Now let’s roll the time machines back to the 70s and 80s when telephones would ring and there was no internet (the centre of GenZ’s entertainment or to be more specific social media). Now let’s be honest the only connection we probably have to that generation is our parents, grandparents, and a select group of teachers. And I must not be the only one to question whether their lives were interesting without TikTok and Netflix being at their fingertips. But in fact, they did have entertainment, they went to the cinema (for the experience so to say) to feel the romance of it all. When I mean romance though I don’t mean those classics where the boy meets the girl and their first date involved going to the movies; I mean the cinematic vibe; the hot popcorn and the soda refills, an escape from reality. It was the epitome of where the creativity was in that generation.
Now let’s roll them forward into the 21st century, where social media has taken over our lives, and it’s become our roadmap to life where we follow the latest trends and celebrities’ scandals (as well as many other things). To generalise, our entertainment is quite different from before. We want fast entertainment – comedic, witty, dramatic, and relatable. We just simply don’t have the attention span to watch a movie now and then for over 2 hours. It’s more about the 20-minute episodes in the lead-up for a couple of seasons that grabs our interest or even just 30 seconds. We watch, scroll, and then forget about it.
“Our phones are an extension of ourselves, and we just simply don’t know how to live without it,” said Mr Doherty.
My teenage life has always been about phones yet there are snippets of my life where movies have been such a fun and enjoyable experience; it felt like the 70s and 80s came back with a modern twist. New ideas shined and people became excited. Our childhood had most of the original movies and iconic TV shows. Every year I would look forward to the new Marvel movie, a new romance, a new spy, or an addition to the many movie series that were out there. But recently that memory ceases to exist. When the Avengers ended, the Spiderman series came to relive the icons for one or two movies, but there again there are no new signs of a new addition to the much-loved series. All that exists are horrible remakes of classics and the considerably bad live-action Disney movies. There is no interest in going to the cinema anymore, there is nothing to watch, and whatever is interesting is just on every other streaming app.
“The magic of the cinema is lost because it’s just everywhere,” said Mr Doherty.
It’s true when everyone can access it no one was bothered and to prove it this year, the only Hollywood movie that most people were interested in was Barbie and Oppenheimer because it hadn’t been streamed and people had something to look forward to. Social media hyped it up and to be honest that’s the only reason most of us went anyways. The only reason we went was because of themed reels on TikTok and Instagram.
So, I am willing to question whether our disinterest in movies except for a couple of movie buffs in our generation (shoutout to Josiah Lucas) has led to the “Cinema losing its touch” to quote Mr Doherty. Or is it just that big studios are more interested in making money rather than being creative, that there is no love for it anymore or appreciation?
To find my answer, I have left it up to the expert of WCC, Previous Alumni Josiah.
It’s time to hear from the Movie Buff…
Josiah’s View
“With big money-hungry studios like Disney catching on to this, there’s less passion behind projects, it’s a desperate race to release constant projects that’ll make them money, rather than to put genuine creative effort into a film and take time with that process. Therefore, movies have become faster-paced paced, less thought-provoking, and it’s obvious that there’s no love behind most movies these days. Go back to the 70s and 80s when movies were at their best, many of the filmmakers behind the camera didn’t have much to work with, but there was so much love behind each film that the team would go to great efforts in ensuring the quality of the story and execution was as close to perfect as possible, and that they had fun with that process too. Nowadays, the only goals are to make money and push agendas, rather than tell stories that inspire, challenge, confront, entertain, evoke emotion, etc. That’s the core of the problem, apathy. It’s why we’re seeing franchises stretched out beyond their limits (like Marvel and Star Wars), or a tonne of remakes and reboots being released. And as much as the studios behind the films are to blame, we as the audience are as well due to our apathy. People don’t want to be challenged anymore.”
So, I leave it up to the students of William Clarke to share their point of view on the matter and whether they think the question has been answered – Has the cinema lost its magic?
