What If 2016 Is Actually The Year That Saves Cinema?

Hefty opening weekend box office to second week drops for ‘Batman v Superman’ and “Warcraft” suggest that word of mouth really did matter, and it’s this audience that turned away from these movies over the summer that give us some hope. The fatiguing quality of these blockbusters may be so much that, while there’s still a segment of the audience that will continue to flock to them, other filmgoers could be actively avoiding all but the most must-see, and looking for a greater variety of movies in their diets.

Or they could be staying at home and watching a movie on Netflix, Amazon or other streaming or VOD services. A large number of independent releases are now released simultaneously at home (some high-profile Netflix pick-ups from film festivals skip theaters entirely), and those of us who believe in the sanctity of the movie theater, that every story is best absorbed in a dark room with your goddamn phone off, can find that a worrisome thing.

But those of us in that category also usually live in major metropolitan areas with access to film festivals and multiple arthouse theaters. The reality is that a film like Ava DuVernay’s terrific documentary “13th,” which debuted on Netflix last week, or Babak Anvari’s excellent Iran-set horror “Under The Shadow,” are suddenly capable of tapping a much larger audience than they would otherwise. It democratizes the film culture to some extent, and that can only be a good thing to all but the snobbiest cinephile.

Of course, movies aren’t the only type of entertainment competing for attention: the rise of quality TV in the last decade or so has been noted by pretty much everyone, with some pointing to HBO, Netflix et al as the home of the kind of smart, writer-or-filmmaker driven material that they say is lacking in theaters. There’s no doubt that there’s more great TV —too much for any one person to watch, really— than ever before, and there’s no doubt that in some ways it takes up more space in the culture, thanks to blogs and sites endlessly unpicking the individual episodes. Hence people like Ellis declaring TV’s victory over cinema.

But we’ve never been sure that the idea of the mediums competing holds much water. The Playlist’s Katie Walsh interviewed Francis Ford Coppola a few years ago, and he said something that’s long stuck with us. “Today,” he said, “we really don’t have television anymore, and we don’t have movies. We have cinema. Cinema and television and movies are really the same thing, it’s just the length and where you see it. And the length of cinema can be anything, a minute or less, or a hundred hours or more, so it’s a very broad new game. It can be seen in the theater at the same time it can be seen at home, in a church, in a community center, in an arena —it’s really wherever the audience wants to see it.”

It’s hardly a new idea —works like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Dekalog” and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” have long been settled as key works in the cinematic canon, despite being originally made for TV. But suddenly, some dead-enders insist on looking at these mediums as formats that have to be competitive with, rather than complementing, each other.

TV learned how to be more interesting visually from the movies in the last decade, and now interesting filmmakers do fascinating, almost experimental things in long-form on shows like “The Knick,” “Atlanta,” “The Girlfriend Experience,” “True Detective,” “You’re The Worst,” “Mr. Robot” and, most recently, “Westworld.” They’re as cinematic as anything on the big screen, but that means more cinema, not the death of movies.

Furthermore, those suggesting that TV has usurped movies in the culture ignores that prestige TV is not wildly popular for the most part. The top rated shows on TV in the past season were “The Walking Dead,” “Empire,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “The X-Files,” “Modern Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Blindspot,” “NCIS” and “Game Of Thrones.” Only the latter is particularly well reviewed at this point in time.

Significantly more people saw “Sully” in its opening weekend than watched the highest rated episode of “Mad Men.” The season finale of “Mr. Robot” attracted roughly the same live audience as the first three days of “Mechanic: Resurrection.” More people saw the second weekend of flop comedy “Masterminds” than have ever seen an episode of “Rectify.” Obviously, this isn’t the full picture: DVD boxsets and streaming services let a show live on long past its first airdate, but that’s true of movies too (and let’s not forget the high-profile TV flops too, with both “Vinyl” and “The Get Down” proving somewhat disastrous this year). The vast majority of acclaimed TV remains something of an arthouse proposition, with a “Breaking Bad” or a “Game Of Thrones” blowing up to bigger crowds, just as an awards season movie can become a smash hit.

Nevertheless, while doing so is bullshit, we’d almost encourage the continuation of the TV-is-beating-movies narrative. In part, it’s because we love cinema, since it’s the best possible visual storytelling medium, and more great TV just means more great cinema to us. But that narrative is also helpful if it makes studio executives feel that more original stories are outpacing their franchise fare (and while TV has superheroes and remakes too, they mostly perform less well), the more likely it is that they might take some chances on the big screen. People like stories, and people like characters, and people like things that feel a bit fresh, and studios haven’t been paying enough attention to that of late.

But it takes time for executives learn the right lessons, and we’re not sure that they’ve learned them yet —this week saw the announcement of the cast for a movie literally about emojis and the reveal of Guy Ritchie’s “Aladdin.” But another year with great TV and a crappy lineup of lazy mainstream movies (with “King Arthur,” “Power Rangers,” “Ghost In The Shell,” “Baywatch,” “The Mummy,” “Jumanji” and “CHiPS” among those slated for next year, things could well be as bad next year) might inspire some real changes.

Of course, the audience is going to have to accept some responsibility too. One of the reasons we feel optimistic about the state of cinema in 2016 is that we’ve been through the fall festival season. There are some amazing, faith-restoring movies coming out in the next two-and-a-bit months. Like “Moonlight,” “The Handmaiden,” “Loving,” “Arrival,” “Elle,” “Manchester By The Sea,” “Jackie,” “La La Land,” “A Monster Calls,” “Paterson,” “20th Century Women,” and “Toni Erdmann.” These are not difficult, obscure films —they’re accessible, beautiful moving, exciting, funny ones. And if you want to ensure that 2016 is the year that saves cinema, you should go and see them as soon as possible.