‘There I sat, delighted’: Are movies changing for good?

Post Opinions writers Megan McArdle, Robert Gebelhoff, Will Leitch and Damir Marusic discuss recent films and what comes next.

Megan McArdle: Christopher Nolan’s old-fashioned movie magic

Since the pandemic, people have predicted that the movies were doomed. Home theaters and streaming have every hit ever made, and the infinite scroll of TikTok and YouTube are competing for eyeballs. Why leave the house when the couch is so comfortable?

Christopher Nolan has offered the most convincing rebuttal to this sad prophecy. First “Oppenheimer” and now “The Odyssey”: He has gotten people to travel to theaters and silence their phones for three hours of old-fashioned movie magic.

Is he showing us the way forward? Or is he the last gasp of the old order? I’m torn on that subject. But let’s assume Nolan is onto something. What can we learn from his success?

Mostly, that getting people to the big screen requires something spectacular. Gripping images and dazzling sound, of course, but also better stories. Do we really need another, lesser Star Wars or Spider-Man movie when we can see better versions at home?

I’d love to see more truly original stories, rather than ones studios have been strip-mining for the last decade and a half. But even an old story retold by a master, rather than the master plan of some studio franchise manager, can be enough reason to get off the couch.

Robert Gebelhoff: Streaming vs. the silver screen

Cranks will have you believe that American film is dying. They say it’s overloaded with intellectual property cash grabs (or at least, attempts at cash grabs; see this year’s “Moana” flopzilla). They point to layoffs in filmmaking and sagging box office sales.

I can’t argue any of this is wrong (though count me as a fan of some IP flicks). What I see, however, is an industry moving through the violent churn of technological upheaval and changing consumer preferences. I’m confident what will emerge will be no less creative and culturally significant.

Have you noticed, for instance, that romantic comedies have largely fallen out of the big box office mix? That’s because the genre doesn’t drive enough people to the theaters the way that big franchises do, so studios see them as financially risky.

But rom-coms aren’t gone. Talk to anyone who has streamed either of the past year’s extremely popular, steamy hockey shows (yes, there’s more than one!). Or any of the “Bridgerton” seasons. This art form didn’t disappear; it adapted.

I enjoy going to the theater, but I don’t always think it’s the best way to watch all film. Clearly most viewers agree. That’s okay. The market will figure this out.

Will Leitch: Next-gen filmmaking

Here’s a thing everyone forgets: The reason movie theaters have lost customers over the last half-decade or so is not because of young people. In fact, they’re going more than any other generation. Moviegoing is down because boomers and Gen Xers are attending movies less than their parents did.

Much of Hollywood has not caught up yet. They have been making movies the way their parents made them, with established IP and time-honored, conventional narratives meant to appeal to the people who, largely, have stopped going to movies altogether. The reason, I suspect, is that most Hollywood executives are middle-aged themselves. They’re stuck in the past too.

Which is why it’s no wonder that movies like “Obsession” and “Backrooms” are breaking through: They are made by, and for, the primary moviegoing audience. That’s why they feel so revolutionary (even if I’m not sure either of the films is actually all that great). But young people have always loved to go to the movies, even if it’s just to sit in the dark and make out. It’s not a revolution. Hollywood is at last learning to make movies for the people who actually go.

Damir Marusic: Are movies a racket? Bring it on.

Half a century ago, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg stormed a dying studio system in the name of personal filmmaking — and ended up giving birth to the franchise machine that runs Hollywood today.

It’s the trajectory Walter Murch, the Oscar-winning film editor and sound designer behind “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather,” liked to cite: “Every great idea starts as a movement, becomes a business and winds up as a racket.” The racket, in this case, produced the $32 billion Marvel Cinematic Universe — and taught audiences that if every movie is an event, none is.

On Tuesday, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” at 10:45 p.m., the only seat I could get. The first feature film shot entirely with Imax film cameras had sold out every civilized showtime for days. But there I sat, delighted, watching a 2,700-year-old poem cut on celluloid with a room of strangers.

Hopefully this is the future of film: As movies become infinitely available on every screen we own, the scarce thing — a particular print, a particular room, a shared experience — becomes the luxury good.

Will the luxury experience become the next “racket”? I sure hope so. Because competing to deliver luxury forces you to try harder.