Manohla Dargis

Cinema in the Age of Conglomerates

Seen any good or great movies lately? If you are a film critic making a Top 10 list of the year’s best, your annual agony is never that there are not enough choices — just the opposite. About 800 new movies will have opened in New York by the end of the year, which is 11 percent fewer than were released a couple of years ago. The changes in how movies are now distributed are having a pronounced impact on theatrical exhibition, which may be a disaster or a welcome course correction in a glutted market.

The better movies generally open in theaters, just as they have long done. In the past, a lot of junky titles would have gone straight to video; these days a lot go straight to streaming, while many others quickly open and close in theaters before they too flow into streaming purgatory. Despite this online maw, movies still play in theaters because, well, people still like the big screen. Some play solely to qualify for awards or because filmmakers also like the big screen. Amazon and Netflix open movies in theaters because they see those same filmmakers and awards as a way to keep, and attract, subscribers.

Cinema has always been a moving target, from the cinematograph era to the streaming. That’s one reason the debate that raged over Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel movies not being cinema feels like a dead end. He is right that nothing is at risk in them, or rather very little. Even the best ones are absent real risk because they are not films in the old-fashioned sense: They are delivery systems for an integrated array of products and experiences (other movies, theme parks, toys). Their formula is a feature not a bug. The appeal of the familiar is one way powerful entertainment companies turn ardent viewers into brand loyalists, reaching fans with a cradle-to-grave consumer strategy.

History will remember this period for Disney’s monopolistic muscle; it will also remember Scorsese’s films. It seems unlikely, though, that history will remember many of the movies Disney now makes. This probably matters little to the media giant, which has had a busy, record-breaking year. In March, it finalized its purchase of 21st Century Fox, effectively destroying a Hollywood pillar. The origins of Fox can be traced back to around 1904, when William Fox bought a share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon. Disney picked up the empire that rose from that humble beginning for $71.3 billion and will absorb it for the express purpose of leveraging Fox assets to become a global streaming behemoth, just like Netflix.

The end of Fox feels like another rattle in the slow death of what many still call the studio system, which hasn’t resembled the factorylike days of the old MGM for a long time. You can mourn the end of the studios and revere their legacy — the art, craft and technique — but there’s no mourning their racism, sexism, cultivated stupidity and contempt for art. The old Hollywood studios perfected a way of making films and hired artists and artisans who succeeded within those confines or transcended them (or failed or fled). Like the young Scorsese and his friends, the Cahiers du Cinéma critics who became directors, championed those films. André Bazin honored “the genius of the system.”