Cinema 2024 and Beyond: Adequate Images and Original Stories

Thoughts on Wicked, AI, IP and this year in film

“Give us adequate images. We lack adequate images, our civilization doesn't have adequate images. And I think our civilization is doomed, is gonna die out like dinosaurs if it does not develop an adequate language or adequate images.”

- Werner Herzog, filmmaker

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The day before Thanksgiving, I went to see Wicked at an AMC in the suburbs of Chicago. Let me preface this entire tirade by saying that I am now extremely spoiled when it comes to the movie-going experience. In LA… (sorry), for the most part, going to the movies is a sacred practice, and one that (most) people greet with not only respect, but excitement and appreciation. Let’s just say that if the audience doesn’t cheer and applaud for the Nicole Kidman AMC pre-movie ad in a Los Angeles theater, it’s a huge letdown and not normal! Of course, this is probably because everyone and their half-sister and stepdad is trying to break into the movie business in LA, so this admiration for cinema comes as no surprise. Okay, so anyway – now you’re fully caught up: I am a recently anointed Coastal Elite piece of shit, and I am sitting in a Naperville, Illinois AMC matinee showing of Wicked the day before Thanksgiving.

Ariana Grande in Wicked (2024).

The theater was crowded, but not sold out – in fact, to my surprise, none of the AMC showings in the area that week were sold out for Wicked, a film that is arguably the biggest movie of the year. The audience was mostly children and their parents, understandably, but again (Coastal Elite bubble), a bit to my surprise. I guess I was expecting more… adult… Broadway - well, nerds? But as it turns out, we’re not in Burbank anymore, Toto.¹

All this to say: I had an incredible time at Wicked, but it would have been way better with an audience that actually gave a shit. Too harsh of words about a theater full of small children? I don’t care! To be honest, the parents seemed just as disinterested, if not more so. In a world where society is swiftly declining in terms of attention spans, literacy and basic content comprehension, I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked that no one laughed at any of the (many) good jokes or showed any kind of “wow!” reaction for the outstanding musical numbers in the film.

But even if I wasn’t an insufferable elitist in the second biggest metropolis in the country, I’d still be disappointed to see that kids (and their parents) were zoning out, playing on their phones, talking, getting up to get more popcorn or just to run around outside the theater during such a magical and vibrant movie like Wicked. This is, after all, the very kind of movie that is supposed to appeal to kids, right? And yet, the children there were all chitchatting or walking around², barely paying attention and not showing any kind of audible reaction to anything going on, draped in blankets and pillows brought from home as if to say, “this is just like home except we weren’t allowed to bring our iPads here.”

Now, look: I love TikTok just as much as any 7-year-old girl filming her “get ready with me” video of her morning makeup and skincare routine before she carpools off to the second grade. And I can admit that social media and iPhone overuse has made my attention span less than desirable over the years… but I can also still sit and enjoy an incredibly entertaining and dazzling movie musical. Is that only because I have the luxury of being born in a generation that wasn’t fully ruined by the internet until high school or college? Probably, or well, definitely. Despite how it sounds, this is not just me being annoyed at children (though… no comment…): it’s more about how sad I am that they didn’t enjoy a movie that I, a grown ass adult, felt like a little kid again watching.

I know I am aging myself by saying this, but art and art comprehension just ain’t what it used to be, folks. I know I am nowhere near alone in thinking that either, as many social scientists and what have you have commented on it in much more intelligent ways and for much longer than I have before starting this humble essay. But this is the future, after all: young students are writing their research papers with ChatGPT, cars are robots now, driving themselves, and as far as entertainment goes – IP and recycled content are King.

Werner Herzog in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980).

Though Wicked is IP, it is the first time the story is being told on the big screen, and it feels as exciting as something brand new while still retaining everything we love about the source material. Luckily, it seems that audiences like mine full of bored children are not reflecting at all in the box office numbers, seeing as how it’s quickly become the “highest grossing movie based on a Broadway musical” domestically in less than two weeks.

My favorite movie of 2024 was Anora. My least favorite movie of 2024 was Longlegs. (Don’t get me started on the latter…) But hell, no matter my opinion on the latter, at least they were both original stories and told even with smaller casts and budgets. Both movies were arguably two of the most talked about films of the year, and they were new stories. Anora, hailed by many trades as the “indie hit of the year,” turned out the highest per-screen-average of 2024 (as of October). These are only two examples of many that might suggest that maybe – just maybe! – much of the population (notably, Gen Z and Millennials) will turn out in numbers to watch new talent in small-budget indie films with original screenplays led by fresh creators. To quote IndieWire from earlier this year:

A new streaming insights survey conducted by free-streaming platform Tubi found that 74 percent of millennials and Gen Zers prefer to watch original content rather than franchises or remakes.

“Viewers are increasingly seeking fresh and innovative ideas that push the boundaries of what’s possible instead of rehashed versions of existing stories,” a white paper made available to marketers and obtained by IndieWire reads.

Meanwhile, Disney is busy filming a live action version of Moana (slated for 2026) with The Rock because – that’s right! – studio execs found yet another way to recycle already thrice-recycled content: take successful animated movies but make them LIVE! And I already went on my impassioned rant about Lionsgate remaking American Psycho, a movie that’s a) not old enough to remake, and b) impossible to do again better (and that still stands). But with the AI and the robot cars and the Elon Musk of it all, the direction we’re headed in seems inevitable. It seems that the more advanced we get, the less remarkable things are. I think often about science-fiction writer Ted Chiang’s piece about AI for The New Yorker, where he wrote:

Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that a jpeg retains much of the information of a higher-resolution image, but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approximation. But, because the approximation is presented in the form of grammatical text, which ChatGPT excels at creating, it’s usually acceptable. You’re still looking at a blurry jpeg, but the blurriness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the picture as a whole look less sharp.

Unfortunately, the blurry jpeg-ification of cinema is rapidly underway. We want original stories, but we rarely ever get them anymore. We are so starved for new content that when an original film comes out and it’s actually good? Well, we become obsessed with it. We meme it to death and etch poetic odes about it into cyberspace via Letterboxd and Twitter – like celebrating the return of something you didn’t even realize was gone.

So, are we getting dumber, or are the suits at studios and streaming services making us dumber with their greenlighting decisions born out of greed and lack of imagination? I think we already know the answer (or at the very least, you know mine).

We lack adequate images, and we deserve more – much, much more.

1. groan, I know…

2. have I made it clear enough yet that I am NOT a “kids person”?