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Credit: Lucasfilm
One of the biggest conversations in entertainment over the last few years has been the future of the theatrical experience. While big blockbuster movies are still seeing billions of dollars in box office success, theatrical distribution more broadly has taken a significant hit and has never fully recovered from the global pandemic closures. A lot of people in the industry are concerned about the future of movies, and Harrison Ford is among them.
Harrison Ford had been a staple of movie theaters for decades. With roles in his career from Han Solo to Indiana Jones to Jack Ryan, and even recently joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ford has been part of some of the biggest movie franchises ever made. Speaking with THR, Ford admits that he’s concerned about the future of the theatrical movie experience. He thinks the problem is that a shared cultural connection between people has been lost. Ford said…
I’m terribly concerned. I came up at a period of time when the movie business was at its zenith, when the movie business captured the zeitgeist of a culture, and there was a transference, a cross-feeding, and the culture captured the zeitgeist of the movies. There is no zeitgeist anymore. We’ve been disassociated. We’ve been purposefully disaggregated into serviceable political economic units.
As somebody who still goes to the movies an average of once a week (though admittedly it’s part of my job), I still love going to movie theaters, and it’s been frustrating to watch the entertainment venues struggle. Going to the theater can still be great.
My most memorable theatrical experiences in the last year haven’t been the best movies. They’ve been the best communal experiences. Screaming with an audience watching Weapons or laughing together with a crowd watching The Naked Gun were some of my favorite movie memories from last year.
While there’s a financial issue at play here, Harrison Ford’s concerns are more rooted in culture and community than economics. For him, there’s a connection between movies and culture that has been lost, and the only way to save theaters is to find it again. He continued…
There is an empty center that needs to be filled, to bring the culture back together, to bring the culture and the movie business back together, for the movie business to be useful in the consciousness of an audience, a culture, a community.
At this point, it’s clear that many are only going to movie theaters to see major blockbuster releases. This means there are a lot of great movies that don’t get seen in theaters as audiences wait for streaming. Clearly, audiences have less desire for that community experience that Ford is talking about.
If this continues, it’s not hard to imagine that theaters could start to close, reducing the number of places where people can have this experience. If it becomes too difficult for people to go to the movies, they may go even less, and the cycle continues.