Rampage is out April 13th and Avengers Infinity War is out April 27th. Summer seems to be coming earlier and earlier. In fact it seems like if Hollywood has it's way summer will last all year long. Effects driven action movies used to dominate the summer months while smaller dramas or unproven new ideas came out in spring and fall generally. Of course, Hollywood makes more money on tent-pole films and infinite blockbuster sequels, so it only stands to reason they would want to stretch that out as long as possible. But is that good for the movie industry?
It seems that new concepts and movies Hollywood thinks will not do well are getting dumped on the myriad of streaming services. It remains to be seen if this will kill any small movies from making it to the theaters or not, but I think it is damaging the overall health of the movie industry. If every movie is a huge spectacle then they will soon lose any impact( I would argue superhero movies have already lost excitement and impact). Take Avengers Infinity War for example, normally the culmination of a decade long build up would be fun and exciting, but for me it just looks like more of the same. Thanos has been built up so long that he can't possibly live up to the hype. Imagine if every movie that came out was tied to some "universe". Fun and exciting can quickly become boring and repetitive.
I know I'm not everyone but people have got to be getting tired of this endless bombardment of shlock. How long can the age of a Star Wars movie and at least three superhero movies every year last? So will movie theaters just implode, will all movies be direct to Netflix? That might not be a bad thing necessarily, going to the movie theater is usually a bad experience. But what will be the incentive for companies like Netflix to green-light a movie that only a few subscribers will watch? Sure they produce small projects now while Hollywood is doing the heavy lifting but what happens if they are the only platform?
I know this sounds far fetched now but I never imagined when I was a kid that cable would be basically dead in 2018. It's just something to think about, how long can this go on? The movie theater has had a long run, maybe it's time is over, or maybe people will just keep going to Star Wars and Superhero movies until the end of time. Who knows? I'll let you know if Rampage is any good on Friday and I'll be back for Throwback Thursday.
Thanks for reading!