Original films have been met with apathy lately, but can Sinners help turn that tide and save the big screen experience?
Without sounding like a broken record, it’s pretty clear that the studios greenlighting the majority of Hollywood’s tentpole pictures steer hugely in favour of recognisable IPs. Whether it’s sequels, remakes, reboots, biopics, or adaptations of other forms of media, the fact is that a struggling industry has rarely been successful outside of these. Every hit sequel (etc, etc) has effectively papered over the cracks of all the poorly received films that studios greenlit but audiences never asked for. For every Minecraft, there’s a remake of The Crow, for example.
Streaming has seen tastes and viewing habits change drastically, and this evolution of how fans consume cinema has contributed to the big screen being treated with (in some cases) actual disdain (I’m looking at you, Netflix). Do audiences in the streaming age have anything like the same affection as previous generations growing up on cinema outings to see event movies that were actually great?
Upon recently revisiting Jurassic Park, two things really struck me: one, every sequel and pretty much every similar ilk creature feature since (bar Godzilla Minus One) has paled hugely in comparison. Two, it’s so rare that anything that becomes a cinematic cultural phenomenon these days does so because it’s genuinely incredible. No, what we get these days for event movies and pop culture explosions is ‘Chicken Jockey’ and trashed cinema screens. Jurassic Park was the first all-consuming, huge event movie I saw on the big screen, and it has stood the test of time. It wasn’t merely churned out as content. It was made to break new ground, tell a compelling story, and dazzle us with technological advancements that, aside from anything served the story.
You could argue any financial success is good for cinema, but the only lesson a success like A Minecraft Movie teaches us, is that it doesn’t matter what you put out as long as has the potential to go viral, hook in kids and make a big splash in the here and now (before it disappears into the inevitable void of forgotten ‘content’). It’s everything wrong with cinema now. Dumbing down to audiences that studios genuinely believe are dumb (they’re wrong). Old man moment alert: In my day, kids’ films often challenged and had subtext. They were also good enough to engage adults. Above all, they were crafted and made with care. It’s all too rare these days, outside of world cinema.
Inevitably, the bottom line is always the dollar gross and in the past year, original mainstream films, by auteurs, have really struggled. Horror does continue to do well thanks to the small budget and tidy returns model, but these films, even with the buzz of The Substance, don’t get a sizeable big-screen release. For me, seeing The Substance on the big screen proved challenging, simply because showings were sparse and far away, whilst the nearest cinema just packed its showings with blockbusters and kids’ animated films, many of which were gargantuan financial failures.
Then people bring up a recurring point: “It’s not enjoyable to watch films on the big screen any more.” However, this sentiment is often largely centred on the choice put forth, which is often mundane, ill-conceived and cynically made blockbusters that do little to engage an audience to lift their head from their phones or shut the hell up. Maybe people are less ‘aware’ of their surroundings, their behaviour or less empathetic in a self-absorbed world tied to our phones. Maybe people don’t care about cinema etiquette, and it certainly seems that way with certain Chicken Jockey triggered trends. You also generally see the listings stuffed with films aimed primarily at boys of 13 and under.
The Letterboxd generation certainly has the power and the love of film to rejuvenate the big screen experience. It’s up for debate just how much of that cinephilia actually extends to the big screen experience itself. Sure, the under-25s are now broadening their horizons and looking at different types of films. They’re embracing the wild, the weird and the idiosyncratic and giving them ratings out of five, which brings us to Sinners.
A proper director’s vision, shot meticulously to be exhibited in a number of different ways, from superscope widescreen, to the all-consuming full frames of the top-tier IMAX screens (and more besides). Sinners is a film made for the big screen, by a filmmaker given the license to express himself creatively and deliver a vision. It’s also important to note that, unlike a few auteur filmmakers in recent years, it doesn’t succumb to over-indulgence. Ryan Coogler, whilst making the film his way, also keeps the audience at the forefront of his creative choices because ultimately, he wants people to watch it.
The film is a wonderful audio-visual experience. Beautiful cinematography, shot on film. A soundtrack to die for. It has also got depth and layers to get into and incredible performances. All whilst effectively being a film with a third act heavily inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn. Now, honestly, the by-the-numbers ‘genre’ aspect of Sinners is perhaps the least interesting, and it doesn’t do the Dusk Till Dawn bit as well as Rodriguez did, but it’s the sum of all its parts, and it’s all that builds up beforehand, which elevates it. Just a quick side note worth mentioning as well, but can we please just engrave Delroy Lindo’s name into an Oscar now? Just get it done because no one is beating him as Best Supporting Actor.
Sinners should be the kind of thing that ignites people’s desire to go to the cinema and watch something decent. It should be a money spinner, and it has come out of the blocks well, given the rather (sensibly) enigmatic marketing. As some will attest (to the ire of Ben Stiller), it’s not doing the kind of eye-popping numbers that would have studios feverishly rushing to make well-written films. Likewise, Coogler has benefited from enough credit in the bank that studios were vying to indulge his idea, and there aren’t a huge stack of visionaries with a box office track record in the several billions.
Sometimes there’s the feeling with films like this from the major studios, that they’re rather apathetic on whether they go gangbusters, because a risk that pays off doesn’t make another risk any more appealing. No, the safer bet, or the IP film, is still preferred. After all, a huge $300 million opus based on (whatever) allows a lot of budget for a lot of execs to pocket. No, the ideal, from a studio perspective, is probably that Sinners turns a tidy but unspectacular profit and perhaps makes Coogler more likely to headline a more generic, studio-friendly IP film. It needs to do well, but not too well.
Sadly, that doesn’t bode particularly well for the idea of a new golden age of tentpole films that are fresh, good and capture a wide audience. Who’s gonna put out a Marvel film with a stunning blues soundtrack? Okay, maybe Ryan Coogler, but if audiences seem to be increasingly tired of what’s on at the big screen, short of some viral persuasion, maybe it’s worth making films that genuinely feel tailored to be events. To have a legacy years down the line (where most mainstream films are a foggy memory by the time you’re back in the foyer).
There are many other caveats, of course, from flawed cinema pricing to distribution logic, to the continuing insistence of vendors making the experience building up to the dimming lights and age rating card, so excruciating. Yes, 20 minutes of adverts for companies I’ll avoid purely out of spite for delaying the film. I’ll do trailers, but let’s cut the pre-film advertising onslaught because it really does have the opposite effect that companies want.
It should also be noted that with so many chains struggling to keep the lights on, the experience is often further marred by poor screening equipment. My nearest cineplex doesn’t have great screens or sound, but it’s cheap. The more upmarket indie chains are pricier but usually tech proficient (and nicer all round), but again, price is always going to be the biggest factor in a cost-of-living crisis. So you wait for the short window, sometimes weeks, and watch at home. Or you choose to watch the increasing number of production line, (almost uniformly horrible-looking) straight-to-streaming films coming out with the new normal in aesthetics (from shots, to lighting, to grade) that someone decided (wrongly) was a good thing. Or you could, maybe, just maybe, go and watch a film like Sinners, a feast for the eyes and an orgasm for the ears.
What did you think of Sinners? Would you like to see more great original films on the big screen? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth or hit me up @JolliffeProductions…
Tom Jolliffe
