Making Something Out of Nothing

What a wonderful topic for a Monday Morning!

The places you could go with an inference of this sort! The trips of imagination and logic can move as one as we take a thought or motion or occurrence and make it out to be bigger and more fantastic than it already is — or ever was.

Alas, today’s observation is neither cosmic nor scientific. But it makes me smile anyway.

Friday night I went to our local theater to see Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. For those of you unaquainted with the turn-of-the-century series, the storyline is thus: The series, set on the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey between 1912 and 1926, depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants in the post-Edwardian era, and the effects the great events of the time have on their lives and on the British social hierarchy. (Wikipedia) The movie itself is the conclusion of the TV series and the subsequent two follow up movies.

Anyway….

Our local theater is like most small town theaters. Four different movies, four different theaters, very few in any of them. I’ve taken my grandkids to movies and have attended a few on my own through the years, and I would be tickled if there were more than 3-4-5 other people in the theater with me.

Last Friday there were a whopping 12 people in the theater watching this period piece. More than the Fantastic Four and Minecraft together.

Could this be a reflection, an indication, of society’s lack of interest in new and modern faces on movies?

Are people finally getting tired of watching slashing and brutality and dismemberment for an hour and a half? Are people tired of spending good money to watch superheroes save humanity once again or demons possessing innocent victims or beautiful people turning to drugs?

According to Google AI, fewer people are going to movie theaters now compared to the past, with attendance in 2023 being roughly half of pre-pandemic levels, a trend largely driven by the rise of streaming services, the convenience of home viewing, and higher ticket prices.

Now maybe this is nothing more than a Boomer resistance. After all, we’ve seen this and that for like ever (heh). Possession? Yes. Slicing open bodies? Yep. Drugs? Yep. College parties and adult parties where all act like high school parties? Bring it on. Been there, done that.

I think Hollywood is having a problem bringing something new to the table.

There are only so many ways you can fall in love, have a drug overdose, crash cars and fight aliens. Only so many ways you can introduce and reintroduce blood and guts to the big screen.

The “large” audience in the theater Friday night was most likely a fluke. If I had gone to a larger theater in a larger city, they may have been lined up to see Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle.

But maybe — just maybe — people are getting tired of being scared, freaked out, and repulsed. There is enough of that on the nightly news.

Maybe a dose of Downton Abbey or F1 the race driver movie or even Stephen King’s non-demonic-yet-grueling The Long Walk is what people are searching for these days. Something with more brains and entertainment value over brutal and gory fare.

Or maybe I just like Downton Abbey.