Will Movie Theaters Go the Way of the Video Game Arcade?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 26, 2013

Once upon a time, arcades were a fixture in my life. This was so deeply ingrained that even to this day, on those (relatively rare) occasions I find myself inside a shopping mall, I still find myself looking for one. It was something of a surprise in the late 80s when I’d go to a mall and discover that there was not a “game room” of some kind. That was a rarity.

Now… well, not only are arcades rare, but shopping malls aren’t exactly commonplace either – nor are the bustling hubs they once were. Things change, and the stuff that was once a fixture of modern often does disappear with time. Not entirely, but mostly. I remember pull-tabs from soda cans littering the sides of convenience store parking lots – a common sight when I was little which had almost entirely disappeared by the time it was used as a plot point in the movie WarGames. And pay phones! Again, those aren’t gone entirely in this country, but they have become a rarity. What was unthinkable thirty years ago is just the way of things today.

So – next up: Movie Theaters?

New Republic: Hollywood Is in Trouble, and We’re All Going to Pay

Movie theaters have been an institution for longer than arcades (but only about as long as pay phones). But I see the same kind of forces at work here.

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Hollywood. To be honest, it sounds to me like the whole industry has been screwed up from the beginning, and while things have improved for workers in the business over time (thankfully!), it has come at the cost of … well, cost. It’s extremely difficult to make things efficiently – partly because of a backlash from the excesses taken in the “golden era” by Hollywood moguls where “efficient” meant, “screwing over the workers so badly they bled from every orifice.”

But again, that’s just perception from a guy with a casual interest. As far as the current problems for me, as a consumer and “outsider” who just loves (good) movies, here’s what I think:

* There are too many bad, bad movies out there – many with huge budgets that attempt to be the next blockbuster. So – unless it’s a sequel to a movie I already love, I’m going to wait for the reviews before seeing it.

* In the case of sequels – it’s a case of “fool me once…” I’ll be part of that awesome opening weekend crowd (or maybe within the first two weeks, depending on scheduling) for a sequel to a movie I already love, without needing to see the reviews. Movie makers can laugh themselves all the way to the bank on my hard-earned money. But for the NEXT sequel after a crap-fest, I’m going to be a little more cautious, and wait for the reviews again. I expect the big Hollywood business types don’t understand that behavior. They see a lukewarm opening weekend for movie #3 and they say, “Oh, hey, audiences don’t like this movie!” That may be it in part, but part of it is because the audiences still have the bad taste in their mouth from the LAST movie.

* Crappy movies limit my willingness to take risks on movies in the theater. Which is partly due to the next point:

* Expense. Especially with the 3D surcharge that Hollywood until recently seemed to be trying to make mandatory (and to be honest, I don’t really like wearing 3D glasses during a film – the best use so far has been to make modiocre-to-bad movies a little more watchable, once), going to the movies is not an insignificant expense. You know how we complain about $60 video games? At my local megaplex, it’s $9.25, reserved seating… which means if you don’t want to drive to the theater hours before the show to reserve your seats, or take your chances at showtime, you’ll need to pay another $1 Internet surcharge to order your tickets, so that’s $10.25 per seat. So that’s $41 without buying popcorn or sodas for a film at the theater. While I’m okay with doing that occasionally for a pretty awesome film, we’re talking once-every-couple-of-months here, not every-weekend.

* Marketing: The TV networks are struggling, too. Newspapers are nearly dead. The days where you could advertise a movie on the “big three” networks and the major papers and connect with 90% of your target audience are long gone. I didn’t even know about RED 2 until I saw it in the “coming soon” list at Rotten Tomatoes – and I was immediately interested because (surprise!) I’d loved the original. I had to hunt down the trailer. Yes, I’m seeking advertising. Or at least seeking information, and good advertising is supposed to educate (IMO). I also heard that it was good by word-of-mouth. How does a movie studio reach me with advertising these days, so I can know a movie I’d be interested in is coming out?

* Audience fatigue / experience / education: I was actually excited about The Lone Ranger, even after hearing Johnny Depp was going to play Tonto. Then I saw the trailer. Everyone I know who watched the trailer expressed the same concern: It looked stupid. Lots of stunts, lots of explosions, zero brains. I held out hope that it wouldn’t suck, but the reviews quickly convinced me that my impression from the trailer was correct. I still haven’t seen it, and don’t have much desire to do so, even when it comes out on DVD.

* Alternatives. That $41 can buy me 5 months of Netflix streaming movies – or two and a half months of DVDs / BLU-Ray + streaming. And I’ve got a nice wide-screen HD TV now, with a decent sound system, so it’s not like I’m missing too much out of the “big screen” experience, particularly if I’m not a huge fan of 3D (We’ll see if the 3D TVs catch on…) So if I’m willing to wait six months for a film, what do I lose? This wasn’t the case in the golden and silver ages of Hollywood, where at best a show might come out on TV in a few years, with lots of edits and commercials.

If anything, I’d say this latter factor might be the biggest.

Let’s talk about the death of arcades for a minute. Why did the arcades go away?

Well, games of competitive quality could no longer be profitable at a quarter per play, so the expense went up. Audiences became fatigued with the same ol’ game styles (‘cuz, you know, those were the only ones that made money).  And the big killer was when home gaming systems caught up with the capabilities of the arcade machines. Again –  alternatives. You could rent a game for the weekend and get an almost identical experience as the arcade (sans fighting over the machine with other players – which in some cases was part of the fun) for a fraction of the cost. So what was the draw to the arcades?

Sure there were reasons, and people still came… in smaller numbers. Machines went idle a lot. Which meant they had to charge even more money to make them worthwhile, which meant even fewer people bothered. It was a vicious cycle, culminating with most arcade operators no longer able to sustain a business, and calling it quits.

I’m seeing a lot of parallels here with theaters. The theater screens have gotten smaller, home screens have gotten bigger. There are fewer “draws” to the theater experience. Assuming this is the case, the question then is – if the movies can’t make the kind of money they have grown to rely upon from box office returns, can they keep making the big-budget “blockbusters” anymore? Or is there something more that Hollywood and the theaters can do to stave off the grim reaper?

Filed Under: Geek Life, Movies - Comments: 14 Comments to Read



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