"Three leaving" in Japanese movie.

There are a lot of changes in Japanese movies recently. Simply put, "three leaving" is happening.

First of all, it's "movie theater leaving"

The second one is "foreign movie leaving"

The final one is "subtitle leaving"

As for "movie theater leaving", Life media research bank released their survey result about movies on 22nd Feb. According to this result, over seventy percent of people watch movies at least one time in half a year.

38.9% of people also watch a movie in one month.

Meanwhile, seven percent of people who watch movies don't go to theaters. Over fifty percent of people said the reason is that watching movies in the house is much easier and movie tickets are too expensive.

I agree with this opinion of "watching movies in the house is much easier compared to going theaters" because I can decide when I start to watch, no need to move, don't care about other audience, best of all, relaxing with a drink is the biggest reason. I don't have to hold my gas, too.

As for ticket price, despite of some discount tickets exist like a ladies day, it costs $22.5 basically. It's too expensive compared to the U.S price $9.

In addition, home TV is getting bigger and have some equipments like 3D and 5.1ch sound. It helps people to enjoy movies in their house.

In contrast, classy large movie theaters disappeared and small cinema complex style theaters increased. Then it lost special feeling.

DVD price got cheaper and everybody knows that DVD is released as soon as road shows are finished. In addition, epidemic of bootleg DVD on the internet is one of the big reason. It's a big issue that new movies are downloaded easily.

In my case, I usually download movies from iTunes or use rental DVD store.

However, I went to movie theaters to watch Avatar and Alice in Wonderland because, it has additional values like beautiful images and 3D technology.

Considering people's opinion above, in fact, it's almost to be expected that people move away from movie theaters. Rather, movie lovers still exist and it just changed the way of watching.

I think movie theaters should conduct the price reduction first and also, they have to add something special. In addition, they shouldn't make light of hard-core movie fans. Tsutaya Roppongi book store could be good example as giving something special to hard-core fans.

Next, as for  "foreign movie leaving", I realized this somehow but, the box-office of Japanese movies have already surpassed foreign movies since 2006.

Big hit movies still come from foreign movies but, a lot of smash hit Japanese movies come from animations, popular TV dramas, cartoons and novel.

According to the internet, many people said that Hollywood movies are becoming knee-jerk and has no movie stars.

Of course, the contents of Japanese movies are getting strong and foreign movies don't improve in a decade such as remake and series movies. And I also agree with the opinion of "no movie stars" because Brad pitt and Johnny Depp are still popular.

I personally think there are some nice foreign movies and nice actors but, I feel they are hidden by huge budget movies as we called "Big Hollywood movie" and people don't realize the existence of small nice movies.

Furthermore, I want to watch other than American movies.

The third, as for "subtitle leaving" I personally can't understand but, if I throw out my obsession with original movie, dubbed movies are much easier to watch. According to the research, over 50 % of teenagers prefer dubbed movies to subtitled movies. I understand that many American TV dramas on the air are dubbed and young people are familiar to them but, I still can't understand the opinion of that subtitle movies are difficult to concentrate.

I think that catching a glimpse of subtitle is enough to understand and I want to hear original actor's voice. So I prefer subtitle movie to dubbed one. It is also problem that using unskilled comedians to have the news hook which makes  the quality of the movie lower.

However, 3D movies use dubbed because it's easy to focus on the movie. In addition, it helps to prevent from foreign movies leaving.

I don't deny dubbed movies but, I hope to keep subtitle movies in the future.

In conclusion, I described that there are three "leaving" in Japanese movie world and showed some reasons but it doesn't matter that watching movies at theaters or house, domestic or foreign movie, subtitled or dubbed. I think that all things to do is just making nice movies and prepare a lot of watching styles. In addition, it's important promoting not only big Hollywood movies but also small nice movies and increasing the range of movie lovers.

written in Mar 20 and revised Mar 26