At this point, summarizing one of the wildest years in recent history would only denote the profound sense of loss we all felt as a global pandemic brought our entire world to a screeching halt. Instead, I want to highlight some of the innovations of the film world that brought us all together and kept us sane for an extended period of time.
Without innovations like Amazon’s Watch Parties and newly curated streaming services (like the Drafthouse-On-Demand or Shudder), audiences would’ve been shut out from sharing in films they love. Even small ideas like cutting yourself slack as you round the eleventh straight hour of “Bob’s Burgers” helped advance our love for the movies and TV shows. HBO disrupted the entire industry when they released their massive blockbuster spectacle “Wonder Woman 1984” day and date for us to watch on TV and Disney earned a tender shilling dropping “Mulan” early for an extra thirty bucks. Whether it’s technical, financial, or ideological, 2020 was a revolution in every way possible. Here are some of the innovations 2020 either crafted or popularized to get us to the State of Watching today.
1. Streaming Services
I know I know. Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime have all been around for years now. I’m glad for them. They’re doing lots to encourage middle budget and indie movies to find a home. I’m talking about the niche streaming service, those more specified corners of the universe. Shudder cornered the market on horror streaming and honestly, horror fans love it. With great acquisitions like “Blood Machines” or “Impetigore,0 Shudder has been killing the game. They bring in horror from far and wide across the globe. They even showcase behind-the-scenes TV shows like Horror Noire that explain the history of the genre.
Alamo On-Demand stepped up to fill the gap left by our favorite rowdy theater. They brought several classics to homes and scratched itches not even the vast catalog of Netflix could scratch. Art house aficionados finally paid for their MUBi or Criterion subscriptions. Just when we thought content might get stale these services came along and really picked up the slack.
2. Watch Parties
Whether it’s an officially sanctioned Amazon Watch Party or some restream or screen sharing software, people found ways to watch movies together, alone. We all downloaded that Netflix Party Google Chrome extension and binged “Tiger King” together. It took a while for the services to catch on to what we were doing and yes, they may have poo-pooed the idea initially, but they finally leaned into it. Not all movies are watch party available, but they certainly made an effort to let us all congregate together.
Personally, I’ve loved the Watch Party feature. Even before the pandemic some friends and I debated starting a movie-watching event. Each month we’d watch some cult films and B budget schlockfests that went ignored by the mainstream of cinema. COVID forced us to quash the monthly movie idea and instead we went with a weekly cinema! After three months of host curation, we opened up to the friend group and watched some true gems. I finally watched classics like “Motel Hell,” “Flash Gordon,” and “Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II.” I feel like I’ve earned my bona fides in the weird world of forgotten classics.
3. Cutting Ourselves Some Slack
One of my favorite outcomes of the pandemic (of which there are next to none) was the focus on mental health. Experts advised: It’s okay to veg out. Living in the middle of a pandemic carries is stressful and after MONTHS of this, we’re cracking. I know I was going nuts living alone in a cabin in my parent’s backyard doing nothing for almost an entire month. We finally started to cut ourselves some slack. Don’t worry if you gain quarantine weight! Let your kids’ screentime get out of control! Finish that TV show, the world could end! As a collective, we breathed easier and just let ourselves enjoy things more.
Who among us didn’t watch all of “Tiger King” from beginning to end in a single sitting? The pandemic showed us we need to permit ourselves more distractions and whatever gets the job done is welcome. Sure our eyes are sore from staring at a zoom screen all day but if Joe Exotic’s trials and tribulations couldn’t fascinate us for well over six hours straight then who can? Personally, I watched an entire season of “The Bachelor” for the first time in my life. Yes, I downed a glass of rosé and stuttered over the insanity therein but I learned to appreciate the show for what it is. Just as I watched a season of a reality show I also downed every single “Fast & Furious” movie in the span of three weeks.
4. New Movies on Your Home TV
This next bit might be extremely controversial but it alludes to something only my closest friends have been kind enough to point out: not a lot of people go to the movies. Gasp! Heresy! My word! I’m sorry but it’s just the truth. Your average moviegoer watches maybe 5 movies in a year. Most of those are families so the movies have to be family outings. It’s one of the reasons we have such an over-inflated blockbuster lineup.
Let’s be honest: going to the movies is expensive. Twenty dollars for a prime movie ticket, another twenty on food, maybe another fifteen on a cocktail, and you’ve essentially bought dinner for two at a decent restaurant. Rising ticket prices and increasing snack costs have edged more and more people out of cinemas and they don’t feel guilty. Why should they drop all that money on a movie if they can stay in and watch Netflix? It’s the great philosophical dilemma of the modern movie era.
This year, like it or not, streaming services caved. Theaters emptied out and completely closed down after studios pulled their blockbuster hits. It became a vicious cycle of despair, as a theater chain would attempt to open, showcase a film or two, and fail to eke out a living.
Studios watched Christopher Nolan attempt a full-court press at theater attendance for his film “Tenet” and came off as tone-deaf. No, audiences would not risk their lives for a movie. Movies are, in fact, dangerous events for large groups to attend. So, some studios adapted.
Before all the “WW84” hype, Universal rolled the dice by releasing “Trolls: World Tour” on VOD the same day it went to theaters. It’s wild success demonstrated one simple truth: never underestimate a child’s spending influence on their parents. This economic success raised eyebrows but seemed far outside the norm and unlikely to continue.
Disney dropped its blockbuster “Mulan” on its streaming service Disney+ for an extra thirty dollars the same day as its theatrical release. Any theaters that were open played it, but Disney gambled on that sweet, sweet family money. Make no mistake, subscribers would get to watch “Mulan” without having to spend thirty dollars. They would just have to wait an extra two months to do so. Disney’s success of “Mulan” mirrored the previous success: families’ purchasing power. Then came “Wonder Woman 1984.”
There’s a lot to say about the movie itself and its questionable critics’ score might speak to the generally ‘meh’ attitude consumers have regarding HBO’s massive decision. In a unilateral, sweeping move Warner Bro.’s announced it would release all seventeen of its 2021 released films on the new streaming service HBOMax on the same day as its theatrical release.
For consumers, it’s a dream come true: new theater movies without risking your neck. For the movie industry, it was the equivalent of flipping the table, breaking it down into small pieces, and using it to smoke a sausage. Creatives fumed over what felt like backstabbing and the payouts Warner Bros’ handed to the “Wonder Woman” team urged others to start asking for advances instead of taking points.
WB CEO Ann Sarnoff said the decision was temporary but the ramifications will send shockwaves throughout the industry IF consumers flock to it. If people decide they’d rather watch blockbuster movies on TV than in theaters AND a huge portion of people join HBOMax, we may seem some form of hybrid model in the future (theatrical releases aren’t dead yet!) Only time will tell.
5. Table Reads
Who doesn’t love a good cast reunion? With all this free time on their hands shows reunited, stars laughed again, and we all donated to a charitable cause just to watch them do it. It’s kind of a genius idea honestly. Bring back the cast of “Community” and have them reread an episode together with the chance to comment and laugh and provide insight about the show. Taika Waititi read “James and the Giant Peach” with stars like Chris Hemsworth and Nick Kroll. The cast of “90210,” “Splash,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Frasier,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” all reunited and on and on.
Not only did original casts reunite but they adapted and included new talent to fill vacant roles. Pedro Pascal stepping in on the “Community” table read filled me with joy as he broke line after line busting out laughing. It was every cinephile/TV fan’s dream: a “where are they now” but contained in the typical twenty-minute structure of TV. It became so popular that it parodied itself in less than a month with Ryan Reynolds crashing the “X-Men” cast reunion to crack some jokes.
6. Virtual Film Festivals
Film Festivals occupy this strangely powerful niche where only the most fastidious cinephiles really knew what they were getting into. Press clamored over chances to cover fests and even then they’re front-loaded with tens, even hundreds, of films to watch. A person can only watch so much!
This year film festivals adapted. The indies had to get out there and find their audience! Festival programmers pioneered the new virtual film festival where audience members can hang in a discord channel and chat with each other over movies they loved. I even recall an 8-bit cine lounge for an avatar to wander and chat with other avatars.
I honor the hard work of those programmers, representatives, and publicists. Can you imagine coordinating a thousand different screener links to ten thousand different people? Try to coordinate press materials for over a hundred films on a single Google doc without overwhelming the average viewer. It’s a lot of hard work. The poor publicists had to answer the same ten questions for ten days straight as they tried to show us the crème of the crop.
Film Festivals can feel like major gatekeeping and critics (notably critics of color, transgendered critics, LGBTQIA+ critics, and differently-abled critics) have cast doubt on their tastemaking abilities. With festivals going digital now there’s no excuse to deny critics the chance to find and champion films. Even the youngest among us could cover Sundance with the right application, a dream for many film journalists. Gatekeeping fell, just a little bit, and we all got an opportunity to indulge in some truly interesting films.
7. Working from Home
Working from home means something else entirely new to actors and directors alike. Anyone in the animation or voice industry had to build their own voice studio, to different degrees of success. Some shows made a limited comeback: “Bob’s Burgers,” “South Park’s Pandemic Special,” “Euphoria,” and even “Supernatural” finally finished its sixteen season run. The animators all worked within their own homes and voice actors chuckled their way through episodes. Meanwhile, other shows powered through the pandemic with limited crews and made a baker’s dozen of shows to share with the audience. With the weight of the world settling in around us creators showed us they wanted to make us laugh again.
These seven innovations made the year what it was. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, these were the trends of watching we endorsed and can look forward to in the year ahead. They speak to human ingenuity and our sheer stubbornness. They demonstrate our heartfelt desire to laugh, cry, smile, smart, and otherwise feel something amidst a crumbling world. We learned to savor every little drop of community we could get. That saccharine nostalgia comforted us.
People worry about the future of cinema. Netflix is set to release fifty movies in 2021. HBOMax will give us some of its greatest hits straight to our TV for a reasonable price. Eventually, theatergoing will return. In what form I can’t say. You’d need a crystal ball and a COVID vaccine to tell me. While filmmaking may be struggling to produce something new, we’ve been gifted even easier access to content unlike ever before. Whether you’re into videogames, movies, or TV, there’s always something to watch!
Look forward to 2021 even as we mourn 2020 because while there’s no going back from this, we’re also entering uncharted territory where human resourcefulness can break down gatekeeping walls and introduce all of us to new things. My advice? Try something new! Find something far outside your norm and indulge in it. If 2020 was the end of normalcy, then 2021 can be the beginning of a new watching era!
