It seems that the Oscars Awards happened last weekend. Was there any reason to watch four solid hours of entertainment industry self-congratulation, aside from seeing if any aspiring starlet would parade in a completely transparent dress without any undergarments to speak of. On the day following, just about all the stories about the Oscars on my guilty pleasure of a mainstream newspaper, the English Daily Mail, concerned the fashions – or the bad taste displayed thereof – on the red carpet. There was only a single story or two about the movies and the awards garnered. Although the National Establishment Media organs try to sound chipper and upbeat about the broadcast and streaming audience for the Oscars … general interest in the event seemed pretty restrained.
None of the movies up for consideration this year seemed to have made much of a splash in general release. No long lines at the theaters, no splashy cover stories in national magazines, no repeat customers telling their friends ‘you must go and see this movie!’, no packed theater showings for weeks and weeks and weeks. It seems as if whatever movie-going audience is left these days has a serious case of the “mehs.” As a commenter on another thread about the Oscars said, not only had they not seen a single one of the nominated movies – they hadn’t even heard of most of them. They appeared briefly on the multiplex marquee and then went to streaming video. A few weeks ago, the theater roof collapsed during a showing of the Captain America movie. Well, it was at an 8 PM showing on a weeknight, but there were only two people in the place for a first-run movie, which may be a sad reflection on how ‘meh’ that recent releases have become. One of the most savage comments that I saw was that the movie was so bad that the theater itself decided to commit suicide.
I’ve begun to wonder if the whole Hollywood movie and entertainment industry has been committing slow-motion suicide itself, over the last ten or fifteen years. The insistence on expensive blockbusters, the lack of originality, reliance on established comic books and well-established franchises, a tendency to let inexperience take the helm of such highly-visible and expensive projects, the insistence on preaching (assume Critical Drinker voice) “the message” – indeed, beating the audience over the head with “the message”, until the audience stays away in droves, fleeing to their archive of classic (and often much more entertaining) movies and series, foreign imports, or to gaming … repeated sexual-abuse and harassment scandals, the fact that many of the creative (or at least, well-established) Hollywood personalities are really awful, horrible, abusive people. That so many of them came out for Harris/Walz was just the sour cherry on top of the whole rancid package.
So – how much longer can the downward spiral last, while mainstream audiences flee? Will there be more independent productions, or will a kind of renewal take place? Place your bets … and have you seen anything good on screen lately?