From ew, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial opened in theaters on June 11, 1982. It was still playing in theaters one year later. On one hand, that kind of theatrical run is unthinkable today. Too many things have changed in Hollywood: The rise of home video as a cultural phenomenon and an economic necessity, the frontloaded release schedule that values opening-weekend gross over anything else, the rising ticket prices that have essentially eradicated any incentive to see a film more than once in theaters. But in a sense, the modern moviegoing experience isn’t so different. People saw E.T. one year and were still talking about it one year later. Today, the equation has flipped: First, we talk about movies for a full year in advance; then, we finally see the movie, and the conversation essentially stops.
It helps to remember that, in a weird way, the biggest movies of summer 2011 aren’t coming out until 2012. The internet has regularly buzzed all summer with leaked images from next year’s The Dark Knight Rises. Some of these images have been official: The famously secretive Christopher Nolan decided to grant sneak peeks at the villainous Bane and the maybe-villainous-but-probably-just-amoral Catwoman. Some of the leaks were less official: TMZ just posted video footage of Anne Hathaway’s stunt double accidentally crashing into an IMAX camera. Meanwhile, next year’s Spider-Man reboot dominated the conversation at Comic-Con. And two of the biggest movies of the summer — Captain America and Thor — were essentially advertisements for a film that isn’t coming out until next year.
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3 comments:
Great article. I completeley agree. For me the less I know about a movie going into it the more I'll enjoy it.
Some interesting points raised here (and I have myself marvelled at the amount of front-buzz that gets coughed up, mostly because JPX pastes it here on the blog), but I think he's missing something. Going out on a limb here, I don't think the internet is a complete and accurate representation of the sum total of human conversation. I think this is more a comment on internet media, which doesn't really have an interest in discussing movies that have opened already. There's our blog and hundreds more like it, but EW and TMZ etc are under pressure to present the new stuff, not maintain the "cultural conversation."
Neat point about Fast Five
Oh believe me, I've avoided posting a ton of the Dark Knight Rises stuff. Just yesterday I watched footage that someone took with their phone of Bane doing something and other footage of Catwoman doing something. I try like heck not to watch this stuff but then curiosity takes over.
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