Quote Originally Posted by SlumpBuster
Will these movies ever have the social currency that Star Wars did? Probably not. But Starwars isn't all that great of a product to begin with. The acting is bad. The plots are lifted. The writing is so-so. The product today is still good. It's just that popculture is evermore compartmentalized and individualized. I'm not going to listen to Top 40 when I have 200 XM stations to choose from. Same with movies. But to blame the product is to miss the mark. Sure your going to get crap like Epic Movie. But, that low brow crap has always exisisted. To pine for the lost golden age of Hollywood is to rewrite history that ignores the 1000s of B movies that kids loved and directly inspired Star Wars, Raiders, and The Godfather.
I think another aspect that has diminished the "event" nature of moviegoing is simply how the release schedules have evolved.

Back in the era of Star Wars you did not have mass releases with 4,000+ screens on opening weekend. Nor did you have home video releases coming out within a few months. The DVD has changed moviegoing into a virtual infomercial for the home video release, and movie releases are now all about the opening weekend box office numbers.

In order to see Star Wars, you had to either seek out the theater showing it (which might not have been close by), or wait until the print arrived at your neighborhood movie theater. And then, you had people lining up for hours on end so that they could get tickets to that day's screenings, and then wait hours more to get in. With mass releases and 20+ screen megaplexes, the crowds just get funneled into whatever auditorium is screening the movie next.

Before Star Wars even came out on home video in 1981, it got at least two theatrical re-releases. In order to see Star Wars again, you had to go to the theater again, since there was no place to simply buy or rent a copy for home viewing. While home video made it possible to watch movies at one's convenience, it also wiped out the market for second run and repertory theaters.

The last movie I can recall that became a phenomenon where audiences would line up to see the movie repeatedly over the course of several months was Titanic. Even if a movie comes out and resonates with audiences to that degree, I'm not sure how long a studio would let a movie linger in theaters since now they can make so much more from a major DVD hit than a long-term theatrical release (contractually, movie theaters will typically take a progressively greater percentage of the box office receipts as a release goes further into its theatrical run).