To those who don’t follow the box office, it might seem like the pandemic has dealt a blow to movie theaters but the numbers have shown for quite a while that films have been in jeopardy for a few years now.
The blockbuster business model of films has geared towards blockbusters and
that disincentivised films from prioritizing quality. For one, the emphasis is
generally on making money opening weekend. A film might make half its money
opening weekend (generally enough to break even) before audiences realize it’s
not that good. It’s a curiosity that film critics even devote their time to big
releases when audiences will realize a film’s a dud before it’s too late.
I often cite 2002 as the year things changed because the original Spider-Man
became the first film to gross
$100 million in a single weekend. Believe me, it wasn’t just me looking at
a newspaper and realizing “eureka! We’re in a new era.” A lot of press was
written about this milestone (which Google News hasn’t been that generous in
preserving). Ironically, some of the films that topped the top ten that weekend
were Changing
Lanes (a thriller starring Samuel L Jackson and Ben Affleck), The
Scorpion King (a Dwayne Johnson film) and The
Rookie (a sentimental sports movie).
Tragically, very few films would survive in today’s market. A sports film
(particularly the Kevin Costner kind) but it’s chances are slimmer, especially
in today’s market.
Dwayne Johnson still makes films but they’re board game and Disney ride
adaptations in the case of Jumanji and Jungle Cruise. Which brings me to the
point that even tired and tested brands and genres like those mentioned above
might not get financed if they’re price tag is too expensive. The only thing that
sells today is what’s known as Intellectual Properties or IPs which translates
to films made from a past property whether a sequel/prequel/reboot/remake of an
existing film or an adaptation of a highly popular comic/TV show/broadway show/book
(i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, 50 Shades of Gray). In fact, in the
year 2016, only
2 films out of the top 20—La La Land and Hidden Figures—were original
films.
One way around this is to hire visionaries to get an intellectual property and
make it their own like Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes, and Taiki Wahiti have
done. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of the classic film Taxi Driver, wrote
and directed the brilliant film First Reformed with Ethan Hawke to the tune of $3.4
million. Director Todd Philips had much better luck when he used Taxi
Driver as a heavy influence on his (marginally) comic book based film The Joker
for a film that grossed roughly 100 times
that amount.
This phenomenon is known as the death of the mid-range film which many people
have written about:
Is
the Mid-Budget Movie an Endangered Species?
This all came to a head when mega-influential director
Martin Scorsese penned an essay attacking
the multi-headed beast of Marvel for ruining movies.
Which Brings Us to 2021
I keep track of a list of directors I've seen 4
or more films of. Last year, of the around 45 films I saw only 2 directors
that met that benchmark (Ron Howard-Hillbilly Elegy and Chris Nolan-Tenet) and
very few other notable names who I just hadn't seen enough of like Lee Daniels
(Billie Holiday), Charlie Kaufman (I'm Thinking of Ending Things) and Paul
Greengrass (News of the World)...most films I saw were by directors who were
making a film I'd seen for the first time. I think (though I could be wrong)
that studio money going to trusted film makers is going down and you just have
to watch a lot of indie stuff on streaming to not get typical franchise stuff.
However, this year that number ballooned to 8 out of only 34 films I've seen so
far*. Additionally, there are so many artistically-renowned directors that I
haven't yet seen or might not see--Mike Mills, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel (without Ethan) Coen, Chloe Zhao, Pablo Sorrentino, Pablo Lorrain, Guillermo del Toro,
Peter Jackson, Sean Baker—that it's a remarkably rich slate. A few years ago
with David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh moving to TV and aging masters like
Mike Nichols, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme struggled mightily with
the studio system.
Now whether they're streaming or in a theater, I'm not sure
if we can declare movies dead just yet if visionary filmmakers are being able
to get their visions met. This has been
a great year for movies.
Most industry insiders treat Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film
Jaws (followed by his friend George Lucas’s 1977 film Star Wars) is ground zero
of blockbuster culture.
Spielberg’s near-impossible feat of remaking a classic--West
Side Story—and turning it into an entirely new classic puts him in the category
of auteurs behind this year’s wave of greatness.
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