2021 in Film Part 1

 Its hard to believe that we are here again, the end of another movie year and one where the pandemic has again cast a long shadow over it though hopefully 2022 will be the year where that does not happen but I won’t hold my breath.

 

But what to make of 2021 as a movie year well in the beginning of the year it started to finally feel like a proper movie year again in that I was going to my usual roster of 4 to 7 movies a month and I thought to myself “I have a proper movie year again” and things had finally started to turn the corner.

 

But then the winter came and with it came another long lockdown and between August and November there was little to nothing and many of the big blockbusters like No Time to Die, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Dune suffered one last undignified delay in Australia in terms of their release dates.

 

But this year did do one thing that I like to think is the theme of this year for me and that is it brought back what it really feels like to sit in a cinema and watch a new release movie, I have talked about the feeling of going to the cinema being this symbiotic combination of my Church and my Therapy and that has never felt more truer for me than this year especially in this last couple of months as the big films finally got local release dates.

 

But not everyone has felt the same way and as the year comes to an end it has become very very clear that there is only one group going back to the cinemas in big numbers and that is mainly younger men in their 20s to early 40s and that has become apparent in the top grossing films of the year like Spider-Man No Way Home, Venom, Fast and Furious 9 and Shang Chi easily being the top 4 films at the American Box Office while Spider-Man, No Time to Die and F9 have dominated worldwide.

 

And that is going to become I think a problem as we go into 2022 as one group dominating to such an extent is going to see other audiences like women, people of colour and older audiences who have by and large been more reluctant to return to cinemas not get as big a slice of the movie going pie and if I have one wish to make to the Eternal Dragon in terms of movie going it would be that 2022 sees these audiences begin to feel confident in returning to cinemas.

 

But audiences are one factor, another factor that has been on my mind as I reflect on 2021 in film is the role of the studios and this year saw a major shakeup in the Australian movie distribution market for after nearly 5 decades, Warner Brothers saw their films no longer being distributed by their traditional parent company Roadshow and instead make a new home at Universal already a mighty studio in its own right and that change of ownership I feel has been a mistake in hindsight as it has led to from what I have heard Uni charging a lot more money for the WB films as compared to Roadshow.

 

And the more I think on that the more it feels like a studio getting greedy at a time when their partners and allies in the cinema industry are dealing with shifting tides in terms of their audience attendance numbers and it makes me think “Come on guys this is not cool” now the other major studio distributors such as StudioCanal, Roadshow, Paramount, Disney and Columbia/Tristar might well be playing ball but its something that’s been on my mind as the year wraps up.

 

But that is Part 1 next time Part 2 where I reveal my Turkeys of the year and my favorite films of 2021.