The Box Office June Update

As I mentioned in my May update, it looked like the summer was going to peak in May on the movie front. Shrek 3, Pirates 2 and Spiderman 3 were undoubtedly the biggest movie picture events.

The last installment of Shrek at 441 million dollars was the 3rd highest grossing film of all time behind only Star Wars and Titanic. The original Spiderman launched this whole megablockbuster era that we have today by being the first film to gross 100 million dollars in a single weekend (this is akin to the film industry's version of breaking the 4-minute barrier) and Spiderman 2 got immense love from a large fan base and critical respectability. Like Spiderman, Pirates of the Carribean has created a cult fugure (and an oscar nomination as well) out of Jonny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow and left its marks all over the box office record books setting opening day, opening weekend, and opening 10-day records before becoming the second highest film of the decade.

So to summarize, what all these numbers mean is that last month we had the final promised installment of the three biggest summer movie phenomenons of the new millenium and whether it was because they were all crammed together or not, they all dissapointed. They still made money but sequels automatically tend to do that anyway, and they did not make money in terms of satisfied customers.

Of the three, Spiderman 3 is probably the least dissapointment-proof. It is safely above 300 million dollars now and while it had some mixed reviews upon its opening, the general consensus was pretty positive. I personally thought it was a very uneven experience at first, but satisfying overall, and it served as a satisfying conclusion to the series. The main problem, I think was that so much was resolved in Spiderman 2 (Harry knows who Spiderman is, Peter and Mary Jane get together, Peter confesses to Aunt May for lying about Uncle Ben's death, etc.) that there was little tension left over for Spiderman 3. That left the first hour of Spiderman 3 boring and uneventful. It started to feel like a teen flick and reminded me that without the superhero element, Spiderman does not have as much to offer in terms of rich and dynamic characters. In other words, I don't feel that Peter Parker, Mary Jane, and Harry are interesting enough characters to base a film around if the superhero angle was taken out of the equation. Therefore, it was imperative for the film to not waste too much time with exposition and get into the superhero dynamics before the audience gets bored, which was the case with me. Once, the film found its groove, things started rolling, however. When Spiderman's suit turned from red to black (I'm sure there's some more technical term for what happened to him that some comic geek would know), you could really tell that Tobey MaGuire was having fun playing against type for the first time in his career and I felt the new additions to the Spiderman ensemble were all complimentary. My final verdict of satisfaction came about ultimately because the ending really was very effective and it's hard to feel satisfied by any ending that you've waited five years and sat through a combined 7 hours of film to see.


Shrek 3 I've heard pretty bad opinions across the board from the imdb.com comments that it just didn't measure up to its predecessors.

Pirates of the Carribean III, on the other hand, just didn't succeed as a film, in my opinion. I say
this as someone who counts the original Pirates of the Carribean as one of his favorite films of all time so needless to say, I was rooting for the film and gave it every benefit of the doubt. In the end, it was just a squandered sequel. It was about as bad as it could possibly considering the potential of the story and the greatness of these characters. The story was so convoluted, it made Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (which I complained was too confusing) look like Little Red Riding Hood. I was surprised that despite the fact that the movie was a failure and sequels usually have major trouble pleasing critics, Pirates of the Carribean III actually got some good reviews. My local newspaper and a number of others actually found the film to be pretty good.

The era of the blockbuster

Five years ago, Spiderman burst into movie theaters across the country an unpredented three weekends before Memorial day. Boasting a head start over the rest of the summer films, an unlikely choice for the lead in Tobey MaGuire, and a legion of comic book aficianados eager for the movie's release, the film made movie history by becoming the first film to make one hundred million dollars in its opening weekend.

Since then, Spiderman 3 enters theatered the same weekend, but in an era that's completeley dominated by summer blockbusters. At $151 million Spiderman 3 broke the weekend record once again and has become the eighth picture to do so. Thirty-three movies have grossed $200 million or more domestically and 23 of those came out during the summer whereas only 28 films hit the $200 million mark before this decade.

Ten years ago, there might have been one or two big budget projects like Men in Black, Batman Forever, or Independence Day that would generate water cooler buzz all summer, but nowadays, a big-event picture enters the theaters once every other week during the summer months, with sequels, prequels, remakes. Everything practically falls into this pattern even if it's not technically a sequel. The 2002 hit Signs and M. Night Shamylan's sophomore effort, was anticipated "the next M. Night Shamylan film," which was in essence The Sixth Sense II or we could have called Michael Moore's Farenheight 911, "Bowling for Columbine II."

"Why don't the studios care about originality?" you may ask. They do. In fact, it's because of their love of filmmaking and their desire to want to make innovative and original films that the studios put us through this cycle and it also benefits us as well. Here's how:

By expending a lot of money on these cash cow films and shamelessly plugging away at them until every person and their grandmother has seen the movie twice, studios are able to pay for all the more interesting films that might not be as sure of a commercial bet. These films usually appear in theaters from around the end of the summer to the end of the year, and you can often find many of them spilling over into January and February. The films that are released during this time of year in hopes of winning Oscars, which are little toy statues that the winners like to wave around to their peers in hopes of gaining respect, power, and priority seating at high-class Hollywood establishments. It's a strange culture they have out there.

Nevertheless, once Oscar season ends, we have a season of pretty-much nothing on the movie front. Movie fans can spend their time watching the NHL or college basketball or whatever else catches their fancy, because the state of movies is pretty much unchanged. Sure, there are movies in the theaters between February and April but these are films that are released just for the sake of having something new for the movie theaters to show. With a few exceptions, these movies are usually very forgettable (If films in this category like R.V., the Pacifier, Norbit, Epic Movie, Failure to Launch, The Shaggy Dog, Date Movie or Wild Hogs become classics 10 years down the road, than I will eat my words on this one). I think of it as a kind of absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder-type of process where we take a break from watching current releases and might even swear off movies as a whole considering the quality of the films that comes out during this period.

This is where the summer Blockbuster season comes to the rescue. It presents us with sequels, remakes and tentpoles which are virtually impossible to turn down. Anyone who's watched Pirates of the Carribean 2 and has even the slightest interest in the characters is going to feel compelled to watch the third one just to see what happens to the characters. This is why sequels are so profitable, although that's based on the cliffhanger element being done well enough. Personally, I thought one of the weaknesses of Spiderman 2 was that it closed off all the loose threads for me to be invested in the third: Spiderman's identity revealed to Harry, Spiderman's identity revealed to Mary Jane, Spiderman's confession to his aunt, Spiderman and Mary Jane getting together, etc.

Still, the people saw it in mass droves ignoring mixed reviews because that's the power of the sequel: It's a must-see and more than that, it's a must-see on opening weekend, which some of us (myself included) have not been able to make.

The tragedy of this summer is that if we mutually agree that Ocean's 12 ruined our good faith in the Ocean's 11 and that the Rush Hour series was never very good in the first place, than the three big trilogy back-ends this summer, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, and Spiderman 3, are all taking place by Memorial Day Weekend which was when the summer seasion is traditionally supposed to start. The Early Bird catches the worm is the philosophy. So if you haven't been able to make the big opening-weekend rushes, don't worry, there's still the actual summer to see them. I myself am a little behind on starting my summer. I just saw Spiderman 3 last weekend and will see Pirates this weekend.

And the summer season is off: Spiderman breaks all the records

Well, the summer season has started (and I have yet to fully discuss that in another post that I had planned to post up) and it was a bang with the new Spiderman sequel. The critics gave it "mixed reviews" while the public saw it in record numbers. Early Sunday projections come to the tune of $149 million and all I can say is that I saw both these trends coming. It seemed obvious that the critics wouldn't like the 3rd part of a trilogy because they rarely do. The expectations are so high, that they're usually expecting the next Citizen Kane and this is usually more the case when the film directors like the 2nd half of the trilogy better. Roger Ebert called X-Men 2 the best superhero movie he'd ever seen until the year after that when he proclaimed Spiderman 2 the best superhero movie ever again, so again the expectations are going to be high.

My city paper's film critic, Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post, went on to express this self-fullfilling prophecy in her review of the film. She basically said, "Spiderman 3 cements the rule that the third leg of a trilogy will always be a massive disappointment, just like Batman Forever and X-Men 3." As I constantly try to remind people, it wasn't until Batman & Robin that the Batman series took a real dive. Batman Forever remains one of my favorite superhero films and I have yet to hear a rational argument for why X-Men 3 was not a good film. Maybe slightly less effective than the first two films, but the level of acting, plot complexity, and special effects are still way up there. By no means do I equate Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer as directors (I think much higher of the latter), but without seeing the opening credits, I would openly challenge many of the film critics who bashed X-Men 3 to identify whether it was a Singer or a Rattner movie.

I also expected Spiderman 3 to do tremendously well, but duh. The harder question is why. I much prefer the X-Men series and tried to show it to my dad once, but for some reason he has a habit of running in the opposite direction of anything that appears sci-fi and about halfway through, he felt it was just unappealling and walked away.

It was too complex for him and in that respect, Spiderman with only one hero (Peter Parker), one villain (Doc Ock or the Green Goblin), one girl (MJ), and one variable who shifts in between (Harry Osborn), it's superhero/supervillain entertainment watered down enough so that anyone can partake. That's kind of the way I see it, at least. Magneto is a villain of Shakesperean proportions and he plays games of chess with his biggest arch rival. Despite Alfred Molina and Willhem Dafoe being serviceable actors, they played one-dimenstional villains. In Spiderman 1, the Peter Parker-MJ relationship is so cliche of the girl-next-door type story, that she's even literally next door. I also didn't feel that any of the key relationships evolved organically from Spiderman 1 to Spiderman 2. Harry and Peter Parker are "best friends" but that is merely a plot point. Do we ever see the two actually canoodling as friends? Despite the cliche factor, I might say that it was a somewhat effective progression from boy having a crush on girl to the two falling in love in Spiderman 1, but in Spiderman 2, there's an awkward stability between the two and they act as if they're lifelong friends. MJ is expecting things of him as "her best friend" such as being on time to the play. It's merely a relationship established at the start of the picture to move it along from one end of the spectrum to another.

Nevertheless, I do like the Spiderman Series and would give both movies thumbs up. I think that they do a great job of intermixing the superhero within the mundane world and that's another reason why this superhero trilogy has become such a mega force at the box office. Because it attracts the comic book nerds in droves while it attracts the people who aren't drawn to comic book storytelling. I think Tobey MaGuire is cast extremely against type and it plays off especially well. I just don't think it's on the level of really great movie making

Nevertheless, I will probably see Spiderman 3, mainly because when something's this big, you've gotta jump in and see what it's all about. I'm also extremely curious to see what they've done with Thomas Haden Church