Today, Explained - The movies are back*

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

*But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should go see one. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today, today explain.

I don't know about you, but I miss the movies. Today, today explained. here in DC, and everything in between. I miss it all. But the good news is the movies are coming back. And now you can risk it all to see Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Vox film critic Alyssa Wilkinson is here today to tell you whether it's worth it and also to delve deeper into what was lost along the way. We're going to start back in March because March was the last time many of us went to the movies. What was it for you, Alyssa? I think my last movie theater was Portrait of a Lady on Fire. What was even in theaters other than that? I don't really recall. March isn't typically the best time for the movies. So there's The Invisible Man is in the theaters. Oh yeah, with the Mad Men. Yes, with Elizabeth Moss.

Really good movie. The movie First Cow had just come out, like, maybe two days earlier, which is quite a look. It's about a guy and a cow. Two guys and a cow, actually. True. Baking things on the prairie. I remember the Vin Diesel movie came out, and Vin was like, we're going to bring people together to celebrate movies in a movie theaters. And I was like, but Vin, that's what you don't want to do right now. We were at the premiere watching this movie

with people because what we're realizing in this time is how much we love to be amongst other people. I know it took a while for a lot of people to figure out what was actually going on and that the virus wasn't scared of our bravado. What was that movie called? I don't even know. Oh, gosh. Do you remember? Bloodsport or something like that. No, that's not it, but it was something to that effect.

Let me find out. Bloodshot. You're close. Bloodshot. I was close. Yeah, I did not see Bloodshot. What happened to the movies after Bloodshot. You're close. I was close. Yeah, I did not see Bloodshot. What happened to the movies after Bloodshot? All across the country, movie theaters basically shut down within about a week in mid-March, basically because, you know, state governments didn't want people gathering in an enclosed space where they might pass a virus around, which seems pretty reasonable. And, you know, movie theaters in the best of times are maybe not the cleanest places in the world, maybe not the greatest fresh air exchange rate, people eating and drinking. So theaters shut down. And that also

meant that all of the movies that were slated to come out started to get pushed off the release calendar, especially blockbusters. Because, of course, if you've shot a movie for hundreds of millions of dollars, you need people to buy tickets to it in order to recoup your costs. And so people thought, well, this thing can't last more than a few months and we'll just release it later. So one movie that got moved pretty quickly was the new James Bond movie. And then some movies were rescheduled for, say, June, and then June kind of rolled around and it became clear that this was not a thing you could do, really, because theaters are still shut down and cases are spiking. You know, the Wonder Woman movie got moved.

Another, and probably the most visible one, is Tenet, Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Okay, we'll get to Tenet in a minute, but let's talk about how the movies adjusted to a world in which, you know, they couldn't come out in theaters. It wasn't just American Pickle, right? American Pickle is a great example. It's been 100 years. The pickle brine preserved him perfectly. You know, that one's on HBO Max. Or, you know, I think one of the best movies I've seen all year is Driveways. Hi.

I'm turning nine and I wanted to invite you to my pizza party on Thursday at the roller skating rink. Thank you. Which practically nobody saw, but it's a great small arthouse indie, and it's just kind of a quiet drama that would have done pretty well in sort of your small local independent theater, but almost nobody I've talked to has heard of it. And of course, First Cow, everyone loves First Cow when they see it. You have a cow.

First Cow in the territory. It's a place for cows. It's no place for white men either. I loved First Cow. Such a great movie. I sort of saw it last fall and then I saw it again this summer and then I immediately baked a clafoutis, which is a French dessert in the film that's kind of significant.

Actually, it turns out it's not too hard to make. But Alyssa, we didn't talk about Bill & Ted 3. Yeah, so Bill & Ted 3 did actually get delayed, I think by a few weeks, but it's just opened. And it is currently in theaters and drive-ins and you can rent it or buy it digitally. And I loved it. Excellent!

What have we learned along the way about how willing people are to support this industry from home when you take movie theaters out of the experience? Has Hollywood said like, oh, this could work? Or is it sort of a failed experiment? It's honestly, and this is funny to say six months in, but it's still hard to tell. So, for instance, Trolls 2, Trolls World Tour, did end up releasing on digital platforms. And this was very early, like maybe the end of March. And because of the timing, parents were desperate, cooped up with their children who've watched every episode of who knows what show on Netflix a thousand times, or they're just like tired of Daniel Tiger or whatever it is that they're

watching. And so of course, you know, we're all cooped up. We're sad. We're going to rent Trolls World Tour, even if it costs $20 or whatever it costs. And so the movie made a healthy sum of money. Like how much? Like well over 100 million. Wow. Which is comparable to what it would have made in the theater. And of course, at that point, everyone who watches the industry wants to say, oh, that proves that people don't need theaters anymore. And I'm not so sure it does. You know, on the flip side, lots of other movies came out that people didn't watch because they're watching The Office again on loop, or they didn't know it came out, or didn't watch because they're watching The Office again on loop, or they didn't know it came out, or they think, oh, I'd like to see that someday,

but then they don't see it, right? Because there's billions of hours of Netflix to watch. The lesson we have here is, first of all, that we can't take lessons from anecdotes, that different movies have different kinds of circumstances around them. And that's always true. You know, you can't, if Hollywood had figured out how to make a surefire hit, they'd just be doing that constantly now. And then on top of it, I think the impetus to watch a new thing probably isn't as great as it is when it's tied to an event. Like, oh, we're going to get friends together, we're going to buy tickets, and we're going to go to the theater and, you know, have popcorn,

or maybe you go to a fancy theater and have a cocktail, and it's like a cheap night out. That does seem to drive the way that some people watch movies. So while we've been at home watching Trolls 2 and Friends and, you know, the entirety

of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on HBO Max. What's the fight to reopen movie theaters been like in the United States, at least? It's been pretty wild. One challenge we have in the U.S. is that we have 50 governors who decide these things for 50 different places. And even then, you have a very large state like California. It's sometimes hard to know how the North is different from the South or whatever. So that's been a challenge because there are theater owners who've been really upset

that they can't reopen their theaters when maybe they had like two cases this entire time in their county because they're in Northern Maine or something like that. And on the flip side, there's been people who've argued that, well, if we're in a state where a church is allowed to open, why can't we open a movie theater? And then on to make matters worse, even if you were to open your theater or you were allowed to open your theater, you might not have any movies to really put in it because the studios have moved all the summer movies into the fall or into 2021. And so what you end up with is a situation where you could open your theaters, I believe as of a month ago, you could open theaters legally in 80% of markets in the US.

But most of those markets still didn't have theaters open because the cost of opening the theater, paying the staff, you know, just basic operations costs were never going to be balanced out by how many tickets you could sell in a theater that you could only fill to maybe 30% capacity. Right. And so until there was stuff that they knew people would come and see, a lot of people just elected to stay closed. But like in New York City and Los Angeles, you can't have a movie theater open. Those are two huge movie-going markets. And if you can't have a theater open in those two cities, then Hollywood is not usually going to open a movie at all. That's changing right now. How is it changing? So the big way that it's changing that we can tell is that Christopher Nolan's Tenet, it eventually opened in Europe and across

the world last week because theaters have been open in the UK and across Europe for a while. What you're saying that like countries that did a better job of this can go back to normal life? As it turns out, that's true. Imagine that. So that movie has opened already, but it is opening in the US this week in some places. It's not opening in New York. It's not opening in Los Angeles because there's nowhere to open it. But it's opening in Pennsylvania. It's opening in Connecticut. It's opening in Virginia. So it's opening in Pennsylvania, it's opening in Connecticut, it's opening in Virginia. So it's opening in states where theaters are open. And in some cases, it is literally opening the theater, or maybe they opened last weekend to show Bill and Ted and make sure that things are in good working order. Is it an accident that Christopher Nolan, who is this, you know, devotee of cinema as an art form and movie theaters as the ideal place to see his work,

this guy who's committed to shooting for IMAX with the right cameras and the right technology and the right teams and the right effects, is somehow bringing movie theaters back? It is not at all an accident. I think, you know, early on, Nolan wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post where he basically said, Movie theaters have gone dark, and will stay that way for a time. But movies, unlike unsold produce or unearned interest, don't cease to be of value. Much of this short-term loss

is recoverable. When this crisis passes, the need for collective human engagement, the need to live and love and laugh and cry together, will be more powerful than ever. I think he's right. But also, he is a known pedantic person about theaters. He specifies many things. He cares very deeply about how his films are seen. I remember seeing Interstellar in theaters, and there were no trailers before it started on the IMAX screen, which is so rare that you see zero trailers. It just went straight to Interstellar. Yeah, he really thinks of it as a kind of all-encompassing experience, which is honestly a very old school way to look at films that is adopted by some, you know, some of the directors we think of the most today, like Quentin Tarantino is that way as well. They're very committed to making films that many, many people want to see, but that also are up to very exacting standards. And like Christopher Nolan really doesn't want you to see Tenet on an iPhone. I think as David Lynch put it a long time ago,

when people were starting to watch movies on their telephones, he said, I believe he said, Now, if you're playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You'll think you have experienced it, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real. Still good. Nothing but respect to David and Quentin

and Christopher, but is there a chance that we're not ready for this gift of communal movies? It feels like there's a chance. So there is a chance of that, but it's hard to predict.

So, you know, certainly epidemiologists have talked a lot about whether movie theaters are safe, and many of them have said no. You know, on the other hand, Certainly, epidemiologists have talked a lot about whether movie theaters are safe. And many of them have said no. You know, on the other hand, we have gyms opening this week, which to me, a movie theater seems safer than a gym.

But I don't know. I mean, if people in, you know, the northern parts of Vermont want to see Tenet, should they be allowed to? Or should they not be allowed to because Iowa is a mess right now, right? Like these are the questions that people are asking and it's very complicated to answer. But the fact that theaters are open abroad suggests that a movie like a Christopher Nolan film, which was going to make a ton of money worldwide, maybe shouldn't be held up by America. Have you gone and seen Tenet in a movie theater yet, Alyssa? I have. You have?

I have. How is it? It's, uh, it's okay. It's very technically competent. Many reviewers have said that it is very confusing, and I agree with this. So would you, Alyssa Wilkinson, risk it all to see Christopher Nolan's Tenet? No. I wouldn't risk it all to see any movie.

I find, you know, I've been reading stories about people who are, like, flying to other places to see a movie. And I just, I write about movies for a living, but every movie ever made is basically available to people right now. And waiting a month is not going to be a problem or three months or whatever. No movie is ever worth your life. But on the other hand, you know, I think a lot of people with a Nolan movie in particular are worried about being spoiled on it. And I can, I think, say that this movie is basically spoiler proof because the plot is so kind of backwards and upside down that describing it won't mean anything until you see it on screen. I'm thinking like it'll be on one of the services by Christmas and that's when I'll watch it. I think that's right. Alyssa's got a theory that the hiatus we took

from going to the movies this year might forever change the American summer blockbuster. That's after a quick break. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate.

She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions do apply. Alyssa, we're going to get Tenet, but what have we lost along the way when it comes to the movies? Yeah, I mean, one thing we've lost for sure is some movie theaters. Some are never going to be able to reopen. Another thing that we may have lost is some of our illusions about Hollywood's place in the world. And we also, you know, we have literally lost a lot of movies that might have been made that now are going to get pushed out of the way for bigger budget films at the studios. And all of that really pales in comparison to actual human life lost, obviously.

But it's sobering. It's another indicator of what we've experienced over the last six months. Surely, yeah. Well, let's talk about some of that. So what movies or productions have we just for sure lost forever? Well, you know, it's hard to say because they just don't exist. I think what is true is that it is more expensive to make a movie now than it used to be because there are extra precautions that now need to be taken whether it's sanitation or it's testing people every day or two on set and those costs rack up and they're going to go towards the big ticket items they're going to go towards the Jurassic Worlds and the Mission Impossibles. And so studios may be hesitant to then put out extra money for a movie that would be more of a risk.

Or maybe more of an artistic film that they're not really sure is a surefire hit or an original story that doesn't have a built-in audience. So you would see the arguments being made in the before times that studios are more risk averse these days. They just want to do tentpole, summer blockbusters, sequel adaptation type fare. They're not interested in original movies about people dealing with human things. And you're just saying that's going to be even more so the case now. Yeah, I think in nearly every case, what the pandemic did is accelerate some trends that were already there and make it more plausible for people to get away with accelerating those trends. And this is probably going to be one of them. How about movie theaters? Do we have any idea how many

theaters in the country across the world have permanently shut down? It seems like the big chains, the AMCs, the Regals are still around, yeah? Yeah, the big ones are still around. And right now it's still kind of hard to tell because there were a number of maybe smaller theaters or smaller chains and even the big ones that stayed afloat on loans from the government or on money they had saved, donations from the community that they serve. And so right now it's unclear who will close. We still have months to go, if not years, before we start to really see the full impact. Let's talk about that other thing you mentioned, which seemed a little more amorphous, that Hollywood may have lost some of its footing in the world. How do you mean? So, you know, I started thinking earlier this

summer when it became clear that there would be literally no summer blockbusters about the history of the blockbuster. And, you know, ever since Jaws came out in the early 70s, Hollywood summer blockbusters have been kind of a big part of the moviegoing experience and one of our big, big exports to the rest of the world, whether it was a movie like, oh, I don't know, Armageddon, or Independence Day, or Men in Black, right? Or any Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, all of these movies, right? And they all kind of follow a similar pattern,

which is for the most part, they're pretty apocalyptic. Like the world is going to end in some way. Those are always the stakes. And they're usually solved by like heroic Americans, whether those heroic Americans are like ordinary people or scientists or the president who's like going to lead a charge against a flying saucer. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. Or oil drillers who are gonna go to the moon, right? There's like this nationalism or this

patriotism to the Hollywood summer blockbuster. And that's very calculated. The idea is you go to the movies and you see yourself, and then you get kind of excited and inspired by it, and you feel like, yay, we're going to save the day. I lived in Chile for a year once, and my host father, whenever we'd watch a movie, he'd say, siempre los gringos salvan el mundo, siempre. Exactly. Which was Spanish for always the Americans gotta come in and save the world.

Let's hear it for Captain America. Yep, and that's because those are the stories we want to tell ourselves about ourselves. And they're super fun. And that has held right into the comic book era where sort of the twin heroes of the Avengers movies among all the other heroes are literally Captain America and Tony Stark who stands for American innovation and capitalism

and all this stuff. So that story kind of concluded last summer literally with Endgame. And I am Iron Man. And now we're in this sort of strange period this year where we didn't have those movies. And if you were lucky enough to go to a theater or a drive-in and see a blockbuster this summer,

it probably was Jurassic Park. Really? Yes, highest grossing film of the week was a movie from decades ago about dinosaurs. I'm simply saying that life finds a way. It does feel like some sort of like poetic justice that the year that America literally sort of not only failed the world,

but also just failed itself, failed to save itself from a global pandemic, is also the year where we kind of didn't have this sort of American myth so pervasive in our movie theaters. Yeah, it's certainly possible for people to tell themselves a story in which we're still the hero, but I don't know how easy that is to do if you're actually looking at the facts.

That being said, I mean, the Yanks are still trying to get to Mars. The Yanks are still building electric cars. The Yanks are still going to have drones deliver that toilet paper to your house in like an hour or whatever. We're still doing okay in some measures is there a chance that this is just the year that the yanks tanked and then next year we'll be back to save the world i mean what you're suggesting is does this sequel to this year put us back on a high note yeah in the franchise of America, does the new sequel leave us more like Endgame did where, ah, we fixed it, right? There's another generation coming. Right, exactly.

And I mean, who knows, right? I guess we're waiting to see. We're certainly sitting wondering what's going to happen in November and certainly far beyond that. And it also is definitely true that blockbusters aren't going away from Hollywood. I think people will keep watching them if we keep making them, but I think I would point to Black Panther. That is an African story. Made by Americans. That's a good example of a movie that honestly the industry did not think was going to do very well. And instead, it just was a massive success.

Billions of dollars worldwide. Everyone went and saw it. And there's a lot of possibilities. And I felt, as a person who writes about movies for a living, that the blockbuster had gotten very stagnant for a long time and very predictable. And so perhaps we'll discover that this summer was actually an inflection point where we started doing something new. Hmm. Let's hope so. R.I.P. Chadwick, Wakanda forever.

Yeah, someone did mention to me yesterday that I don't know anything about comics, but I guess his sister becomes the Black Panther at some point in the comics, so... Oh, that's an incredible idea! Yeah. I'm just... Ugh!

Right? So surprised my little sister came to see me off before our big day. You wish. I'm here for the EMP beads. I've developed an update. Update? No, it worked perfectly. How many times do I have to teach you? Just because something works doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. You are teaching me. What do you know? More than you.

Alyssa Wilkinson. She writes about the movies for Vox. You can find her writing on summer blockbusters at vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos for them. We're off Monday for Labor Day. Back Tuesday for today explained