FOR the second time around, it looks like cinemas are heading towards a climactic end.
The first time was from the 1980s to the 1990s, when cinemas were on the brink of mass closures due to the onslaught of home entertainment systems — first VCRs and then DVDs before flourishing with Blu-rays.
But there was still life in these survivors: from exhibiting sensational Hollywood glamour to blockbuster sci-fi epics, cinema operators worldwide clawed back by innovating with cutting-edge technology. In the new millennium, they succeeded.
Just as DVD tapered off and Blu-ray ascended, cinemas somehow overhauled the viewer experience. Luminescent visual marvels and multi-channel speakers brought "naturalism" to the raging wars in the stars, under the seas and in blood-soaked battlefields.
Then came virtual and practical "realism": 3D screens, seats became sofas and beds with fine dining, while motion seats rocking and shaking to a movie's action were introduced to viewing experience albeit with pricier tickets.
For years, these gimmicks seduced the younger generation who loved the bells and whistles, especially high-concept movies accompanied with mind-blowing digital visuals and aural aesthetics.
These technical enrichments held their ground against bargain-basement pirated DVDs, which provided undiscerning home viewers immediate viewing of the latest Hollywood offerings in fuzzy video captures of the big screen.
If cinemas thought they withstood the home entertainment revolution, heartless censorship or even bans, they were rabbit-punched by illegal digital downloads, and lately, floored by streaming.
Even the pirated stores knew their time was up as the world embraced streaming and pirate download sites.
Golden Screen Cinema, an enduring operator from the early years of cinema-going, culminating in the merger of Shaw Brothers and Cathay Organisation, was hit so hard that they're closing outlets.
There's no way movie theatres like GSC, even with the advent of state-of-the-art technology, could compete with endless high-definition selection of films, TV series, documentaries and reality shows, binged before giant TV screens and an immersive sound system, both improving in quality and diving in prices by the month.
The era of cinema halls and duplexes in every city or town, while historic, instructive and fun, has passed. Soon, watching movies in a ultra-modern cinema setting may be highly specialised and cost a bomb.
Anyway, most audiences are indifferent to movie theatres because of streaming's court advantage: censors can't molest its shows the way they control cinema.
Perhaps our censors could take it easy with the deletes and bleeps, ditch their ineffectual film classification and adopt the Motion Picture Association rating system to give cinemas some breathing room.
However, it's a plea that is oblivious to conservative and religious dogmatism. In the end, cinemas have no recourse but to wind up and with that, a historical loss of our pop culture soul.
