Missing Movie Houses

Bigger is better; also: what's up with DC superheroes?

Theaters: The biggest lesson I learned from watching Godzilla vs. Kong is that I miss watching movies in theaters! The film is a splendid spectacle, the kind that is designed for the biggest screen possible, and as much as I enjoyed the experience, I keenly felt the loss of the size and the smells (?!) of an auditorium filled with sweaty people, munching on their favorite foods and swilling their favorite liquids. (Yes, I mean an Alamo Drafthouse.) My current (and possibly continuing indefinitely) physical limitations make it unwise for me to even fantasize about roaming the aisles of my favorite movie palaces in person anytime in the near future — much less fears of fellow Texans exercising their individual rights to make me sick or die — yet I would have loved to see Godzilla vs. Kong in a movie theater. [My ScreenAnarchy review.]

Hollywood: DC Films’ decision to halt development on New Gods and The Trench is fascinating to me because — of course — they involve ‘relatively obscure characters’ but “more importantly, both also have connections to” Zack Snyder’s exceedingly dark (literally; I could barely figure out what was happening in many scenes) and bleak version of Justice League. The remaining slate of DC Films feature one exceedingly well-known character (The Batman) and a bunch of other obscure characters that mainstream audiences have never heard of before (Black Adam, The Suicide Squad — with new unknown team members — Blue Beetle and Static Shock). I’ve never heard of them before, even though I spent two years getting familiar with comic books after Iron Man came out in 2008; by the way, Iron Man was a character I’d never heard of before I saw the movie, either.

The idea of bringing new voices into the mix of superhero movies is fine and good and healthy. And DC has been splurging on other superhero characters who are better known and are (perhaps) more promising, such as The Flash and Superman, and will pump money into a concluding Wonder Woman entry. Really, though, I think this points to the reassurance though that in Hollywood, nobody knows anything. [Variety]