Does God want movie theaters to survive?

A meditation on the 2024 Memorial Day box-office disaster and the future of movies in American mass culture

This is the question that I have been thinking about ever since Memorial Day: What role do movie theaters play in God’s glorious and fallen creation?

Yes, that’s a strange question. Let me explain.

Back in my professor days when I taught Introduction to Mass Communication 101, I explained the whole “technology shapes culture” equation (again, think “the medium is the message”) by asking a series of questions that went something like this.

Is reading the epic that is “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien the same thing as viewing the Peter Jackson movies (let’s say one at a time) in theaters? The question is whether the content of this classic, in the printed word, changed when it was adapted into a visual medium for theater screens.

The answer, obviously, is “Yes” — even with talented screenwriters and a director who sincerely wanted to honor the author’s vision of the story.

Let’s keep going. Is seeing the LOTR films in a packed theater, on a big screen, the same thing as watching the movies on your couch at home on a television screen? I would say, “No.” Let’s push this equation even further: What about watching LOTR on your smartphone? Would that change the content again?

On one level, the movies would be the same. But what about the reality of the experience? What about the impact of the story on the viewer, in terms of the images (large and small) and the sound track? (If you are reading this post on a smartphone, CLICK HERE and think about that.)

What about the summer classic that is “Jaws”?

This brings us to the role that Memorial Day plays in movie culture, since the experts have long connected the arrival of “Jaws” with the blockbuster-based business model of modern Hollywood. And, yes, was “Jaws” in a packed theater (by all means, CLICK HERE) different than “Jaws” viewed on smaller screens?

What happened in American theaters on Memorial Day 2024?

The quick answer is “Not much,” and that’s really bad. Let’s look at some key paragraphs in this Variety report: “Box Office: ‘Furiosa’ Just Barely Beats ‘The Garfield Movie’ in Disastrous Memorial Day Weekend — the Worst in Decades.”

As always, trade publications focused on specific movies:

… “Furiosa” ended up generating $26.2 million over the weekend and $32 million for the four days. “Garfield” was shockingly close behind with $24 million over the weekend and $31.1 million over the four days.

Critics on the cultural left and right disagreed on whether “Furiosa” — with a strong female character in the lead and Mad Max nowhere to be found — deserved a “woke” label of any kind. The Critical Drinker channel is always a good place to start, for punchy but sane commentary on the conservative side of things.

For many, the fact that “Furiosa” was a competent summer-popcorn movie only made the following information more frightening. Here’s Variety again:

No matter the final order, it’s the worst Memorial Day weekend in nearly three decades — excluding 2020 when theaters were entirely closed due to COVID. Box office comparisons to the same holiday weekend in 2023 are particularly tough — down by nearly 36% — given that Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” remake took the crown with $118 million, one of the best debuts for the holiday. Overall, this Memorial Day stretch adds to Hollywood’s summer woes as ticket sales remain 22% behind 2023 and a concerning 41% behind 2019, according to Comscore.

You can read similar material in The New York Times, if you wish. Screencrush zoomed back a bit further to get the history in focus:

Furiosa earning an estimated $26.3 million makes it the worst #1 movie over a Memorial Day weekend (excluding 2020, when the holiday fell during the worst of the Covid pandemic and most movie theaters were closed) since 1995 — 29 years ago. That’s when Casper debuted to $22.5 million over the weekend. No disrespect to the live-action Casper movie, but that is not the sort of company you want to be in when discussing an epic action film with a reported budget of well over $150 million.

The total revenue for the U.S. box office over the four-day holiday weekend was roughly $128 million — which is also the lowest such total since the summer of 1995.

To cut to the chase: Can movie theaters in zip codes across the nation survive without blockbusters?

If the Memorial Day collapse is a sign that things are getting worse — in this era of red vs. blue “woke” warfare in America, as well as sweeping changes in streaming technology — what happens to the “church of the masses” pop-culture phenomenon that was viewing movies in actual theaters?

In my old Comm 101 classes, I argued that movies are the “books” of people who were raised on television. While television shows soak in, week after week, movie theaters were where viewers gathered for a communal experience of Hollywood’s Big Ideas. Even during the Depression, Americans kept going to view (affordable) mass entertainment in theaters.

Would losing theaters have a negative impact on popular art and, thus, American culture? Try to imagine LOTR in TikTok form. This was one of the questions looming over my recent “On Religion” column: “Hollywood is no longer the true church of the masses.” Here is the top of that:

As the creator of classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" and "You Can't Take It with You," director Frank Capra knew how to touch the hearts and souls of moviegoers.

The self-described "Christmas Catholic" took that power seriously. "No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has," he once said. This was the "power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark."

The power of today's digital media is much more complex than that, said Barbara Nicolosi Harrington, a former Catholic nun turned screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor.

"Hollywood has been the church of the masses, but I don't think that's still true. At least, we cannot say that movie theaters are the sanctuaries they once were for most people, especially for the young," said Harrington, author of "Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture."

When she was young, she explained, mainstream entertainment "was everything. Hollywood created the images that told us what was cool and what it meant to be a success and to be loved."

In a way, the collapse of the blockbuster business model could open doors for a wider spectrum of content in “niche” movies for specific audiences. In the past decade or two, movie-biz insiders have even asked “Is Christian the new gay?” in terms of the potential for studios green-lighting faith-based niche movies.

Would it matter if these movies were released straight-to-DVD or only on streaming services? At this point, have traditional religious believers lost the ability — or the willingness — to support good movies in real theaters? Think about that.

At the moment, I would love to see the new movie “Wildcat,” based on the life and art of the great Southern Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor. Click here for a Religion & Liberty review of this important film. Here is the Steven Greydanus take for U.S. Catholic.

I’ll end with the overture from Barbara Nicolosi Harrington’s “Wildcat” review at the National Catholic Register: “A Cinematic Plunge Into Faith — ‘Wildcat’ Is an Experience, Not Just a Movie.”

Ron Austin is a veteran TV writer and astute cultural philosopher and has been the Yoda of a new generation of serious Catholics in Hollywood for more than two decades. Ron used to tell us, “It might be that the traditional model of the Hollywood film, with the classic three act structure, relatable protagonist, and invisible filmmakers behind it all, may not suit a truly Catholic storytelling.” 

Ron was developing the idea that because the Gospel is fundamentally unconventional as a narrative — the victories are largely interior — visionary Catholic filmmakers would need to probably break through the conventional hero’s journey, which has been the backbone of the American movie storytelling since the Golden Age. 

Writer/Director Ethan Hawke is not a Catholic filmmaker. But his new biopic about the enigmatic Catholic Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor, is wildly unconventional as a movie, and plays brilliantly — very much the way an O’Connor short story feels. Wildcat is weird, jerky, brooding, unsettling, and full of the profound conviction that — as O’Connor put it — “grace is out there.” 

Like I said, I would love to see this movie in a theater — if this niche-audience movie ever makes it anywhere near me here in the hills of East Tennessee.

Sure, I’ll be able to watch it someday in my home “theater.” But will that be the same as seeing it on a big screen, surrounded by other movie lovers (maybe even some folks from my own parish)?

Ah, but can small movies of this kind — artistic stories of faith, perhaps — attract enough ticket buyers to keep theaters open?

I would hope so. But it’s safe to assume that the answer is “No.” That’s depressing.