I don't buy the deception theory at all, that it was used to make it hard to determine the year it was made. Everybody has always known which movies are new this year! Or which movie is from 10 years ago. To me, this falls into the common fallacy of "oh people from back then were so dumb/unobservant..." Like the busted myth that Europeans used spices to mask rotten meat.
It seems nobody knows why it started, but it seems pretty intuitive why it's continued -- it looks fancy and formal and important. You went to the Cinema and you had an Experience and at the end it was capped off with a fancy set of Roman Numerals. It's silly like a hundred other aspects of the movies, but it's kind of lovable.
And I can't help but assume that fanciness derives from years being carved in stone as roman numerals for Important Things. On buildings (date of construction), memorials (for wars and important people), and of course gravestones.
I mean, it also wasn't Star Trek 3, it was Star Trek III. Because fancy.
It seems nobody knows why it started, but it seems pretty intuitive why it's continued -- it looks fancy and formal and important. You went to the Cinema and you had an Experience and at the end it was capped off with a fancy set of Roman Numerals. It's silly like a hundred other aspects of the movies, but it's kind of lovable.
And I can't help but assume that fanciness derives from years being carved in stone as roman numerals for Important Things. On buildings (date of construction), memorials (for wars and important people), and of course gravestones.
I mean, it also wasn't Star Trek 3, it was Star Trek III. Because fancy.