I don't think Barbie sets a realistic goal for anyone, but I saw a number that something like 11% of the people who went out to it either hadn't been to a theater pre-COVID or hadn't been at all. Given the general age of who saw that movie, I'm sure that Venn diagram isn't hard to read either way. I think certain movies (which I should warn you all I'm gonna ramble a lot about) can inspire the average SVU binge-watcher to get curious about the theater. Though, and I won't touch on this at all, I do wonder if a certain, extremely impressionable age range (parents, say when) will meet this break with a collective shrug, consider their Barbie moments a collective fever dream and get right back to making Youtube #shorts and TikTok Jeffrey Katzenberg's worst nightmare. Anyway...I meant this paragraph to be a sort of joke for those who made it to the end of this post, only to make it as long or longer than any other thought in this bloated disaster...so this is my last, completely uninformed statement that summarizes everything below:

NOTHING IS GUARANTEED, PAY THE FUCKING WRITERS.

Other than when I was the one jackass going out to see a Tenet or (hey Longo, set an alarm to delete this post in 36 hours) Wonder Woman in 2020, audiences have been exactly what I've expected here. Just like bars and restaurants that year's fall, nothing much appeared or felt different about theaters.

It's harder and harder to remember the caveat to that statement is that, as landlocked and generally uninteresting as Nebraska is, this state had the bizarre experience of seeing its most serious outbreaks occur in remote, densely populated slaughterhouses rather than the two easterly cities with so-called "big-time" colleges that've produced annoyingly well-read, self-delineated empaths...all relatively speaking of course, because obviously more people meant more communication, so every number worth caring about was still biggest where it paradoxically felt most invisible...

I realized this wouldn't say much before I even did the search but the only seats available for the non-IMAX, 5PM on a Friday screening of the Taylor Swift concert movie at my favorite cineplex are the handicap holds.


Especially after I figured I should check that against Equalizer 3, which has almost 10 less tickets sold for its pre-Labor Day 11:30 AM screening for the olds today than Oppenheimer (whose number is, glancing, 13, so) while TMNT seems to have absolutely zero parents planning to numb their kids at 11AM and at best a quartet of teens managing the afterglow of parents-are-out-of-town shroom trip at 12:30...


So maybe I just pick the right movies on the right days. For some dumbass, really aggravating reasons, I saw the first 30 or so minutes of MI Dead Reckoning three times and the theater was at least 3/4 full each time (and no, even the third time I didn't get to stay much beyond the opening credits). I unintentionally saw Maverick on Memorial Day, and given the (appropriately) raucous audience I have to imagine our claim to Offutt Air Force Base and STRATCOM did a Barry Bondsian number on those seats (and how awesomely fun those 3 hours were).

But I've got no explanation for how packed John Wick 4 was, especially considering the number of kids getting indoctrinated by Kurosawa cosplay. Spider-Man was fully loaded, though, which makes sense being that A) it's Spider-Man B) it's animated and C) as much as Tom Holland might seem like the most Peter-y Spiderguy I've ever seen, Miles absolutely soars without the weight of the MCU (and I love his parents, and its animated, and parents oughta love his parents, and kids oughta want their parents to be like his parents, and its animated). So, yea, that crowd was equally as bonkers as the Top Gun fleet but with way more charm. Twice, even.

Hell, when I saw Beau Is Afraid in that same damn cineplex with the almost perfect IMAX screen that's the best I can get (digital projection, aspect ratio slightly adjusted for the room) maybe I should've expected the room to be as just over half full as it was, but not knowing at all what I was getting into with that movie (and having little affinity for Hereditary or Midsommar) I was shocked most of the people I walked in with were the same people I was walking out with. Especially considering I took Aster's bait/bet/dare and lingered on the final shot as long as he did. That he's built a fanbase, even on opening weekend, that would linger in a pretty apathetic AMC multiplex through not only that third act generally but an effectively infinite last look that to my mind, seemed to be an atomic refutation of fandom, passion or any number of things that seem to drive so much of a fraction of entertainment that's bizarrely as invisible as it is all-encompassing...I wish I could say I took something profound from that moment when the Beau crowd didn't seem all that different from the Spider-Man crowd. But I mostly worried that the Omaha/Council Bluffs area was littered with weirdos.

Yea, I felt like ranting, and ultimately I think I didn't say anything more insightful than my subject line. Any decently argumentative person could point out, for example, that if no parents are shambling into this morning's TMNT showing (or at the very least pre-ordering the tickets to help inform an OKP's understanding of his trek through the past two years of movie-going) historically that bodes worse for the box office than when I saw the best military propaganda since Leni Riefenstahl had game while encircled by flyboys. The more I...tweeted through it...I realize that even as the pre-COVID box office suffered, it wasn't all or nothing for Sundays Old Guys and Soccer Moms block the way my little survey seemed.

(Sound of Freedom, dubious as always, boasts about 60% seating for a 4:45 showing).

Again, I think the bigger cities will dictate the terms here, but you see all the streamers recognizing that the theater crowd helps build hype for the dweebs that think their 4K TCL and Amazon Days discounted soundbar equate to a full theater experience. Whatever the effect memes and social pressure had on Oppenheimer's box (not to mention the infamous Nolan-bros that plausibly might've bought a second or third ticket to "fuckin', like, get it, man") and what I see in my little centralized, entertainment desert of the world probably doesn't matter.

But I want to believe it does, and that theaters ultimately ought to contract and specialize, but will survive.

As for your actual question, having just worked a Craig Ferguson stand up I totally get the power of that turn on, tune out window of late night entertainment. Catch me at the right/wrong time, I might tell you he's the best late night host to ever do it. At the very least, he's uniquely cunning. His jokes that night weren't surprising, but from minute one you could tell he was testing his material, making sure his IDEA of Nebraska didn't match the audience who'd paid to see him. All cards face up, I'd put Ferguson and Dick Cavett in an interview death match and care very little who wins. But I suppose that's beside the point, other than...

Which helped me understand why Warners would delay Dune, or the Even More Zendaya Challengers movie - that only the 11 of us still refreshing PTP two or three times a day think about - got pushed 6 months. It doesn't matter that the only good interview out there is Hot Ones, the late night hosts, even as unapologetically kinda not really but for many people's purposes basically communist as their jokes are remarkably capable of lulling audiences into complacence. Of course studios want to buffer their biggest movies with that junk. It doesn't matter that audiences saw the Dune trailer before Oppenheimer and it looked outrageously good, the allure of a Zendaya anecdote about how Tom Holland's been loving picking blueberries to garnish their waffles during his acting sabbatical while she busts her ass learning the weirding way is too kitsch to dismiss for something as petty as "wages" or "the continued growth of the creative side of movies".

But then again I rant, so scroll back to the top where I say

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz