Hollywood: Not an Anachronism

Come Labor Day, parents around the country can rightfully tell their kids, "I know what you did last summer." Against everyone's expectations, the kids went to the movies. In record numbers.

This behavior, to be sure, would seem counterintuitive since our kids supposedly are too pre-occupied with their Blackberries, computers and video games to make time for the multiplex. Hollywood had become an anachronism, we were told.

Well, not really. Box office results this summer are presently running 10 percent ahead of summer '06 and record business is being replicated around the world. Even more anomalous, the movies leading the surge are one step beyond sequels -- they are three-quels. Shrek III already has passed the first Shrek both in the U.S. and abroad while Spiderman III and The Bourne Ultimatum (also a three-quel) are out-performing their previous iterations. Other third-edition hits include Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Rush Hour III (the Harry Potter sequels are already into more advanced stages and it's hard to keep count of the Ocean's Elevens).

All this represents a surprise to most pop culture observers on several levels. Third installments of films historically have been disappointments (think the Poltergeist and Jaws franchises, not to mention Home Alone). Indeed, the current crop of sequels and remakes was considered suspect, even in Hollywood, going into the summer. Many felt that the process of recycling old ideas would only replay the problems of summer '06, when Poseidon went underwater. But even more important was what Hollywood considers the "zeitgeist issue." If movies are no longer the centerpiece of our pop culture, why lavish $200 million or so producing and marketing a cluster of three-quels to kids who'd prefer to spend their time on Facebook and MySpace?

The studios decided to take their shots anyway, albeit hedging their bets through major infusions of capital from hedge funds and other equity groups.

The results have been startling and have shaken a lot of assumptions. During the box office slump of summer '06, Robert Shaye, the CEO of New Line, fretted that the downturn represented "a cumulative thing, a seismic evolution in people's habits." When films like Cinderella Man and Kingdom of Heaven tanked, the box office analyst for the Los Angeles Times declared that "consumers are leaving one of America's greatest pastimes."

Well now the gloom has lifted. The revised wisdom holds that while evolutionary changes are indeed taking place in our pop culture, a good movie, even a slate of lively three-quels, can send everyone back to their former habits. As the famed producer (and malapropist) Samuel Goldwyn once told me, "Nothing ever really changes -- just the numbers."

Comments

[Apples]

I have to agree with grendl.

As a huge fan of the art of film I've suffered most of the films released throughout the summer, many of which was seen with my teenage son. Less than a handful were any good.

Gene Siskel was right when he once stated that newspapers should stop publishing the weekend box-office winners. Who of us really care how many millions a mediocre piece of work makes? All it does is change our perspective on what is considered successful. Pirates 3 may be a commercial success, but no one in their right mind can tell me it was a good film.

Only investors, stock holders and movie execs should be concerned with the amount of money a film makes. The rest of us who pour our cash into the box-office should be more concerned with whether the product is any good. From our perspective the cinematic gloom is still with us.

[grendl]

I don’t think the gloom has lifted.

Oh, monetarily you mean. After all this is a business we’re talking about. What’s important is that opening week-end which will make or break a film. What’s important, to the industry is that Adam Sandler can be entrusted to make a hundred million dollars time and time again.

Story isn’t important to the studios if it’s not important to the kids, who fund the industry. That’s the beauty of today’s audience, their laughably low expectations of movies. It makes the greenlighting process so much easier when all you have to do is go down a checklist of a film, and incorporate the elements integral to its success into a sequel. Pirates, check, Depp, check, explosions, check, coherent story line…er wait that isn’t on the list.

You know people who used to know something about filmic narrative used to greenlight movies. Men like Irving Thalberg, and David O Selznick actually cared what went up on the screen. They appreciated the medium which today is run by people who only look at the bottom line. And we saw far better movies because of their acumen, and passion.

We haven’t seen movies the likes of “Jaws”, “The Exorcist”, “The Godfather”, for thirty years save for the odd “ Silence of the Lambs”, because Hollywood has lost its nerve. Fear of box office failure has not only informed the greenlighting process, it has petrified it.

Movies suck these days, not that that particularly matters to those who measure the success of something by the amount of money it earns, which is really the only measuring stick corporations who own these studios care about. But the gloom is still ever present, sorry to say.

[InternationalObserver]

"...Hollywood has lost its nerve..." Huh? Why do you say that? Hollywood IS continuing to take BIG risks with groundbreaking movie making eg Get Smart (the Movie), Star Trek (with Tom cruise and Brad Pitt), and a remake of Escape From NY.

Oh and BTW, Adam Sandler's 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry' is unusually similar to the Australian movie 'Strange Bedfellows' starring Paul Hogan. Of which a script was given to Rob Schneider, Sandler's buddy. Yup. Hollywood loves making original movies.