Cinema Cemetery
The End of The Blockbuster
Disclaimer:
The following is my own opinion and not the opinion of any studios I have worked for in the past or will work for in the future. All specific information comes courtesy of publicly accessible articles, please see the bibliography for more information. Several times through this editorial, I refer to Hollywood. Please take this to mean the North American, big budget blockbuster film industry...not the specific city or not even necessarily the remnants of the film industry within said city exclusively.
If you’re anything like me, most blockbusters released last year (and the year before that etc etc) have increasingly left you feeling rather...blah. Generally speaking, most of the recent wide releases that I was able to see exhibited a high level of polish and I enjoyed most of the ones I saw to a degree...but across the board, there was something missing. A sense of inventiveness, imagination, and genuine heart seemed to have been worn down with a belt-sander, replaced with a checklist of marketing and franchise-related requirements.
Judging by the historically low box-office returns for the summer of 2017, it seems I’m not alone in this general sense of ennui. Summer blockbusters were once a sharp exclamation point, a cultural event. Now we churn them out on a near-weekly basis, calculated products machined by robots in suits.
Yes there are exceptions, but not nearly enough to banish the nagging thoughts at the back of my mind, the needling feeling that the film industry is getting desperate, that the motivations guiding most studios have less to do with creative integrity and more to do with franchise building...yet these same studios gape in disbelief as audiences fail to show up for their mass-produced, homogenized offerings like Pirates of the Caribbean 5 in favor of flocking to the low-budget, risky, R rated, twilight-zone-esque, Get Out.
The Hollywood of olde has fallen ill. It ignored all warning signs in the past and continues to keep its fingers in it’s ears as long as the prospect of quick money is dangled in front of it’s sniffling nose. For the good of future mass market films, Hollywood must be allowed to die. It can no longer die with dignity, that time has passed, yet it must be put down all the same.
Our journey today has four parts.
Part 1: A Dire Warning
There was a time when having the name Steven Spielberg attached to a movie almost guaranteed funding from any one of the major studios. Currently though, we find
“...the industry at an extraordinary time of upheaval, where even proven talents find it difficult to get (original) movies into theaters. (1)”
Creative upstarts like The Duffer Brother, responsible for the smash hit that is the Stranger Things series, were passed over on directing the IT remake due to their lack of experience at the time. As someone pitching scripts and trying to make a name for myself, I know full well the pain of having a story loved by all who read it yet simply not being given a chance to make it reality. But these days, it’s not just the small fries being ignored, Steven Spielberg had to fight tooth and nail to even get the chance to make his movie Lincoln. As Mr Spielberg and George Lucas both had a huge hand in defining the term blockbuster, hearing them come together to predict the implosion of the film industry as we know it was chilling.
“Steven Spielberg...predicted an "implosion" in the film industry is inevitable...(1)”
They recognize that studios no longer want to take risks on Art when they could just buy the rights milk a franchise.
“ ‘That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion or a big meltdown. There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm.’ (1)“ Said Spielberg.
Could it be that he’s just grown bitter towards an industry that seems to be moving past him? Or are these wise words of warning from someone who has been with the film industry since before blockbusters were even a thing?
Let’s look at current trends in cinema and see how this dire tiding matches up with reality.
Part 2: Symptoms
When thinking about modern blockbusters, how they seem to flit from cinema to streaming to disc to walmart bargain bin all in less than a year, it’s important to remember what the life cycle of big movies looked like decades ago.
For example:
“(the) 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial stayed in theaters for a year and four months. (1)”
The second-highest grossing movie from 2017, the live action remake of an animated adaptation of a fairytale,
Beauty and the Beast was released in the US on March 17th and hit home video on June 6th. (8)
I can’t find the exact date it left mass theaters, but if we take the domestic premiere to the home video release, that’s still a run of less than three months. Pitiful in comparison to ET’s year and four month run. What could be behind such a difference? I think a part of the reason has to do with how unique ET was in it’s time coupled with the fact that very few “blockbuster” style movies existed at that time.
Keep in mind, ET came out of nowhere where Beauty and the Beast already had millions of fans the world over. If ET were released for the first time today, it probably wouldn’t do as well. So Beauty and the Beast’s lack of legs can’t entirely be blamed on the film’s quality...though we will touch on that later. The biggest issue we’re dealing with right now, is cinematic gluttony.
“Do you like big blockbuster movies? The kind that will make a billion dollars but will never be financially profitable, thanks to Hollywood's shady accounting practices? If so, here's the insane slate of blockbusters 2018 has to offer:
Avengers: Infinity War, Ready Player One, Pacific Rim 2, Aquaman, Toy Story 4, Deadpool 2, Black Panther, The Flash, How To Train Your Dragon 3, Ant-Man And The Wasp, Jurassic World 2, The Predator, Fifty Shades Freed, Jungle Book: Origins, Marry Poppins Returns, Tomb Raider, Alita: Battle Angel, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 2, The Secret Life Of Pets 2, an animated Spider-Man movie, Hotel Transylvania 3, The Wolf Man, Wreck-It Ralph 2, the Star Wars Han Solo spinoff, the Transformers Bumblebee spinoff, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Gigantic (Disney's next animated musical).
...
And then there are the spots in the schedule studios have claimed but haven't specified what movies are going to be released. (5)”
That’s a lot of money being thrown at a glut of remakes, sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.
If we look at the Spielberg film that made him a household name, we see blockbusters like Jaws, ET, Poltergeist, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the third Kind. I could go on and on. There are a couple book adaptations here, but by and large the list of blockbusters by the man who co-pioneered the blockbuster as a concept were unique, original, and emotionally resonant.
2017’s Beauty and the Beast is a remake of an existing, well-loved movie, with all the life, resonance, and magic sucked out. What’s the big gain of remaking such a classic? It’s no longer animated, is that a good thing? Is Disney trying to send a message that traditional animation is a bad thing? They’re essentially sawing the kneecaps off their own legacy by attempting to eclipse their animated classic with a mediocre, big-budget live action remake. Essentially, Hollywood at large has gotten so desperate to connect with modern audiences that it’s limping along on the selling points of graphics updates and consumer nostalgia for better movies.
Returning to the upcoming slate of films, it’s impossible for them to all make their money back. Even if the Pacific Rim sequel was any good, Black Panther was still selling tickets at a record pace...what of the potential market was left for the book adaptation, A Wrinkle in Time or the remake of the reboot to a game franchise like Tomb Raider? Regardless of quality, they never had a chance.
This goes a long way towards explaining why movies make far less money, theater attendance across the board is down, and new movies have much shorter legs than blockbusters in the past, yet there is still a paradox here.
“Less and less people are watching movies in theaters, but studios are making more than ever on theatrical releases. Why? The average price of a ticket has nearly doubled, from $4.35 in 1995 to $8.43 in 2015. (5)”
“ ’The theater business has weaker prospects going forward than at any time in the last 30 years,’ says media analyst Hal Vogel. ’It’s encountering visible strain this summer. It’s a superhero, mega-blockbuster, tentpole strategy run amuck. There’s too much of it, and it’s not working.’ (6)”
On the face of it, the last several years in particular, Spielberg’s prediction seems to be coming true. Yet, despite the warnings and data, movie studios are hesitant to change.
“The concern is that the slump isn’t just a run of bad luck. Cinema operators have managed for years to keep increasing sales by raising ticket prices amid stagnant attendance, but a sharp drop in filmgoing would make that harder to sustain. And the tried-and-true formula of churning out big-budget sequels and cinematic universes populated with superbeings seems to be wearing on filmgoers. Movies featuring once-reliable draws Jack Sparrow, the Transformers and the Mummy did poorly in the U.S. (2)”
Of course, the natural response to this is the typical internal scream of MAKE BETTER MOVIES THEN. But unless it is something that can quantified on a checklist that is easy to understand for shareholders, studio executives seem allergic to pulling the trigger on Art over commerce when this much money is on the line. This is a dangerous place for them to be in as the audience can go to many other platforms of entertainment that bypass these mega-studios entirely.
“Netflix Inc. and other digital distributors are creating more original movies, and consumers have more demands on their attention than ever, from Snapchat to YouTube. (2)”
Outside of putting internal systems in place that change the way their movies are made and marketed, in order to favor creativity (something that is NOT going to happen), Studios need to find a way to compete for the viewer’s attention.
“The big shadow hanging over the industry is whether studios will push to shorten the time between theater and home release of their movies, from the standard three months to within weeks after theater attendance has dropped off. The concern is that such a premium video-on-demand offering would give consumers less incentive to go see a movie in theaters, knowing they could watch it at home within weeks. (2)”
Personally, if I could watch a new release in my living room, I would. But then that might just be me.
Another facet of old Hollywood that is showing symptoms of collapse is the very concept of a movie star. There was a time when having someone like Humphrey Bogart, Tom Hanks, or Tom Cruise’s name attached to a film all but guaranteed success. But this too has changed.
“The art of managing a star’s career has become challenging in Hollywood’s New Economy. In years past, major projects could be pre-sold worldwide on star names, but distributors know they can’t be monetized to the same degree any more. Warners may pour $200 million or so into ‘Batman v Superman,’ but its potential success (didn’t) depend on Ben Affleck’s chemistry with Henry Cavill. (3)”
“Hollywood executives still want to believe in stars’ power to get bums on seats, so they will bet again on a headliner even after a few flops. There is some risk-aversion in this: if they make a flop with a big name in it, they are less likely to have to defend their decision to green-light the film.
This conservatism tends to favour the white male actors that have already attained superstar status over the selection of new and diverse talent (as does the fact that the decision-makers are predominantly white males too). (4)”
“The stars with the biggest global profiles, such as Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, are instantly recognisable in lucrative overseas markets.
But much of the industry’s recent success, at home and abroad, comes from the rise of the big special-effects event film: franchises like ‘Fast and Furious’, ‘Avengers’, ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘James Bond’ and ‘Star Wars’ (4)”
Where audiences once showed up for a star, they now show up for a brand of spectacle. But what happens when there is so much spectacle in every major release that it’s just not exciting, unique, or interesting anymore?
“Number-crunchers at Epagogix, a company in London, use an algorithm to project box-office takings of films based on their story elements including the use of special effects, a surprise ending or a cool location. And they reckon that as long as the stars look good and can act, they make scant difference, with at best a very few exceptions. It helps to have a damsel in distress, but it does not really matter which damsel. (4)”
These symptoms have led the film industry to push hard into foreign markets, especially in China where people haven’t yet tired of Hollywood’s antiquated bag of tricks.
“Foreign cinemas like to exhibit films with known names in the lead roles. Some old-school stars are still big draws the likes of Mr Cruise or even, apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (4)”
“Hollywood is making these gigantic movies not just for American audiences but for the rest of the world, too. Mostly China. Pacific Rim (got a sequel), even though it only recouped $101 million domestically of its $191 million budget. But then it made $114 million in China, with a grand total of $411 million worldwide. Warcraft was a colossal failure by American standards, making only a pathetic $46 million domestically on a budget of $160 million ... and it's more than likely getting a sequel after it reeled in $376 million worldwide, with $156 million of that coming from China alone. It beat out the box office totals of The Force Awakens and every Marvel movie. The American film industry is going to keep pumping out gigantic movies, even if they suck terribly and their predecessors bombed here, because nothing gets lost in translation when the movie you're trying to sell overseas is about robots punching monsters. (5)”
In this way, while Hollywood’s main thrust once hinged upon delivering experiences, it has now become a struggling fireworks factory desperate to find that one group of people who have never seen their stale fourth of July show before.
“The audience of 18- to 39-year-olds has declined over the past five years, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
‘There are pockets of age groups and demographics that have not been inspired by what they’re seeing in movie theaters,’ says Bud Mayo, president of Carmike Cinemas’ alternative programming and distribution division. ‘With social media, the reaction time is instantaneous. If kids don’t like it, word spreads.’ (6)”
At a time when filmmakers like to blame critics or aggregate sites for their latest film’s failure at the box office, more and more young people are using social media where movie recommendations and otherwise are delivered instantaneously by friends. They’re more informed than ever and the blame of poor returns on reviewers only shows just how out of touch Hollywood has become.
“At the same time, TV and online content continues to be compelling, with production values that rival those on the big screen. For a new generation of cinephiles, Ned Stark being separated from his head on ‘Game of Thrones,’ or Walter White cooking meth in his underwear in ‘Breaking Bad,’ are pop-culture totems. Little of what’s in the cineplex has that kind of impact.
‘There has been a shift in the way that people are consuming content, and it’s moving away from the big screen,’ says Bruce Nash, founder of the box-office tracking site The Numbers.
Producer Mike Medavoy says the box-office malaise is symptomatic of the larger problem of engaging moviegoers who have a wide variety of alternatives, from Netflix to Pokemon Go. ‘I’ve been deeply concerned for a long time by the fact that there are so many other options besides movies,’ he says. ‘Millennials can play games or watch movies at home on a big screen, so repeating the same kind of content over and over [at the movie theater] doesn’t really make sense. If you don’t give people something that’s fresh and new, they’re not going to show up.’
It’s a looming disaster that’s been more than a decade in the making. Some of it is self-inflicted, brought about by a mixture of greed and fear, aided by a profound and troubling lack of imagination. The consequences add up to a business that feels increasingly irrelevant. (6)”
You do see some smaller studios really taking creative risks with low budget films, but the mid-budget film is slowly disappearing from the cinema landscape as more and more studios chase that mega-budget blockbuster lottery-strike.
”It makes business sense for the studios to focus as much energy and money as possible on the biggest films that will generate the most revenue down the line.
That makes it harder to justify smaller films unless their budgets are really small, under $20 million, as opposed to a mid-budget film in the $50 to $80 million range. (7)”
“Studios will still put out some mid-budget comedies and romances and there will always been smaller production companies like Alcon that will be willing to foot the bill for smaller films because they don't need all of those spin-off opportunities to be profitable.
But with the content from entertainment driving more and more of these big studios' growth, those smaller films become much harder to justify. (7)”
The stars have faded, the audiences are leaving in record numbers, and the film industry is gutting itself to chase potentially higher and higher returns, only to often leave empty-handed. Currently they’re leaning heavily on the Chinese market to save them, perhaps in the future they’ll start making movies tailored to other high population markets like India. Regardless, with tensions across the globe ratcheting up politically, these markets could close themselves off in the blink of an eye. The film industry has never been so close to choking out on it’s own blood.
Part 3: Dreams
What would the ideal collapse scenario look like for appreciators of cinema? In my view, I would love to see the distribution method of films completely shatter. The near monopoly that the MPAA and Cinema Groups hold over the industry is crippling to smaller films, and an industry collapse would allow more local theaters with fewer mandated restrictions to pop up and still be profitable.
A true shattering of the current cinema system would return the artform to the wild west of filmmaking that existed in the 60s and 70s, where you could tell any story you could dream and possibly even find an audience with it. Where the politics of suits, stocks, and superhero-fast-food-franchises no longer composed the spinal column of an entire industry.
Where would Walt Disney be if he were a young person looking to start an animation studio in LA today? He’d be back on the family farm or back in the military like so many would-be artists these days. I can see it now, ‘Welcome to Starbucks, my name’s Walt. What can I get for you?’
By putting films in the vice grip of corporations, we stifle the voices of those who could have affected generations of people with their stories...and for what? Iron Man 5? Transformers 10? Remakes of sequels to a remake? It’s not worth it and it needs to stop.
Here’s the beautiful thing though, we (yes, us, the little people), we can stop this machine.
Part 4: Action
Ok. Let’s do this together, let’s kill Hollywood.There are steps you can take to educate or suffocate the film industry through your personal habits without affecting your viewing habits much.
Don’t see franchise films on opening nights. If you simply MUST see them in the theater, then wait for a discount day (in my area tickets on Tuesday nights are half off). Hollywood puts a silly level of weight on opening night numbers, so, do what you can to reduce those numbers.
Inversely, show up on the opening night of movies you think the studio took a risk to make. Can you imagine a world where movies like Brigsby Bear or Kubo and the Two Strings garner more attendance than Transformers 6 does? There are always great movies being made that you can feel great about throwing your money at! You just have to know where to look.
There are many ways to see a movie that don’t involve rewarding the people who made it, legal and otherwise. Don’t buy tickets to, discs of, or streams of bad movies. If you MUST see a movie that you know is crappy, find a way around their system. This can be entirely legal, such as buying a used copy or checking it out of your local library. There are also illegal methods, which are bad. Don’t do that. I would never do that. Wink.
Post your opinion of a movie you saw on social media. Inform your friends so they will know to stay away from a stinker or reward an unexpected winner!
Never spend money on a movie ticket or impulse movie buy without researching the film first. Be an informed consumer, Hollywood HATES informed consumers.
If we could get every single person who watches movies to follow these five habits, then we could decapitate the current film industry’s formula in less than a year, finally allowing the artform of filmmaking to undergo a rebirth and unleashing a new era of daring and imaginative movies.
But this isn’t going to happen, the gilded hooks of Hollywood’s ghost have pierced the flesh of audiences so deeply, that it will continue to limp along on the power of stale nostalgia and glossy mindless sheen until it’s slow, stutter of a demise. The mass market’s lack of desire to be informed consumers coupled with the fresh injection of life from foreign markets will continue to prop up this celluloid corpse of a cash cow...at least for now
Yet the symptoms are really there, the damage is done. The film industry as we know it is only one truly catastrophic summer away from a raft of bankruptcies. Let’s do what we can, to speed that along.
This has been Cinema Cemetery, digging six feet deeper into filmmaking culture.
-Josh Evans