Making movies about movies is not a new phenomenon. People always have, and always will want to make films that reflect inwards on themselves, whether they be sprawling odes, scathing satires, or, most frequently, both at the same time. And it makes perfect sense. If you give someone who loves movies the chance to tell you a story about something they care about, you can't color yourself surprised when the outcome turns out to be the inevitable. But even so, it feels like 2022 played host to even more of such films than usual. And the fact that the influx is coming at a time when a huge chunk of film discourse revolves around the repeatedly re-hashed question "Are movies dying?" seems too perfect to be solely coincidence. With movies like Empire of Light, Babylon, and The Fabelmans spawning this awards season, Hollywood feels more fascinated in examining its own past and future than ever before. The industry is trying to pave its own path forward, but is ending up feeling like a snake eating its own tail.

'Empire of Light' Is a Sentimental Reminder of the Value Movies Once Held

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Image via Searchlight Pictures

One of the most frequent criticisms voiced by modern cinema cynics is that people just don't care anymore. They cite the MCU as taking up the role of Galactus, gobbling up the entire world of film, and spitting out formula rather than feeling. And the Debbie Downers say most viewers are content with the formula, unwilling to allow the art form to eclipse pure entertainment. It feels like Sam Mendes is one of those people, with his writing and directing of Empire of Light. Despite being set in a small English town in the 1980s, Mendes draws so many parallels to the plights of life in the 2020s that it's evident he's commenting on current conditions. From mental health stigma, to workplace sexual abuse, and rampant racism, Mendes tries to a funnel his viewers to a time and place where nearly everything feels identical.

The lives of the characters revolve around the movie theater they work at, but the monotony of the work itself engulfs everything that otherwise might provide a spark. The film is mostly cloaked in despair, until Olivia Coleman's Hilary actually goes into a theater and watches a movie and, for the first time in the film, feels real joy. Mendes sees movies, and the theaters they're shown in, as a reprieve from the harsh world, a reprieve hiding in plain sight that many seem to have forgotten exists. He sees value in the magic that comes when the lights dim down and the camera starts rolling, and believes the community that envelopes cinema is one of meaning. And so his film seems scared, frightened that what the movies can offer and the value they hold is dissipating. It's a call to remember all that movies once provided, and what they still could do if people would only open up to them.

'Babylon' Knows Old Cinema Is Dying, But Accepts It

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Image via Paramount

Babylon is a lot less subtle in its messaging, and a lot less subtle in everything else it does too. Damien Chazelle's vision of old Hollywood is one of outright lawlessness, and the pure euphoria that came with. It's a cacophony of eccentric characters who find themselves plunged into a moment where their anarchic tendencies are a cause for celebration, and subsequently get dialed up to eleven as a result of the success that accompanies. The characters' ascension to stardom is one concocted in a whirlwind, and their descent back down into pain and insignificance is seen through a long, screeching, drawn out whimper. It feels at first as if Chazelle is sentimental for the period in Hollywood history that allowed for such wild souls to thrive, and bitter at how the movie making industry transformed from something manic into something more mechanical.

But the final scenes, including the much-discussed virtuosic montage that sends the 3-hour-long picture out with a bang, seem to tweak the messaging. As Chazelle takes us on a kaleidoscopic trip through the history of cinema, the movie's scope broadens, and the themes become less fatalistic. Sure, the era of movie making we've just sat and watched flourish is now dying. But it was always going to die, just the same as it will prove to be immortal. The lifecycle of movies is that of life, death, rebirth, and remembrance. There will always be a style and symphony of figures that will rise to prominence, and then preach foul play when their fall from grace becomes imminent. But the new wave of movies that get birthed from their ashes won't be one populated by machines. Those who knew and loved the old cinema won't be able to recognize the new one, but that doesn't mean nobody else won't either. There will be a new batch of voices and fans to which the new cinema's tendencies will cater to. Chazelle sees that the "movies" he knows, loves, and has found success in will likely tail off and take the backseat to what streaming will create. But that doesn't mean the old movies don't still matter, and that the new movies don't have something valuable to offer.

'The Fabelmans' Has the Most Optimistic Outlook on the Future of Cinema

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Image via Universal Pictures

The Fabelmans is the most optimistic out of the three, probably because it doesn't explicitly grapple with the future of the industry itself. Spielberg's cine-memoir is more concerned with what it means to have a creative passion, and the winding road you have to travel to follow it. The film focuses on Sammy Fabelman's life. His parents' marriage, bullying at school, finding friends, and dealing with first love all take center stage over his camera. His passion is making movies, but it occasionally becomes difficult to justify pursuing it when everything else in his life starts to go haywire. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Sammy's inclination to tell stories through his camera lens shouldn't exist in its own realm, despite how fantastical and magical everything feels when it appears projected on the big screen. His movie making should exist on the same plane as the everyday issues he is forced to navigate, because that's how he'll be able to adequately cope.

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While the specifics of movie making will change, the reason people will feel the urge to create will never fade. Spielberg may not be explicitly stating this thesis in his latest, but as a result of the times it emerges in, the message is conveyed nonetheless. Movies won't disappear because people will always have creative urges, and will always need to filter their own world through self-expression. The types of cameras may change, movie theaters might get whittled down to just a handful of locations, but reality's rocky roads will never get paved over. Growing up will always be a struggle. There will continue to be the pain caused by breakups and lost friendships. Family dynamics will never cease to frustrate. So moviemaking will never cease to exist, because the need to tell stories will always hang around.

Poor Box Office Numbers Seem to Prove the Industry's Greatest Fear

There is very little in common with these movies other than the fact that they're an example of the medium looking in on itself. Styles are wildly different. Messages are conflicting. Reception has ranged from "sleep inducing" to "best movie of the year." But one thing Mendes, Chazelle, and Spielberg can talk about at the next Hollywood mixer is how their movies underperformed at the box office. Despite coming from one of the biggest figures in Hollywood's history, the director of some of the most beloved movies of the 2010s, and a former best picture winner and bond director, each film flopped. Despite the impressive resumes of the men behind the camera, the public couldn't be bothered to make the hike out to the theaters and see their latest.

With so many claiming Hollywood is on life support, the industry seems keen on reminding audiences of the value of movies. But with the amount of money continued to be pumped into films that seem destined to flop, it's hard not to wonder whether the film world is really just trying to re-assure itself instead. Even though some of the movies getting overlooked are phenomenal, there's a clear disconnect between what filmmakers want to make and what audiences want to watch. Directors are trying to transfer the feeling of the magic of movies they themselves have grown to love, but it's a magic many casual viewers have never felt as they have the TV playing in the background while scrolling through social media and folding their laundry. Cinephiles rejoice in using the big screen as a mirror, seeing the history of what they love reflected back at them in all its glory. But the recipe appears to have gone sour, and Hollywood's defensive desperation only seems to be re-affirming what the industry feared the whole time.