While I appreciate things like Fathom Events’ screenings of classic films, the one-day (or two, or three, on occasion) release model is rather annoying. People should be given TIME to go see the films, as opposed to having to be available for one or two showtimes on one specific day.
The 1997 STAR WARS Special Edition model actually made sense. They re-released the films a few weeks apart, and the films were in theaters for several months. That gave people plenty of opportunity to see them, and one could even buy tickets and watch all three in a row, if they so chose (and some did). And the SEs beat out brand-new films at the box office. They were a staggering success.
Jamming each full trilogy into two consecutive days is pure idiocy. Typical of Disney-LFL.
I can pretty much guarantee that a whole lot of people who would otherwise love to go (and take their families along) will instead elect to just stay home and watch the films at a more leisurely pace on streaming/home media, instead.
Setting aside the slow and needless death of theatrical cinema, something like this should have been an EVENT, akin to the 1997 re-release.
(As an aside, I’ve occasionally wondered how things would have gone if, instead of making and releasing the Special Editions in 1997, as a warm-up for the prequels, Lucas had waited until maybe six months or so after EPISODE III and then released the Special Editions, or perhaps even re-released all six films in chronological order. Of course, part of the reasoning behind the SEs was to help revive interest in the franchise prior to TPM, and they most certainly succeeded.)