Before
As a kid, going to a video store was like going to a candy store. There was a video store down the street from where I use to live, and both my aunt and uncle would sometimes take me down whenever they had to babysit me. Just the look and atmosphere of all of these movies and tv shows just blew my mind away, even though the video store was just the size of a master bedroom. But then again, I was at the height of just barely over 4 feet, so the store looked big to me. I didn’t discover Blockbuster Video until later on, and no, it wasn’t that far from me either. I had to get a car ride to get there, mind you, but still closer than the Blockbuster that we’re going to talk about. I do have some memories of going to a Blockbuster Video store, mostly just for renting games, like Batman Arkham City, Pokemon Stadium, and the Burnout games. And the last time I went to one was during their clearance sales in the summer of 2010, where a comically saw a table of over 20 dvd copies of Pandorum and over 20 dvd copies of Bruno. I didn’t rent movies from Blockbuster that much, let alone rent that many movies from any video store. Nowadays I rent my own movies from the Redbox, just about a decade after Blockbuster was slowly being liquidated. But I was bummed out seeing Blockbuster video disappearing slowly, which made me wonder what was going to happen to the rest of the video stores.
But for now, let’s keep our main focus on the documentary. I just barely discovered this film last night on March 21st, 2021, but I didn’t see it, because my friends wanted me to watch Get Out, which I thought was okay. But today, one of my friends, who I haven’t seen in 11 years, just made mention that he was in this documentary. And now I felt like I had to watch it, and I do have more things that I have to say as well. So Steve, if you are reading this, this is for you out of love!
After
Now seeing this documentary, all I can say is that I was pleased to see it. And you know what? I forgotten what a Blockbuster looked like too. This movie is like the best blast from the past that just about everyone can enjoy. I can safely say that because we all have been in a Blockbuster, even those who are reading this and grew up before the 2010s have been in a Blockbuster at some point in their lives. By the way, I only mean most of Americans. I can’t speak for those outside the US or Canada. Silly noobs!
But yes, more of my past was coming back to me, especially for some of the ads that this film screened. I remember watching the commercial for the no more late fees and laughed hilariously when I first saw it! I didn’t like the Blockbuster hamster commercial though. It was annoying. I had to be specific on writing ‘Blockbuster’ in front of hamster commercial, or you would of thought I was talking about that Scion hamster commercial, which I also hated. You know what? As much as I love hamsters, I hate seeing them in anything that isn’t in real life.
There were some things in this documentary that I thought they could of touched upon that I have heard in the past. I thought they were going to talk about how Blockbuster was the first rental stores to allow you to rent out Nintendo games and how they had to go to court to fight for that right. And obviously won in the end. It would have been unique to have seen this movie try to unearth some new issues that we have never heard of before about Blockbuster Video instead of the movie being mostly positive, because it was mostly positive. I know that this is the story of how the store first opened, became the last surviving store, and the family that runs the place, but it would be fun to hear some other problems that most employees or past customers have experienced. The one negative that really stick out the most was how the company went out of business and was later on sold to Dish Network. Most people thought it was because of Netflix running them out of business. I thought it was because of the company not trying to go through any changes, as well as others. Well, we were all wrong. Almost like landing on a zero in Roulette, where everyone loses. It was because Netflix had capitol and Blockbuster did not, thus facing the financial crisis in 2008. There and then it all made sense to me.
The one part about the movie that really stood out to me the most was how much love and passion there was to the store owner, Sandi Harding, going out to a Target, buying new movies and tv shows for Blockbuster. Call me old fashion, but that’s how I prefer watching anything, which brings me to my next point. Preserving the past seems to be a dying art nowadays, with most people wanting to go digitally from here on out. I have no bad blood against both Hulu or Netflix. I still watch stuff from those streaming sites to this day. It’s my go-to for watching such great stuff, like Baki or Attack on Titan. It is the future of entertainment, and we might have to rely on it someday. But even I have issues with that too. As impressive and successful as Netflix has become for about what I believe is 15 years, I still have the one problem of them keeping and then losing the shows or movies that they are limited to have. I even had the same issue with Hulu and Amazon Prime as well. It was just 5 years ago that most Whovians, like myself, got upset about US Netflix losing Doctor Who, both old and new. There was even a time when some of the classic Who era was on hulu too, before they pulled it off. Now all we have to do is go out and buy the dvds and watch them. That wasn’t a big problem for me, since I happened to own some on dvd!
Sure, you may find yourself a lot of anime on these streaming sites, both old and new. But these streaming sites don’t have ALL of the notable titles that you would think to be available. I had to recently buy Big-O on blu-ray because not a single streaming service has that series. Not even Crunchyroll. And speaking of Crunchyroll, in 2018, Crunchyroll lost their licence with Sony, which made them lose over 600 anime titles. Sure, Sony would later on buy them out, but imagine if they didn’t, and all you had to do was dig around to find that new series without knowing what you want to watch. What makes things more complicated with today’s streaming services is how you might have to one day get several different streaming services and pay them all seperately to watch that one show or movie that you like. Oh, you love watching The Office on Netflix? Too bad! You have to go on Peacock now! And we don’t even have Seinfeld or Friends! I’m glad that I have all of season 1-7!
Oh, you like watching your beloved Star Wars movies and NOT the special editions, which I have?
Too Bad! You have to watch it as the altered special editions only, all from your evil overlords- I mean Disney+! Oh, you say that you hate Star Wars and you’re a Trekkie? You wanna watch Star Trek, Spongebob, South Park, and, ummm…….Gilligan’s Island? Well, pay an extra $20 for Paramount+, a streaming site that nobody liked to begin with anyway! Oh, you love Cobra Kai? Well, that was moved to Netflix from Youtube Red, which nothing of value was lost, because all that streaming service was good for was giving you an ad free experience! But with all of these streaming services showing different shows that might have to be showing their shows exclusively on their platforms, you would have to pay for Netflix, HBOMax, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Disney+, Peacock, Crunchyroll, which would all ad up to about $160 a month. I pay almost $200 a month for my car insurance. If you ask me, I prefer to lose more space in my library of movies and tv shows than to go digital. And to top it all off, even Sandi had to try to renew their license agreement with Dish to keep Blockbuster open for another 6 years, which was said was a long and tiresome process to do. But even though she made light of her not knowing what she might do if the store were to close down, she never made mention on what might happen if the option of renting movies in physical would end. I do like going through Redbox every now and then whenever I come across them, but even then it doesn’t have every movie that I want to watch. It does have Wonder Woman, but not Wonder Woman 1984, just so I can see if I will be either liking it or complaining at it! C’MON REDBOX! LET ME FIND OUT IF I HATE IT OR NOT!!!
In the end, I always will go physical, knowing where my movies, shows, and games are at, not worrying a thing about what might happen to them, and not having to worry about either memory storage or lagging or terrible internet service that can occur every now and then. And that was really the beauty of video stores like Blockbuster Video. It was always the safer way how to make sure that you are getting a valuable source of entertainment that you may or may not like without the boundaries or technical difficulties that can get in your way. It was, for the most part, convenient. It made you not have to pay too much for a movie that you may not like, and let you borrow it for a limited time, and then you could make up your own mind if you wanted to get it. A lot like a library, except you didn’t NEED a library card. FYI, the Blockbuster card was only optional, although I wish I had kept my parent’s Blockbuster card.
Overall, I do recommend everyone to watch this movie. It may be a movie that could of added more than what I was given, but it is a good watch! It really is a love letter to most of us milenials that were old enough to experience something that really helped us experience entertainment in a new way that we never had imagined it before, and I don’t think there will ever be another store like it ever again. It truly did make a difference to us all!
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