“Spider-Man: No Way Home” Reminds Us Why People Go To The Movies

By Joel Silberman

“What is the point of theater?” 

The question was posed by my high school drama teacher on the first day of class, and her teenage students’ hands immediately went up. “Artistic expression!” said one. “Personal truth!” exclaimed another. On and on the answers went, none of them landing on the word my teacher was looking for. Finally she just laughed. “You self-centered brats,” she chided us. “The point of theater is the audience. Not you, them.” 

I’ve been thinking about this exchange a lot lately, especially after going to see Spider-Man: No Way Home twice in its opening weekend. Two years into the pandemic, it was thrilling to sit with a crowd of people cheering, laughing, crying, applauding – and after reading countless articles mourning the death of theatrical movies, the experience also exposed the lie beneath that doom and gloom. Some things are just more fun with other people. 

Unfortunately, I fear that Hollywood may already be taking the wrong lesson from No Way Home’s success. Monday morning analysts are writing off the film’s haul to Spider-Man’s enduring popularity as a character, or the bankability of superheroes in general, turning No Way Home into “an exception that proves the rule” around theatrical decline. But Spider-Man is no guarantor of success (just ask Marc Webb) and neither are super heroes writ-large (just ask DC or Fox). To the contrary, No Way Home is succeeding for the reason most of Marvel’s movies succeed: It’s an unabashed crowd pleaser. 

Please The Crowd

Crowd-pleasing is the single unifying throughline of every theatrical success since COVID, and most of the successes before COVID too. Superhero movies are crowd-pleasers. Horror movies are crowd-pleasers. Computer-animated movies are crowd-pleasers. The Fast and Furious and James Bond and 50 Shades movies are crowd-pleasers – as are original hits like Free Guy, Knives Out, and Hustlers. Cinephiles may pine for sophisticated “adult” fare, but the overwhelming majority of movies that have actually put butts in seats for over a century have been endorphin machines that sent audiences home exhilarated: The Hunger Games, Legally Blonde, Gladiator, Titanic, Basic Instinct, Back to the Future, ET, Rocky, The Godfather, The Sting, The Sound of Music, Psycho, The Wizard of Oz… All very different, but all distinctly crowd-pleasers.

You know what’s not a crowd pleaser? The Last Duel – a middle ages period piece where Hollywood hunks are put in ugly prosthetics and given ludicrous haircuts to fight with each other over a woman’s rape. Or for that matter West Side Story – a remake of a beloved downer musical from when boomers were babies, with lovely but archaic music that sounds nothing like anything on modern radio, now with more overt progressive politics. Meanwhile, anyone who thought the next Star Wars or Lord of the Rings might be found in Dune, a sci-fi allegory about western imperialism that’s gorgeously shot but devoid of humor or romance simply does not understand what made those mega-franchises successful in the first place.

Hollywood has gotten it into its collective head that the thing which will drive audiences to cinemas is recognizable IP, and to a lesser degree socio-political relevance, but this is largely nonsense. The Last Duel, West Side Story and Dune were all based on IP, the latter two on gigantic pieces of IP, and they all still bombed or underperformed. Movies like Antebellum that tried to rip off the social relevance of Jordan Peele’s Get Out without the latter film’s crowd-pleasing cleverness have also crashed and burned. By contrast, originals like this year’s Encanto and Free Guy, 2020’s Palm Springs, and 2019’s Knives Out all prove there’s still an appetite for non-IP fare if it’s laser-focused on crowd-pleasing. 

Yet naked crowd-pleasing is somehow not always a top-line concern in Hollywood. Anyone who’s tried to sell a project lately knows that when execs examine something, they typically ask three core questions: 

• “Who’s in it/behind it?” 
• “What’s the IP?”
• “Why now?” – ie “What’s the social relevance?” 

When audiences decide whether to go to a movie, they also ask three core questions – but two of the three questions are different: 

• “Who’s in it/behind it?”
• “What’s it about?”
• “Will this be a fun social activity?” 

Franchises and IP provide audiences with shortcuts to “Who’s in it/behind it?” and “What’s it about?”, but unless there’s an obvious affirmative answer to “Will this be a fun social activity?” the ticket probably won’t get sold. On the other hand, an original movie that answers the audience’s three core questions in a two minute trailer absolutely can succeed, occasionally on a level that launches its own franchise such as Free Guy and Knives Out.

The upshot here is that Hollywood has its analysis of what drives audiences to theaters somewhat backwards. It’s not that the audience only wants to see familiar franchises; it’s that the audience wants crowd-pleasers, and franchise movies – along with horror and computer-animated movies – are vastly more likely to be oriented toward crowd-pleasing. Some may dismiss crowd-pleasing as “pandering” or “fan service”, but that criticism is insane. You can’t draw a crowd without pleasing the crowd, and if you can’t figure out how to please the crowd, you need to make like Amy Pascal and call somebody who does.

Hollywood desperately needs the theatrical moviegoing experience to endure if it wants to maintain its financial and cultural primacy. Streaming is great, but there’s just no substitute for the long-term brand value that gets created when people actually go to a theater and create a new memory together. There’s also no substitute for the ticket revenue generated by a hit movie, as MGM learned when it considered selling No Time To Die to streaming last year during peak COVID. But to save the theatrical experience, Hollywood needs to remember what the mission of the theatrical business actually is: Please the damn crowd. 

My high school drama teacher could’ve told you that.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.