The Last Blockbuster Leaves Us Full of Nostalgia and Reminiscing About The Bygone Age of Video Stores
Many of us remember video stores with a special nostalgic warmth that few things still hold. It’s a remembrance of a time of Saturday morning cartoons, tv guides, and pre-social media simplicity. I must admit that I have had a long and storied history with video stores, and a stronger connection to them than most. To me, The Last Blockbuster feels like more than a documentary, it is a piece of history. Of mine, yours, and all those who lived in the age before Netflix and streaming.
As a child, my mother worked at an independent video store. She would frequently bring home countless plastic-encased VHS tapes, in a time when buying a tape was out of the question. I remember holding the VHS in my hand, running over to the VCR, and jamming it in almost immediately. It is this that formed my early love of movies, and although she didn’t work there all that long, that experience stayed with me.
I fell in love with stores like Blockbuster from an early age. Any place that allowed me to rent the video games and movies that I so cherished, was destined to become one of my favorite places. Weekends were marked with trips to the video store, where I’d come away with a bag full of assorted delights to fill the hours until school the following Monday.
Flash-forward many late-fees, rentals, and formats later, and I too found myself working at an independent video store. I attribute many things in my life to the nine and a half years I worked there. I decided to go back to school while working long minimum wage hours under its roof. I met my wife, as a sad lonely clerk, who saw her walk to and from work at the grocery store next door, finally building up the courage to ask her out. It was the last retail job I would have before leaving university, and the last I would have before becoming a father. The store ultimately closed a few years after the majority of Blockbusters vanished; however, it suffered the same fate as many other video stores, slowly whittling away into obscurity.
To say that The Last Blockbuster is a love letter to those who miss the physical brick and mortar stores is cliche, to say the least, but there is something about that metaphor here that fits so perfectly. Like letters, video stores are a thing of the past, they represent a moment in history before tremendous technological advancement. Both may still be seen in odd places, popping up when you least expect them, or in movies and television reliving the past, but they are not common, and feel antiquated and impractical when compared to today’s modern sensibility. Both of these things are also fond souvenirs of the past, but they seem so distant from now, that it is a wonder how we ever relied on them.
The Last Blockbuster is lovingly crafted, the filmmakers who have spent so much time creating an interesting, entertaining, and well-conceived documentary. They balance their time interviewing those who are directly tied to the last Blockbuster, located in Bend, Oregon, telling the ill-fated history of Blockbuster’s downfall, and talking to several celebrities about their love of the video store chain. All of this works and does so in an engaging way that seamlessly meshes the three distinct sections together.
It is through following Sandi Harding, and to a lesser extent Ken Tisher, that the story of The Last Blockbuster finds its roots. The film is a celebration, not of Blockbuster, the faceless company, but rather Sandi, and a group of people, in a small city in Oregon, who have maintained a connection to each other through a video store.
It is their story that is the most interesting. I am certain that there are countless more stories similar to Sandi’s across North America, of women and men fighting a losing battle to keep their stores open, just a little while longer. This is ultimately an underdog story, a story of a small business bullied into submission, by a larger force that single-handedly mismanaged an entire industry into the ground.
The story of video stores and Blockbuster the business is visited frequently, filling in the gaps of what took Blockbuster from start-up to global juggernaut, and finally to complete irrelevance. This is done fairly well, we get a decently put together overview of the final days of Blockbuster, though much of the information here is contradictory to elsewhere. Having listened to Wondery’s Business Wars podcast episodes that highlight the Netflix rivalry with Blockbuster and then HBO (which I highly recommend), the blame is placed in a much different corner.
Wherein, The Last Blockbuster points a finger at John Antioco’s mishandling of Blockbuster, as the leading cause of its demise, Business Wars places more blame at the feet of Carl Icahn and James Keyes. For context, these portions of the documentary are necessary, though much more time would have been needed to fully explore the sordid history of Blockbuster.
Finally, it is the interviews with celebrities that give this movie its polish. The filmmakers put together an incredible list of people whose stories are so relevant to the subject matter, that my hat is off to them. Who doesn’t want to listen to the likes of Kevin Smith, Doug Benson, James Arnold Taylor, Brian Posehn, Paul Scheer, Jamie Kennedy, Adam Brody, and many others, talk about their love for movies, video stores, and Blockbuster in general?
The film also employs the use of several clips of tv shows and talk shows to its advantage. Lauren Lapkus’ narration is also really good here, bringing additional whimsy whenever we hear her. It is the interviews that boost production value, and bring humor and lightheartedness to a film that would have been less than without their inclusion. The being said, there are a few stories and interviews that seem less significant or added simply out of the need to justify having interviewed someone for the film.
Watching The Last Blockbuster was a joy to watch, as it brought me back to my days behind the counter of the video store that I worked at for so long, and made me further appreciate the sacrifices that those who still run these stores are making. They are aware that the end is in sight, but they are still plugging along, grasping to the final few connections they make with their customers. It was reassuring to know that I was not the only one craving this defining experience that had been lost, wishing for a time that will likely never return.
In the end, this film was also hard to watch, as it reminded me of the facelessness and continual loss of connection that we have been barrelling towards for the better part of the last decade. We are moving away from good people eager to engage, share, and interact with one another, toward algorithms and disassociation. It is not Blockbuster that we care about, per se, but what that name now represents: a destroyed legacy, pockets of people clinging to the past, and a march toward an uncertain future.
For more film and tv news, trailers and updates, make sure to keep it locked right here at The Nerdy Basement. And while you’re here, please consider supporting us on Patreon. It’s an easy way of supporting us so we can keep proving you with your Nerdy News!