Screen to Screen — Argument Essay
Movie theaters are closed. But does it matter?
In recent years we’ve received countless other ways to consume entertainment, without even having to leave our beds. From Netflix to Amazon to binging entire TV shows in one day, why did people still go to theaters in the first place? It’s not for the overpriced snacks, although we succumb to those too. It’s because movies are better on the big screen! (At least they seem that way.)
There’s a certain spectacle that you get in a movie theater. When the only thing you can see in a dark room is a 50 foot screen, paired with surround sound, the movie is obviously what’s going to demand your attention. You get immersed in it — sometimes I have to remind myself that there is still a world out there. Would Avengers: Endgame made such an impact on pop culture had it been released on Disney+? Probably not. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the same chills I got when Cap lifted Mjolnir seeing it on my phone, then I did when I saw it on full display in front of me. In a theater, a film becomes an experience, rather than just a movie. Even an average movie can seem great when you see it on the big screen (until maybe 3o minutes after you leave the theater, and realize you can’t remember anything that happened in the first half).
Another reason: movies are made to be looked at and listened to. At their core, that’s their sole function. A director makes conscious choices about everything you see on screen. A great director knows where you’ll be looking in a frame, and that’s where they will place important information. If you look away to let your dog outside, or your screen is too small to see, you’ll miss that information. Missing any part of a movie is missing the movie that the filmmaker made. It is much harder to understand the meaning, message, and emotion of a film without being fully attentive and immersed in it. A bad movie is probably going to be bad either way, but you might miss out on what makes a great movie great.
So why are these big movies like Black Widow, Dune, and Wonder Woman 1984 receiving delay after delay? Why not just put them on streaming when that seems like a no brainer in today’s entertainment market. Because Hollywood is a money’s game. If these movies were dropped on streaming, as prolific as streaming is, they wouldn’t gain nearly the praise, chatter, and (most especially) dollars to be worth it to the studio. Movies are made for movie theaters. I’m not saying that movies on a small screen can’t be great, because they definitely can, but tearing them away from their big screen intentions would be doing them a disservice.
