“They don’t make movies like they used to,” is a phrase you’ve heard more than you’d want to. In today’s day and age, everything is out to get your attention as soon as possible and it is apparent when you go to a theater and see that most movies have what has been termed ‘Marvel writing.’

Now what is Marvel writing? It’s a term used to describe any movie that’s overly quippy, unserious, and most of all, safe. Now movies like this existed before the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - watch any old Adam Sandler movie - but the MCU was certainly the catalyst of it all.

Originally though, these types of movies were quite beloved but over time the oversaturation in the market of these kinds of movies has exhausted the audience. Now and then a movie will treat its audience like mature people like the recent box office success Oppenheimer, but most big-budget Hollywood movies tend to still follow the blueprint that Marvel provided.

Why is that you may ask? The people have been asking for this to change for a few years now but it hasn’t, and it doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon. The simple answer is, “It works.”

Safe movies may not be memorable but safe movies sell. For example, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was not received too well by the audience and most would agree that it was just barely mediocre, but it still made over 900 million dollars at the box office. You could talk about the writing as much as you want but you can’t argue with the results. So is it all about the money? Well… kind of. Over the years, movies have gotten more and more expensive to make. The previously mentioned Doctor Strange costs about 294 million dollars to make (you could buy a Neymar for that much) and if you include the price for marketing and all the other expenses that come after the movie is made, the movie would have to make over triple the budget to make a profit. They say you can’t put a price on art, but they won’t be saying that if their movies flopped and lost millions.

“But what of it!?” a layman would ask. “Movies were about making money before anyway, so why were the movies of old much better?” That layman would be correct but how you made a profit before was different than it is now. And now comes the main point of this article, the fall of DVD sales.

DVD sales at its peak reached 16.3 billion just in the US and were over 50% of the world’s home video market. Now if you’re young you don’t even know what a DVD is because nobody owns one anymore. Since 2008 DVD sales have declined more than 86% and as the years go by it will only drop lower. The same stats exist for Blu-rays as well. Buying DVDs and Blu-rays is now a collector hobby, it’s for the diehard film fans who love to stack them on their shelves, but back in the 90s and the early 2000s everyone bought a DVD. These days it might seem pointless to do so, but back then they were the only way to watch a movie after its initial theatrical release was over. And so when good old Billy Joe came up to you and told you about this great movie called Star Wars, you had to go to the video store.

Now another question might come to your head, “Why did the sales drop so low?” but if you think about it, you already know the answer. Streaming services.

Let’s check the price of a DVD or a Blu-ray on Amazon India; both the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness are going for 2999 rupees on Amazon. Those are prices for just one movie. Now let's check the price for one year's Disney+ subscription where you can watch Doctor Strange as well; 899 rupees for a year. The difference is staggering. Also, Disney+ has all the other Marvel movies and more and it’s also way more convenient. DVDs never stood a chance. 

And for the big question, “How does this affect the kind of movies that are made?” After all, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of connection right? Wrong. Two decades ago a movie could risk not making all its profits from the theatrical release because if it was good enough the people would market it themselves and in a few months when the DVDs were out, people would buy the DVDs to watch the movies. Many times a movie would make more money from the DVD sales because DVDs were more expensive than a movie ticket. Now, filmmakers and studios don’t have the luxury. If a movie flops once, it’s over because the DVD sales are not going to help you recover much. Think of all the amazing movies that failed because of poor marketing and lack of interest. Movies like Scott Pilgrim Versus The World and Blade Runner 2049 are so ingrained in today’s pop culture that are considered box office flops. If those movies were released during the age of DVDs, the post-theatrical sales would have turned those flops into success but now they live as an example of why it’s risky to make movies that are different from the norm. And so we enter an era where every movie is trying to grab your attention as soon as possible and constantly jingle its keys on your face.

There are other factors involved as well, such as piracy and of course, a shift in media culture with the popularity of short-form content but the fall of DVDs is one of the most prevalent reasons why movies feel so safe and soulless in our modern era. We could blame the studios all we like but ask yourself this:

“Would you be okay to lose 100 million dollars?”

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