Cinema Decline in Germany continuing
In my diploma thesis I wrote that cinemas are seeing there end of live as a mainstream mass media and especially the multiplexes will close down in masses in the coming years. I backed this up with the continuing downwards trend of movie goers. Well this theory is coming more and more reality with germany seeing another 6.4% decline in moviegoers - thats what the head of the biggest film distribution company - constantin - in germany says. That means that since around 2000 when the decline started there are only 50% moviegoers left (between 5% and 12% decline every year) in germany - this must be absolutely devastating to an industry that had just before been in an an absolute boom cycle and just build movie theaters that could house 300% more people.
The Constantin chef says the reason is too many movies, but as always with these people living in bubbles the real reasons are much deeper. Bad movies, too expensive ticket prices (1 euro dvd rental - or even "free" from the intertubes compared to 12 euros for a cinema ticket), cheap home electronics, computer games. The last one is coming in from under the radar and its not that its "computer games" per se but the need for a complete rethought about what a story is and how we percieve visual media. PEOPLE ARE BORED with any nine act structure no matter how smart it tries to web itself into a nonlinear storyline. People are smart they predict much more then in the past and there is nothing worse then watching a movie where you roughly have an idea how its gonna end - BORING. Computer games are - by nature - needing a different approach and somehow seem to be more innovative on the story front (not all I might say - Crysis is a bad example of how to do a story line for a game imnsho).
A whole new cinematic approach that combines the couch potato aspects with the nonlinear novel story aspects packaging it all into a new media form that could then use up the empty cinema spaces would be great - yet I guess it has to get more ugly for big production houses to accept this matter of fact.
Source:
Heise News (german)
In a personal note - out of 50 movies I watched this year I did not find a single one above the line worth mentioning. They where all rubbish and I already set my standards especially low already. The only few that I thought to be entertaining and I actually enjoyed watching had been two english comedies with good actors.
Other then that there had been some that had good effects, some that had awesome camera work - epic pictures (yawn), almost none that any kind of noteworthy story and a lot that I fell asleep during watching them (and I am a media junky and I never used to fall asleep during movies - I love to be entertained if the entertaining is at least a little bit grabbing).