Tell that to Hoyts.
In an email sent out this week, the Australian movie chain had a funny strategy for artificially inflating the urgency to buy tickets to Black Adam:
"Don't wait before it's too late! BLACK ADAM tix on sale now."
For starters, I want to contest the basic grammar of that statement. It should be "until" not "before."
Then within the body of the email:
"The time is now! Book your tickets before it's too late."
What the hell does "too late" mean in the context of movie that will be on at least three screens at every Hoyts in the state of Victoria?
Sure, if it's a limited engagement of some sort -- an old movie being brought back for a one-week run -- I get it. Or something that's so small that a lack of ticket sales could push it out of theaters prematurely.
But Black Adam stars one of the world's biggest movie stars, is a superhero movie, and has been getting a huge advertising push from its distributor. I have seen the trailer at least two times, even though I haven't gone to a huge number of movies recently that would naturally host a trailer for this movie.
"Too late?" Too late to see the matinee screening on the first day?
Even if the movie tanks, which it won't, Australian theater chains do not quickly drop movies. You can still see movies an absurd number of months after they've been released, usually because not as many movies get a theatrical release in Australia as in the U.S. As just one example that strikes me as pretty funny, Everything Everywhere All at Once is still playing at Cinema Nova, and that came out in early April here in Australia. Now that's an arthouse cinema that sort of plays by its own rules, and has something like 16 screens to play with, but it does indicate a larger proclivity by Australian cinemas.
"Too late?" Too late to contribute to the film's opening weekend box office?
I considered for a moment whether "too late" might have something to do with the theme of the movie. Maybe some aspect of Black Adam involves racing against time. I know they've alluded to another aspect of the movie in other text from the email, where they describe this as "the calm before the storm" with Black Adam opening in cinemas on Thursday. I believe Adam has some command over the weather, if the half attention I was paying to the trailers are any indication.
But the fact that I believe weather is a theme of the movie just makes time less likely to be one.
Well it's funny -- I have sort of decided I might not see Black Adam.
A couple things are informing this. One is yesterday's post, in which I bemoaned that I am on very close to the same crazy movie-watching pace I was on last year, when I had a record 170 movies watched before my year-end rankings. Having tried to pump the brakes before, I want to do that even more so now. And movies that aren't pulling me in strongly, and feel more like an obligation, are a good place to start.
Plus I am, like many people, tired of superhero movies at this point. I will continue to watch every Marvel movie (and I have another one of those coming up soon) because I believe I have to -- one aspect of being a film critic is that you need to be conversant on the industry leader in whatever genre it is, and with superhero movies, that's Marvel. But Black Adam seems to me more like a Venom, where I can opt in or out. (I opted out of the most recent one of those last year.)
Then there's the fact that tomorrow heralds the release of two other films that would take precedence for me, Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave and the new horror film Barbarian, about both of which I have heard good things. I can only definitely get out to one movie each week, and if I push it I can get two. Three is almost impossible, and once another Thursday rolls around, you get set back even further by more new releases that demand your attention.
The one factor that might assist is that tomorrow is my birthday.
I'm currently scheduled to work -- I have an important meeting before lunch -- but if I decide to take the afternoon off, it'll be to get out and see a matinee movie. If I do catch either Barbarian or Decision to Leave in that time slot, or possibly both, that might leave me available to watch Black Adam in one of my normal evening viewing slots. After all, its fits the criterion of being a high-profile release that my readers want me to review.
If I do miss my opportunity to see Black Adam, though, it won't be because I waited until it was "too late." Strike me down if it's not still playing in a couple theaters at the end of November.
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