Was 1989 a Signal Year for the Evolution of the American Box Office?

Recently I remarked 1989 as the year when all the "armchair executive" stuff in the press began to impinge on my personal consciousness.

That in itself would make it seem a significant year for me. But I do think that year saw particular developments that, more clearly visible in hindsight though perhaps not insignificant even at the time, indicated the shape that the blockbuster would increasingly assume in our time, with two hits of that year in particular indicative of the pattern.

One was the year's biggest hit, Tim Burton's Batman. After all, a decade earlier Richard Donner's Superman was a colossal hit--but the franchise fizzled out pretty quickly, and was not followed up by much else in the way of superhero films.

By contrast 1989's Batman established not just that franchise, but started a fashion, which if looking slight in the '90s (the first-string DC and Marvel superheroes stayed in the comics through these years), helped pave the way for the twenty-first century boom in such figures we so take for granted, and in a broader way, the brand name sci-fi/fantasy action franchises that have displaced those '80s-style "Someone killed my favorite second cousin" movies that then dominated the action genre.

Indeed, it seems worth noting that Spider-Man apart, Batman has provided the most consistent basis for successful superhero films (certainly to go by Christopher Nolan's trilogy, and last year's The Batman). It also seems significant that Burton went with a darker tone before Nolan did, such as has since characterized treatment of the character, and the genre (for better or worse).

The other hit that seems of particular importance is the original, animated The Little Mermaid--because while animated features had been a staple of the theatrical experience for a half century by this point this was the movie that brought it back as a commercial head-liner, paving the way for how Disney and Pixar, and since then Dreamworks (the Shrek franchise) and Illumination too (the Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets and Sing franchises, and now The Super Mario Bros. Movie as well) would be the only competition the new-style action films had for the top of the box office.

Indeed, through this century, look at the top-grossing movies of the year and sci-fi action, especially superhero action, and splashy family animation, especially where the tilt is toward music and comedy, are what you are apt to see. (In 2016-2019, going by calendar grosses at least five of the top ten movies each year were either superhero films or other closely related action movies, or animated movies of this type and their live-action derivatives, their domination of the top of the box office is almost complete, accounting for every one of the top ten in 2016, nine of the top ten in 2018, eight of ten movies in 2017 and 2019.)

Meanwhile it seems that even the failures were suggestive of things to come. James Cameron's The Abyss, which was not the financial success its backers obviously hoped for, can, in its sci-fi adventure, friendly aliens, aquatic theme and ground-breaking visual effects, seem to be a strong indicator of how Cameron's career would go, anticipating hits like Titanic and the Avatar films (while, it would seem, the film's doing poorly at the box office after eschewing the kind of gunplay Cameron helped make a movie staple drove him to include plenty of that in his next two movies, Terminator 2 and True Lies).

In lesser degree, other underperformers were also suggestive of the trend of the market. The underperformance of Ghostbusters II was a reminder of just how extravagant and unrealistic studio expectations could be, such that a then impressive-seeming $100 million gross was deemed a disappointment, and put that franchise on hold for a whole generation. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier marked that franchise's slippage from the top tier of blockbusters its four predecessors had safely occupied--while, like The Abyss, probably encouraging the filmmakers to stress action movie mechanics over more cerebral elements in the next installments, a lesson they took to heart in the five subsequent Star Trek films prior to an even more thoroughly action-oriented reboot. The commercial low point for the James Bond series that was Licence to Kill, itself indicative of how the '80s-style action movies of which it was so imitative were on their way out, signaled that franchise's being overhauled yet again in a way that was to happen with increasing frequency, with the Pierce Brosnan eras seeing a mere four movies in seven years before a reboot that, after a mere five films, has been rebooted itself. (It seems notable, too, that Licence to Kill was the last Bond film that EON put out into the ever-more brutal summer season, preferring the vibrant but less action-oriented late autumn-winter period for that series' releases ever since.)

Of course, one can look at other points in film history for other anticipations, as with 1993 (when Jurassic Park showed how CGI-dominated the blockbuster would be), 1999 (with the return of Star Wars, the upping of the CGI ante, the routinization of prequels and of grumbling about them), and 2000 and 2002 (when the X-Men, and then Spider-Man, kicked the superhero boom into higher gear). Still, it seems to me fair to say that 1989 was exceptionally rich in indications of the "shape of things to come."