Midweek Update: Box Art Shouldn't Look Like Hot Garbage

Physical media, specifically DVDs, were a boon to the movie studios. It was a great ancillary market where, though the strength of rentals and sales, a movie that may not have been a big hit in theaters could find a second life on home video. The reason we got Hellboy II: The Golden Army is because the first Hellboy did well enough on DVD to warrant the investment. But with streaming, that market dried up, and the casual moviegoer is content to hop across various streaming services or VOD rentals (hence no Hellboy III). While studios still produce physical media, it’s now becoming a collector’s market similar to vinyl. It’s not that streaming music is necessarily bad (although it’s not great for artists), but there is still a market for die-hard fans who would prefer to own a physical copy of superior quality for their own library.

Studios haven’t completely abandoned physical media (although they’re starting to in certain markets), they are beginning to phone it in. While I understand scaling back on special features since those can be expensive to produce, where I’m at a loss is why the cover art is getting so bad. Look at what Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is putting out for the 50th anniversary of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (and part of the studio’s WB100 line):

That’s…pretty bad. That’s someone taking a still image, running it through a few photoshop filters, and calling it a day. The steelbook art (available via Best Buy) isn’t much better. Only the UK version has the classic poster redone into a stylish cover.

But The Exorcist cover art is a masterpiece compared to the eyesore Disney produced for its “Disney 100” titles. Here’s what Disney did a few years ago for the 4K of 1991’s Beauty and the Beast:

And here’s what they did this year for Disney 100:

All Disney 100 titles look like that: a crummy little image boxed in by a bunch of silver and the “Disney 100” logo and film title with a little graphic on the back.

So why does any of this matter? After all, it’s the movie that counts, right? Of course, but we’re talking about a collector’s market now. For its part, Disney seems to actively be making its physical market worse in an attempt to presumably drive consumers to Disney+ even though 4K streaming is inferior to 4K discs. Bill Hunt, the long-time EIC of The Digital Bits, has a good article on how studios are actively ruining their own product.

Where I get infuriated is that cover art is a simple fix! You have graphic designers on payroll! These are legacy titles that didn’t sneak up on you! There was time to make something appealing to the people that would buy this product! Physical media may no longer be a priority, but that means you need to retain buyers where you can. Maybe Disney and Warner Bros worry that a physical media buyer is someone who won’t subscribe, but that’s a ridiculous notion. People who buy vinyl still probably pay for a streaming music subscription because it’s nice to have the bigger library, but you want the home library for favorite titles. Also, it’s not like every studio is following this trend. Lionsgate isn’t the biggest studio, but they’re taking legacy titles and making sure they look terrific and eye-catching:

I’m not going to pretend we can bring back the heyday of the 2000s or that people will ditch streaming to return to physical media. But I do know that serious cinephiles have always preferred a tactile, physical object (we still call it “film” for a reason), and that they’re going to keep paying for physical media. But they deserve better than what the design team did on a Friday afternoon before heading out for a long weekend.

Recommendations

Earlier this week, we lost the great William Friedkin. Friedkin was a dominant force in cinema, and also a brutally honest cinephile willing to call out other directors as well as himself. One of his best films, the crime thriller, To Live and Die in L.A., isn’t available on streaming, but Kino Lorber released the film onto Blu-ray and 4K last month and it’s well worth your time for the freeway chase alone.

Over on Substack, I highly recommend checking out John Ganz’ article, “They’re All Like That.” Ganz shows that across the right-wing spectrum, its “intellectuals” are white supremacists who work to couch their arguments in language that may lure self-proclaimed moderates to see them as serious people. The problem isn’t that people may jump right to reading Richard Hanania; it’s that Hanania and his ilk can convince chin-stroking faux intellectuals to serve as handmaidens to bigotry.

What I’m Watching

Last night I saw Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo, which is based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a guy who played so much of the video game Gran Turismo that he managed to become a real race car driver. I’ll have more to say on the film (and other movies based on products) in Sunday’s Substack, but it’s kind of remarkable how far Blomkamp has fallen since breaking onto the scene in 2009 with District 9. It’s not even that Gran Turismo is awful as much as it feels like a very long commercial with almost no artistic vision whatsoever beyond adding a few video game touches to the visuals. The only person who seems to excel past the material is David Harbour, who’s so good in this in the mentor roll is makes me want to pick up Stranger Things again just to see him act some more.

What I’m Reading

I’m still making my way through Written in Stone, but here are a few articles I enjoyed:

“I Can Do Things to You with My Voice” by Bilge Ebiri [Vulture] – I can’t stress enough how much Ebiri has been crushing it with his longform interviews for Vulture right now. Samuel L. Jackson is not an easy interview (I don’t know if this guy ever recovered from the Django Unchained junket), but this is an absolute masterpiece where Ebiri went in knowing his subject cold, digging into aspects like how Jackson’s stage work influenced his work on screen, and getting terrific answers like Jackson’s observation on how directors today lack the skill of those from a pre-digital era:

Take some time out to read the whole thing. If you don’t subscribe to New York Magazine, make this the one free article you read this month.

They Didn’t Ask to Go Viral. Posting on Social Media without Consent Is Immoral by Mark Hill [WIRED] – After this past weekend’s Alabama Riverfront Brawl, I’m a bit conflicted about Hill’s take here. Sometime, posting is an act of protection. The footage of white boaters attacking Black boat captain Damien Pickett, and Black bystanders rushing to Pickett’s aid. Those involved in the confrontation did not consent to have the footage go on social media, but there is a clear benefit to capturing this footage and sharing it so that others will be less inclined to become violent in public. However, the cases Hill outlines in his articles are cases of distortion done for engagement, and I fully agree that you can’t just use strangers for your content needs. If you’re constructing a video (as opposed to capturing something contemporaneously like the brawl), you need consent from participants.

Dril Is Everyone. More Specifically, He’s A Guy Named Paul. by Nate Rogers [The Ringer] – If you’re too online, you know who Dril is. You may have even absorbed some Dril quotes simply by the popularity of his tweets going mainstream. For a long time, Dril was able to remain anonymous, but now that there’s a real person attached, this article skillfully examines the real person who became popular for an online persona who channels online sentiment.

What I’m Hearing

I finished up Serial’s The Retrievals and it was a terrific bit of reporting that not only summed up the Yale case, but always kept its focus on the larger issue: why do we constantly seek to diminish women’s pain? From the first episode, where women blamed their own bodies before learning that they were given saline instead of fentanyl to the conclusion where the women were told, “Hey, at least you got a baby out of it, and isn’t that what matters?” the pain and trauma the patients endured was dismissed or minimized. I can’t think of any other medical area where we would apply this logic. If my dentist just yanked my tooth out after lying to me about using Novocain and knowing I was in immense pain, then the conclusion shouldn’t be, “Hey, the tooth is out, so what are you complaining about?” At that point, why use painkillers at all? I hate that the general sentiment of America is a deep, systemic disregard for how women is ingrained in everything. We don’t have to live like this.

What I’m Playing

I’m back playing Hitman, which is fun! I like my little mission and goofy little assassinations. I also decided to play a bit of Tekken 7, which is fine, although I started the story mission, and I’m not sure who wanted a bunch of long, poorly written and poorly voice-acted cut scenes shoved into their fighting game.

Where’s I’ve Been

I don’t travel much, but when I do, I’ll tell you about it! I recently went to Tulsa to visit family, and while I was there, I stopped by the Woody Guthrie Center and the Bob Dylan Center. Both are terrific, and honestly I probably could have spent hours in both just listening to their music.