Movies
Commercial movies started with documentaries: a steam train pulling into a station. Movies quickly advanced to longer films with plots. In those early days that meant westerns and gangsters and romance. Those films steadily grew longer, to about 90 minutes, that was what audiences could take. For a full evening at the theatre, trailers, cartoons and short subjects wer4e introduced. Then sound on film was added, complete with dialogue and music. The films still focussed on the wild west and gangsters and romance, with horror added.
In the forties there were many films about war. In the fifties, the wild west continued but in the sixties moved into outer space. Musicals, popular in the early decades of sound, began to vanish, tastes changed. TV provided significant competition. Movies experimented with 3D, but its popularity came and went (the effect was great, the glasses annoying.) Widescreen was far more successful, offering more picture in each frame. Technology improved the quality of visual effects. The audience was still offered versions of the wild west, gangster films and love stories, many now containing all three. Men’s movies featured guns. Women’s films featured romance.
There was a shift in the next century. Movies often included superheroes, horror and action, with special effects which were, at the time, new. People left theatres after the pandemic and began watching movies at home on TV, and on small computer screens. Movies shrank, but the number of them vastly increased with new streaming services. Today’s films emphasize action and horror. Posters of men with guns and women screaming. Westerns are set after an apocalypse, romances in outer space, porn everywhere.
What is the future of movies? What is in their next century?
Certainly not VR headsets. Never will be comfortable enough, ditto 3D TV. Theatres will continue, but in far fewer numbers–cheaper and easier to watch at home. Most new movies will know they will be seen on small screens. Expect more close-ups, films with limited sets and budgets. Horror films will be steady–small budgets and big shocks. Most films will feature men and women with guns. Romance is always added, and most films remain westerns in different realities. The biggest genre will be porn.
The future of film is in computer chips inserted into the brain, so a person can watch—and participate in—movies in their heads. The next step is to be in the movie, in about ten years, will be called BrainoVision, once the issue with seizures is resolved, particularly with porn.