Quentin Tarantino: Hollywood Film Business Has Been Dead for Years: 2019 Was the ‘Last F**king Year of Movies’

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1. >“Well, what the fuck is a movie now? What — something that plays in theaters for a token release for four fucking weeks?” Tarantino said. “All right, and by the second week you can watch it on television. I didn’t get into all this for diminishing returns. I mean, it was bad enough in ’97. It was bad enough in 2019, and that was the last fucking year of movies. That was a shit deal, as far as I was concerned, the fact that it’s gotten drastically worse? And it’s a show-pony exercise. Now the theatrical release, you know, and then like yeah, in two weeks, you can watch it on this [streamer] and that one. OK. Theater? You can’t do that. It’s the final frontier.”

2. I agree. I hate only having three weeks to see a movie in theaters and then it’s gone.

3. Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

4. In the article, it doesn’t seem like he’s annoyed at the quality of the movies, but the way they make it to streaming quickly.

   > 2019, and that was the last fucking year of movies. That was a shit deal, as far as I was concerned, the fact that it’s gotten drastically worse? And it’s a show-pony exercise. Now the theatrical release, you know, and then like yeah, in two weeks, you can watch it on this [streamer] and that one. OK. Theater? You can’t do that. It’s the final frontier.”

   Quentin Tarantino is a cinema purest, so I wouldn’t blame him for thinking that the streaming model has killed the movies. But as a consumer, the streaming model was a godsend.

5. He’s right but… theater etiquette with the movie-going public has gotten much worse over the years.

   I’ve seen people bring covered baby carriers into theaters, or whip out their phones when they are bored. Or, people getting up and leaving the theater causing light leakage (this was a real problem during my viewing of Nosferatu, though admittedly that was also due to how the theater was designed).

   Maybe it’s not a big deal in film nerd theaters with a more respectable audience. I haven’t enjoyed the theater experience in quite a while, unless it’s long after the release and we have it mostly to ourselves.

   Edit: Also fewer ads at home. Trailers come out early so there’s little reason to sit through 40-odd mins of commercials and trailers these days at the cinema.

6. He’s right, ya know.

7. Poor etiquette has killed seeing movies on the big screen

8. I find horror movies to be waaaaaaaay better in the theater as long as people don’t talk throughout.

9. There’s too much content out there and too many streaming platforms. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It was inevitable that theaters would die a slow death like the typewriter. He’s stating the obvious so who gives a crap.

10. Either figure out a way to make movies tickets cheaper or make movies that are worth paying the current price.

11. My best friend and I were film students back in the 80s and spent every free waking moment in theaters watching movies. Much of the time it was magical – having a shared experience with strangers in the dark. Today, not so much. Bunch of ignorant and/or entitled a**holes talking over the film, scrolling on their phones or actually FaceTiming the movie to friends while doing a running commentary. Plus ridiculous ticket prices – $17.50 per ticket for an Oppenheimer weekday matinee – ruin what used to be a special experience. I have a dedicated home theater in my house and doubt if I’ll ever bother to go to a theater again.

12. For me , I don’t go much anymore because of a couple of three reasons.

    1. Cost. I’ve spent enough now on a good sized tv, and a decent soundbar that I don’t need to be spending $50-$100 just to go watch a movie (Denver).

    2. The way of the world these days. People don’t have any respect now days for the neighbor.
    I’ll sit down next to people chatting all the time through the movie, looking at their phones etc I strictly only go to the Alamo theater, and even though they have a good policy, there’s always some people who have to chat. Can’t people just sit quiet for 2 fucking hours?!

13. If I could watch any movie at home then the Odeon, Cineworld and all the other cinemas near me would be out of business. People wouldn’t still be taking their kids to see the latest Sonic the Hedgehog film to this day. They’d have just waited till the second week and watched it at home with their kids. Quentin is just another of the countless arrogant twats that thinks cinema “died” the second it stopped conforming to his beliefs and he’s just as tiresome as all the other countless neckbeards you can find online making these baseless complaints.

    It’s a shame. I wish I could respect him based on his film work but the more he reveals of himself the more he reveals that all the other people involved likely mattered more than he did to their success.

14. Going to the theater is too expensive for most people to do on a regular basis. The theater chains are killing that experience as much the studios and distributors. If I go to a movie I know I’ve got a $15 ticket, $12 popcorn and $9 drink (roughly) to pay for. That’s just me. So do I pay all that to see some slop like Wicked or Transformers 13 or do I take that same amount of money and go to a concert or do literally anything else. And on top of all that audiences are worse than ever. The people who go to movies make going to movies hell.

15. Tarantino should probably do something that contributes to the zeitgeist these days if he has so much time to rant about the zeitgeist. Why aren’t we hearing from many *other* directors who aren’t working, if this is what we want out of the entertainment community?

16. It’s too expensive to watch shit movies at the theater. Take my wife and kid to watch a meh movie and have it Cost me $110? Pass I’ll wait till it’s released on streams where we can enjoy without going broke doing it

17. At home I can tell people to turn off their phones or go elsewhere. In a theatre I pay $$$ for the privilege to be annoyed.

18. I can make popcorn at home. I can pause my 75 inch TV with surround sound. I don’t need to sit next to weirdos. He’s right, movie theaters are dead, Just like Malls.

19. Theaters are kinda where Arcades were in the mid-90s. Home technology has caught up, and the theater experience doesn’t have as much to offer.

    I still like arcades, but they’re a novelty. No one goes to an arcade for serious gaming. I play a few dollars worth of games and then leave. I don’t want them to disappear, but most are already relegated to being a secondary service.

    I just don’t think we’ll ever get back to regular movie theaters being as big as they once were.

20. Home entertainment advancement ruined movies. When we had 20 inch tube TVs with shit sound movies made sense. I still enjoy movies just not the theatre. I’d gladly pay 30 bucks for in home releases maybe more to be in the comfort of my own home and not crammed in a dirty theatre with strangers worrying about this group talking, texting, sneezing, chewing, etc. My last movie experience I had a person tapping their feet the whole movie right behind me. I was lucky I kept my composure.

21. A24 really holding it down for theatrical releases. Almost every single release.

22. Movies are dying because theater etiquette is dead. Reposting this comment I made a few weeks ago:

    I went to Nosferatu on opening day at 3pm. Theater was absolutely packed but when I checked the app on my way I saw there was an open seat next to me, only open seat in the row.

    I get to the theater and sit in my seats with my fiancee, all is well. Once the previews start, a solo teenage boy probably 17 walks into our row and takes the empty seat. Whatever no big deal.

    Throughout all the previews he is sending and receiving VOICE MESSAGES on whatsapp at full volume. Going back and forth with a girl, flirting, him talking slick about their next date and how much hes feeling her, her saying stooooopppppp i miss you so much daddy. All of these at FULL VOLUME, no whispering at all. But whatever it’s just previews.

    So Nosferatu starts and this motherfucker doesn’t even make it 10 minutes into the movie before he’s back to opening her whiny voice messages and responding. So I quickly check the app and see that the seat was never purchase and still available.

    I turn to him and say “hey man, I know you snuck in here and I don’t care, but if you’re gonna keep voice chatting I’m definitely gonna go let management know.”

    Kid sucks his teeth at me, calls me a f***ot, and says he doesn’t wanna watch this wack as movie anyway and leaves immediately.

    Seriously don’t understand what goes though someones head when they act like this at the movies. Like do you want to ruin other people’s entertainment?

23. I just saw Wicked and that was so good in the theater. Unless you have a home movie studio it won’t be the same

24. Covid killed people’s theatre etiquette, they started treating everywhere like their living room, and theaters have stopped implementing any kind of no talking or phones rule. Add all of this to the streaming model, why would you pay $100 to see the new Pixar movie to be around assholes on their phone when you can watch it on Disney plus in a month. Movie nerds will always be there but casual viewers will reasonably just slowly stop going.

25. America has gradually started to fulfill the prophecy of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. It was a hilarious joke that people were going to a movie theater to watch a guys ass fart in their face. I mean with each passing year with the kind of crap entertainment they shovel at us is it really that far off?

26. Tarantino’s head is so far up his own ass. Last year of great movies just so happens to be the last time he released his own movie.

27. Of course, of course it dies the exact time that he retires as a director.

    Like, seriously, how full of yourself can you get?

28. By the looks of the movie community on something like YouTube (not to mention how people at my job, and family and friends haven’t bothered watching anything new for years), it’s clear that the normies don’t even care about movies anymore. It’s not just politics, in my opinion; it’s a matter of how awful newer movies are, collectively.

29. The last time I went the cinema the experience put me off ever going again..so I built my own home theatre. Happy days

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