I'm going to miss it. I blame both Covid but also the digital effects revolution.
For a long time, it was my must-buy magazine, but as the computer age began to reign supreme, it became less and less interesting, especially with so many of the movies covered themselves failing to interest me. As far as my continued purchasing of the magazine goes, I had tapered off significantly in recent years.
I'd pick up issues on a case by case basis. I have "Dunkirk" and a lot of Nolan's other work covered. "The Mandalorian" was fascinating and is like the next phase in CGI revolution. Rogue One was a CGI fest too, but I enjoyed some of it. "The Irishman" - neat with Infrared photography being a big part. I'd say I averaged one issue a year for the past 10 years, down from the previous 20 years of buying every issue. The last one I bought was a year ago, and it was the 40th anniversary issue itself that had a lot of retrospective material and interviews with FX pioneers.
So many of the more recent ones were just before and after images with CGI being the difference. I find the cleverness and innovation of the pre-digital age to be much more engaging to me as a more hands on model maker type. There was one infamous article that covered a Mission Impossible movie. It had no pictures whatsoever. Apparently Tom Cruise was micro-managing every aspect of the film and its publicity to the point that he wouldn't/couldn't okay the images for the magazine on time, so they just ran the story without and blamed him. It was bizarre.
For my money, I'd have enjoyed more retrospective stuff like NZ Pete does. Perhaps one article per magazine could've been an old movie or artist. What do I know though. In any case, I'll miss the magazine.
