Mystery or Medicority? Waxing Hysterical
Filed under: Box Office, Waxing Hysterical
Fretting over the WWWs (as in, "what went wrong?") with Blockbuster X has become standard Monday morning business, so it's no surprise that we arose from the Cinematical Sleep Pod today to find two articles had been left on our doorstep, each one rocking its own kind of WWW hysterics. Nicole Sperling's Hollywood Reporter inquisition on the failures of Stealth and The Island makes a lot of shot-in-the-dark suggestions, as has become de rigeur with this type of report. Filmgoers have mysteriously shunned the action/sci-fi genre alltogether! No, that's not it - Moviemaking has become a "brand business"! Oh, crap - Bewitched tanked, too. Well, maybe "audiences are making a distinction between new and unique, rather than new and still-feels-like-a-rehash." Oh, but, uh - and you, know, sorry to bring it up - but isn't rehash-of-a-rehash War of the Worlds one of the biggest hits of the summer? Oh, well, that's obviously because Steven Speilberg is the only brand name director out there. Well, except for Peter Jackson. And Quentin Tarantino. And Spike Lee. Whose last film bombed.
It just makes my head hurt.
In the New York Times, David Carr suggests that it's a lot simpler - although his take on it might be a little *too* simplistic. It's couched in an obituary for the era of baby boomer moguls, but it's an age-old relationship story: the spark between movies and movie lovers, temporarily or otherwise, seems to be gone. "I think that the audience is reacting to the lack of quality movies. They have been disappointed too many times when they have made the decision to leave their house and go see a movie, and whoever is running the studios is going to have to figure out how to rebuild that relationship," says a board member at UTA. Critic David Thomson says it's no longer fashionable to approach moviemaking from a movie-loving standpoint. "In the same way that audiences have lost their taste for film, filmmakers have lost their passion." So, essentially, studios and filmmakers need to learn a few new tricks, but the audience has to be willing to, uh, get tricked.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-08-2005 @ 6:18PM
Chance McClain said...
I would like to throw up an idea as to why the box office is “slumping”.
It boils down to this: our over-stimulated public is too restless en masse to tolerate the return on time and money invested in a trip to the movies. We are over-stimulated with news about our stars. We are overloaded with celebrities. We have the internet. Let’s face it, we spend an assload of time plopped down in front of the computer. The compound effect of this is we now have less time to do other crap. And with the deluge of over-marketed, under-delivered rubbish we have chosen to spend our cash elsewhere. The movies that totally succeed are the ones where there is no risk of wasting money. Spiderman, X-Men, War of the Worlds, Wedding Crashers, etc. 10 years ago Stealth would have done well based on the SFX alone. But now we’ve seen all of that. Been there done that, I’m no longer impressed. Ditto for The Island. Also think of how many movies are out there. All of the Indie movies that 15 years ago simply were not around. A small Indie House is totally pumped about a “flop” that only draws $20 million bones. But that’s $20 million that’s not going to the major releases.
When I grew up in the eighties it was all I could do to keep up with the Brat Pack, the pop bands that were around at the time, the older generations actors that were still “hot” (Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, etc), and the authentic newsmakers (Geraldine Ferraro, the “where’s the beef” old lady.) Now, people are trying to keep up with everyone that we had plus the celebrities that are celebrities because they are celebrities and for no other reason (Reality stars, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, etc.), and they are at the point of sensory overload. I know I am. And I’m a pop junkie.
Chance
W in ’08
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8-08-2005 @ 6:27PM
Michael Byrnes said...
Amen.
But rather then the spark being gone, I would suggest it's more of the movie going public getting smarter in general - gone are the days when masses would flock to whatever movie happened to be opening any week (its awareness being raised by the star, of course). The movie going public has been trained to EXPECT letdowns and as a result, is simply more choosy in what they are willing to go see - able to recognize potential flops BEFORE they spend their money.
Not even Bewitched's previews could draw laughs, which is never a good sign, not to mention the doomed from the start pairing of a tamed down Will Farrell and a always heavy Nicole Kidman. Throw in a plot having nothing to do with the series and you could smell the money-motivated stink as early as March. As for Stealth and The Island - effects heavy blow up movies are a dime a dozen and inter-changeable now (especially Michael Bay's), so unless you have better draws (and more believable heros) then Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johanssen (like, say, Tom Cruise), then the only question will be how much will it make on video.
Meanwhile, look at the Wedding Crashers - two well liked actors in roles requiring them to do nothing but play themselves in scenarios that all of us have been in. Throw in a couple of akwardly phrased lines by none other then Christopher Walken, and you've got ASSURED box office gold!
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