Dearth Vader

 This has been a pretty slow summer for movies. Not in the world, necessarily, but definitely in my corner of it. And this isn't because of the writers' strike. Or the actors going out with them. I'm just not that good at getting out and going to the cinema.

Not like I used to be. Summertime was, after the release of Jaws in June of 1975, the time for blockbusters. Summers full of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and most anything that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas pointed their magic machines at comprised a steady lemming-like stream of viewers like myself. And this was long before the advent of the superfaplexes. This was back in the day when a movie could show on the same screen for weeks, months, as long as it was still doing business. 

I spent the summer of 1977 inside the Flatirons theater in Boulder, Colorado memorizing every line in Star Wars. More than three thousand other films were released that year, but I spent my time and allowance riding my bike up the hill to see that movie. Keeping in mind this was also the summer that Smokey and the Bandit came out. And The Spy Who Loved Me. And Capricorn One, for heaven's sake. I went to all those other movies, but after I was done, I got back in line for the story of Luke Skywalker and his merry band of galactic rebels. 

Of course, it seems quite likely that sixty-one year old married school teachers are not the demographic that studios are trying to reach in 2023. I don't know if they ever were, but there is still some latent impulse in me that surges when I watch previews for coming attractions. Except most often these days I am watching them on my computer screen because I have received a link or an email suggestion. And for a moment, I am transported to those halcyon days of yesteryear, where every free moment was a possible trip to the movies. Where will we find the time?

Well, there is this to consider: Those three thousand feature films released in 1977 compares to the fourteen thousand released in 2022. Sure, a lot of those went directly to streaming services, but those fifty years brought all kinds of change to a business that likes a show. Blockbuster status is now judged in billions, not millions. The first three days that a movie races into the concrete bunkers we refer to as theaters now had better pay for all of its costs, or it will be tossed aside. Flop. 

Into this mix was tossed the finale of the Indiana Jones saga. I went on a Saturday night, prepared to be disappointed or enthralled. I sat in a theater that was only half full. A week after it had been released. Maybe everyone had come out for the matinee. Or perhaps they were there the night before. Or maybe they were simply waiting for the inevitable release to everyone's home theater. 

You know, Elvis died in 1977. I don't know if this is related.