The once omnipresent movie rental behemoth Blockbuster Video isn’t, technically speaking, dead. But for many of us, it may as well be.
Last weekend, I noticed that the particular Blockbuster store my wife and I used to rent videos from had closed. (I say used to, because since having three children, we simply don’t have time or energy to rent and watch movies at home anymore). Now, this is hardly a newsflash, as the video rental giant went into bankruptcy last fall and has been closing many of its outlets as it struggles to deal with the dual onslaught of Netflix and Redbox (more on that in a minute).
Still, looking at the boarded-up building, I realized that I couldn’t think of a single Blockbuster store here in Colorado Springs that was still open. All the locations we once frequented have shuttered their doors. (The handful that apparently remain, according to the company’s website, aren’t anywhere near where we live.) For just a moment, I got a bit wistful for an experience that many, if not most of us, don’t have much any more: the ritual of traipsing to Blockbuster to pick out a movie.
Once upon a time, the impulse Let’s rent a movie! was followed by heading off to Blockbuster (or Hollywood Videos, which has experienced a similar fate, or just the corner video store) to wander the aisles and weigh the prospect of watching a new release versus the joy of sitting through some familiar old classic. Then came the inevitable negotiations with whoever we were planning to watch a movie with if they were in the mood for something a little different: “How about The Sound of Music?” “Nah, let’s watch Avatar.” Sometimes there was enough give and take in the process that renting the film took about as long as watching it (except if you were watching Avatar, of course). But that was hardly a nuisance. Instead, the communal act of settling on a movie together was a pretty delightful, bonding exercise—often the most relational part of an evening’s entertainment.
But in the last 10 years or so, new avenues of movie distribution have made this experience less and less common. In 1999, Netflix gave customers the opportunity to rent videos by mail (online distribution followed more recently). Fill up your Netflix queue online, and, boom!, movies magically started appearing in your mailbox a few days later. And in 2003, a little company called Redbox started placing video rental kiosks in stores and fast-food outlets. Now they’re as ubiquitous as McDonald’s, it seems.
Both of those delivery methods delivered a broadside blow to Blockbuster, changing the rental paradigm for harried movie fans who apparently now longer had time to make that special trip to pick up a movie. Netflix and Redbox—not to mention the increasing prevalence of simply downloading films online—forever altered the way we find movies to watch, and Blockbuster was the primary casualty.
Blockbuster is actually still around, of course—though you might not know it looking at all those closed stores. The company now has kiosks just like Redbox does. And, mimicking rival Netflix, it also sends out DVDs and allows customers to download films as well.
But even if Blockbuster isn’t technically dead, the joy of going to a video store to choose a film for the evening is quickly becoming a fond memory from a bygone era for most of us.
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