issue 11// vol 46 Death of the movie theatre » Streaming services like Disney+ could spell the end for movie theatres Craig Allan Staff Writer y relationship with movie theatres is complicated. I have worked in a movie theatre for 10 years, and it has not been a fun 10 years. No one likes making minimum wage for this long and watching people you started with move on to better things as you remain stuck. However, there is one thing that has remained a constant love for me that has never wavered. Throughout these 10 years, I have been lucky to be able to go to my theatre, get a bag of popcorn and a drink, and settle in top row centre to be awed by films like Joker, Room, and Logan—or laugh myself silly at movies like This Is the End, Vacation, and Movie 43 (replace “laugh myself silly” with “watch the horror that is” for Movie 43). These times may be withering away though, as on November 12, movie production and distribution behemoth, Disney, will be debuting Disney+: a new streaming service which may have the main goal of landing a critical hit to the old movie house. For the last few years, Disney has been building to launch this platform. It influenced one of the biggest purchases in film history, being that when Disney bought almost all of the film and TV assets from 20th Century Fox to the tune of over $70,000,000,000. This purchase includes classic TV and movie hits like The Simpsons, X-Men, and the Planet of the Apes franchise. When it comes to Disney+, the Walt Disney Company is not messing around—research firm MoffettNathanson has predicted that the company will possibly lose almost $9,000,000,000 in the first two years alone. According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, one of the reasons for the predicted loss is due to the budget of the shows they are going torun. With shows like the Star Wars spinoff, The Mandalorian, predicted to cost $15,000,000 an episode—amongst other shows like Marvel’s WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier also coming with high episode budgets, being as much as $25,000,000 per episode. With such an investment, it is clear that Disney is betting that the future of the entertainment industry is streaming. This bet could put competitors, traditional media outlets like television and movie theatres, in Disney’s crosshairs—with movie theatres especially in danger. Some may wonder why Disney would want to give up the movie theatre model for streaming. After all, if someone goes and buys a ticket at a theatre for $12.99, that’s money going straight into Disney’s pockets. Instead, streamers get thousands of hours Dance when you are free » ‘Jojo Rabbit’ Review Jerrison Oracion Senior Columnist keen N matter what race you are, everyone is the same. Everyone has likes and dislikes, and everyone must face problems in their lives. In this era of fake news, misinformation is floating around. Fake news was not invented today though— Germany used propaganda to portray Jewish people negatively during World War Il. This topic is at the heart of Jojo Rabbit, a film by Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, which has a colorful and comedic commentary on misinformation and racism. The film, also written by Waititi— based on the much darker book, Caging Skies by Christine Leunens—won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. It had a sold-out screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival this year as well. The movie takes place in Germany during World War II, with lead 10-year- old Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) as a passionate boy who dreams about serving his country and his leader Adolf Hitler. When Jojo gets frustrated about something, he gets advice from his imaginary friend— Hitler himself (played by Waititi). After an injury in training camp, he temporarily gives out propaganda while recovering. When he goes back home he finds out that his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), is hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their walls. Jojo interviews Elsa to learn more about Jews in hopes of writing an exposé on them, but soon after he begins to question the actions of the Germans and his relationship with Hitler. There are a lot of lines in the film that reference serious topics for which you must hold yourself and try not to laugh at. Waititi’s portrayal of Hitler is great, and he initially makes Adolf look like a father- figure in Jojo’s mind—yet he also acts in Hilter’s signature way, with an example being him making a negative reference to Jesse Owens, the real black American track-and-field star who showed Hilter and his Aryan regime up at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. McKenzie also did a great job Illustrations by Janis McMath of content for the price of Disney+—only seven dollars (in the US). The answer is twofold. According to the Wall Street Journal, movie theatres get a cut of movies shown in their building, equating to about a6o to 4o percent split from distributor to theatre. Along with this, Bloomberg reports that in 2017, US and Canadian theatre admissions hit its lowest point since 1992. Disney can get those same people to give them seven dollars, 12 months a year, that is a higher profit which Disney keeps 100 percent of. While the end of the big movie theatre chain may not seem so bad, as other entertainment businesses like video stores went by the wayside for more convenient entertainment options, the way Disney is operating has been especially vicious from the view of independent movie theatres. For years, independent movie theatres have been making a sizable portion of their sales portraying Elsa. In the beginning of the film, when Jojo feared her, she looked and acted fittingly creepy. As the film progresses, she becomes friendly instead of scary and menacing. While everyone speaks in a German accent, their own accents come out as well. An example is when Stephen Merchant plays a Gestapo leader, Deertz, searching Jojo's house—he is trying to sound German, yet he speaks in a British accent. There were a lot of fun moments from Jojo’s captain, Captain Klenzendorf, played by Sam Rockwell. Rebel Wilson plays the captain’s assistant, Fraulein Rahm, and she also did a good job. The soundtrack has songs from the 1960s, in a way implying that the heyday of Germany in the 1930s had some similarities arts // no. 7 showing old films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room to adoring crowds. These interactive experience films combined with older classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Pulp Fiction have been a staple of midnight movie houses and independent theatres for years. For many, 20th Century Fox films were a stable group of films for these screens. But with Disney’s purchase of Fox earlier this year, those movie theatres have started to see these once reliable films disappear—with Disney moving them into the “Disney Vault.” The vault is a strategy by Disney to limit the showing of films in theatres in order to keep their nostalgia value strong. (However, with Disney+ being released, this tactic of driving up artificial value will end.) This has led some theatre owners to feel that the streaming revolution could leave them in the cold. Without old films—the stable money maker that props theatres up on slow evenings—historic movie houses like The Rio in downtown Vancouver could find themselves struggling to pay the bills and being forced to find new revenue streams. No one knows what the future may hold for the entertainment industry, but it would be disappointing if the movie theatre experience was lost for future generations. There is something special about sitting in a theatre and turning off the world for two hours. Streaming is fine, and there are many movies that work for streaming—but there are just as many movies that need to be seen on a big screen and made a collective experience. It would be saddening if this phrase was uttered in the future: “When I was your age, we saw movies together in a theatre!” Hopefully future generations will not be subjugated to watch movies—meant to be ona larger than life screen—on tiny phone or computer monitor. Promotional image for ‘Jojo Rabbit' to the Beatlemania craze. The score includes the German version of The Beatles song, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”—called “Komm, gib mir deine Hand.” Dancing is important in the film and we see a lot of unusual dancing throughout it. The scenes where Jojo interviews Elsa convey that everyone is doing the same thing, and that there is no good reason to hate people enough to declare war on them. There is also a scene near the end of the film that is like a scene in the Terence Davies film The Long Day Closes. Jojo Rabbit is a very important history lesson about why propaganda is misleading, why genocidal wars are not going to solve problems, and that hate should not be part of humanity.