Re-releasing Movies

There is a trend these days to re-release movies from a few years ago, or more. What’s up with that?

I just saw a preview for the upcoming release of Finding Nemo. And there was some news the other day about Raiders of the Lost Ark coming back to theaters. And those are just two. Several other previously released movies have been out in the last year or so, and I’m sure some others are coming up, too.

Of course, most of these re-released movies have a hook to them. For the two mentioned above, Finding Nemo will be in 3D. And Raiders will be in IMAX.

It seems like most of the movies being re-released are in 3D these days. Which to me seems just a bit fake, because we all know that Star Wars wasn’t made in 3D. They have used some sort of computer trickery to make it look like 3D, but it really isn’t true 3D, at least not to me. And if you are a regular Burnsland Blog reader, you probably know I am not that big of a 3D fan, anyway.

I feel much the same about IMAX that I do about 3D. I have seen a few movies in IMAX, and I wasn’t all that impressed by it. Sure, it is an amazingly large screen, but at the end of the movie the size of the screen didn’t improve the story one single bit. It’s just a big movie screen.

To me, the real complaint about all of these re-released movies is that they are all out on Blu-Ray and DVD. So that if they are movies that I really like, I can just pop them in the player at home and watch them whenever I want to. They may not be in 3D or on a super-huge screen, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t enjoy watching them at home. Oh yeah, and I don’t have to pay incredibly inflated prices to watch them at home, because I already own them. Or I get them from Netflix, where a month of movie watching costs less than the price of movie theater tickets for my family.

Back in the old days, the movie studios would re-release their movies to theaters, because that was about the only way you could see them. There weren’t 2,465 cable channels showing movies all the time. There weren’t even VCRs to watch movies on. There were three or four television channels, but even then they didn’t show the top Hollywood movies all that often. I can remember going to see movies like Mary Poppins and Swiss Family Robinson in the theaters long after their original releases, because that was how you would get to see them. If the studios re-released them, that is.

But now, most all movies are available to own just a few months after their theatrical release. So why bother releasing them to theaters again, even in some special format?

I suppose there must be some money in it, because the theaters keep doing it. And converting an existing movie to 3D or IMAX is probably much cheaper than making a new movie. On top of that, those movies already have a following, so their fans will come see them in whatever new way they offer.

But not me. I will just be watching the movies I already own at home, and waiting for something new to come to the theater.