Australia’s last Blockbuster closes, leaving only one left in the world

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

For an entire generation of moviegoers the video rental store meant an endless supply of entertainment and movie history to choose from, and while most towns had their local spots, Blockbuster was the king of the ring. That era of perusing the aisles has been coming to a slow end for some time, but the end is seemingly nigh as the second-to-last Blockbuster in the world has officially closed its doors, leaving only one store left standing on the entire planet.

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News broke about the closure of one of the final Blockbusters in Perth suburb of Morley in Australia, despite the efforts from the owners to keep the business alive for those who still valued the physical connection of renting of a movie. Co-owner Lyn Borszeky told the Australian Associated Press (via Mashable) knew that it was only a matter of time, though, saying, “We put in a pretty good effort to be the last one in Australia, I suppose, but it was going to happen eventually and now is the time.”

That means after years of steady decline the chain once having thousands and thousands of locations around the world has been reduced to one lone store located in, of all places, Bend, Oregon. The store has a Twitter account and posted about their status on Monday after they were made aware of the Australia location’s closure.

A once established institution that seemed like it would always have a place as long as there were movies to sell and rent, video stores of all stripes have been closing their doors over the last decade as Redbox kiosks and mail-based systems like Netflix made renting more streamlined, while the rise of the latter’s streaming capabilities made it so you didn’t even have to put on pants to choose from hundreds of titles. Now a swath of younger viewers are living in a world where walking up and down aisles to pick a movie to rent is a foreign concept, which is distressing on a few levels.

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Like many of you, I had my local video store as a kid that I would walk a mile or two to get to (Showtime Video), visiting the store to rent movies and games dozens and dozens of times. That beautiful building is now a worker’s supply store, selling, I don’t know, heavy-duty coats, or something. Now, I consider myself very lucky to live in Seattle, home to Scarecrow Video, a literal Candyland of movies where you can spend hours and hours perusing two stories of videos and only slightly scratch the surface of offerings. Most people don’t have that available to them anymore, which is truly sad given the memories us adults have of sorting through VHS and DVD boxes to find the perfect movie to watch. It’s the end of an era, and now pilgrimages must be made to the lone Blockbuster to pay homage and get a box of Milk Duds.

At the very least, audiences will always have Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) crashing through the roof of Blockbuster to remind of what once was.