Has Premium Video On Demand (PVOD) and Streaming Changed Moviegoing Forever?

It’s the question that’s on everyone’s mind: Is this the new normal?

Over the past weekend, two films which would have easily grossed over $100 million (with Wonder Woman a candidate for grossing over $300-400 million) made their debut on their respective studio streaming homes.

The way we consume the movies has been changed. The way that we feel about the movies has been changed.

For a movie that’s supposed to be shown communally with big sound and a live audience, what happens when that gets seen for the first time from a small screen with small sound, all by your self. Does it make an epic movie seem less epic?

This past Christmas Day, Walt Disney Studios and Pixar released Soul, their new classic centered around a middle school jazz teacher who yearns for his big break as a jazz musician. The critically acclaimed film features an all-star voice cast led by the Academy Award winning Jamie Foxx and the Emmy Award winning Tina Fey.

To date every single Disney Pixar release has made over $100 million and there’s no reason to think that in a normal movie going environment, Soul would have done just that and more.

Soul is a movie that relies on its charm, wit, humor, and introspection. The movie’s score is masterfully executed and brings jazz to a whole new generation. However, the movie doesn’t largely rely on big budget theatrics to connect with audiences.

Wonder Woman 1984 is an entirely different case study. Wonder Woman 1984 is your prototypical comic book universe big budget studio franchise. It features a rising female director in Patty Jenkins and a mega-watt star in Gal Gadot, who has become synonymous with the Wonder Woman character.

While not to say that Wonder Woman 1984 doesn’t have charm, wit, or humor (which it does), WW1984 does rely on its big budget theatrics to tell the story to its viewer. There’s something very satisfying about feeling the rumble in the movie theater of a big explosion, seeing the action that fills up your entire eyesight. In a movie theater, you are flying with Chris Pine and Gal Gadot as the bombs burst in mid air. At home, you are checking your phone, answering the door to pick up Amazon packages, stopping the movie to take a phone call, all while giving less than your full attention to the movie.

Watching Wonder Woman 1984 in a small screen doesn’t give us the full experience of what it was meant to be. The movie theater experience is magic and while some movies can be duplicated without losing much at home, others really play on all of the advantages that a big movie theater has to offer. At home, its difficult to replicate that authentic movie going experience even with a good tv and a good set of speakers. Even Orville Reddenbacher (despite his best attempts) can’t mimic the movie theater popcorn experience at home.

So as audience reviews come in for Wonder Woman 1984, remember that audiences aren’t seeing the movie that was made for home, they are seeing a movie that was made for a movie theater. As time goes on, there will be new techniques that are able to optimize the movie going experience for the home environment, but for now we are left with something in between, taking movies meant for the big screen and debuting them on the small screen.