AMC, Warner Bros. bring back movie snobbery — and it’s about time

Ordinarily, I try not to spend too much of my one precious life watching Marvel trailers — or Marvel movies, for that matter. But occasionally, snobs don’t have a choice, such as when they’re sitting in the dark of a movie theater, where the viewer assumes the role of the spectator. There, I will watch whatever I’m served, and grit my teeth as needed. But what I witnessed recently at the end of the trailer for “Avengers: Doomsday” made me glad I didn’t shut my eyes to protect my precious pretension. Just before the trailer finishes, a hilarious decree comes down from Mount Disney, splayed across the screen like law: “See it in InfinityVision!”

With film formats and projection styles becoming some movies’ selling point — “The Odyssey” had its 70mm IMAX tickets sold out for months, while audiences clamored to see “One Battle After Another” in VistaVision — the sight was perplexing. InfinityVision? I’d never heard of such a thing, but if I had to wager a guess, as I did that fateful evening, I’d say that it was some fake new format that Disney invented so its blockbuster superslop could come with a bit more prestige. 

Sure enough: InfinityVision, as its website states, is a “certification for premium large-format theaters, meaning moviegoers are guaranteed exceptional film presentation.” In other words, it’s a fancy, relatively pointless label that Disney can “award” to theaters that make the cut — and a clever marketing tactic to align their movies with films of a more substantial artistic pedigree. If even the once all-powerful Marvel is trying to recapture viewers by positioning itself as haughty and highbrow, there is no doubt snobbery is pushing for the mainstream.

This blessed return to artful thinking was echoed again last week, when AMC announced its new distribution venture, Leawood Films, dedicated to getting as many eyes as possible on small and entirely independent movies. Make no mistake: America’s biggest theater chain wading into the indie film distribution business is a bold, risky move that suggests a dedication to both the art of cinema and the curious moviegoer. Sure, being an independent production doesn’t automatically mean that a film is good. But over the last two decades, the already tiny space for indie film has grown even smaller, being phased out by streamers — the place indies go to die — and YouTube. 

Given that the current culture is so heavily steeped in brainrot — a recent viral clip of actress Miriam Shor shocking a gaggle of news correspondents by refusing to use ChatGPT is just one bit of proof of our cognitive decline  — this return to snobbery couldn’t come at a better time. We’ve all been pushed down a very slippery slope by tech tycoons who want nothing more than to watch us fall in line and succumb to the mental offloading that their products encourage. And one of the primary consequences of this shift is that everything, including our movies and television shows, is getting so much worse. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, your second cousin who gets too drunk at every family wedding has seen it. It’s no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the horrible places our culture is headed. If there were any time to turn our noses up in defiance and refuse to engage with anything less than quality, it’s now.

Happily, more than a few major players are catering to the growing number of those tired of sub-par, corner-cutting crap. In October, Warner Bros.’ new boutique sub-label, Clockwork, will release its highly anticipated restoration of Ken Russell’s 1971 religious horror, “The Devils,” aiming for a wide theatrical release. A film from an auteur who isn’t exactly synonymous with the big names in cinema history being restored and brought to a new generation, on hundreds of silver screens across the country, is a major win for the snobs. 

But Clockwork isn’t solely aimed at repertory restorations, either. According to Warner Bros., the label will “focus on lower-cost films, targeting digital natives and Gen Z audiences with zeitgeist-driving fare [and] both independently made and acquired projects.” This means that, alongside AMC’s Leawood, two major new players have entered the independent movie space, dedicated to giving viewers genuinely good — or, at the very least, interesting — films that stand out in a sea of sameness. Not to tout major corporations too much, but it is heartening to see that even businesses worth billions of dollars have their customer in mind, too.

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In retrospect, these decisions to finance and distribute independent films make Disney’s InfinityVision look even sillier. Frankly, Marvel diehards aren’t exactly the crowd that I’d expect would be most concerned about “exceptional film presentation.” When the bar for the films themselves is so dreadfully low, I can’t imagine a Marvel fan getting upset about the technical specs of their repetitive, predictable, formulaic, lab-made, half-finished superhero movies. 

But maybe, just maybe, Marvel fans are feeling a nagging sense of discontent, too. The Marvel Cinematic Universe can only expand so many times before one realizes it’s not actually going anywhere. The steady decrease in quality is unmistakable, and it’s perfectly conceivable that even a day-one Marvel enthusiast would feel the facade crumbling at some point. As a transparent marketing tactic, InfinityVision implies that there will be a spectacle worth watching. But anyone who’s seen more than two Marvel movies this decade knows that the spectacle has long since faded. Now, it seems even Disney knows the scales have tipped, and that not even the sheer number of mediocre movies they produce is enough to outweigh the force of people finally coming to understand they deserve better — more importantly, that our culture deserves better.

 

The films Leawood and Clockwork are producing inspire discussion. And what we are sorely lacking in this world is discussion. As more films get restored and re-released, and more small and independent movies earn surprising box office returns, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how the AI era’s gospel of instant gratification dulls our prefrontal cortex. Our critical thinking skills are what define our entire lives, our perception of everything that we see and do. It’s imperative that films challenge us and encourage discussion, even the bad ones. Something like the average Marvel movie, on the other hand, exists solely as clip montages in fans’ minds. “Remember when Hulk smashed that thing? And Thanos made everyone go poof? And Black Widow met her Russian family? And? And? And? Yeah. That was awesome.”

That’s simply no way to live, and it’s certainly not a way to enjoy a movie as anything deeper or more important than a fleeting experience. When you look at films like that under a magnifying glass, they tend to fall apart. (That’s why they need to be seen in InfinityVision, so the sound can blast your eyebrows off and rupture your eardrums; you can’t pick apart a movie you didn’t watch because you were too busy tending to the blood running out of your ear canal.) But analysis is a good thing. Conversation is a good thing. Humans should want more for themselves than a binary good-bad, or the answers to all of life’s questions spat out by a machine.

If wanting to engage with art, humanity and ideas in the hallowed halls of a movie theater instead of on a streaming platform — or worse, through the unseemly images generated by a machine — is snobbish, then so be it. Someone’s got to put their foot down. And if even the big corporations can see that a diet of universally palatable slop is unsustainable and troubling, it’d be a shame to get left behind, comparing favorite Marvel moments with a chatbot.