SALT LAKE CITY — Time has become a funny thing. The coronavirus pandemic crashed through the world about six months ago. But for me, it feels like one month ago. We were asked to quarantine and work from home back in March. It’s now September. But wasn’t it just May? Wasn’t last week the Fourth of July? Didn’t we just see the NBA return?
Our lives are measured in time. We identify special markers and moments to remember where we are and when we are.
If the pandemic and the coronavirus are constants of 2020, so too is the film “Tenet.” Since this all began, trailers for the Christopher Nolan film have aired, promising one release date after another. Sometimes it was put off indefinitely. Other times it had a hard release date.
Now, like all things in 2020, we’re unsure when we’ll actually see it. In some places — like Utah — viewers may see it this weekend since it opened in local theaters on Thursday. You may see it next week if you’re in Texas since it’s airing in theaters there, but not until next year if you’re in New York since movie theaters are closed. The pandemic has left movie theater screens shuttered. Several states and cities refuse to reopen due to public health concerns.
What might be a disappointment for some could really hinder the entire theater industry. The war between theater-first and direct-to-streaming releases was always coming. The pandemic pushed it forward. And during a time where we should be streaming and staying home as much as we can, “Tenet” asks us to come together again.
“Tenet” officially hit international markets at the end of August and opened in U.S. markets on Thursday. It became the first Hollywood blockbuster film to hit the big screens since the pandemic began. And indeed, there are plenty of fans heading right to the theaters to see it, including in Salt Lake City — despite the health risks of seeing a movie.
For example, an unnamed 30-year-old university administrator is flying to Salt Lake City to see the film because he or she can’t see it in Los Angeles, according to Variety.
“It’s stupid, yes, but it’s something I’m interested in.”
It’s a potential turning point for the film industry, one where “Tenet” might not be allowing us to fully push forward into a new era. “Tenet” might be trying to turn back time.
“It kind of feels like we’re at a turning point in the very idea of cinema,” said Kendall Phillips, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University. “We’re getting that ... cultural tension about just what it means to go to a movie, what it means for a movie to be premiered. Does it mean at this time, in this place, or does it mean that when it is dropping, you watch it whenever you want to?”
How the industry changed
It was Alfred Hitchcock who helped usher in an era of showtimes and the culture of avoiding spoilers. When “Psycho” was released, Hitchcock didn’t want anyone to know what happened in the movie unless they had seen it from beginning to end. He wanted people to walk in and see every part of the movie before they learned who Norman Bates really was. Seeing the ending would ruin it.
So Hitchcock orchestrated a newspaper advertisement campaign to encourage audiences to show up on time.
The promotion for the film highlighted the call to see the movie from beginning to end: “Surely you do not have your meat course after your dessert at dinner. You will therefore understand why we are so insistent that you enjoy ‘Psycho’ from start to finish, exactly as we intended it to be served.”
Hitchcock went even farther, according to reports. He purchased multiple copies of Robert Bloch’s novel that inspired the film so people couldn’t read about the story ahead of time and didn’t release it to critics ahead of time.
Hitchcock changed the film industry, shifting it slightly in another direction and progressing it to the point where going to the cinema was an unmatched experience unmatched.
“I think the same thing with Christopher Nolan,” Phillips said. “He needs the worldwide audience to see ‘Tenet’ at a particular time. So that we’re all having that experience kind of at the same moment.”
Of course, Hitchcock’s version of how to see a movie goes against how we want to see movies now, Phillips said.
The idea of promoting showtimes is “fighting against the new trend, which is, ‘I want to watch a movie whenever I want to,’” Phillips said. “I don’t want to have to go on April, or you know, Aug. 31 at 6 p.m. to see the movie, I want to watch it wherever I want to.”
The risk of movies
Experts have agreed that going to the movies isn’t completely risk-free.
“There really is no activity” when going outside of the house that doesn’t have risk, said Dr. Joyce Sanchez during a Zoom call with the National Association of Theatre Owners. “The distancing policy helps to mitigate that.”
Flying, restaurants, hotels, sports — all of these industries are “trying to adjust” to integrate new health and safety protocols, Sanchez said.
Theaters are different than restaurants because people are not encourage to speak when they’re watching a movie (though some definitely do). Sanchez said people may take off a mask to eat but it’s unlikely they will speak. Speaking would send more droplets into the air, she said. (Sanchez would, however, minimize eating and drinking in a theater.)
There might not be much medical literature on the subject, but that doesn’t mean that going to the movies is without risk.
“As far as risk goes, this is not risk-free, and it’s important for the public to understand it,” Sanchez said.
Seeing “Tenet” does present a risk. That’s why some cities haven’t opened movie theaters. It’s why there were rumblings that the movie will have an extended release time — being shown on screens all throughout the country at different times of the year. It won’t necessarily have a traditional 70-day run before transitioning to video on demand. Maybe it’ll show up at drive-in theaters or be released for a premium on a streaming service. We don’t know the future of how this film will arrive.
But “Tenet” had a chance to meet the moment of the pandemic and look beyond the theater experience. The desire to see a movie in your home when and where you want will change the industry. We see it happening now, and it will only progress as more new streaming services arrive (in the last 12 months Peacock, HBO Max and Disney Plus all debuted) and films become direct-to-streaming only (like we’re seeing with Disney Plus’ release of “Mulan,” which will be available for $29.99 to Disney Plus subscribers).
“Tenet” had a chance to lean into the future and become the “Psycho” of its time — a groundbreaking film that changed the cinema experience. Sure, the movie wouldn’t be seen in the theater for some time — likely not until there’s a vaccine or a treatment for the novel coronavirus. But it would have been a groundbreaking, cinema-altering decision to have a streaming release — even if it accompanied the theater release. Instead, “Mulan” will be the first blockbuster to do this.
“This may be the moment where you really galvanize that distinction between the big picture that will be released in the theater at a particular time, and all the rest that kind of get thrown wherever people think they can make the most money,” Phillips said. “So it’ll be interesting to see how that works.”
Then again, people have always loved the movie-going experience.
“This is an industry that’s been blindsided by the pandemic,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with Comscore, told NPR. “A lot of people are saying it’s over, people are going to just stream movies now at home. That’s not true. People are going back to the movie theater, and they want to feel safe and secure doing that. And ‘Tenet’ is the big ticket, the movie that everyone has been waiting for.”