Back when television got big, cinema had to evolve to survive. The aspect ratio went wide.
This Is Cinerama was more of a tech demo than anything else in 1952, but it was followed by widescreen movie, movies in 1953 with “The Robe” being shot and shown in Cinemascope.
Technicolor too gave a more vibrant color scheme even than previous color film processing that actually came a generation prior, in 1932.
But the widescreen/Technicolor combination provided a must see experience that were the event films of the era and they couldn’t be duplicated at home.
Roll forward 50 years… home theater technology has evolved to a point where theater has to compete with 65" 4K television displays and 7.1 Dolby Atmos surround sound. People need a reason to leave their homes and deal with noisy, disease infected, crowds, high concession prices, expensive tickets, and annoyances like having to pre-pick your own seats instead of just walking in and sitting down.
Streaming is keeping people at home, being able to binge long form content, pausing when necessary. Cinema can’t provide that experirnce.
So it’s going the other way, the “theme park ride experience”. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the first Pirates of the Carribean movie hit in 2003, pre-dating the wave of comic book movies by, what? 5 or 6 years? 50 years after the first Cinerama movies?
But even that has roots going back to Jurassic Park (1993), Star Wars (1977), and Jaws (1975).
Now, don’t get me wrong, I dearly love “small” films like Scorsese’s After Hours, or even modern stuff like Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, but there is ZERO compelling reason to see them in a theater. I can get the same experience viewing them on my home theater setup without, you know, blowing $50 to sit in a noisy, uncomfortable theater.
To do THAT, I NEED a spectacle. I need to see something that demands I see it right away, in a theatrical environment. It needs to be a theme park ride.
If your end goal is to make a tight knit drama full of people in rooms talking to each other, well, Downton Abbey and Bridgerton are over there ->