Pacific Hollywood Cinerama Dome Gone Or Coming Back?

[Bobby Henderson]

I personally never had any kids of my own. My younger brother has one grown daughter, now serving in the US Army. My niece has one daughter and no plans on having more kids. The high cost of parenthood is steering a lot of this behavior. Young people can be stupid at times. When it comes to the cost of raising kids, young people are proving they're not that stupid. The teen pregnancy rate in the US is now less than 1/3 what it was in 1990.

The growing trend of automation will be another downward force on America's birth rate. Most parents want their children to grow up to have the best opportunities. That paradigm includes going to college in order to be able to get a good paying, white collar job. They don't dream of their kids growing up to weld, lay floor tile or work in a factory. The inflation rate of college tuition costs is putting that white collar future for many would-be parents' kids way out of reach. The specter of automation eliminating millions of lower level jobs is making the gulf between the haves and have nots even worse in terms of what to expect for a child's future.

I'm still of the opinion America's looming baby bust is not on the radar scopes of any policy makers. They can't see past their own 2-year or 4-year election cycles much less show interest in an issue whose consequences may take another 10-20 years to have effect. Even today there is a lot of economic imbalance that is pitting cities versus towns and different regions against each other. Small towns and rural areas are caught in a negative feedback loop, shedding more young people to big cities. Not enough kids are being born to replace those who left. That's leaving those towns and rural areas with a population that is getting older, a working age labor force and tax base that is shrinking and not enough opportunity to convince any young people leaving high school or college to stay. When a small town can't afford to have its own police or fire departments, keep the streets paved or keep a school staffed and populated with students that town will slowly dry up and die. Even elderly people get forced out of such towns; they're in more need of access to health care, adult day care services, etc. Those services are usually found in bigger towns and cities.

Here in Oklahoma our state legislature recently finished state-level redistricting. Rural areas, particularly those in the Southeast part of Oklahoma, got hit hard. Whole counties have been merged into other representative districts -all due to population loss. Meanwhile the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metros have gained new districts.

China is already keenly aware how its one child policy failed badly. They boosted the limit to 2 kids and are now even removing that limit. The country is falling into the same dilemma of lopsided demographic imbalance of elderly vs working age generations that has been adversely affecting Japan. In addition to encouraging couples to have more kids they're getting aggressive with diplomacy. Africa is the only continent on the planet that still has high birth rates. In another couple or so decades the majority of the world's youth will live in Africa. The continent has the potential to become either an economic powerhouse or a nightmare scenario of tyrant controlled military power. China is trying to lay down ground work to establish an economic and diplomatic beach head there. The rest of the developed world isn't doing so much.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed totally on childcare. It's one of the reasons why my wife and I only had one, both directly and indirectly. The direct reason is our age when he was born; the indirect one is that we had to wait that long to be as sure as we could be that we could raise him in a financially secure way, which included full time childcare to begin with, and then part time once he is in to K-12. So here is one family unit, at any rate, that is not reproducing itself at the level needed to sustain the current population. I read somewhere recently that China is now trying to turn this oil tanker around by not only ending the one child policy, but actively trying to encourage its population to have more. But the broader economic climate discourages that so much, that the change of policy at the top isn't having much effect.

And childcare, of course, is something you can't automate. One side effect of the pandemic is that every business that can replace low skilled, minimum wage (or not much above it) labor has been doing so aggressively over the last year. A coffee bar/snack place near me recently reduced its wait staff workforce by around three quarters, by putting iPads on each table, through which you place and pay for your order. Sophisticated combine harvester type things that can pick fruit off trees are making an appearance in the Central Belt. Amazon is putting more robots and fewer humans into its warehouses. Self-driving big rigs are already in advanced testing stages, and it looks likely that they'll be certified for freeway use (with human drivers getting in and taking over for the first and last miles between the on-ramp and the warehouse) within 2-4 years. Airbus is now testing a variant of the A350 that can be operated by a single pilot. But childcare, and for those that need it, elderly care, cannot be done by machines, and the cost of having humans do it has outstripped inflation for many years now.

As for California's water problem, it can only be a matter of time before large scale desalination comes onto the agenda. One plant is already being built near Carlsbad. It's hugely energy intensive, but that is the sort of application for which solar panels and birdie blenders actually work OK (because all that matters is the total volume of water you treat, not the precise time at which you treat it: unlike electricity, it is possible to store a large volume of water until it's needed), and California has plenty of sunshine and wind.

[Bobby Henderson]

It's not like those people that move don't see they're slowly creating a new problem elsewhere. But the solution lies in their home states. With real-estate prices and cost-of-living exploding to such extend that only multi-millionaires can afford to live there, you're slowly bleeding your population dry of any elementary workforce...

That is certainly the major imbalance taking place in coastal metros like New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of young people reaching adulthood in those regions, more and more of them are being forced out of their home regions, even to entirely different parts of the nation, just to be able to move out of their parents' houses and be on their own. The problem has existed for some time and appears to be getting worse. Those high priced regions have relied on an influx of immigrants to counter the imbalance. Even that ploy is wearing thin now.

California is in a particularly rough spot because, even though it is a big state, there are only so many places there where it is practical to live. Water supply is an enormously difficult and worsening problem. Some of the state's most highly populated areas are in what would otherwise be a barren desert. The Lake Mead reservoir is having to supply water to Southern California, the Las Vegas metro and parts of Arizona. Lake Mead also gets tapped for agriculture in the state's central valley. Now the reservoir is at record low levels.

Water is easier to come by in much of Texas. When needed, there are more available areas to build new reservoirs. It's easier for small towns to grow into cities and for existing cities to get a lot bigger. While the cost of living in Austin is starting to get out of hand there are many other areas in Texas where affordability still exists.

The increasing cost of parenthood is a problem in many industrialized countries, but from what I've heard from friends in the U.S. that stuff like daycare is exceptionally expensive. Over here, daycare still isn't cheap, but there is quite a lot of government funding to keep costs in the realm of the acceptable. If both parents want to have an active career, daycare is a necessity, not so much a luxury.

The cost of day care is ridiculously expensive. Even here in Lawton, a place considered "fly-over country," the cost of putting one child in day care is equal to renting an apartment. It's one of multiple issues that forces many married women to choose between either having a career or being a mother, but not both. Any job they take has to at least cover the day care cost with money to spare. Single mothers are stuck in a far more difficult position. They have to work and then struggle to find arrangements, usually with other relatives, to get someone to watch their kids. For many young women avoiding pregnancy in the first place is of paramount importance. Parenthood is a gateway to poverty for many Americans. Hence our nation's looming baby bust.

Out of my own selfish concern, I'm pretty worried about this problem. Around 20 years from now I'll be eligible to retire. By that time the US will be very top-heavy with elderly people and have a shrinking working age population. Our tax base will be shrinking. Programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be unsustainable. Our nation won't be able to afford its military, much less even staff it properly with manpower. America is going to be in big fucking trouble.

[Marcel Birgelen]

There is a difference between actively promoting something and trying to erase it from history. What Disney is doing with Song of the South is clearly the latter. I do often think about the moral implications of it all, but does this now mean that I can't enjoy a movie with Kevin Spacey in it? Am I not allowed to enjoy listening to a Michael Jackson record?

I try to see the achievements of those men as a separate thing of how they lived their life. That's also the only way I can still look at any movie featuring Tom Cruise, knowing he's otherwise promoting his Xenu-fearing space-cult to the masses.

Many talented people seem to be otherwise deeply flawed human individuals. Maybe because they can't handle the power that comes with their fame and money, I don't know. But I'm certain there is a lot out there we still know nothing about.

After what happened in Miami this morning, the attractiveness of vertical living space just took a bit of a hit..

There is an entire spectrum between a single-family home in the suburbs and some shoddy constructed box in the sky.

It might not be hard to look up, but wasn't the first IMAX "DMR" a blow-up of one of the Star Wars prequels? I did see The Matrix: Reloaded at a Cinemark IMAX theater in Colorado Springs. That definitely did get the DMR treatment.

The first release in DMR apparently was Appollo 13. The second one was Star Wars: Episode II. Both movies had about 30 minutes cut, to fit on older IMAX platters.

I remember DMR being marketed as the pixie dust that allowed IMAX to scan 35mm to such a resolution, that they could access the "hidden information" between the film grain... Well, Episode II was shot in a native resolution of 1440x1080 with anamorphic lenses, which was later "upsqueezed" to 1920x1080. I'm still wondering how they found the magic missing information between those pixels.

The sad thing is some places in Texas, such as Austin, are starting to get over-priced. But Texas has an advantage of being a huge state with lots of land. If a new arrival to Austin can't afford housing within Austin itself he'll probably be able to find something pretty inexpensive in a town not far away.

It's not like those people that move don't see they're slowly creating a new problem elsewhere. But the solution lies in their home states. With real-estate prices and cost-of-living exploding to such extend that only multi-millionaires can afford to live there, you're slowly bleeding your population dry of any elementary workforce...

New Urbanists want everyone to abandon the suburbs, move to the urban center and increase population density. I understand the advantages of concentrating more people onto a smaller more vertical footprint of living space. But the New Urbanist types have never been able to solve the problem of affordability.

I don't think you need to build much more vertical living space, but you just should organize suburban living spaces better. The total lack of commercial development in many of those suburban areas is a great example. If the closest shop is 3 miles away, you're bound to take the car to get there. Meanwhile, envision a small town with a still functioning urban center. People can do a lot more while walking or biking to the services they need and still live in a calm neighborhood. There should be more mixed-developments, where people without children can still live in smaller homes. This would require zoning regulations to become more flexible.

Beyond that, there are many studies that indicate that building anything beyond 10 stories high isn't cost-effective at all. Maybe things change if you're in the center of a metropolis, but not in your average town or city.

Longer term the soaring costs of parenthood are really going to bite the United States square in the ass. This nation is now in the early stages of what could be a long term and possibly irreversible baby bust. For more than 40 years all of this country's net population gains came via immigration and the higher birth rates of those immigrants. And now that scheme has stopped working. Today even immigrants are having far fewer kids. In 20 years this nation's leaders may be pleading out loud, begging for more immigrants to move to the US. We already have skilled worker shortages in medicine, engineering, computer science and other fields that depend on imported labor to fill. Other nations, like those in Europe with really low birth rates, may start competing harder for that labor. In 20 years the United States military may be struggling badly at recruiting enough young adults to maintain an adequate force strength.

The increasing cost of parenthood is a problem in many industrialized countries, but from what I've heard from friends in the U.S. that stuff like daycare is exceptionally expensive. Over here, daycare still isn't cheap, but there is quite a lot of government funding to keep costs in the realm of the acceptable. If both parents want to have an active career, daycare is a necessity, not so much a luxury.

The whole thing about immigration is a very political one. Parties on both side of the spectrum tend to be very dishonest about the entire subject, often leading to polarized discussions that don't seem to match with reality. But since it's so politically loaded, I guess it's best suited for another forum.

[Leo Enticknap]

I understand the advantages of concentrating more people onto a smaller more vertical footprint of living space.

After what happened in Miami this morning, the attractiveness of vertical living space just took a bit of a hit..

Personally, I'm a bit done with "white washing" history. At the time Disney employed James Levine, nothing public was known about any sexual misconduct charges regarding Levine.

The reason why nothing public was known (though it was reportedly an open secret within both the Met Opera and Boston Symphony orchestras' workforces) is that his victims were intimidated against coming forward by the likely damage to their careers, or even worse. The same thing happened with Jimmy Savile, who regularly threatened lawsuits against his victims if they went public. So it's not uncommon for the full extent of predatory pedophiles' crimes to enter the public domain only after their death. Michael Jackson is another example.

The fact that many of Levine's victims are still alive creates, IMHO, an ethical problem with his recorded work (and especially Fantasia 2000, which is about his only output that is known to a wider audience beyond classical music fans) circulating freely. I would also feel queasy about it being "canceled," but neither should there be any active promotion of it.

[Bobby Henderson]

I remember Fantasia 2000 back in 1999 to be the first full feature released on 70mm IMAX, but it wasn't a DMR title. While I wasn't fond of the Fantasia 2000 "re-make", I could see the potential of watching movies in this format. I don't know what the first DMR title was, but I remember seeing The Matrix Reloaded in that format at the IMAX in Lincoln Square in New York, which was still a Loews theater back then and the IMAX theater was still a proper IMAX theater and not a "baby IMAX", which started to become a thing around that same timeframe. I wasn't impressed by the show, because looking at a scope feature on such a tall screen, without any masking, yields nothing compared to watching it on a properly masked, well-sized scope screen. Also, the DNR did nothing for me to reduce the film grain...

I watched Fantasia 2000 in IMAX at a Cinemark theater in Dallas. I hardly remember anything about the new sequences added. I did see the 70mm blow-up of Fantasia back in 1990 when I was still in New York City (saw it at the Gramercy Theater).

It might not be hard to look up, but wasn't the first IMAX "DMR" a blow-up of one of the Star Wars prequels? I did see The Matrix: Reloaded at a Cinemark IMAX theater in Colorado Springs. That definitely did get the DMR treatment.

I kind of blame IMAX for starting the whole trend of theaters getting built with wall-to-wall, masking-free screens. Several years ago I visited a Santikos theater in Houston where every screen was a wall to wall, floor to ceiling thing with no masking. The setup looked odd and even cheap. To me it looked like someone had jammed a giant white trampoline into one end of the auditorium.

Quite a few people I know, some of them good friends, who worked in and around Silicon Valley or the New York metro area moved to Austin in recent years. Most of them are making more than $100K/year and still had trouble to make ends meet, no wonder you're going to look for alternatives. If such salaries can't afford you a comfortable living, something is not going the way it should be...

The sad thing is some places in Texas, such as Austin, are starting to get over-priced. But Texas has an advantage of being a huge state with lots of land. If a new arrival to Austin can't afford housing within Austin itself he'll probably be able to find something pretty inexpensive in a town not far away.

I guess many countries, including quite a few European ones, will have to cope with the effects of 50 years of urban sprawl. While it may have been "the American dream", the single family home in some generic, sub-urban place, in hindsight, many of those communities are extremely expensive to keep up, especially in the face of an ever-ageing population. Urban sprawl requires a lot of expensive infrastructure per household and everybody needs cars to get somewhere. This also lead to the whole concept of the mall, the typical agglomeration of shops amid a concrete jungle of parking spots.

Suburban sprawl occurs mostly out of economic necessity. When housing in the urban core gets too expensive and when the zones in the core that are still affordable get too crime-infested it forces many to go farther outward to find living spaces that are both affordable and safe.

New Urbanists want everyone to abandon the suburbs, move to the urban center and increase population density. I understand the advantages of concentrating more people onto a smaller more vertical footprint of living space. But the New Urbanist types have never been able to solve the problem of affordability.

There are many cities where local politics actively limits the supply of new housing, especially anything that's designed to be affordable to middle and lower income workers. Wealthy home owners don't want the value of their properties negatively impacted, either by lower class people living near them or by a good supply of housing limiting housing price inflation.

This kind of housing market manipulating policy has gone on for decades. And now it is starting to yield some consequences.

Many areas of the country are experiencing a shortage of workers, particularly low wage service industry workers. If someone flipping burgers can't afford to live within 20 miles of that restaurant why the hell would he commute to a job like that? A job paying minimal wages can be had in any town, particularly ones where it doesn't cost as much to live. Many are trying to blame this all on pandemic-related unemployment benefits. Worker shortages are still persisting in states where extended benefits have ended. The common refrain is "people don't want to work." Well, the response is, "not for the shit pay you're offering." A record number of people have voluntarily quit jobs lately. You can't draw unemployment when you quit. Some who quit have taken better paying jobs. Others are simply leaving the work force. Some industries have relied greatly on migrant workers to do jobs with low pay (and terrible work conditions). With so much noise made about immigration that could be affecting the supply of such workers.

Nevertheless, areas of the nation that have high living costs will likely see increasing trouble at staffing low wage service industry jobs. They'll either have to figure out how to pay those workers enough to be able to afford living near their crappy jobs. Or they'll have to be willing to allow affordable housing to be built in those areas.

Longer term the soaring costs of parenthood are really going to bite the United States square in the ass. This nation is now in the early stages of what could be a long term and possibly irreversible baby bust. For more than 40 years all of this country's net population gains came via immigration and the higher birth rates of those immigrants. And now that scheme has stopped working. Today even immigrants are having far fewer kids. In 20 years this nation's leaders may be pleading out loud, begging for more immigrants to move to the US. We already have skilled worker shortages in medicine, engineering, computer science and other fields that depend on imported labor to fill. Other nations, like those in Europe with really low birth rates, may start competing harder for that labor. In 20 years the United States military may be struggling badly at recruiting enough young adults to maintain an adequate force strength.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I did a quick check and Fantasia 2000 is still available on Disney+, at least in this region.

Personally, I'm a bit done with "white washing" history. At the time Disney employed James Levine, nothing public was known about any sexual misconduct charges regarding Levine. What do we do when we finally find out that the relationship between Leonardo DaVinci and his two pupils, who were both practically given to him at 10 respectively 14 years of age, was more than a bit "platonic"? Are we going to paint the Sistine Chapel white and burn the Mona Lisa?

[Leo Enticknap]

While I wasn't fond of the Fantasia 2000 "re-make"...

Apologies in advance both for going off topic and veering close to the political wind. I'm guessing that Disney have now buried that movie, almost as deep in the vault as Song of the South. Its star, James Levine, was one of the best known orchestral conductors in the world at the time the film was made. About a decade later, allegations surfaced that he had molested an impressive number of his students over several decades, with the result that he went from being one of classical music's biggest stars to persona non grata in that world, in the space of about 3-4 years. He died earlier this year, having disappeared completely from public life by the late teens.

I'd be surprised if you can see Fantasia 2000 on Disney+, or rent it for theatrical bookings anymore. It does appear to be available on DVD and BD on Amazon when I looked just now, but only in used or "new old stock" copies from third party sellers, suggesting that Disney is trying to walk away from it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The theater chain that eventually became AMC is the one that started the original multiplex trend in the 1960's, first with twins, triples, etc. By the end of the 1960's they were building six-screen sites. The theater industry really embraced the multiplex format going into the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember the 1970's and 1980's. By the 1980's theaters with six, eight or even ten screens were very common. By the 1980's some drive-in theaters had installed multiple screens, perhaps as an attempt to survive. Most drive-in theaters died out going into the 1980's.

There indeed was a trend to build multi-screen cinemas in the 1970s and 80s, not just in the U.S., but also over in Europe. Most of those were in larger cities though and quite a few of those theaters started out as single-screens, but had new screens added to them over the years, at least in Europe. Most of those additions were cumbersome little rooms though, which even lead to the German term "Schachtelkino", which roughly translates to "box cinema". I remember going to the Beverly Center in L.A. in the mid 1980s, ironically located inside a shopping mall. This really had some of the more modern "multiplex" vibe going on, while most other cinemas often still felt like a more traditional cinema, with a traditional foyer.

The so-called "megaplex" trend in the US began in 1995, arguably with the opening of the AMC Grand 24 in Dallas. It didn't take long before AMC was opening 30-screen sites. The key thing with those theaters was stadium seating. That's the feature that sealed the fates of many older theaters, even big 1000+ seat locations like the GCC Northpark 1-2 in Dallas. Of course the megaplex trend did not last. No chain is opening new theater locations with nearly that many screens. Stadium seating has endured in new theater designs to varying degrees, depending on how that can be combined with recliners or dine-in service options.

I guess the adoption of the stadium seating concept coincided largely with the general expansion of the multiplex and megaplex concept. While larger urban areas were outfitted with megaplexes, the multiplex saw widespread proliferation even into more urban territories. The first "megaplex" appeared in 1988 in Brussels, opened by the still existing Kinepolis chain, but the reason to build 25 rooms there was largely due to the fact that they needed to play two versions of almost every movie. By comparison to many megaplexes that followed around the world, those Kinepolis complexes were still huge, as their average room size was still large. The interesting thing is that their concept included ample leg-room and seats that would still be found perfectly comfortable today. But many of their screens were so large, even in their "mid-sized" theaters, 35mm film really suffered on those screens.

IMAX and other "PLF" concepts are hold-overs from the initial experiments of the first mid 1990's megaplex sites. Some locations would have at least one auditorium with a screen ridiculously large in size and too big for a 35mm projector to show an adequately bright and steady image. That is the very thing that gave IMAX its opening to get into the multiplex business, first with 15/70mm theaters showing "DMR" content and then with their own branded d-cinema thing. IMAX would have been completely cut out of the loop if theater chain executives and Hollywood studio executives would have bothered supporting 5/70mm print distribution again. 35mm looked like shit on those giant screens. Nevertheless the theater chains and movie studios didn't bother showing 5/70mm on them. They ended up having to pay IMAX serious money for something they could have done for themselves for far less money.

I remember Fantasia 2000 back in 1999 to be the first full feature released on 70mm IMAX, but it wasn't a DMR title. While I wasn't fond of the Fantasia 2000 "re-make", I could see the potential of watching movies in this format. I don't know what the first DMR title was, but I remember seeing The Matrix Reloaded in that format at the IMAX in Lincoln Square in New York, which was still a Loews theater back then and the IMAX theater was still a proper IMAX theater and not a "baby IMAX", which started to become a thing around that same timeframe. I wasn't impressed by the show, because looking at a scope feature on such a tall screen, without any masking, yields nothing compared to watching it on a properly masked, well-sized scope screen. Also, the DNR did nothing for me to reduce the film grain...

Many European cities are far older than the ones in the US. And, historically, Americans have had a thing for packing up and moving to new places. Right now a pretty serious amount of migration is taking place, largely due to insanely high living costs in California and the Northeast US. California just recorded the first net loss of population since the state started keeping records; over 180,000 left the state in 2020. States like Texas are gaining from it. For the past 20+ years I've watched the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex not far away from where I live grow almost like a virus. Regions like Austin-San Antonio are growing even faster.

Quite a few people I know, some of them good friends, who worked in and around Silicon Valley or the New York metro area moved to Austin in recent years. Most of them are making more than $100K/year and still had trouble to make ends meet, no wonder you're going to look for alternatives. If such salaries can't afford you a comfortable living, something is not going the way it should be...

American cities have had far less in the way of historically sensitive sites like European cities. So during the late 20th century it was fairly easy to build giant super highways through the middle of them. Now with trends like "new urbanism" they're starting to re-think that, particularly in regard to what freeways and "urban renewal" did to minority neighborhoods. However, the soaring costs of living in major urban city centers is souring that ideology. Minorities are getting victimized via gentrification. And virtually anyone without a high income has to look elsewhere. People tend to move farther away from city centers in search for housing that is both affordable and in a safe/good location.

Americans still like to get out of the house. And "town center" style commercial districts try to appeal to that. But they're successful only to a limit. Americans also like a bargain. They'll often choose saving money in the method they choose to buy a retail item or watch a movie. Hence the retail apocalypse.

I guess many countries, including quite a few European ones, will have to cope with the effects of 50 years of urban sprawl. While it may have been "the American dream", the single family home in some generic, sub-urban place, in hindsight, many of those communities are extremely expensive to keep up, especially in the face of an ever-ageing population. Urban sprawl requires a lot of expensive infrastructure per household and everybody needs cars to get somewhere. This also lead to the whole concept of the mall, the typical agglomeration of shops amid a concrete jungle of parking spots.

I've seen it where Amazon has showed interest in old mall sites. But I think they're probably more interested in the land rather than the existing buildings. In most cities when you start renovating on any commercial building you have to bring everything up to code. Very often it's less expensive to demolish, clear the rubble and start over with a new building.

Their datacenters come in modules, so they just strip those buildings empty and put in their modules. Former department store locations like former Sears locations seem to be ideal for those, as long as the superstructure is still sound. As for the warehouse part, they'll probably are more interested in the land. As a bonus, many of those malls are pretty well connected to existing road infrastructure and since they usually come with big parking lots, which won't be necessary anymore, they really get the land at bargain rates.

[Bobby Henderson]

I guess if you go back about a year or 30 to 35, the biggest change in our recent lifetimes for exhibition was probably the advent of the multiplex and megaplex. While we've seen twinning, tripping and quadrupling of existing cinemas before, the cinema specifically built with like 8 theaters or more, from the ground up, is a phenomenon that really just started in the late 80s and I'd say the boom lasted to somewhere until the early 2000s. That time also saw the closure of many smaller theaters, failing to compete with the then new-and-shiny multiplex around the corner. It's especially the multiplex style theater that got colocated with shopping malls all over the place.

The theater chain that eventually became AMC is the one that started the original multiplex trend in the 1960's, first with twins, triples, etc. By the end of the 1960's they were building six-screen sites. The theater industry really embraced the multiplex format going into the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember the 1970's and 1980's. By the 1980's theaters with six, eight or even ten screens were very common. By the 1980's some drive-in theaters had installed multiple screens, perhaps as an attempt to survive. Most drive-in theaters died out going into the 1980's.

The so-called "megaplex" trend in the US began in 1995, arguably with the opening of the AMC Grand 24 in Dallas. It didn't take long before AMC was opening 30-screen sites. The key thing with those theaters was stadium seating. That's the feature that sealed the fates of many older theaters, even big 1000+ seat locations like the GCC Northpark 1-2 in Dallas. Of course the megaplex trend did not last. No chain is opening new theater locations with nearly that many screens. Stadium seating has endured in new theater designs to varying degrees, depending on how that can be combined with recliners or dine-in service options.

IMAX and other "PLF" concepts are hold-overs from the initial experiments of the first mid 1990's megaplex sites. Some locations would have at least one auditorium with a screen ridiculously large in size and too big for a 35mm projector to show an adequately bright and steady image. That is the very thing that gave IMAX its opening to get into the multiplex business, first with 15/70mm theaters showing "DMR" content and then with their own branded d-cinema thing. IMAX would have been completely cut out of the loop if theater chain executives and Hollywood studio executives would have bothered supporting 5/70mm print distribution again. 35mm looked like shit on those giant screens. Nevertheless the theater chains and movie studios didn't bother showing 5/70mm on them. They ended up having to pay IMAX serious money for something they could have done for themselves for far less money.

While Europe has plenty of shopping malls, the concept has never been as prolific as in the U.S., maybe also because suburbia like the U.S. never happened to the same extremes as in the U.S. So, in Europe, the old center of a town is usually the commercial shopping district. While many big cities still have sprawling shopping centers, many smaller towns have seen an exodus of retail, much like many malls in the U.S. have seen over the last 10 or so years.

Many European cities are far older than the ones in the US. And, historically, Americans have had a thing for packing up and moving to new places. Right now a pretty serious amount of migration is taking place, largely due to insanely high living costs in California and the Northeast US. California just recorded the first net loss of population since the state started keeping records; over 180,000 left the state in 2020. States like Texas are gaining from it. For the past 20+ years I've watched the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex not far away from where I live grow almost like a virus. Regions like Austin-San Antonio are growing even faster.

American cities have had far less in the way of historically sensitive sites like European cities. So during the late 20th century it was fairly easy to build giant super highways through the middle of them. Now with trends like "new urbanism" they're starting to re-think that, particularly in regard to what freeways and "urban renewal" did to minority neighborhoods. However, the soaring costs of living in major urban city centers is souring that ideology. Minorities are getting victimized via gentrification. And virtually anyone without a high income has to look elsewhere. People tend to move farther away from city centers in search for housing that is both affordable and in a safe/good location.

Americans still like to get out of the house. And "town center" style commercial districts try to appeal to that. But they're successful only to a limit. Americans also like a bargain. They'll often choose saving money in the method they choose to buy a retail item or watch a movie. Hence the retail apocalypse.

I guess it somehow is an indication that mall business and cinema business target a largely different audience. I guess the problems start, once the mall starts to attract "the wrong kind of people", who will start to scare the potential customers of the 16-plex away...

In the case of Crossroads Mall in OKC that could have been an issue. It certainly was with the stores inside the mall. Not so much in terms of violent crime. Shoplifting rates were terrible. The 16-plex is a pretty good trek across that parking lot. It's near the intersection of I-35 & I-240, which is a pretty high profile spot. That might explain why the theater is still open.

I don't know where I've read it, but ironically, Amazon seems to be interested in many of those dead malls, as they can be gotten cheaply and are easily converted into warehouses and/or datacenters, both for their plans to increase their delivery speed and their "edge computing" plans...

I've seen it where Amazon has showed interest in old mall sites. But I think they're probably more interested in the land rather than the existing buildings. In most cities when you start renovating on any commercial building you have to bring everything up to code. Very often it's less expensive to demolish, clear the rubble and start over with a new building.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Much has changed with both shopping centers and commercial movie theaters over the past 20 years. With movie theaters we've seen theater designs change to incorporate stadium seating, d-cinema, recliners, dine-in options, etc.

I guess if you go back about a year or 30 to 35, the biggest change in our recent lifetimes for exhibition was probably the advent of the multiplex and megaplex. While we've seen twinning, tripping and quadrupling of existing cinemas before, the cinema specifically built with like 8 theaters or more, from the ground up, is a phenomenon that really just started in the late 80s and I'd say the boom lasted to somewhere until the early 2000s. That time also saw the closure of many smaller theaters, failing to compete with the then new-and-shiny multiplex around the corner. It's especially the multiplex style theater that got colocated with shopping malls all over the place.

While digitization was a big deal for the exposition industry at large, the impact for the average moviegoer was largely minimal, many people not even noticing the difference. Without going into the merits of each of one, but the advent of stadium seating, recliners, dine-in and generally more comfort options is an ongoing trend to improve the theater-going experience for patrons as the exclusivity of what the theater has to offer has greatly suffered over the last years and continues to suffer. This includes recent trends like "PLF" concepts and other gimmicks like 4DX.

The 1970's style suburban indoor shopping mall is now a mostly dead retail concept. There are some exceptions, but most self-contained malls that are still standing are relics of retail. Most shopping centers built in recent years have adopted the open air "town center" concept. I think Southlake Town Square in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake is a very good example.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has upended a lot of norms. So even when a movie theater is built in a great location, such as Southlake Town Square, it can still fail. The Harkins Southlake 14 permanently closed after 15 years there.

While Europe has plenty of shopping malls, the concept has never been as prolific as in the U.S., maybe also because suburbia like the U.S. never happened to the same extremes as in the U.S. So, in Europe, the old center of a town is usually the commercial shopping district. While many big cities still have sprawling shopping centers, many smaller towns have seen an exodus of retail, much like many malls in the U.S. have seen over the last 10 or so years. Many formerly sprawling city centers now have a rather dystopian feel to them. So, this problem isn't entirely unique to shopping malls, but seems to occur to almost all "generic retail" places, as in the more transactional places, those places where people go because they have or rather had to go, rather than want to go.

Ironically, you can visit Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City, a huge and vacant 70's style mall yet find a 16-plex still operating on the outer fringe of the property. Regal originally opened that one (when the mall was already in decline), but now AMC runs it. An older 8-plex building that opened in the 1980's is also on the outer fringe; it operated as a bargain house after the newer 16-plex opened. Starplex was the final operator of the 8-plex before it closed. I heard the Crossroads Mall property sold recently. It's not clear what will be done with the property. My bet is a date with a wrecking ball.

I guess it somehow is an indication that mall business and cinema business target a largely different audience. I guess the problems start, once the mall starts to attract "the wrong kind of people", who will start to scare the potential customers of the 16-plex away...

Here in Lawton our old Central Mall was purchased by the city government a few months ago. A defense technology incubator is renovating the vacant Sears and Dillard's buildings for private use. They're looking at repurposing some other spaces in the old mall building for admin use. There is talk about doing a major remodel of the building to convert it into more of an open air shopping center. But not everyone is on board with that idea. I've never seen any existing 70's style indoor mall building converted into an outdoor "town center" concept. Usually open air shopping centers are built that way from the outset. That especially goes for any of the ones that have streets and parking spots in front of the shops and restaurants. The rinky dink 12-plex movie theater that was inside Central Mall closed permanently last year. IIRC, the entire New Vision Theaters chain went bust. It's not clear what will be done with the former theater property. But I'm pretty sure the space will never re-open as a movie theater. I think downtown Lawton needs a first-run movie theater. But not inside that mall. It needs to be a stand-alone building that allows for much taller ceilings and screens.

I don't know where I've read it, but ironically, Amazon seems to be interested in many of those dead malls, as they can be gotten cheaply and are easily converted into warehouses and/or datacenters, both for their plans to increase their delivery speed and their "edge computing" plans...

[Geoff Jones]

With theatrical release windows as short as they were even prior to the pandemic and all but gone now in the cases of Disney and Warner Bros I don't know how a luxury style theater with big recliners and dine-in options can be self-sustainable. There are so many compounding factors that work against such theaters.

This may be true in certain markets, but it isn't true everywhere. In some markets, the release window doesn't matter at all.

Over the past several days, the Alamo Drafthouse in Westminster, Colorado has sold more than twice as many tickets (per-showing) for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as it has for The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, which is only available in theaters.

Sadly, they left money on the table. They would have sold even more tickets if Indy had been in their premium auditorium instead of dinky little ones, because a number of showtimes were essentially "full," with seats only available the front rows.

Meanwhile, THWB sat nearly empty for a number of showings in the 250-seat premium auditorium.

[Bobby Henderson]

Much has changed with both shopping centers and commercial movie theaters over the past 20 years. With movie theaters we've seen theater designs change to incorporate stadium seating, d-cinema, recliners, dine-in options, etc.

The 1970's style suburban indoor shopping mall is now a mostly dead retail concept. There are some exceptions, but most self-contained malls that are still standing are relics of retail. Most shopping centers built in recent years have adopted the open air "town center" concept. I think Southlake Town Square in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake is a very good example.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has upended a lot of norms. So even when a movie theater is built in a great location, such as Southlake Town Square, it can still fail. The Harkins Southlake 14 permanently closed after 15 years there.

Ironically, you can visit Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City, a huge and vacant 70's style mall yet find a 16-plex still operating on the outer fringe of the property. Regal originally opened that one (when the mall was already in decline), but now AMC runs it. An older 8-plex building that opened in the 1980's is also on the outer fringe; it operated as a bargain house after the newer 16-plex opened. Starplex was the final operator of the 8-plex before it closed. I heard the Crossroads Mall property sold recently. It's not clear what will be done with the property. My bet is a date with a wrecking ball.

Here in Lawton our old Central Mall was purchased by the city government a few months ago. A defense technology incubator is renovating the vacant Sears and Dillard's buildings for private use. They're looking at repurposing some other spaces in the old mall building for admin use. There is talk about doing a major remodel of the building to convert it into more of an open air shopping center. But not everyone is on board with that idea. I've never seen any existing 70's style indoor mall building converted into an outdoor "town center" concept. Usually open air shopping centers are built that way from the outset. That especially goes for any of the ones that have streets and parking spots in front of the shops and restaurants. The rinky dink 12-plex movie theater that was inside Central Mall closed permanently last year. IIRC, the entire New Vision Theaters chain went bust. It's not clear what will be done with the former theater property. But I'm pretty sure the space will never re-open as a movie theater. I think downtown Lawton needs a first-run movie theater. But not inside that mall. It needs to be a stand-alone building that allows for much taller ceilings and screens.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Firstly, the stores and restaurants in many of your typical large malls in America stay open until mid to late evening, at least until around the last movie goes in. It's not like in the UK at any rate, where mall stores tend to close at 5-6pm (or at least they did when I lived there). So doing some shopping and then a movie on a weekday evening is commonplace.

Opening times have been bumped around here too over the years. Many shops, especially grocery stores don't close before 10pm/11pm. Still, the average mall I know, is a pretty dead place after the usual shopping hours. Sure, there are exceptions, like there are with almost everything.

Some of the better performing malls are often more than just a mall, they're made into a shopping/entertainment hybrid complex, where restaurants aren't just clustered in your odd boring food court, but given their own space, a space that can still see some activity, after the shops have mostly closed. Those places seem to keep performing pretty well, even though they compete as hard against the Amazons of this world. as anybody else. I guess once people create beautiful, memorable places, places with some unique identity and atmosphere, people actually want to be there and they will come. I don't think a movie theater is misplaced in such a setting.

It also depends on culture. Warm places like the U.A.E. only come alive once the sun starts to set. Those otherwise giant empty shopping malls become a beehive of activity. I get why you want to have your cinema there, but that's not really your average run-of-the-mill mall either.

I got that impression of the mall that the Pacific Winnetka theater is in. The parking lot was never more than around a third full whenever I was there.

I guess that once "mall rot" sets in, it's very hard to fix as the newer places are almost always fancier and more appealing to the general public. I've seen some malls being upgraded, but the results are often pretty mixed and those revival measures often only work for a limited time. Apparently, people really tend to flock to the places they like, even just for transactional business. So, unless they have special business in that "lesser mall", they will naturally gravitate to the newer, better thing. While those "lesser malls" can often stay afloat for a while, by re-focussing on an other type of clientele, eventually this is all just borrowed time. If you're stuck in there with your movie theater, I guess you can expect some hard times ahead, especially if you're trying to target to a more upscale market, where the better margins are.

It would be interesting to compare the average number of years from opening to final closure of all the movie theaters that no longer exist, between the USA and one or two European countries. I suspect that such a comparison would reveal that theaters don't last as long here, as a general rule. Maybe more land availability and cheaper building tilts the economics in favor of pulling down an old theater and building a new one, rather than refurbishing an existing building. Zoning restrictions (UK: planning permission) may play into it, too.

I think I've written about it before, but I think there is a bit of a new trend in the U.S. nowadays, in where it is seen useful to re-use existing places and not just tear them down and build something entirely new. Limiting zoning regulations in Europe may be part of it, but I also think people start to respect the stuff that's already there more. But it would indeed be interesting to see the differences between regions. While I also think that the average theater in Europe lasts longer than in the U.S., this is merely based on some broad assumptions. Maybe someone at CinemaTreasures.org could run such a query.

[Leo Enticknap]

Firstly, the stores and restaurants in many of your typical large malls in America stay open until mid to late evening, at least until around the last movie goes in. It's not like in the UK at any rate, where mall stores tend to close at 5-6pm (or at least they did when I lived there). So doing some shopping and then a movie on a weekday evening is commonplace.

I've witnessed this trend of the "dying mall" before. Most of those malls are pretty generic places, also sometimes called "Liminal Spaces" and as soon as somebody constructs a newer, more fancy mall, the old mall usually starts to die a slow and painful death.

I got that impression of the mall that the Pacific Winnetka theater is in. The parking lot was never more than around a third full whenever I was there.

Also, movie theaters don't seem to be as ephemeral as your average shopping mall shop (at least if they aren't run by AMC).

It would be interesting to compare the average number of years from opening to final closure of all the movie theaters that no longer exist, between the USA and one or two European countries. I suspect that such a comparison would reveal that theaters don't last as long here, as a general rule. Maybe more land availability and cheaper building tilts the economics in favor of pulling down an old theater and building a new one, rather than refurbishing an existing building. Zoning restrictions (UK: planning permission) may play into it, too.