The Search Engine Optimization company PageTraffic posted a list of the 500 most popular keywords on Google during 2022 (so far, anyway) on its web site.
As might be expected many of the top searches were clearly a way of accessing utilities that could be used for a great many different purposes in daily life (like e-mail and social media accounts usable for general communication, or means of online payment). A great many of the others also appeared to be related to the performance of essential daily tasks, like shopping (there were plenty of names of retail outlets here, in the main of a general nature; interest in bargains on used cars, used textbooks, etc.), and getting information related to that (as by checking price comparison sites, or finding directions to some place to which they needed to get, or the weather they would face going to work or going about their errands during the day).
When one got away from that to searches for information that was not necessarily being sought for some sort of immediate use one saw signs of at least a little interest in current events (manifest mainly in people going to favored news sites), and even a few particular news stories (generally associated with the cultural and political "fringe"--what most would call "conspiracy theory"-type stuff, or tabloid-type stuff). However, entertainment predominated, especially if one includes the numerous searches referencing celebrities and pornography under that heading. (Even where the keyword was not the name of some porn site or of some well-known fetish many of the searches were very, very specific, and the intent hard to mistake.)
Most of this seems predictable enough, but there were too surprises. I had a notion that, if most people are not intellectuals and their searches for information are mostly for stuff they can make practical use of immediately in their own lives, I thought that in looking for the immediately useful they would show themselves to be not merely "buyers," but "doers." I thought there would be more evidence of people seeking out, for example, health information, or wanting to know how to fix something, clean something, cook something. (WebMD did make the list, but it was not very high up that list, and I failed to notice anything else like it. One may imagine that some of those going to YouTube had an interest in its ample supply of "how-to" videos, but again, the keywords failed to make that clear--and I personally suspect people looking for YouTube generally rather than something specific on YouTube were going looking for amusement rather than to learn something.)
The other surprise was in the celebrities people were looking up. Those they searched for in 2022 were pretty much the same ones I would have expected them to be searching for in 2012 (Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Emma Watson, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox)--and even 2002 (Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Britney Spears, Trish Stratus, Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Alyssa Milano, Brooke Burke, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, Jenny McCarthy)--as if none of those who have emerged since have captured the "public imagination" in the same way, even by comparison with them at this point in which the great majority of these personages would seem to be very, very far from the peak of their cachet.
Certainly plenty of people have remarked the decline of the movie star, but a decline of celebrity more broadly in the way implied here is something else. Could it be a function of the ever-more extreme fragmentation of popular culture? Or is something else going on?
What do you think, readers? (Lest there be any doubt about the matter that's not a rhetorical question, I really am inviting your comment in the thread below. If anyone is out there. The results I'm talking about didn't exactly raise my confidence in anyone being a reader of the kind of thing this blog happens to offer . . .)
Friday, December 16, 2022
Does a Book Release Now Have to be an Event for People to Take an Interest?
I have previously written about how the tougher and tougher market for theatrically released films since the advent of TV has meant that films' backers need their movies to be perceived as events that the audience will want to see in the theater now rather than wait three months and stream at home to get very many people to buy tickets.
These days I think the same thing is happening with novels.
Simply put, people used to consume novels casually and frequently in the course of their daily routine--during a commute, while looking to relax before bed, etc. opening one up. In doing so they often followed some genre, some author, some series fairly faithfully, so much so that the most popular authors commonly building careers out of some formula, or the continuing adventures of some character, in a manner reminiscent of catching up with the latest episode of some TV show. (Indeed, Mack Bolan had a dozen adventures a year in the '80s--not unlike what a season of a show might offer--while hardback heroes like Jack Ryan or Dirk Pitt, or later, Alex Cross or Kay Scarpetta, often had new adventures annually or biennially.)
However, just like the old pattern of movie theater-going, that whole model of producing and enjoying books is collapsing due to the convenience of other media (just as it became easier to watch TV than see a movie people can watch a show or play a game just as easily as read a book during their commute or anything else, and more disposed to do so too), with this likely having much to do with the decline of the paperback (the end of The Executioner was a non-story in the media), and the way the bestseller lists look these days. Those hardback authors who crank out, for example, procedural-type thrillers regularly, seem to me in the main old stars doing so for the audience--or what remains of the audience--they won long ago, because younger people are simply not becoming casual readers, and heavy consumers of novels in the process, in that same way. Thus do we see James Patterson still making the list--but we don't see new writers of comparable thrillers getting up there in the ranks with him. Indeed, where the names on the covers are concerned the paperback rack at your local convenience store or supermarket (in general, dominated by the paperback editions of last year's bestsellers) is virtually indistinguishable from what it was in the '90s.
Those very few "newer" novelists we see make it really big these days generally seem to offer something more idiosyncratic in content, and are more often aided by he publicity potential of the author themselves--with Della Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing exemplary. The book is admittedly describable as a murder mystery--which makes selling it that much easier--but no basis for some series whose latest entries people will snap up when they hit the market each and every year, with other features of the narrative (its sociobiological perspective, its politics, etc.) critical to the draw, while it probably mattered a good deal that the author was already a famous and not uncontroversial figure. (Again I am reminded of the vile king of the Paris publishing scene Dauriat sneeringly telling young Lucien de Rubempre that what he does is take "distinguished names," "reputations ready-made," and via crass and corrupt means for manufacturing "success"--"the claqueurs hired to applaud"--coin money out of them, rather than giving aspiring authors a chance to become famous by actually writing, and that they are fools to expect anything else from him.)
In this particular case the publisher was especially successful in making the event happen--and in the process made a bestseller not simply by attracting people in the habit of reading, but creating such an atmosphere as drew in a significant number of that ever-growing portion of the potential audience who do not read so regularly, because they were promised something special, because the author was themselves a source of interest, because they wanted to see what the fuss was about. Afterward, I suspect, many of those readers did not become more regular readers but went back to reading nothing—at least, until another publisher similarly interested them in their wares as something to which they simply must attend.
These days I think the same thing is happening with novels.
However, just like the old pattern of movie theater-going, that whole model of producing and enjoying books is collapsing due to the convenience of other media (just as it became easier to watch TV than see a movie people can watch a show or play a game just as easily as read a book during their commute or anything else, and more disposed to do so too), with this likely having much to do with the decline of the paperback (the end of The Executioner was a non-story in the media), and the way the bestseller lists look these days. Those hardback authors who crank out, for example, procedural-type thrillers regularly, seem to me in the main old stars doing so for the audience--or what remains of the audience--they won long ago, because younger people are simply not becoming casual readers, and heavy consumers of novels in the process, in that same way. Thus do we see James Patterson still making the list--but we don't see new writers of comparable thrillers getting up there in the ranks with him. Indeed, where the names on the covers are concerned the paperback rack at your local convenience store or supermarket (in general, dominated by the paperback editions of last year's bestsellers) is virtually indistinguishable from what it was in the '90s.
Those very few "newer" novelists we see make it really big these days generally seem to offer something more idiosyncratic in content, and are more often aided by he publicity potential of the author themselves--with Della Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing exemplary. The book is admittedly describable as a murder mystery--which makes selling it that much easier--but no basis for some series whose latest entries people will snap up when they hit the market each and every year, with other features of the narrative (its sociobiological perspective, its politics, etc.) critical to the draw, while it probably mattered a good deal that the author was already a famous and not uncontroversial figure. (Again I am reminded of the vile king of the Paris publishing scene Dauriat sneeringly telling young Lucien de Rubempre that what he does is take "distinguished names," "reputations ready-made," and via crass and corrupt means for manufacturing "success"--"the claqueurs hired to applaud"--coin money out of them, rather than giving aspiring authors a chance to become famous by actually writing, and that they are fools to expect anything else from him.)
In this particular case the publisher was especially successful in making the event happen--and in the process made a bestseller not simply by attracting people in the habit of reading, but creating such an atmosphere as drew in a significant number of that ever-growing portion of the potential audience who do not read so regularly, because they were promised something special, because the author was themselves a source of interest, because they wanted to see what the fuss was about. Afterward, I suspect, many of those readers did not become more regular readers but went back to reading nothing—at least, until another publisher similarly interested them in their wares as something to which they simply must attend.
Black Panther 2, Avatar and the End of 2022
Black Panther 2 has taken in $11 million in its fifth weekend, lifting its total to $409 million (up from $394 million last weekend), a rate of decline suggesting the movie will finish out below the $450 million mark, and perhaps not much above $430 million in North America; while globally (where the film now stands at $768 million) it seems certain to finish well below not just the billion-dollar mark, but the $900 million mark, and I think, likely to finish below even the $850 million mark (which would give it about half of the original's gross when this is adjusted for 2022 prices).
Of course, this is pretty much in line with the low end of the conventional expectations from the start for the U.S. (with which I did not disagree, and which seemed to me increasingly persuasive from the first weekend on). At the same I have little more to say about what all this means for a Black Panther 3 or for the continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Instead what interests me is that Black Panther 2 has held to the #1 spot at the box office for five straight weeks--a rare feat these days, especially in the normally very competitive holiday season, though alas, this seems at least as much a function of the weakness of the competition as the strength of the film's draw. Had it come out in a "regular" year it might have done even less well--which is to say that, like Top Gun 2, if in lesser degree, it has been a beneficiary of the pandemic's leaving 2022 with a relatively thin slate of releases.
I expect that Avatar 2, cutting into what remains of Black Panther 2's ticket sales from this weekend forward, will similarly benefit from being up against a weaker-than-usual slate of December and January releases. But afterward the market will tighten fast, with 2023, after three years of slim pickings at the box office, looking as packed with potential hits of the big-budget action franchise variety as any pre-pandemic year.
Of course, this is pretty much in line with the low end of the conventional expectations from the start for the U.S. (with which I did not disagree, and which seemed to me increasingly persuasive from the first weekend on). At the same I have little more to say about what all this means for a Black Panther 3 or for the continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Instead what interests me is that Black Panther 2 has held to the #1 spot at the box office for five straight weeks--a rare feat these days, especially in the normally very competitive holiday season, though alas, this seems at least as much a function of the weakness of the competition as the strength of the film's draw. Had it come out in a "regular" year it might have done even less well--which is to say that, like Top Gun 2, if in lesser degree, it has been a beneficiary of the pandemic's leaving 2022 with a relatively thin slate of releases.
I expect that Avatar 2, cutting into what remains of Black Panther 2's ticket sales from this weekend forward, will similarly benefit from being up against a weaker-than-usual slate of December and January releases. But afterward the market will tighten fast, with 2023, after three years of slim pickings at the box office, looking as packed with potential hits of the big-budget action franchise variety as any pre-pandemic year.
Friday, December 9, 2022
The Need for Movies to be "Events" and the Fate of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Short version: in a couple of decades a number of changes, the most important of which was the proliferation of TV, meant that measured on a per capita basis Americans' trips to the movie theater fell from thirty to four, and the studios struggled then and continue to struggle now simply to maintain that level. Over that period they have developed and utilized many strategies to accomplish that object (bigger screens, color and 3-D to provide a superior visual experience; "edgier" fare than the more thoroughly censored small screen could offer, etc., etc.), but improvement in TV technology (color, bigger screens and high-definition; access to more content via cable, home video, streaming; the relaxation of censorship over television until it became edgier than the movies) progressively narrowed their options. And these days filmmakers have only two options left, namely:
1. Deliver the kind of spectacle TV production companies still can't deliver on their budgets, while extracting every bit of impact from screens bigger than any TV-maker offers, to offer a sensory experience such as viewers still cannot have at home; and
2. Make your movie seem like an "event" that people want to participate in right now, rather than waiting for two or three months and catching the thing on streaming at a much lower price.
Big-budget action-adventure films with salable brand names fit the bill well, and in this century, none have more consistently done so than Marvel, which offered the requisite spectacle while making its movies seem an event even as it put out three of them in a year in what still stands as the only really successful attempt at a "Shared Universe" (as the fate of such efforts with Star Wars, Warner Brothers' Justice League, Universal's "Dark Universe," and the rest make all too clear).
Where the matter of making the films seem like an "event" is concerned Marvel benefited greatly from the fact that where DC characters had been previously familiar--and new versions of their stories unavoidably and often unfavorably compared to their predecessors--they were putting their not-much-less famous characters on the big screen for the first time, and in the process delivering something new in at least visual terms (like Spider-Man in a really big-budget, big-screen production for the first time ever, swinging his way through New York in Sam Raimi's original 2002 film). As more and more such characters got the treatment there was still the interest of cross-overs, culminating in the gathering together of Iron Man, and Captain America, and Thor--and the Hulk, and Black Widow, and Nick Fury, and Hawkeye--that helped make 2012's The Avengers an event. Subsequently Phase 3's continued milking of the interest of multi-hero cross-over events (from Captain America 3 forward), mobilization of "identity politics" behind Black Panther and Captain Marvel gave those films "event" status claims, and the films' collectively offering an arc which drew that whole "universe" of superheroes together into their biggest cross-over event as they fought their biggest enemy ever in their climactic battle with Thanos, saw the franchise go from strength to strength.
By contrast nothing of the kind could be claimed for Phase 4, by which time a very great deal had already been done, and the franchise could not go bigger, while the law of diminishing returns was kicking in very forcefully. The interest of certain critical figures was already exhausted (Thor), while by this point the figures being put on-screen for the first time tended to be less well-known to the broader audience (The Eternals, Shang-Chi--Spider-Man they are not). And the makers of the films did not exactly rise to the challenge the situation posed. An origin story for Black Widow could seem an anti-climax to her prior adventures, as prequels so often do; Dr. Strange, another of the less well-known figures, had a sequel movie tied in with the Wandavision TV series in a way problematic for the broader audience that could not all be counted upon to have seen it; and Black Panther 2 was mainly an event to the extent that it was connected with a prior movie that had been an event (while dispensing with the lead character and actor who played him!).
In the end, only Spider-Man: No Way Home, with its ever-popular hero and retconning of the two prior Spider-Man franchises into a single multiverse-spanning narrative could seem really an event that way. And unsurprisingly it was the only really spectacular, Marvel Cinematic Universe-at-its-peak, billion dollar barrier-bursting success (with the fact that, if one can blame the pandemic for much of the underperformance of the first three movies one cannot do the same for that of the three movies which followed Spider-Man underlining the fact). And right now I have my doubts that there is anywhere left to go in this respect--the Phase 5 slate of films already in the pipeline. (Indeed, Ant-Man 3, will be coming to a theater near you scarcely two months from now.) Some of them might make decent money (with Captain America 4 perhaps the best bet that way, to go by their prior track records). But I see no sign of anything that will bring back the sense of Marvel releases as events that did so much for the franchise's first three phases, with all that implies for the franchise's fortunes in the coming years.
Martin Eden, Radical Rightist
In Jack London's Martin Eden the eponymous protagonist, discovering the world of books and the ideas in them, early on happens on the work of Herbert Spencer, which--along with his later discovery of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche--becomes a profound if ultimately destructive influence on him.
In that, as in so many other ways, the book had a very contemporary ring.
That may seem odd, as Spencer and Nietzsche hardly enjoy the same vogue today that they did in London's time. But they stand in a tradition that endures--the radical right's hostility to egalitarianism, with Social Darwinism, nihilism and the rest invoked in opposition to liberalism and the left. And Eden's discovering those ideas so early on, and being influenced by them, should seem obviously contemporary to anyone looking at the "alt-right" and related phenomena today.
I cannot credit London with saying much about why Eden came across those thinkers and ideas that held him so spellbound--but the question of why this happened seems easy enough to answer. Simply put, the ideas of even the extreme right are given a publicity that the ideas of the left are not. Often they are lent a fair amount of prestige through their having rich, powerful champions. Even when the publicity is not wholly positive it tends to be somewhat respectful, and even if less than respectful it still creates a wider awareness of them, and may promote interest in them, in a way that it does not with leftist ideas. And so a young person who starts looking for answers is far more likely to encounter them than they are those of the left (certainly if we are speaking of the actual left, and not the conservative centrists to which our lobotomized political discourse refers as left), as endlessly demonstrated by how much more easily a young person finds their way to, for example, Ayn Rand or Jordan Peterson, than to socialism.
It may also be that for a young person looking for answers severe, elitist, ideas like the ones discussed here have some attraction. The fact that they are looking for answers, after all, is likely to bespeak a measure of dissatisfaction--with the society in which they find themselves, with the people around them . . . with all that means in a society which speaks endlessly of equality, democracy, etc.. (That society may in fact be extremely unequal, the democratic pretensions threadbare at best, but if, as is often the case, they take the rhetoric seriously they are easily persuaded that this is part of the problem.) The idea that there is rightfully an elite may not be unappealing, even when they are clearly not part for it--telling themselves that they really belong in such an elite, that they have somehow been deprived of their rightful place by those from whom they feel alienated, the "herd" somehow responsible for their being down here rather than up there where they ought to be. Indeed, the very severity of the views can fit in well with all of this--their adopting "tough-minded" ideas seeming to them to be proof that they are themselves "tough," unlike all those others spouting what seems to them namby-pamby claptrap, and therefore part of that circle above and better than all the others, because they see life as it is, all as, even if their situation is none too estimable at the moment, they entertain hopes for what they might become, attaining to their rightful place. (This may go especially for those who have found delusions of grandeur a necessary coping mechanism for their hard actual circumstances, or the challenge of going out into a world turning a very hard and ugly face toward a young person of modest background--especially until they learn just how rough the going will actually be, how irrelevant their estimation of themselves.)
Thus did it go with the would-be superman Eden, disdainful of the "herd," and intent on winning his way to some place higher and better--who only very late, too late, realized that for all his very many and real gifts he was nothing of the kind, and just when he should have reaped the rewards of his struggles, threw everything away.
In that, as in so many other ways, the book had a very contemporary ring.
That may seem odd, as Spencer and Nietzsche hardly enjoy the same vogue today that they did in London's time. But they stand in a tradition that endures--the radical right's hostility to egalitarianism, with Social Darwinism, nihilism and the rest invoked in opposition to liberalism and the left. And Eden's discovering those ideas so early on, and being influenced by them, should seem obviously contemporary to anyone looking at the "alt-right" and related phenomena today.
I cannot credit London with saying much about why Eden came across those thinkers and ideas that held him so spellbound--but the question of why this happened seems easy enough to answer. Simply put, the ideas of even the extreme right are given a publicity that the ideas of the left are not. Often they are lent a fair amount of prestige through their having rich, powerful champions. Even when the publicity is not wholly positive it tends to be somewhat respectful, and even if less than respectful it still creates a wider awareness of them, and may promote interest in them, in a way that it does not with leftist ideas. And so a young person who starts looking for answers is far more likely to encounter them than they are those of the left (certainly if we are speaking of the actual left, and not the conservative centrists to which our lobotomized political discourse refers as left), as endlessly demonstrated by how much more easily a young person finds their way to, for example, Ayn Rand or Jordan Peterson, than to socialism.
It may also be that for a young person looking for answers severe, elitist, ideas like the ones discussed here have some attraction. The fact that they are looking for answers, after all, is likely to bespeak a measure of dissatisfaction--with the society in which they find themselves, with the people around them . . . with all that means in a society which speaks endlessly of equality, democracy, etc.. (That society may in fact be extremely unequal, the democratic pretensions threadbare at best, but if, as is often the case, they take the rhetoric seriously they are easily persuaded that this is part of the problem.) The idea that there is rightfully an elite may not be unappealing, even when they are clearly not part for it--telling themselves that they really belong in such an elite, that they have somehow been deprived of their rightful place by those from whom they feel alienated, the "herd" somehow responsible for their being down here rather than up there where they ought to be. Indeed, the very severity of the views can fit in well with all of this--their adopting "tough-minded" ideas seeming to them to be proof that they are themselves "tough," unlike all those others spouting what seems to them namby-pamby claptrap, and therefore part of that circle above and better than all the others, because they see life as it is, all as, even if their situation is none too estimable at the moment, they entertain hopes for what they might become, attaining to their rightful place. (This may go especially for those who have found delusions of grandeur a necessary coping mechanism for their hard actual circumstances, or the challenge of going out into a world turning a very hard and ugly face toward a young person of modest background--especially until they learn just how rough the going will actually be, how irrelevant their estimation of themselves.)
Thus did it go with the would-be superman Eden, disdainful of the "herd," and intent on winning his way to some place higher and better--who only very late, too late, realized that for all his very many and real gifts he was nothing of the kind, and just when he should have reaped the rewards of his struggles, threw everything away.
History as Superhero Tale
A.J.P. Taylor quipped in one of the essays collected in Europe From Napoleon to the Second International that in biography the biographer "builds up his individual subject until society is almost forgotten," whereas in history "society comes first," and the subject is "always man in society."
Looking at "popular" history I suspect the distinction is lost on most. It seems that for many, maybe most, of those who produce and consume it, history is nothing but biography--and what Taylor would recognize as history scarcely present at all. Here the "Great Man" theory (with the "good" among them responsible for all progress, the "evil" for all calamity) lives on, as if centuries of intellectual progress--the advent of other ways of looking at the world--simply never happened.
For those who unquestioningly accept such a view of history, as for Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes, society does not exist (unless they suddenly find it convenient to speak foolishness about "Big Society" to gull the simple as they slash the social safety net).
Accordingly, when cultural critics (quite correctly) take to task the simple-mindedness of superhero fiction, with its larger-than-life heroes and villains and the reduction of everyone else to cast-of-millions extras, it seems well to remember that it is less a matter of comic book writers distorting the public mind than the fact that their work simply reflects what people are taught about the world by the very institutions and persons responsible for their education in the broadest and narrowest senses of the term--so that they comprehend all history as superhero tale anyway.
Looking at "popular" history I suspect the distinction is lost on most. It seems that for many, maybe most, of those who produce and consume it, history is nothing but biography--and what Taylor would recognize as history scarcely present at all. Here the "Great Man" theory (with the "good" among them responsible for all progress, the "evil" for all calamity) lives on, as if centuries of intellectual progress--the advent of other ways of looking at the world--simply never happened.
For those who unquestioningly accept such a view of history, as for Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes, society does not exist (unless they suddenly find it convenient to speak foolishness about "Big Society" to gull the simple as they slash the social safety net).
Accordingly, when cultural critics (quite correctly) take to task the simple-mindedness of superhero fiction, with its larger-than-life heroes and villains and the reduction of everyone else to cast-of-millions extras, it seems well to remember that it is less a matter of comic book writers distorting the public mind than the fact that their work simply reflects what people are taught about the world by the very institutions and persons responsible for their education in the broadest and narrowest senses of the term--so that they comprehend all history as superhero tale anyway.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Is Marvel the New Star Wars?
All of this fell apart pretty quickly--by the third movie, in fact, with The Last Jedi getting such a poor reception that supporters insisted Russian robots must be behind it, and a half year later Solo flopping hard. (Going by the rule of thumb that, all other things being equal, a movie needs to make four to five times its production budget, to break even on its theatrical run Solo may have needed $1 billion-plus. It didn't even break the $400 million barrier.)
And so all those projects, like that Boba Fett movie, fell by the wayside as Disney settled for just putting out Episode IX to an underwhelming reception (with a global gross about a fifth less than what The Last Jedi had).
In the three years since, amid much firing and replacement of directors and much launching and cancellation of projects, we have not had a single new Star Wars movie even make it into production, and there will not be another such release for at least a year. (Maybe Taika Waititi will make his "untitled" movie, maybe he won't.)
The result is that it seems safe to say that the plan to transform the Star Wars franchise into a Marvel-like movie machine failed--and miserably--with the profusion of small-screen Star Wars unlikely to be satisfactory compensation financially with even the best response (and the shows would not seem to consistently have that).
Now it seems that not only is it the case that Star Wars did not become the new Marvel--but Marvel may be starting to look like Star Wars as its own movies, post-Phase 3, even with the box office normalizing, give an impression of a declining trend, the franchise's best days behind it. (Even Black Panther 2 seems on track to make just half what the first film did in inflation-adjusted terms.)
In short, far from making Star Wars into the Marvel, Marvel is now the "new" Star Wars.
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Black Panther 2's Fourth Weekend
Black Panther 2 took in some $18 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its gross during the first twenty-four days of its North American run to $394 million.
But how much higher will it go?
Once more the original Black Panther can seem a good first point of comparison. That movie took in $562 million in the same period--working out to 80 percent of its total. If Black Panther 2 likewise manages to expand its 24-day take by another 25 percent then it will finish up in the vicinity of $500 million, which does not seem wholly implausible.
Still, there is the fact that the film is fading faster. The original Black Panther not only opened "bigger" ($202 million on opening weekend, which is $240-$250 million in today's terms, versus Black Panther 2's $181 million), but in spite of the particularly large opening in its fourth weekend took in 20% of what the movie made in its first three days ($41 million). By contrast in its fourth weekend Black Panther 2 made less than 10 percent of what it did in its more modest opening weekend (under $18 million)--a fact offsetting the better hold it got from a Thanksgiving day release.
Once again, its trajectory looks less like that of Black Panther than that of Thor 4, which made about the same relative to its first weekend in its fourth (9.2 rather than 9.7 percent). That movie made 88 percent of its gross by that point. Assuming Black Panther 2 to be doing the same it would be headed for a gross in the vicinity of $450 million.
Meanwhile the overseas earnings are likely to be proportionate. Currently running 86 percent of the domestic gross, should this trend continue down to the end of the film's run the movie would end up making $390-$430 million. The result is that the global take would be in the $840-$930 million range--once more, under a billion dollars, and especially at the low end of the range--which I think the more likely outcome--not much more than the disappointing Thor 4 ($761 million), somewhat less than the not-quite-all-that-was-hoped-for Dr. Strange 2 ($956 million), and in real terms, perhaps just half of what the original Black Panther made ($1.6-$1.7 billion in 2022 dollars).
As is usually the case in such matters the entertainment press will look on the bright side--but it is still a far from overwhelming response to the first sequel to Marvel's big event movie of just a few years ago, and to the close of Marvel's "Phase 4." Indeed, with the profitability of the film possibly in doubt (even allowing for all the ambiguities in these matters one can only be sure if a movie makes five times its production budget, which $800-$900 million is not in this case) whether the movie was a hit or a flop is doubtless already the cause of the usual ferocious arguments among the culture warriors (on both sides of the line) who seem to think their arguments about (usually) mediocre, forgettable movies, the most important issue of an epoch of pandemic, war, economic catastrophe and ecological collapse--while adding immensely to the anxieties of Disney's shareholders, board and executives as, on top of the other troubles beleaguering the once unstoppable-seeming Disney machine, flop is piled atop flop piled atop flop. (Indeed, looking beyond the aforementioned Marvel-based disappointments, Black Panther 2 scarcely had a chance to let the company's "leadership" down before the megabuck autumn release Strange World crashed and burned, just months after Lightyear underperformed, while in America, at least, the $175 million Turning Red was sent straight to video, where, as Warner Bros' recent conduct reminds everyone, nothing that pricey can really make enough to cover its cost, even with the benefit of a far friendlier reception than it got.)
What, if anything, the management will do about the situation is another matter entirely.
But how much higher will it go?
Once more the original Black Panther can seem a good first point of comparison. That movie took in $562 million in the same period--working out to 80 percent of its total. If Black Panther 2 likewise manages to expand its 24-day take by another 25 percent then it will finish up in the vicinity of $500 million, which does not seem wholly implausible.
Still, there is the fact that the film is fading faster. The original Black Panther not only opened "bigger" ($202 million on opening weekend, which is $240-$250 million in today's terms, versus Black Panther 2's $181 million), but in spite of the particularly large opening in its fourth weekend took in 20% of what the movie made in its first three days ($41 million). By contrast in its fourth weekend Black Panther 2 made less than 10 percent of what it did in its more modest opening weekend (under $18 million)--a fact offsetting the better hold it got from a Thanksgiving day release.
Once again, its trajectory looks less like that of Black Panther than that of Thor 4, which made about the same relative to its first weekend in its fourth (9.2 rather than 9.7 percent). That movie made 88 percent of its gross by that point. Assuming Black Panther 2 to be doing the same it would be headed for a gross in the vicinity of $450 million.
Meanwhile the overseas earnings are likely to be proportionate. Currently running 86 percent of the domestic gross, should this trend continue down to the end of the film's run the movie would end up making $390-$430 million. The result is that the global take would be in the $840-$930 million range--once more, under a billion dollars, and especially at the low end of the range--which I think the more likely outcome--not much more than the disappointing Thor 4 ($761 million), somewhat less than the not-quite-all-that-was-hoped-for Dr. Strange 2 ($956 million), and in real terms, perhaps just half of what the original Black Panther made ($1.6-$1.7 billion in 2022 dollars).
As is usually the case in such matters the entertainment press will look on the bright side--but it is still a far from overwhelming response to the first sequel to Marvel's big event movie of just a few years ago, and to the close of Marvel's "Phase 4." Indeed, with the profitability of the film possibly in doubt (even allowing for all the ambiguities in these matters one can only be sure if a movie makes five times its production budget, which $800-$900 million is not in this case) whether the movie was a hit or a flop is doubtless already the cause of the usual ferocious arguments among the culture warriors (on both sides of the line) who seem to think their arguments about (usually) mediocre, forgettable movies, the most important issue of an epoch of pandemic, war, economic catastrophe and ecological collapse--while adding immensely to the anxieties of Disney's shareholders, board and executives as, on top of the other troubles beleaguering the once unstoppable-seeming Disney machine, flop is piled atop flop piled atop flop. (Indeed, looking beyond the aforementioned Marvel-based disappointments, Black Panther 2 scarcely had a chance to let the company's "leadership" down before the megabuck autumn release Strange World crashed and burned, just months after Lightyear underperformed, while in America, at least, the $175 million Turning Red was sent straight to video, where, as Warner Bros' recent conduct reminds everyone, nothing that pricey can really make enough to cover its cost, even with the benefit of a far friendlier reception than it got.)
What, if anything, the management will do about the situation is another matter entirely.
Centrist Dystopias
Recently remarking the way the YA boom that was so impressive in the early 21st century, and especially the early '10s, collapsed, I was mainly interested in the role of our digital devices, and especially that of the smart phone--the way the smart phone's proliferation had everyone carrying the whole package of entertainment options with them everywhere as a matter of course, not only providing more alternatives to reading, but being relatively inimical to reading, in situations where people used to get a lot of their reading done (commuting, flying, etc.); and this, perhaps, especially affecting the young, who may have been less accustomed to reading.
Still, I also thought the content being offered had distinct limits--and it seems to me worth enlarging on that now. Among much else I had in mind the dystopian scenarios we got. In Cyberpunk, Steampunk and Wizardry I used the term "centrist dystopias" to refer to them. At the time I used the term "centrist" in the more general way people use the term than I do now, to refer to a watery middle-of-the-road position--and "centrist dystopia" to mean a society that no one, at least no one anywhere near the mainstream of American political discourse (at least before these disgraceful last several years), would call anything but a deeply unattractive social order (Suzanne Collins' Panem, for example).
Even so, I still think the term applicable, reflecting as it does the essential features of centrism in the narrow sense--avoidance of deep and probing social analysis and criticism, an aversion to calls for change generally and virtual ruling out of anything but the smallest adjustments, a stress on agreement among those interests recognized as within the mainstream, with the same results that centrism produces, not least a shallowness about the conception.* (Yes, Panem is a horrible place. But why did we end up there? Of that she does not have much to say as compared with, for example, Jack London, George Orwell, Frederik Pohl and any number of other authors of really classic dystopias in their own works.) The result was that people could see what they wanted to--not just the center but right and left claiming it for themselves.
Considering all this it seems to me that (while this is not the only factor in the dystopia bubble's going bust) all of this has become less viable--for many reasons, but one of which is the tenor of politics, and especially the current and probably increasing level of of public polarization. If people were ready to accept centrist dystopias in the '00s and early '10s the wake of the presidential election of 2016, Qanon, Charlottesville, "Russigate," "1-06"--and pandemic, and full-blown major land war on NATO's doorstep as war brews at the other end of Eurasia, and so much else--I suspect watery "dystopia for everyone" will no longer do. Authors would seem less able to avoid taking some stance toward such events, and the developments behind them, rather than talking about a place that might be bad in some general way. Failing to do so the public is also likely to be less charitable to those who play it safe--thinking them cowardly and contemptible, or behind the evasions "on the other side," and feeling less charitable toward that, with all that means for those who do declare themselves, who get punished for doing so more severely than they would have been before. This may have factored into those who dared to play the game one way or the other having so much less less success, while those who were cannier about their careers opted not to play the game at all--save, perhaps, to continue milking some old success, as Suzanne Collins has done (with the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes a bestseller, and the inevitable film adaptation coming your way in November 2023).
* These days I use it to mean that tendency originating in mid-twentieth century Cold War anti-Communist conservatism stressing pragmatism, pluralism and the sustenance of "consensus" behind the existing social order.
Considering all this it seems to me that (while this is not the only factor in the dystopia bubble's going bust) all of this has become less viable--for many reasons, but one of which is the tenor of politics, and especially the current and probably increasing level of of public polarization. If people were ready to accept centrist dystopias in the '00s and early '10s the wake of the presidential election of 2016, Qanon, Charlottesville, "Russigate," "1-06"--and pandemic, and full-blown major land war on NATO's doorstep as war brews at the other end of Eurasia, and so much else--I suspect watery "dystopia for everyone" will no longer do. Authors would seem less able to avoid taking some stance toward such events, and the developments behind them, rather than talking about a place that might be bad in some general way. Failing to do so the public is also likely to be less charitable to those who play it safe--thinking them cowardly and contemptible, or behind the evasions "on the other side," and feeling less charitable toward that, with all that means for those who do declare themselves, who get punished for doing so more severely than they would have been before. This may have factored into those who dared to play the game one way or the other having so much less less success, while those who were cannier about their careers opted not to play the game at all--save, perhaps, to continue milking some old success, as Suzanne Collins has done (with the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes a bestseller, and the inevitable film adaptation coming your way in November 2023).
* These days I use it to mean that tendency originating in mid-twentieth century Cold War anti-Communist conservatism stressing pragmatism, pluralism and the sustenance of "consensus" behind the existing social order.
"Neoliberal Superheroes"
Most of this comment stresses the right-wing tendency of the superhero genre (e.g. its affirmation of defense of the status quo by an elite using force as good), and in particular the neoliberal character of its more recent incarnations (in its ultra-individualism, its imbibing of the "Silicon Valley" mythology about technology even in the depiction of places like Wakanda, etc.).
However, as with so much else of what we get from the media (the entertainment media as well as the news media) all this seems to me to say much more about the values of the elite who get to make movies, and set the tenor for contemporary culture more broadly (which has been resolutely neoliberal in our times), than these ideas necessarily having all that much purchase with the public--precisely because of the way in which it experiences action films, as casually enjoyed, highly disposable spectacles received at a neurological rather than dramatic level (while taking rather less interest in the form in those media where story, character, theme would mean more--like the comic books from which these characters hail).
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