many of their owners are contemplating what their future might entail, and wondering if there even is a future.  The pandemic has left many of them deep in debt, and far too many theaters are choosing bankruptcy over gambling on future financial loss.  And so, that’s why we are seeing so many headlines recently of movie theaters calling it quits for good.  In particular, this has been the case for movie theater chains that exist in that middle area.  The COVID relief bills that passed through congress in previous months had financial assistance available for the smallest of theaters; the ones that operated in small towns like the one that my Dad grew up in, although even that was too little too late for many venues.  Still, it gave these tiny theaters a chance to survive, because they fell under the small business loan obligations that were crucial to meet under the directions of the government.  If you were a larger chain, you often fell outside of those qualifications, and had to find a way on your own to secure your financial future.  While the big chains did face financial hardship they did at least have the benefit of public and private investment to keep them solvent through stock trading.  Privately own chains that don’t have the benefit of Wall Street behind their back, unfortunately were the odd ones out in this; too small to be publicly traded, too big to receive government assistance.  These are the businesses most desperately in need of a full recovery for the industry, and it’s sadly looking like most of them are not going to make it, even into next year.

One of the clearest examples of this is the recent news of Arclight Theaters closing shop for good.  Most people around the country probably are unaware of what Arclight was and were confused even more why so many people were mourning it’s loss.  For some background, Arclight was a theater chain branched off of the Pacific Theaters brand.  The California theater chain created Arclight as a prestige brand that focused on elevating the theatrical experience through top notch presentation standards as well as through high class ambience.  If you ever watched a movie at an Arclight theater, you felt like you were entering a cathedral to the art of cinema, with beautiful art deco style lobbies and pristine amenities throughout.  Even their bathrooms were exquisitely designed.  And this level of high quality even extended to the staff, all of whom were knowledgeable and well trained, and who even introduced each film personally before it started.  Arclight just became synonymous with the idea of the best that cinema can offer, and the reason why you’ve heard of it far outside it’s small reach is because it was the preferred movie destination for Hollywood itself.  The first Arclight theater opened in 2002 on the prime location of Sunset and Vine in the heart of Hollywood, behind the pre-existing and iconic Cinerama Dome, which was incorporated into the venue itself.  Because of it’s central location, and it’s reputation for quality presentation, it became a favorite haunt of movie stars and film directors working in Hollywood.  Filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and Edgar Wright were all frequent patrons of the Arclight in Hollywood and were especially mournful of it’s closure.  Being a resident of Los Angeles myself, this too affected me, because I was a frequent visitor to the Arclight in Hollywood too.  I even made it a Christmas tradition to visit it so I could watch the newest releases that were only available there before the rest of the country got them weeks later.  The Arclight was a cherished institution here in Los Angeles, and a surprisingly egalitarian one, where Hollywood elites and the average joe could all enjoy the movies in the same place.  But, it was one of those businesses hit hard by the pandemic and was left with little to no options for it’s continued future.  So, in April of this year, the devastating news broke that Arclight Hollywood and all the other locations scattered across the Southland and the country at large would not be returning post pandemic.

This was devastating in many ways to patrons of Arclight, famous and non famous, but it’s one of the bigger stories that has defined a epidemic of theater closures across the country.  And one such example is a little closer to home to someone like me, because it’s an independent, art house cinema in my hometown.  Most people outside of the community of Eugene, Oregon know nothing about a little movie theater called the Bijou Arts Cinema, but to the people of Eugene, the Bijou was an important fixture in the their town.  Located a few blocks from the University of Oregon campus, the Bijou was a genuine one of a kind movie theater.  Built into what was once a Presbyterian church and later a mortuary, the Bijou began playing movies in 1981 to a decidedly alternative, artistically minded crowd.  The ambiance of the old church setting, complete with the buttressed ceiling and high, windowed walls, really reinforced a different kind of movie experience than what you would get in a multiplex.  Year later, they added a second, smaller screening room in what I presume was either an unused office space or even more morbidly, the old crematorium.  Despite not looking like your average movie theater, the Bijou served an important function in the Eugene community because it offered up movies that otherwise would not have played in the multiplexes.  While the big theaters played action movies, they played costume dramas.  Instead of Disney movies, they played anime imports.  All those movies that were too weird or too obscure to find in the big chains, the Bijou would have it, and that’s what made it so valuable.  I credit it for expanding my perception of cinematic art, because no where else would I find a place that played movies in other languages, that were made outside of the Hollywood system, that were documentaries or provocative art pieces, or any other miscellaneous form of cinema.  And sadly, the Bijou too announced, almost at the same time as Arclight did, that they were not going to reopen post-pandemic as well.  The situation for them is different in a way because their previous owners decided they wanted out of the movie theater experience and just handed the keys back over to the landlord.  The owners deciding the future of movie going is not one they see growth in is a devastating sign for independent cinemas, and one that more than anything impacts the people who have depended on the Bijou being there as a part of the community all these years.

That’s the harsh reality of the pandemic’s affect on the theater industry as a whole.  The movie theaters that made the theatrical experience especially worthwhile are sadly the ones that are not able to survive.  And in post-COVID era where streaming has staked a stronger foothold in the industry, hopes for a recovery are pretty dim.  I was especially shocked when I learned of the Bijou’s closing.  It opened in 1981, and I was born in 1982.  For me, it has always been there, and now it is gone.  Now, before I get too fatalist about movie theaters in general, I want to point out that Bijou and Arclight have at this point merely locked it’s doors with no foreseeable reopening date in sight.  The structures are still there, unchanged in all this time.  You go to Sunset and Vine and peer through the glass doors of the Arclight theater and you’ll see it’s pretty much intact exactly as we left it a year ago; just collecting dust.  The same holds true for the Bijou.  It’s just that now the fate of these venues are no longer in the hands of the people who used to run them, but rather in rather in those of the people who own the buildings they were housed in.  One thing that people have speculated with Arclight is that they are trying to use the closing as a negotiating tool in setting up new leases with the landlords that can help them remove the unpaid rent off their books and start anew.  To do that, they have to convince the landlords that their use of the space is better than say converting the venue into retail.  Movie theaters take up a lot of real estate, and it’s increasingly harder to find another kind of business to fill that hole.  Arclight is hoping to convince their landlords that they are the better investment for long-term, and the outpouring of support from Hollywood is also helping their case as well, at least for the Sunset and Vine location.  In many ways, for Arclight to make a return, it’s going to be on a venue by venue basis, and I don’t think we’ll see a full recovery.  The Arclight location in Santa Monica is already in danger because it’s landlord is already moving to evict.  For the Bijou, it all depends if there is an investor out there that has the money and willingness to fund a small town independent cinema that brings in far less money than the bigger screens do.  It’s all dependent on if people with deep pockets believe there is a future for the theatrical industry worth investing in, and that right now is unclear and risky.

But one thing that could be a devastating loss for movie theaters like the Arclight and the Bijou if they do manage to reopen is that the culture surrounding them will forever be changed.  New ownership means new management, and what defined these theaters before may not survive in this new culture.  It all depends on who ends up buying these leases and properties.  Will Arclight 2.0 have the same high quality standards of presentation that the theater used to pride itself on giving to it’s customers.  Though it’s unlikely given their own economic woes, but imagine if Arclight was bought out by a bigger chain like AMC.  The standard of presentation would follow that particular chain and most likely would feel more restrained and corporatized; far less concerned with personal touch that Arclight gave to every customer.  No more in person introductions, no more caramel corn, no more special events.  Just no frills movies, which goes against what Arclight originally stood for.  And imagine if big tech companies like Netflix and Amazon decided to invest in Arclight, and what that would end up doing to their independence.  Suffice to say, there is a lot of worry that what made Arclight special would be lost in the shuffle to get it reopened.  For the Bijou, the character that defined it was due to the fact that it was an alternative to the big chains.  But because the movie market has so dramatically shifted, the smaller movies are not enough to save it’s business, so does Bijou change it’s character and start showing blockbusters as a means for survival.  To find a new owner, the management of the Bijou needs to get investors to see the value of independent cinema, and why the quirkiness of it’s small operation needs to survive.  Sure, the Bijou doesn’t have the polish of an Arclight, but it’s DIY movie theater feel was something that people in the community found irresistible.  They loved that the staff of these theaters were jack of all trades, whose function was to sell you a ticket, serve up your snacks, and start the projector all by themselves.  It takes a special kind of dedication to the profession of cinema to pull off a workday like that, and that’s what made the Bijou so endearing to people.  The people who worked for the Bijou as well as those who were patrons to it, were both equally in love with cinema, and it’s that culture that sadly dies along with the theaters that have closed.

One hopes that those who invest in the future of movie theaters carry over that some love for the movies that existed before.  The Arclight in Hollywood is one that I imagine will indeed reopen it’s doors one day.  The Cinerama Dome is already a protected monument, and I can’t see anyone being foolish enough to convert it into an Old Navy or a Target.  The question is, will the same Arclight atmosphere return when it does reopen.  That is the question raised by fans of the beloved chain, as well as those who were patrons all the now closed theaters across the country.  Arclight and those like it raised the standard of the theater experience, and set a good example for the industry as a whole.  But with only the big chains being the ones able to come back at the moment, their less personal movie culture is following with them, and it is sadly leaving the middle guys who tried to be more bold without a clear future.  The one thing that does give me hope is that people who do care about the movie going experience are making their voices heard.  Fans of the Arclight theaters are showing their support, and there are interested parties already listening.  If those Arclight backers also insist on a return to the same standard of quality as well, there is a chance for Arclight to return back to normal even under new ownership.  It all depends on what these future leases on the properties look like. The same applies to a small place like the Bijou.  If the fanbase makes their voices heard and convince the landlords to sell to another interested party willing to preserve the space as a theater venue, then it may just well happen, but it is a risk.  The fact that the Bijou had forty years of operation to endear itself to a community helps to keep hope for it’s future alive, but in the end, it will all depend on if there is a bright future for the theater industry.  We owe it to ourselves to demand more out of our movie theaters, and given the precarious year that the industry has just had, they are more inclined to listen than ever before.  If we want more Arclights and Bijous in the world, we need to show our support, both in our social media postings and also in our patronage.  Independent cinema had more of an impact in making the movie-going experience ideal than we previously realized; one that could be key to the future of cinema because of the way it elevated the experience.  They were the ones that made going to the movies special, and worth the effort of leaving the TV behind.  For now, I am saddened by the loss of two great theaters in this world, but my hope is that they are not eternally gone.  A positive sign is that Google still lists them as temporarily closed, rather than permanently.  It shows that this is not a finite moment for these theaters, and that a glorious resurrection may hopefully be on the horizon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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