CinemaCon Should Take A Lesson From Gaming Trade Shows

thegamer.com:

I’m pretty sure CinemaCon is trying to kill me, specifically. Among the many reveals were the first shot of Margot Robbie as Barbie, Olivia Wilde’s promise that Don’t Worry Darling will bring back “good movie sex” through a scene between Harry Styles and Florence Pugh, and a John Wick spin-off starring Ana de Armas called Ballerina. I will be considering it an origin story for No Time To Die’s Paloma until further notice. Despite all three of these being enough to stop my heart (what does ‘good movie sex’ mean, Olivia?!), overall it feels like despite showcasing movies with mass appeal, CinemaCon was too insular, and could take a lesson from gaming conventions.

I don’t like to compare film and gaming too often, mostly because our medium has a massive inferiority complex and exaggerates every perceived victory. The Game Awards might get more viewers than the Oscars, but even without a winner slapping the host, the Oscars have far more cultural relevance. And we may technically make more money, if you include console sales and all the other sundries, but most people in the world could name a movie that’s been out this year, and outside of our bubble that’s not true for games.

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I’m saying this because it’s tempting to see a games website saying ‘film should copy video games’ and see it as another symptom of this inferiority complex, but it isn’t. It’s just in this specific case, film could learn a thing or two.

Of course, this is a little bit of a ‘have your cake and eat it’ situation, except instead of cake it’s Margot Robbie as Barbie and instead of eating I am looking respectfully. I have recently complained that Thor: Love and Thunder stole its own thunder (and diminished my