In the Seattle area, we have a real-life Cinerama. It’s one of four left in the world that projects the original Cinerama format, in 3 film strips. Seattle’s Cinerama also regularly holds celluloid-based film festivals where you can watch How the West Was Won and This Is Cinerama in their original format, as well as 70mm prints like 2001 or Cleopatra.
For the past 4 months, Seattle’s Cinerama has been under renovation. They got a nifty new outside mural. They have new, bigger, comfier Orange Leather chairs, which reduced their seating by 27%. They have a new ticketing system which gives you assigned seating. They have a shiny new projector which kicks out more light than most commercial projectors (the new Christie 6p, if you’re a tech geek). They have a new 110-speaker Dolby Atmos sound system. They now serve beer and wine.
They also have a shiny new ticket price: $15 (no word on if there is a 3D premium either). With no matinee tickets either. If you think getting up at 11am to watch a movie will save you a few bucks, you best be going to AMC. For a contrast, the Pacific Science Center’s True IMAX (currently showing Interstellar in IMAX 70mm) charges $14.75 right now.
The Cinerama is owned by Vulcan, Inc., which is, in turn, owned by Paul Allen. Paul Allen was the co-founder of Microsoft, and also owns both the Seattle Seahawks (football) and the Portland Trail Blazers (Basketball), as well as co-owns the Seattle Sounders (soccer). He’s worth $16.4 Billion.
If the new renovations feel like Paul Allen is making an investment, he totally is. Seattle is being termed Silicon Valley North, with a bunch of tech companies moving in and bringing in fresh new young faces with higher incomes. The tech neighborhood, South Lake Union, and its neighboring communities are seeing rent and housing prices skyrocket, and are starting to resemble the San Francisco cost of living. We have 200 sq-ft communal-bathroom communal-kitchen efficiencies going for $700+/mth. Did I mention that Vulcan also does Real Estate?
Cinerama’s new ticket price is matching the new cost of living in Seattle, one could say. And, look, it has all these new things that make Cinerama pretty. New comfortable seats, new assigned seating (if you’re into that kind of thing), new projector and sound system. Cabinets with costumes left over from Paul Allen’s Sci Fi museum collection just up the road. But, there’s something fundamentally icky about it all.
You see, the Cinerama is a premium experience aimed at people who like premium experiences. A new “study” from Google points out that movie goers do research before heading out to the movie theater. They have multiple choices, and want to pick the best option for their price and time. The new pricing model has made it so that people aren’t just dropping off at the theater, but going to a specific movie that has good reviews (my family used to do this all the time, but we were weird). Big Franchises have started coming out at a rate where the audiences have options even when it comes to sequels. (Do I want to see the new Marvel movie, the new DC movie, or the new Ape movie?)
Originally, the Cinerama was developed as part of a widescreen craze in the early 1950s. Box office had fallen, television was increasing in affordability and pricing, and people were staying home with their investments. As a result, the movie theaters started offering experiences in widescreen, including the new superwide Cinerama. They showed a bunch of new formats with new color technologies and other gizmos (see William Castle’s amazing roadshow), and eventually the box office came back.
This year, the domestic box office is seriously deflated, in no small part due to the relative failure of many many franchises. Part of that may be technology. Part of that failure may be due to franchise and sequel exhaustion. Part of that may be due to rising ticket and concession prices. Part of that failure may be due to the increased realization that they are watching product more than watching art (see franchise and sequel exhaustion). And, part of that may be a realization that they are part of a continual money grab from people far richer than themselves.
The Cinerama’s first two post-renovation movies, The Hunger Games part 3.1: Mockingjay – Part 1 and The Hobbit part 3: The Battle of Five Armies, does not help any of these perceptions. Both are movies based on books that have been split into multiple parts for maximal box office. Both are parts of a franchise made by a studio. They both kind of have that feeling of being a money grab, even though The Hunger Games part 2 was really well done.
Will the shiny new toys of the Cinerama bring audiences back to the theater? I’m unsure. The rising ticket prices are probably meant to overcome the dwindling audience, but if the audience is dwindling because of ticket prices then they will continue to dwindle. The most packed I have seen the Cinerama was for special events like David Lynch bringing Inland Empire, an archival 70mm showing of Star Trek II, or SIFF and the Sci-Fi Hall of Fame showing off their sci-fi shorts festival. These are special events, however, and the Cinerama can’t do them every day of the year.
The Cinerama is just a shiny polish on the same product that has seen dwindling ticket sales all year long. Malibu Stacy has a new hat, but it is still Malibu Stacy.
