When Martin Scorsese pleaded that we not watch his 2019 Netflix-released film The Irishman on a phone, many rolled their eyes at his pretension. Increasingly desperate, he conceded that if we could not make it to the cinema then at the very least would we please watch his film on “an iPad, a big iPad”. With cinemas now closed since March, we are left feeling the true deprivation of the big screen and it has become harder to dismiss Scorsese’s puritanism. Online streaming has exploded and the cinema industry seems to be in perilous shape, but will the allure of the cinema truly disappear?
Surge in streaming
Back in the early days of the pandemic when a lockdown seemed increasingly likely, membership to streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu (still to launch in Europe) rocketed from an already high base. In April, Netflix announced they had gained 15.77 million new paid subscribers, which was double what they had expected. It’s likely these new members will be signed up for good too as a reported 41% of Netflix subscribers use the platform every single day. Now that we’re watching so much online we seem to know what we want to see more of and content providers are only too eager to deliver.
When asked if their viewing habits had changed much since lockdown began, a quarter of Netflix users said that they liked documentaries a great deal more than they had once thought and there were similar increases in the comedy and true crime genres. No prizes for guessing why Tiger King (Rebecca Chaiklin and Eric Goode, 2020), the madcap true crime series about the life of zookeeper Joe Exotic, was such a runaway success.
Whilst streaming platforms have stormed ahead, cinema grapples
It has been difficult to shake the uncanny feeling that the world stopped in late March and is proving obstinate to really getting going again. Nothing worsens this feeling than seeing posters for films released months ago. I recently saw a somewhat sun-bleached poster for Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man on the side of a bus. The film was released in late February but was quickly launched across a variety of streaming platforms once cinemas closed two weeks later. This has been how the film industry has tried to cut its losses in this time: either releasing a film straight to streaming or by optimistically extending release dates so that a film may enjoy a theatrical release.
Streaming releases
Titles like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019), Pete Davidson’s semi-autobiographical The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow, 2020) and the latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma (Autumn de Wilde, 2020) have avoided theatrical release and have instead been launched across a variety of online media platforms. Some titles, however, are more exclusive: with Artemis Fowl (Kenneth Branagh, 2020) and
Hamilton (Thomas Kail, 2020) only available on Disney+ and Greyhound (Aaron Schneider, 2020), a film where Tom Hanks plays the stout-hearted WWII US Navy Commander Ernest Krause embroiled in The Battle of the Atlantic, will only be found on Apple TV+.
Nostalgia
The lure of the old and the familiar was certainly at its strongest at the beginning of lockdown. In a time of such mammoth upheaval and uncertainty I found myself returning to the titles I knew and loved best, films like The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006), Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001), Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999) , Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986) and just about every Richard Curtis rom-com offered predictable comfort.
But can streaming ever really replace the cinema? Scorsese should be pleased that streaming on phone apps has dropped at least, even if it has risen across websites. But how much of an improvement is a laptop or a big iPad? Overcome weak wifi, inevitably splashing half a cup of tea on your keyboard and the spinning wheel of death, and you still have to endure what is essentially a sad miniaturisation of the big screen.
Streaming might appear to us as a fun form of escapism but paradoxically regular users of platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ are over 40% more likely to be concerned about the Coronavirus situation in their own countries. It appears that the more engaged we are with streaming, the more engaged we are with social media and overall the more our fears about the world are heightened.
Maybe that is why there has been such a joyous resurgence of retro drive-in cinemas during the pandemic. You have the opportunity to see a film at the proper scale and your car acts as a natural pod for social distancing. Right now this may be the closest replication we get to the true magic of the cinema: that small thrill you feel when it gets very quiet, the lights go down and you can go into another world, well for ninety minutes, at least.
