Last night I watched May December, a film that follows Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) as she studies a woman she’s set to play in a movie. The woman in question is loosely based on the real sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau.
I streamed the movie. I watched it alone in my room on my laptop screen, but I also had friends who saw it the same day in the theater. May December was first released in select theaters in America before being given both a wider global theatrical release and being put on streaming in North America- Netflix has the North American distribution rights to the film. My friends asked if I wanted to come along but ultimately I decided against it. The dual existence of this film both on streaming as something more digital and in theaters as a more physical experience at the same time made me reflect on the differences between the two media and why my friends and I chose one over the other.
Streaming or Cinemas?
There are a lot of arguments for the ease of streaming. Much like my previous post on online shopping and size charts versus trying clothes on in real life, we trade a more fully embodied experience on a larger screen at a venue dedicated to this one activity for the comfort of watching at home, maybe half-paying attention while folding laundry, and all for much less than the twelve euros that a cinema ticket would cost. The thing is, I love the ritual of going to the theater usually. I have trouble forcing myself to concentrate on a lot of longer movies and I know the social pressure of watching together with strangers on a massive screen with no phones allowed will force me to give whatever we’re watching my full attention. I also just like the process of getting dressed, going out, and having a physical ticket as proof of my experience- it makes the movie more memorable. While both the streaming and cinema experience end with me watching the same movie, the cinema feels like an event.
Temporary Cinemas and Permanent Streaming
I also find that straight-to-streaming releases of movies don’t excite me as much as the same movies would if they had theatrical releases. There’s something about the perceived permanence of the internet in contrast to scheduled cinema showings that are only available for a limited window of time that makes me feel like I don’t need to watch the movie immediately. It will be there for as long as Netflix exists and I know someone with an account.
Which is more conducive to socializing?
I also wonder if streaming or the cinema is a more social experience. My first instinct is to think that cinemas are more social because of the stigma against going to the movies alone, but with streaming, you can talk with your friends, pause, and rewind the movie as you wish. There are also a number of services that let you watch the same film from different computers at the same time, effectively connecting people who couldn’t go to the same cinema through streaming. In theaters, you’re not allowed to talk until the movie is over or interact temporally with the film in the same way you can while streaming, but you also are necessarily surrounded by other people in the crowd. Concert movies and fandom-forward films like those at the height of the MCU’s popularity also seem to create moments of bonding between strangers who treat their cinema showings as live interactive events.
Do you go to the movies often? Are there any streaming releases that you wish were available in cinemas or are you the kind of person that can’t wait for movies to leave theaters and go to HBO Max? Are there certain genres that you like to watch in theaters and others that you prefer to watch at home?
hi,
i believe that movies made for streaming services are made to watch casually. I feel like they never have a difficult plot. For example “the kissing booth”. It was a fun movie but if you missed a scene because you were folding laundry you would still understand the plot. On the other side movies made for cinema have more depth. For example the new hunger games movie. It has all these details that you would only see if you were really paying attention. If i were to watch that movie at home i would miss all these things. I personally have a preference for the movies made for cinema.
I agree that straight to streaming movies generally are of lower quality- at large I think they have a lower budget, worse scripts, and are often cliche because the studio wants to stick to what they know will work. There are a lot of outliers though. For example the Wes Anderson Roald Dahl short films that were put on Netflix earlier this year which are attached to not only a massive director but also based on the work of a widely known and loved author but was also made for streaming. I don’t agree with the idea that there are strictly streaming and strictly cinema movies one of which is better than the other. There are plenty of great films that are downgraded to a streaming release after underperforming at test screenings or limited theatrical releases. Bottoms directed by Emma Seligman was a movie I was really excited to watch in cinemas but it never got more than a limited North American cinematic release and was pulled from the Leiden International Film Festival list last minute so it effectively went straight to streaming for me and it was a great movie with lots of details you only catch on rewatch! That’s another thing- cinemas obviously have a bigger screen and are built so you pay attention only to the movie but they don’t have the same capacity for rewind and rewatch that streaming does. I don’t know, I thought I preferred cinemas too but through this blog post I’ve found myself defending streaming more than I expected.
Before streaming video really took off, we all thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with family and friends or lovers at the movie theater, an iconic offline entertainment venue. The fact that such a public space happened for a specific event, namely going to the movies, made the activity of going to the movies important to all of us. However, the interference of streaming media distracts from that. We can see clips of movies and even commentaries of movies on any social platform. Streaming devices have made the duration of our movie enjoyment shorter and faster. Such fast-paced information input makes it difficult for viewers to want to spend two hours sitting in an offline movie theater anymore. So that’s why I think the intervention of streaming media has affected people’s movie-watching habits.
I am a big cinema girl, as I work for a film theatre (maybe it’s the access to unlimited free films). However, I believe in striking a balance between the two worlds. Movies can have their grand premieres on the big screens, allowing enthusiasts to relish the experience. Subsequently, making them more available on streaming services making it available to the masses.