A new year means yet another shuffling of the films and television shows available on the myriad of streaming services that customers now have to keep track of. But despite the age of digital media promising unlimited access and more options than ever, we have often seen the opposite actually happen in practice. For a pressing recent example, most of the Star Trek films were taken off of Paramount+ in the United States at the start of 2024, with only the newest trilogy of films starring Chris Pine remaining on the service. Paramount may have promised that their in-house streaming service was the place for all your Trek needs, but if you want to watch the first 10 films on streaming, you’ll have to fire up HBO Max.
This is not an isolated incident. Although most of the major film studios now have a proprietary streaming service of some kind, the idea of every piece of media from fan-favorite franchises all being in the same place has largely proven to be a mirage. So much confusion about where various installments are, and the anxiety of knowing that the powers that be could yank them away at any given moment, is further proof that it may be time for physical media to make a big comeback. Why should you consider going back to the way of the box set? Let’s take a look.
One Size Fits None
The way we consume film and television has changed remarkably over the past several years, largely due to the increased importance of subscription streaming services. The technological leap in and of itself is as neutral and innocuous as most are, at its core simply being another way to view narrative media, one that’s especially tuned for an age of persistent online connectivity. But the way streaming has altered viewing and spending habits has arguably been a net negative for the art form and culture at large because of how it’s supplanted and diminished the relevance of many of the more traditional forms of media distribution, to the point of creating a cultural landscape for film and television that is barely recognizable from the one even a decade ago.
Much of this is by design, of course. The great pitch for streaming was consumer convenience, a massive collection of your favorite films and television shows in one place, all for a reasonable subscription fee. With the skyrocketing cost of living, who could resist such an entertainment bargain? But the subsequent gutting of the home video market, the struggles of theatrical distribution, and the loss of consumer control over their media that followed was the cost of allowing streaming to become the primary, if not only, way we watch things. And now with subscription prices steadily rising, advertisements being used as a stick to prompt upgrades to higher tiers, and more and more services popping up, the streaming space has become even more hostile to consumers who just want to enjoy their binging marathons in peace.
Particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, streaming solidified itself as the central hub through which most of our entertainment needs were met. But that also means any disruptions to said hub can be hard roadblocks to get past. If a movie or show disappears off a service and moves to one you don’t have (or worse, doesn’t pop up anywhere else), what are you supposed to do? We’ll leave our Jolly Rogers out of this for the sake of legality, but the answer in the old days was to just pull out the discs… the same discs which retailers like Best Buy are phasing out and which major studios like Disney have stopped releasing in certain international markets. If this trend continues, streaming might become the only legal avenue for watching what you want, and that’s one hell of a problem when they won’t let you watch it.
The Not-So-Final Frontier
As mentioned previously, Paramount+ has incurred the wrath of sci-fi nerds by taking down the first 10 Star Trek films and moving them over to Max. Trek may be one of Paramount’s most popular franchises, but it appears the studio is not above licensing it out to other platforms, even if it undermines their own. This is not the only instance of Paramount allowing Star Trek media to spill away from “the home of Star Trek.” Last year, Paramount canceled the children-oriented show Star Trek: Prodigy after one season and removed it from the service. The show eventually moved to Netflix, where a second season was assured. Sure, the Star Trek movies will likely wind up back on Paramount+ eventually, but even then it can’t be the definitive place to watch everything from the franchise.
Even if Star Trek isn’t your bag, there are other examples. Disney+ took over distribution for new seasons of Doctor Who outside the UK, with their tenure starting with three specials starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor. But the previous revival seasons are on Max, and if you want to delve into the (26!) seasons of classic Who, then I hope you know what BritBox is. Speaking of British sensations, Amazon may have purchased MGM, but are all of the James Bond movies on Prime? Not quite. These are wildly popular franchises with massive back catalogs, exactly the sort of thing streaming was supposed to make it easy to watch in one go. Instead, audiences have to go digging through “where you can watch” articles and hope nothing changes by the time they can get through it all.
Purchasing digitally doesn’t exactly sort this problem out either. There are many platforms where you can “buy” films and television seasons, so you should always have access… unless they decide otherwise. In December 2023, Sony caused a firestorm of controversy when they announced they would be removing access to Discovery shows from PlayStation video libraries, even if they had been purchased. The backlash was so great that Sony had to walk things back with a reversal later that same month. Yet even though they changed course, the fact that removing purchases was even on the table proves how precarious digital “ownership” really is. The only way to ensure you always have purchased media is to buy a physical release, something that is no longer guaranteed as streamers take over more and more projects.
You Can’t Take It With You
Just to clarify: We are not anti-streaming over here. Streaming can be wonderful when it works as advertised, and streamers are responsible for many great film and television projects over the past several years. However, that only exacerbates the problem we’re talking about. Many streamer-specific films and shows never receive physical releases. Outside of cursory theatrical runs for films like Glass Onion or May December, many Netflix Original films are never shown in theaters. And if a streaming platform decides to remove a project entirely without any physical release, then that project pretty much ceases to exist. Look what happened to Willow and many other projects over at Disney+, or Max removing media as a cost-cutting measure. If streamers don’t want you to have access to something, there’s nothing you can do.
When they’re available, buying physical releases of movies and shows is the only way to ensure you can always watch them. However, that’s not really the whole story. More than anything, this situation is a symptom of the vast and vapid corporatism that has devalued art and the artists who make it as the companies that own these platforms try to enforce a stranglehold on popular culture. The failures of streaming have very little to do with the technology so much as the constant battlefield of IP hoarding and cutthroat business management that film and television production has become, which is particularly egregious when you realize that many streaming platforms are not actually turning a profit.
Streaming could absolutely work both as a way to view media and as a revenue stream, but only as a supplement to traditional models like theatrical distribution, network television and home video releases, not as a replacement. Media companies going all in on streaming was a bad gamble from the get-go, and it will likely take them quite a while to figure that out. But in the meantime, the best way to binge is to hunt down physical copies of your favorite movies and shows. Fixing streaming’s issues will take far more than just buying a bunch of Blu-Rays, and the practice can certainly be expensive if you want a large collection, but at the very least you know they’re yours. After all, if you truly love a piece of art, you should never allow the capricious whims of a corporation to take it away from you.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
