Burning Questions: Is the Summer Blockbuster Broken?
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 12:01PM Michael C. here to sift through the Doomsday warnings that the Summer box office has provoked. How fitting is it that the story of this Summer’s box office is beginning to resemble one of the disaster movies Hollywood so loves to foist on audiences?
Seldom does a Summer go by without a high profile flop or two, but these days we can’t get through a weekend without some mega-budget Summer tent-pole crashing and burning. R.I.P.D., White House Down, Lone Ranger, Turbo. One bomb after another. Slate dubbed it the Summer of the Mega-Flop, while the AV Club simply asked “Are Movies Doomed?” These are intelligent, well reasoned articles but in disaster movie terms they are the equivalent of the crackpot scientists prophesying Armageddon, warning everyone to “Look to the heavens! It’s an extinction level event!”
Many blame the crowded media landscape vying for consumer attention. Others point to the recession limiting the disposable cash in consumer pockets. The overall crappiness of the movies themselves hasn’t gone unnoticed either (out of the many underperformers I’d say only Pacific Rim doesn’t richly deserve its fate). The truth involves some mix of all of these factors, but I think the main problem may lay somewhere deeper. I ask you, Is Hollywood’s blockbuster formula fundamentally broken?
True to the clichés of the disaster genre the studios have cast themselves in the roles of the clueless bureaucrats who are going to ignore the warning signs until it is too late. (“We didn’t listen!”) According to /Film of the two dozen titles already slated for 2015 only two are based original concepts. “Business as usual. Nothing to see here. Ignore the smoldering wreckage strewn through the box office charts.”
Somewhere around the start of the new century the Hollywood Blockbusters pretty much mastered the art of trumping bad word-of-mouth with opening weekend hype. For a while it must’ve seemed like that Holy Grail of movie marketing was in reach: Eliminating that most unpredictable variable, the quality of the movie, from the equation. When even junk like 98’s Godzilla is breaking even you know the hype machine is working like magic.
The problem with this seemingly bulletproof business model is that the elements assumed to be constants are in fact shifting under their feet. A populace that can spread buzz at the speed of thought on the Internet isn’t going to be nearly as susceptible to saturation marketing as they once were. Special effects no longer guarantee attention-grabbing spectacle once every film can afford them. Trailers crafted to mimic the illusion of a cultural event produce diminishing returns when audiences view them five in a row.
Put simply, when everything is the “Movie Event of the Year”, nothing is.
Things aren’t going to collapse all at once, of course. There is plenty of life in the machine yet. But the cracks are showing and getting worse by the weekend. Yet studios continue to double down on the equation “Presold Property + Big Stars + Fashionable Aesthetic × Mass Marketing Blitz = Gold” as if it were infallible. From the outside it can appear as if human judgment has been all but eliminated from the process. Was there no one to point out that the Lone Ranger brands means nothing to anyone under the age of seventy-five?
I’m not so alarmist to worry that the movies are going away but if Hollywood keeps plugging away like nothing is wrong they risk damaging their most valuable brand: the Summer blockbuster itself. It’s an image was built on memories of Indiana Jones, Batman, Ghostbusters and Roger Rabbit. As Cinemascore can attest, general audiences are very forgiving, but burn them with enough After Earths and who knows what can happen. I know studios hate risk, but they need to remember that it is an essential, and currently absent, part of the formula. There's no way around it.
Then again, I hope the situation does continue in the mold of Hollywood disaster flicks because if big films keep flopping the way they have been soon it will be time for A Plan So Crazy It Just Might Work. The lone voice of reason (Paul Dano should play me) will need to assemble the team of scrappy misfits to save the Summer movie. I picture a slo-mo shot of Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, David Lynch and Steven “pulled out of retirement for one last big job” Soderbergh walking across a studio lot like the cast of The Right Stuff.
Previous Burning Questions
You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm. Or read his blog Serious Film
Reader Comments (28)
I dunno if I've ever liked the idea of a summer blockbuster. I don't remember that sort of thing when I was a kid although I waited anxiously for Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. Never did get to see that one.
We would not mind a smuch if they didn't be so over co0nfident we will buy into any old thing,they also need to move away from focusing only on teen boys.
The blockbuster is just changing. Instead of The Rise of Visual Effects, we now have the Golden Age of Horror. Things will change again. The public binges on a given genre until it purges it and binges on another.
Great article! Spielberg actually warned about this a while ago. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of "eventually, audiences are going to burn out of blockbusters, and the studios are going to have to radically re-think how they make movies."
I hope fervently that 2013 marks the end of the tentpole blockbuster, but as always it'll take Hollywood a few years to catch up. Besides, many of the failed blockbusters only failed on this side of the ocean. Some are still doing well in foreign markets (Pacific Rim especially).
I personally find most of this, though well said, to be a bit off. The summer has had huge hits (Iron Man 3, Fast 6) and plenty of other well-sized ones. Overseas markets is where the key is to all of this, with foreign movie markets often making moderate success to be large ones.
I don't think I saw a single blockbuster this summer. Monsters University, if that counts. At least last summer I felt compelled enough to check out Dark Knight Rises, Amazing Spider-Man, Brave, Prometheus, Ted.... Hell, I saw Premium Rush. This time? Too many movies that culturally, I'm supposed to keep up with(??)--and so few that seem worth my time. Plus, when there are 4-6 big movies in the theatre at a time--how do I even start seeing them? Am I really going to pay premium 3D prices? Please. I'll stick with Netflix and cheap indie matinees.
This is the highest grossing summer ever by a wide margin. There have been a few high profile, very expensive bombs, as there are every year (have we already forgotten Battleship and Total Recall?) but there have been a lot of huge, and hugely profitable hits too. It balances out. Lack of originality, overcrowding and overhype are problems, but they're mostly problems for movie fanatics who pay a lot (too much?) attention to this stuff. The cost of movies, and marketing them, is the only real problem from a business perspective - this is a big budget blockbuster bubble that will burst eventually. In the meantime, a lot of those articles put us in Chicken Little territory.
Budget. Budget. Budget.
Had The Lone Ranger been made for $85 M instead of $240+ M, it would've made a large chunk of change for Disney. The same is true of nearly all of these so-called "flops."
Hollywood has apparently forgotten how to turn a profit, what with all the tax-breaks they've grown accustomed to. The old studio system had its problems, too, but it mostly succeeded because the studios released both A and B-pictures using modestly paid craftsmen.
In the race for a massive payday, studios have forgotten how to hedge their bets. Only a handful of movies can rake in Iron Man or Transformers numbers. The rest, The Lone Rangers and RIPD's of the world, will fail to return that kind of investment.
As much as we'd like to think otherwise, quality doesn't matter. Stars don't matter. Directors don't matter. In some cases, even brand recognition doesn't matter. Budgets matter. Not every movie can support a $200M price tag.
Great, now any movie I see that is not about Aronofsky, Anderson, Lynch and Soderbergh saving the blockbuster will be a huge disappointment. I blame you.
A lot of the movies that haven't done well do seem like actiony-testosterone fests while the ones who have done well (The Conjuring, Man of Steel, The Heat) have had women in them who speak to each other. Could audiences finally be demanding more sex-balanced films?
W.J. -- well and provocatively put. "budget" being the only thing that matters. It's interesting. I mean. Look at the huge profit margins on Magic Mike. Somehow they made that for under $10 million yet so many movies cost SO much more and you dont see that much of a difference onscreen.
Remember the days when "Titanic's" $200 million budget made jaws drop? Now no one bats an eye when something costs that much. These big-budget films are huge gambles and sometimes they pay off. "Iron Man 3" is at $1.2 billion on a budget of $220 million, which is why the studios are willing to take the gamble. They want their own "Iron Man." My question is, can't they get their own "Iron Man" without having to spend $200 million? "Despicable Me 2" only cost $76 million and is raking it in. Pixar's films on average cost about $150 million. "The Conjuring" will gross about $125 million on a $20 million budget. Throwing money at something doesn't get you an instant franchise. I actually wonder whether Paramount will continue the "Star Trek" franchise. The latest film has only grossed $450 million worldwide on a budget of $190 million. With half of that going to the theaters, that leaves about $30 million which is at least what they spent on marketing. They'll probably eke out a profit from DVD's and such, but to put in that much money and only get a little bit in return?
It's a very complicated subject which could easily support a full book, but I was trying to speak in broad terms in my limited space here. There does seem to be a case of diminishing returns happening, where the same tricks aren't producing the results they used to. For example, Wild Wild West recouped its budget domestically in 1999, I don't believe it would have come close to doing that in the current market place.
As for foreign market is mitigating the losses but it's not rescuing a lot of these movies. It saved After Earth, no doubt thanks to the Will Smith brand, but Lone Ranger, Turbo and RIPD are still substantial money losers so far even with the foreign grosses factored in, I think WJ is spot on when he talks about unjustifiable ballooning budgets.And of course production budget numbers don't tell the whole story considering the huge marketing costs required to push these films.
Like I said, complicated. I readily admit this post only scatches the surface. That's why I posed it as a question.
Just out of nothing, only by reading the expression "foreign markets" in the comments. When you think about foreign markets as the last place for hope, do you remember that foreign markets have all their national movies to exhibit? That there must be screens kept for the local cinema or otherwise, local, national, varied ways of making movies wil die? You can't flood movie theatres with Will Smiths.
Michael C - A quick correction - Wild Wild West cost $170m to make and made $113m in US theaters. I agree with your overall point - if it were coming out today it would cost $250m and probably make $55m, because holy shit that movie sucks - but it needed foreign (an additional $109m) and ancillary markets to get anywhere close to profitability.
W.J.: It depends, somewhat, on genre. R.I.P.D? More practical effects (so it doesn't look as bad), tighter script continuity and a total budget of $50-$60 million. Result: A decent minimum gross of $150-$170 million. The Lone Ranger, if they "wanted to" do it? Focused pre-production, an eye on "not racist" writing, casting and visuals (meaning "No Depp") and if Depp's the entire reason for the production, shut it down before it starts and ask "is there something you want to do that WOULDN'T look terrible for us?" Turbo? Cut almost all of the star factor, finally making the first major animated release of the modern era entirely populated with pro voice actors. That decision? Looking at the cast, that would probably cut the budget by about 40% ($135 million down to $75 million) AND possibly improve the critical reception (depending on if the voice actors were allowed to improvise material OR if critics wanted to be fair to a studio experiment of a film entirely constructed nearly entirely from voice actors OR even if the voice actors just naturally improved on the characters on the page due to crafting character with their voice being their skill set). End result: If the "all voice actor cast" movie Turbo has a higher critical reception than the one we have released (64% to...who knows), it gets $40 million and second place out of it. Pacific Rim? It's probably going to break even worldwide when all things are said and done, but the concept (title on down) is a more globalist take on monster fighting, which was always going to be a fairly difficult sell, ESPECIALLY in large chunks of the American south.
I was a kid when Jaws, the so-called first summer blockbuster, premiered. I remember everyone was talking about how truly scary it was, and in a whole-new way. The MPAA even had to inaugurate PG-13 because it was so nerve-wracking for the young audiences. Of course, I was scared shitless as I watched it with my little brother and grandfather, who kept casually scoffing at how fake it all looked.
The phenomenon of Jaws, a bona-fide good movie, can't be compared to today. These days, with prefabricated marketing and production and making movies from templates rather than scripts, audiences are probably rather shocked when a blockbuster actually happens to turn out worth watching.
Brookesboy, the PG-13 rating was created in response to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, not Jaws.
The problem with a lot of these summer blockbuster is that after a while they all look the same- how can you make a digital explosion look different?
Thanks for the correx. Now I remember they had the tag 'may be too intense for younger children'.
RIPD was buried... it didn't even get any real publicity push. I don't get studio decisions like that... spending so much and then speeding the film in and out of theaters. It only had two showtimes the night it premiered at my local theater. Crazy.
I believe it's Scott Mendelsohn who says "Don't spend AT WORLD'S END money on CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL."
They might have different titles but they are basically the same movie, all green screen flash and no substance. How many times can you watch the same movie in different clothes? And as someone else said they spend stupid money on them and shoot themselves in the foot as far as a chance of profit goes.
It's like in the 70's when a few disaster movies, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno hit big and then the studios ground out one imitation after another in every diminishing quality until they killed the genre. Same thing's happening now.
I'm not completely sure about this, but if the classic summer blockbuster is over, maybe the answer is the Auteuristic Blockbuster? Think Inception. As audiences grow more demanding, maybe the solution would be to bring the spectacle while also leaving them with something to think about.
I can't speak for anyone else, but all of the aforementioned films looked horrible from their trailers and commercials, featured A-list actors who seemed either embarrassed or bored to be in their respective movies, and appeared to be lazy versions of only slightly serviceable predecessors.
These movies are bombing because they aren't good and seem interchangeable. I am very tired of the protracted, 30-45 minute climaxes, for one thing. Keep the thrills nonstop and they stop thrilling very, very quickly.
Hey Hollywood, try this: CHARACTER, STORY, PRACTICAL EFFECTS.
Sure. Make every film for $20 million or less, then spend another $20 million on marketing, find theater owners willing to take a chance on a film with an indie budget and no stars to draw big crowds (the term "bankable" exists for a reason), and keep your fingers very crossed, major Hollywood studio executives.
Really, how would the studios do picking from dozens of low budget pictures to fill what is, after all, the relatively scarce resource that is theater screen days? For all the noise they generate, success stories like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" are rare and, what is worse for the studios, utterly unpredictable. I seriously question how long the major studios and distributors could stay in business working under that model. And without the existing film distribution system, how long do the multiplexes stay in business? That is what keeps me up at night - the current generation may be the last to see movies the way they were laid from the keel to be seen - on a big projection screen with a couple hundred of your closest friends and the latest sound system. I sure hope I have nothing to worry about. But I am not betting on it.