My answer to this post's titular question is an emphatic "Yes," and I think there are three very good reasons for it.
1. The Worsening of Overexposure.
A celebrity's publicity machine getting so aggressive that rather than interesting us it irritates us is not a new thing. But it is probably worse in an age of truly continuous subjection to media that devise like the smart phone have helped usher in--the more in as that publicity is amplified by the disease of the Internet that is clickbait. Amplified, too, by the way that celebrities personally contribute to this with their use of social media, making their idiocies tiresomely public as they take to heart the adage "Better to be thought a fool and remain silent than open one's mouth and remove all doubt" and do the extreme opposite, and alienate at least part of the public in the process again and again.
2. The Fragmentation of Popular Culture.
It has become a truism that less than ever before do we all seem to be watching the same movies and television shows, listening to the same music, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The result is that, especially to the extent that celebrity is associated with the entertainment world, we are probably more likely to be personally attentive to a smaller portion of the range of figures working in it, with the result that when we are hit by a piece of celebrity news we are more likely to say "Who is that?" And even after we learn who that is, not care--but still find ourselves constantly hearing about them so that we ask "Why am I hearing about this person I don't care about all the time?"--which is undeniably irritating.
3. Culture War.
As if points 1 and 2 were not bad enough the world of entertainment, like everything else in American life at least, has been swallowed up by the culture wars. Along with it, so has celebrity culture, with stances, identifications, associations playing their part in it--meaning that just about everyone can offend somebody just by existing, and often what we are hearing about is much more than their existing, as the "journalists" of the entertainment press, analyzing the implications of every word and gesture, every trivial detail of dress, demeanor and everything else make of everything a statement, and every statement a battle. Whatever side of that battle we are on we are likely to find ourselves constantly annoyed, even if that side is no side at all, especially insofar as they detest the very existence of the culture war, because everyone else seems obsessed with it, and rubbing it in their faces all the time.
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
What Does it Mean That the Global Box Office Rose 31 Percent in 2023?
Discussing the post-pandemic box office as a whole I have focused on the U.S. box office, because of the abundance of detailed time series relevant to it, and my long familiarity with them, as well as the abundance of conveniently available analysis to its interpretation.
That does not exist for the global box office, a larger, more complex, less well-covered topic.
The result was that the Deadline report that the global box office saw a 31 percent jump in 2023 over 2022 got my attention. Was it possible that the U.S. was an anomaly, that there was a stronger recovery abroad?
Alas, on close inspection the biggest chunk of that surge is the recovery of the Chinese box office from its extremely depressed state in 2022--this 83 percent surge in that one market accounting for a rough third of the global increase. Cut China out of the picture and you get only a 20 percent rise in the rest of the world. That still sounds pretty impressive--except that this was exactly what we had in the U.S.--the jump from a bit under $7.4 billion collected in 2022 to $8.9 billion collected in 2023--that meager margin of improvement relative to the post-pandemic pattern--itself a gain of 20 percent (indeed, 21 percent), before the inflation that was not even counted here.
The result is that the report seems to me another case of a headline that sounds a lot better than the reality, and only confirms the impression that the box office, and with it the prospects of the studios and their movies, have stabilized at a significantly below pre-pandemic level (while in combination with what Hollywood's movies actually made in that country, China's outsized part in the "recovery" is a reminder of how little business Hollywood can expect in that market). Of course, that same scarcity of data about the global box office implies that more caution is warranted in any judgments about that, though I do not think that this year is likely to change the assessment.
* The box office tended toward $14 billion in 2023 dollars over 2015-2019.
That does not exist for the global box office, a larger, more complex, less well-covered topic.
The result was that the Deadline report that the global box office saw a 31 percent jump in 2023 over 2022 got my attention. Was it possible that the U.S. was an anomaly, that there was a stronger recovery abroad?
Alas, on close inspection the biggest chunk of that surge is the recovery of the Chinese box office from its extremely depressed state in 2022--this 83 percent surge in that one market accounting for a rough third of the global increase. Cut China out of the picture and you get only a 20 percent rise in the rest of the world. That still sounds pretty impressive--except that this was exactly what we had in the U.S.--the jump from a bit under $7.4 billion collected in 2022 to $8.9 billion collected in 2023--that meager margin of improvement relative to the post-pandemic pattern--itself a gain of 20 percent (indeed, 21 percent), before the inflation that was not even counted here.
The result is that the report seems to me another case of a headline that sounds a lot better than the reality, and only confirms the impression that the box office, and with it the prospects of the studios and their movies, have stabilized at a significantly below pre-pandemic level (while in combination with what Hollywood's movies actually made in that country, China's outsized part in the "recovery" is a reminder of how little business Hollywood can expect in that market). Of course, that same scarcity of data about the global box office implies that more caution is warranted in any judgments about that, though I do not think that this year is likely to change the assessment.
* The box office tended toward $14 billion in 2023 dollars over 2015-2019.
Book Review: Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation, by Upton Sinclair
In the second chapter of his book Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1925) Upton Sinclair explains his purpose in writing the book as "to investigate the whole process of art creation, and to place the art function in relation to the sanity, health and progress of mankind." Of course, this raises the question of just what Sinclair actually means by art. His answer is that it is "a representation of life, modified by the personality of the artist, for the purpose of modifying other personalities, inciting them to changes of feeling, belief and action." Art is thus by definition "inevitably and inescapably propaganda"--"sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately" Propaganda.
However, if all art is propaganda it is also the case that not all propaganda is equal from the standpoint of artistic significance, Sinclair taking the view that "great," "real and enduring works of art" offer "propaganda of vitality and importance" according to "the practical experience of mankind," conveyed to the audience "with technical competence in terms of the art selected," with this combination of "propaganda of vitality and importance" with such competence to be expected only when "the artist in the labor of his spirit and . . . stern discipline of hard thinking, find[s] a real path of progress for the race."
From this one may conclude that art can never be about just the perfection of form, purely "escapist" or unconcerned with morality or politics; while Sinclair adds that far from being for only the few "great art has always been popular art," and that far from slavish devotion to tradition and the classics as models "vital artists make their own technique," with "present-day technique . . . far and away superior to the technique of any period."
Yet it is also the case that artists must live, and in line with the realities of the class societies of history this has generally meant the accommodation of the artists and their art to the requirements and desires of the rich and powerful--to those who have "owned" the artists as they have owned everything else--with service to these what enables an artist to do well in life (rather than do good), with the most "successful" becoming the coddled pets of wealthy and powerful patrons, and often enjoy critical respectability after their time. In contrast with those "ruling class artists" the "hero" artists, the "martyr" artists, who did good rather than well--not least in "tak[ing] up the cause of the dispossessed and disinherited" rather than flattering their so-called betters--struggled and were even persecuted in life and often marginalized after their time, with all this reflected in the prevailing standards and canons (a triumph of Mammon over all other moral forces, hence his term "Mammonart"). Indeed, Sinclair makes it clear that he sees "six great lies prevailing in the art world" against which his positions run up, namely the lies of "art for art's sake" (art as an exercise in form only), "art snobbery" (the elitist art-is-for-the-few viewpoint), "art tradition" (advocacy of slavish classicism), "art dilettantism" (art as pure diversion), the "art pervert" (who denies that morality has anything to do with art) and "vested interest" (that art "excludes propaganda and has nothing to do with freedom and justice"). Challenging all of them in principle and in practice, here Sinclair endeavors "to set up new canons in the arts, overturning many of the standards now accepted," while in the process rescuing real "treasures" from "the scrap-heap" to which Establishment critics have consigned them, and transferring those false treasures now being exalted "to the history shelves of the world's library" where they belong.
After having lucidly explained the most fundamental of his intellectual premises Sinclair then proceeds upon a grand survey of art through Western history, proceeding from one figure and their works to the next down to the present time (generally devoting a chapter to each).
It is an exceedingly ambitious undertaking for a single-author work (and at that, a non-specialist who had his hands full with a staggering number of other interests and activities over the preceding decades), and it also seems only fair to point out the limits of the result. In surveying Western art, in spite of a handful of glances at the visual arts (Michelangelo, Raphael, and after that, curiously, just Whistler), and music (Beethoven, Wagner), what we get is in the main a survey of literature; with, after some coverage of the Bible and the highlights of Greek and Roman literature, Sinclair skipping over the Middle Ages entirely (no Beowulf or Norse sagas or Song of Roland or Nibelungenlied or Arthurian romances, etc., etc.) to the Renaissance, which rates mere glances before he gets on to the birth of modernity and the centuries since. Doing so he gives us mainly English and French literature with a little attention to the more essential Germans and Russians (Goethe, Tolstoy et. al.), and only occasional glances at any other Western literature (Dante, Cervantes, Ibsen, Strindberg all we get from Southern Europe and Scandinavia), all as even in surveying the literatures on which he concentrates there are some curious omissions. (H.G. Wells appears in this book--but not as one of the writers to be discussed, just as Sinclair's host at the New Reform Club, where he pointed out one of the writers Sinclair does discuss, Henry James, as "the Great Cham.") One may add that besides the omissions Sinclair can seem very dismissive or impatient of a good deal of what he examines (in an extreme example, owning up to having given up reading Dostoyevsky's The Karamazov Brothers at the time of Father's Zosima's funeral, some two-fifths of the way into the book).
Still, imperfect as the survey is of art, or even literature, Sinclair still covers an impressive, and useful, amount of essential territory with knowledge, frankness and insight--enough to constitute a very respectable "intro to Western literature" course in itself. Indeed, I doubt that many of our tenured professors of literature these days, or even in his day, could do the job nearly as well, neither where sheer range is concerned, nor the significant task of making this long treatment of a very large and complicated subject so readable as Mammonart manages to be from beginning to end, in which his framing the text as a dialogue between a caveman and his wife ("Mr. and Mrs. Ogi") is the least of the matter, with Sinclair's not being an academic perhaps an advantage. Far from having been trained in "raking the dust-heaps of history" in the manner he so derided in his book on higher education in America, Sinclair here stands in relation to literature as a writer, reader, lover of literature for whom these works are first and foremost art to be experienced, for what they make the reader feel and think, rather than a priest calling the flock to worship or an archaeologist poring over relics in the hopes of uncovering clues to the past, bringing to bear in addition to the thoroughly worked-out intellectual position he spelled out in that early chapter genuine personal engagement.
One result of that combination of viewpoint, engagement and contact with so many "greats" was a good deal of iconoclasm--for the most part, highly welcome iconoclasm in my view. Admittedly I disagreed with his appraisals again and again, especially as he got to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where my reading has been more extensive and frankly my opinions about the authors he discussed stronger. (I thought him overly dismissive of Coleridge, and Scott, and Dostoyevsky, reading all of whose work I found more of value, far more, than Sinclair did; thought it wrong that he saw in Balzac wallowing in the money-mad world of which he wrote rather than criticism of that world, and indeed, "relentless, ferocious assault" on it; thought his enthusiasm for Nietzsche curious; etc.) Still, he argued well for his positions, leaving those with whom he disagrees few nits to pick and often something to think about. (Sinclair dislikes Coleridge for his obscurity and irrationality, Scott for celebrating the Middle Ages, Dostoyevsky for going over from rebellion to reaction, and one cannot deny that all those charges are true, or that the only difference between Sinclair in disliking them for that and the kinds of critics he assails here is his being more forthright about his politics, and taking a progressive rather than a conservative or reactionary view stance.) And the truth was that I found myself agreeing with Sinclair more often than not--about the cult of the Classics, about the politics of Shakespeare, about Zola, about much, much else. Indeed, treating writers such as Henry James (a hankerer after feudalism and its relics and supposed graces, for whom no people exist but those furnished with "large sums of money . . . without effort on their part" permitting them "complicated and subtle aesthetic sensibilities"), or Oscar Wilde (whose "smart" dialogue is produced with the simple-minded formula of proclaiming the opposite of "any statement involving the simple common sense of mankind" to produce overrated epigrams), or Joseph Conrad (a "cruel-souled" "Zealot of Pessimism" in the "Agnostic Sunday School" of whose books "Agnosticism upon closer study turns out to be Capitalism," and for whom "the capitalist ownership and control of marine transportation" is "God," and accordingly ever given to directing "jeering scorn," "venom" and satire at the "altruistic impulse"), Sinclair was again and again a breath of fresh air, saying what seems to me all too obvious and obviously in need of saying, but all too rarely, actually, said. (Especially about Conrad, given how "liberal" English teachers so unthinkingly serve up to their students the insanity into which Kurtz descends in Heart of Darkness as the indisputable, sole, truth about human nature.)
At the same time he made good on his promise to try and rescue many a treasure from the scrap-heap--like the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier, whom Sinclair hails the "[Robert] Burns of New England," while in putting in a word for not-quite-ignored figures like a Shelley or Keats reminding us that in his day they were given less than their due (and perhaps still are). At the same time those writers we may be surprised to see included in spite of their mention serving no such purposes, as with political dramas-without-politics author Humphry Ward, or adventure story writer Richard Harding Davis, still help Sinclair explain what he is trying to say about the history of literature, down to his own time.
In the process Sinclair not only tells us something about these authors and works, and by way of them illustrates and supports his arguments from early in the book--and very powerfully--but usefully develops many of those ideas he expressed initially, as with his thoughts about the "ruling class artists" and "hero artists" (persuasively exemplified by the contrast between French playwrights Racine and Moliere), and the contrast between the art of ruling elites, and the art of oppressed and rising classes, not least the way in which the art of the former stresses form, the latter content. Particularly rare, and affecting, in the case of a Whittier or a Burns or a Keats he reminds us of the struggles endured and the scorn faced by those poets who emerge from the people than the salons, and wrote of and for those from whence they came (struggles and scorn that, he does not forget, mean that many a would-be poet, one who might well have been great, dies, not only without recognition, but without ever having had a proper chance to compose a line, "some mute, inglorious Milton" resting in an unmarked grave).
Alas, few have since had the benefit of the insights Sinclair offers in this book about authors and literature and art more broadly--far fewer than Sinclair hoped at the time. Writing Mammonart he still thought that the bad old world he was struggling against was but "an evil dream of but a few more years," and its standards with it. However, here we are a century later, with the predictable result that the six lies he called out remain very much with us. Indeed, they are the standards by which Sinclair's own works have been judged; been weighed, measured and found wanting; as one sees looking at Anthony Arthur's obituary for Sinclair in that newspaper that (as he relates in another work, The Brass Check) treated him so abominably in life. Deriding his works for being "admitted propaganda," for his "interest in persuasion and politics"--for his having "sold his birthright for a pot of message"--it makes clear just how little Sinclair's case that all art is by definition propaganda altered the prevailing standards. The result is that where Sinclair endeavored to rescue literary treasures from the scrap-heap, his own novels have been tossed into the same scrap-heap ("no longer read" Arthur flatly said), with the same going for everything else he had to offer, Mammonart most certainly included--as the shelves of the library of which Sinclair spoke have only become more crammed with false treasures.
Contemporary literature, culture and social thought are today the poorer for it.
However, if all art is propaganda it is also the case that not all propaganda is equal from the standpoint of artistic significance, Sinclair taking the view that "great," "real and enduring works of art" offer "propaganda of vitality and importance" according to "the practical experience of mankind," conveyed to the audience "with technical competence in terms of the art selected," with this combination of "propaganda of vitality and importance" with such competence to be expected only when "the artist in the labor of his spirit and . . . stern discipline of hard thinking, find[s] a real path of progress for the race."
From this one may conclude that art can never be about just the perfection of form, purely "escapist" or unconcerned with morality or politics; while Sinclair adds that far from being for only the few "great art has always been popular art," and that far from slavish devotion to tradition and the classics as models "vital artists make their own technique," with "present-day technique . . . far and away superior to the technique of any period."
Yet it is also the case that artists must live, and in line with the realities of the class societies of history this has generally meant the accommodation of the artists and their art to the requirements and desires of the rich and powerful--to those who have "owned" the artists as they have owned everything else--with service to these what enables an artist to do well in life (rather than do good), with the most "successful" becoming the coddled pets of wealthy and powerful patrons, and often enjoy critical respectability after their time. In contrast with those "ruling class artists" the "hero" artists, the "martyr" artists, who did good rather than well--not least in "tak[ing] up the cause of the dispossessed and disinherited" rather than flattering their so-called betters--struggled and were even persecuted in life and often marginalized after their time, with all this reflected in the prevailing standards and canons (a triumph of Mammon over all other moral forces, hence his term "Mammonart"). Indeed, Sinclair makes it clear that he sees "six great lies prevailing in the art world" against which his positions run up, namely the lies of "art for art's sake" (art as an exercise in form only), "art snobbery" (the elitist art-is-for-the-few viewpoint), "art tradition" (advocacy of slavish classicism), "art dilettantism" (art as pure diversion), the "art pervert" (who denies that morality has anything to do with art) and "vested interest" (that art "excludes propaganda and has nothing to do with freedom and justice"). Challenging all of them in principle and in practice, here Sinclair endeavors "to set up new canons in the arts, overturning many of the standards now accepted," while in the process rescuing real "treasures" from "the scrap-heap" to which Establishment critics have consigned them, and transferring those false treasures now being exalted "to the history shelves of the world's library" where they belong.
After having lucidly explained the most fundamental of his intellectual premises Sinclair then proceeds upon a grand survey of art through Western history, proceeding from one figure and their works to the next down to the present time (generally devoting a chapter to each).
It is an exceedingly ambitious undertaking for a single-author work (and at that, a non-specialist who had his hands full with a staggering number of other interests and activities over the preceding decades), and it also seems only fair to point out the limits of the result. In surveying Western art, in spite of a handful of glances at the visual arts (Michelangelo, Raphael, and after that, curiously, just Whistler), and music (Beethoven, Wagner), what we get is in the main a survey of literature; with, after some coverage of the Bible and the highlights of Greek and Roman literature, Sinclair skipping over the Middle Ages entirely (no Beowulf or Norse sagas or Song of Roland or Nibelungenlied or Arthurian romances, etc., etc.) to the Renaissance, which rates mere glances before he gets on to the birth of modernity and the centuries since. Doing so he gives us mainly English and French literature with a little attention to the more essential Germans and Russians (Goethe, Tolstoy et. al.), and only occasional glances at any other Western literature (Dante, Cervantes, Ibsen, Strindberg all we get from Southern Europe and Scandinavia), all as even in surveying the literatures on which he concentrates there are some curious omissions. (H.G. Wells appears in this book--but not as one of the writers to be discussed, just as Sinclair's host at the New Reform Club, where he pointed out one of the writers Sinclair does discuss, Henry James, as "the Great Cham.") One may add that besides the omissions Sinclair can seem very dismissive or impatient of a good deal of what he examines (in an extreme example, owning up to having given up reading Dostoyevsky's The Karamazov Brothers at the time of Father's Zosima's funeral, some two-fifths of the way into the book).
Still, imperfect as the survey is of art, or even literature, Sinclair still covers an impressive, and useful, amount of essential territory with knowledge, frankness and insight--enough to constitute a very respectable "intro to Western literature" course in itself. Indeed, I doubt that many of our tenured professors of literature these days, or even in his day, could do the job nearly as well, neither where sheer range is concerned, nor the significant task of making this long treatment of a very large and complicated subject so readable as Mammonart manages to be from beginning to end, in which his framing the text as a dialogue between a caveman and his wife ("Mr. and Mrs. Ogi") is the least of the matter, with Sinclair's not being an academic perhaps an advantage. Far from having been trained in "raking the dust-heaps of history" in the manner he so derided in his book on higher education in America, Sinclair here stands in relation to literature as a writer, reader, lover of literature for whom these works are first and foremost art to be experienced, for what they make the reader feel and think, rather than a priest calling the flock to worship or an archaeologist poring over relics in the hopes of uncovering clues to the past, bringing to bear in addition to the thoroughly worked-out intellectual position he spelled out in that early chapter genuine personal engagement.
One result of that combination of viewpoint, engagement and contact with so many "greats" was a good deal of iconoclasm--for the most part, highly welcome iconoclasm in my view. Admittedly I disagreed with his appraisals again and again, especially as he got to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where my reading has been more extensive and frankly my opinions about the authors he discussed stronger. (I thought him overly dismissive of Coleridge, and Scott, and Dostoyevsky, reading all of whose work I found more of value, far more, than Sinclair did; thought it wrong that he saw in Balzac wallowing in the money-mad world of which he wrote rather than criticism of that world, and indeed, "relentless, ferocious assault" on it; thought his enthusiasm for Nietzsche curious; etc.) Still, he argued well for his positions, leaving those with whom he disagrees few nits to pick and often something to think about. (Sinclair dislikes Coleridge for his obscurity and irrationality, Scott for celebrating the Middle Ages, Dostoyevsky for going over from rebellion to reaction, and one cannot deny that all those charges are true, or that the only difference between Sinclair in disliking them for that and the kinds of critics he assails here is his being more forthright about his politics, and taking a progressive rather than a conservative or reactionary view stance.) And the truth was that I found myself agreeing with Sinclair more often than not--about the cult of the Classics, about the politics of Shakespeare, about Zola, about much, much else. Indeed, treating writers such as Henry James (a hankerer after feudalism and its relics and supposed graces, for whom no people exist but those furnished with "large sums of money . . . without effort on their part" permitting them "complicated and subtle aesthetic sensibilities"), or Oscar Wilde (whose "smart" dialogue is produced with the simple-minded formula of proclaiming the opposite of "any statement involving the simple common sense of mankind" to produce overrated epigrams), or Joseph Conrad (a "cruel-souled" "Zealot of Pessimism" in the "Agnostic Sunday School" of whose books "Agnosticism upon closer study turns out to be Capitalism," and for whom "the capitalist ownership and control of marine transportation" is "God," and accordingly ever given to directing "jeering scorn," "venom" and satire at the "altruistic impulse"), Sinclair was again and again a breath of fresh air, saying what seems to me all too obvious and obviously in need of saying, but all too rarely, actually, said. (Especially about Conrad, given how "liberal" English teachers so unthinkingly serve up to their students the insanity into which Kurtz descends in Heart of Darkness as the indisputable, sole, truth about human nature.)
At the same time he made good on his promise to try and rescue many a treasure from the scrap-heap--like the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier, whom Sinclair hails the "[Robert] Burns of New England," while in putting in a word for not-quite-ignored figures like a Shelley or Keats reminding us that in his day they were given less than their due (and perhaps still are). At the same time those writers we may be surprised to see included in spite of their mention serving no such purposes, as with political dramas-without-politics author Humphry Ward, or adventure story writer Richard Harding Davis, still help Sinclair explain what he is trying to say about the history of literature, down to his own time.
In the process Sinclair not only tells us something about these authors and works, and by way of them illustrates and supports his arguments from early in the book--and very powerfully--but usefully develops many of those ideas he expressed initially, as with his thoughts about the "ruling class artists" and "hero artists" (persuasively exemplified by the contrast between French playwrights Racine and Moliere), and the contrast between the art of ruling elites, and the art of oppressed and rising classes, not least the way in which the art of the former stresses form, the latter content. Particularly rare, and affecting, in the case of a Whittier or a Burns or a Keats he reminds us of the struggles endured and the scorn faced by those poets who emerge from the people than the salons, and wrote of and for those from whence they came (struggles and scorn that, he does not forget, mean that many a would-be poet, one who might well have been great, dies, not only without recognition, but without ever having had a proper chance to compose a line, "some mute, inglorious Milton" resting in an unmarked grave).
Alas, few have since had the benefit of the insights Sinclair offers in this book about authors and literature and art more broadly--far fewer than Sinclair hoped at the time. Writing Mammonart he still thought that the bad old world he was struggling against was but "an evil dream of but a few more years," and its standards with it. However, here we are a century later, with the predictable result that the six lies he called out remain very much with us. Indeed, they are the standards by which Sinclair's own works have been judged; been weighed, measured and found wanting; as one sees looking at Anthony Arthur's obituary for Sinclair in that newspaper that (as he relates in another work, The Brass Check) treated him so abominably in life. Deriding his works for being "admitted propaganda," for his "interest in persuasion and politics"--for his having "sold his birthright for a pot of message"--it makes clear just how little Sinclair's case that all art is by definition propaganda altered the prevailing standards. The result is that where Sinclair endeavored to rescue literary treasures from the scrap-heap, his own novels have been tossed into the same scrap-heap ("no longer read" Arthur flatly said), with the same going for everything else he had to offer, Mammonart most certainly included--as the shelves of the library of which Sinclair spoke have only become more crammed with false treasures.
Contemporary literature, culture and social thought are today the poorer for it.
Do the Consensus Historians Still Matter?
When I first started reading, for example, Richard Hofstadter (if memory serves the first of his books I picked up was Anti-Intellectualism in American Life) I had either never heard or failed to recognize any significance in the term "consensus historians." The awareness I was to develop of that bigger context came much later, consolidated as I found myself approaching the matter of "centrist" ideology in a serious way.
Naturally reading up on all that I became aware of how the consensus historians belong to another generation, since superseded by other views--with some of those historians, in fact, contributing to that process themselves with displays of renewed attention to what their visions of consensus missed. (Thus did consensus historian Hofstadter produce the volume American Violence; A Documentary History, a reminder of just how conflict-ridden the history of a country whose history was supposedly defined by "consensus" actually was.)
Still, there is no question of those historians of mid-century having left their mark on American intellectual life, and much more besides. This is, in part, because of the ways in which they helped shape that centrist outlook that I think few understand much in any conscious way, but which is so much a part of American political culture--determining thelimits of the "legitimate" ideological spectrum and with it what people are allowed to talk about or even expect, the conduct of mainstream politicians, the operation of the media, the "political language" we use, etc..
However, it may also be because academic historiography since that time, shaped by the continued tendency to specialization, the influence of postmodernism, and the widening gap between the scholarly and the popular in a culture which is on the whole fragmenting while becoming less and less literate, has simply not had the same potential for broad vision, or broad influence. Indeed, considering the situation I find myself recalling their fellow centrist theoretician, the sociologist Daniel Bell, in The End of Ideology, in which, in a deeply lachrymose passage, he remarks the inferiority of the more prominent public intellectuals of his time in comparison with those of the prior generation (a Veblen, a Beard, a Dewey)--and think that today there are grounds for saying the same of the last generation or two as against those we had at mid-century.
Naturally reading up on all that I became aware of how the consensus historians belong to another generation, since superseded by other views--with some of those historians, in fact, contributing to that process themselves with displays of renewed attention to what their visions of consensus missed. (Thus did consensus historian Hofstadter produce the volume American Violence; A Documentary History, a reminder of just how conflict-ridden the history of a country whose history was supposedly defined by "consensus" actually was.)
Still, there is no question of those historians of mid-century having left their mark on American intellectual life, and much more besides. This is, in part, because of the ways in which they helped shape that centrist outlook that I think few understand much in any conscious way, but which is so much a part of American political culture--determining thelimits of the "legitimate" ideological spectrum and with it what people are allowed to talk about or even expect, the conduct of mainstream politicians, the operation of the media, the "political language" we use, etc..
However, it may also be because academic historiography since that time, shaped by the continued tendency to specialization, the influence of postmodernism, and the widening gap between the scholarly and the popular in a culture which is on the whole fragmenting while becoming less and less literate, has simply not had the same potential for broad vision, or broad influence. Indeed, considering the situation I find myself recalling their fellow centrist theoretician, the sociologist Daniel Bell, in The End of Ideology, in which, in a deeply lachrymose passage, he remarks the inferiority of the more prominent public intellectuals of his time in comparison with those of the prior generation (a Veblen, a Beard, a Dewey)--and think that today there are grounds for saying the same of the last generation or two as against those we had at mid-century.
Of Climate "Skepticism"
In the arguments over climate change it has been common for the press to refer to those rejecting the longstanding and overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is a reality as "climate skeptics."
The term "climate skeptic" implies people who are honestly and seriously considering the evidence for climate change and rejecting it. Some of those rejecting the consensus may fit this description--but hardly all.
The person who rejects the science without really having done the homework--whose answer may simply be "What the hell do scientists know?"--would seem more remote from the characterization. Of course, one may generously allow that perhaps they are skeptical of science broadly. However, after dismissing climate science, we may see them point to a study that correlated low IQ scores with poverty as evidence that economic and social outcomes are a matter of personal failings and not societal failings and confidently underline their position by adding "It's science!" with Ron Burgundy-like assurance.
Rather than any real skepticism there was just denial--and to call it "skepticism" with all the brain-work the term implies dignifies it excessively. But that is what the mainstream media does, and can be expected to do, given that its business imperatives and professional culture, its ideological inclinations, and much, much else, bias it toward extreme deference toward those interests and groups which champion climate denial, and their representatives. The readiness to "both sides" the issue when on so many other points they acknowledge only one side is one way in which this has been the case. The use, down to the present moment (just do a keyword check of recent news stories and you will see this for yourself), of the term "climate skepticism" when they should be saying (as only occasionally they say) "climate denial" is another.
The term "climate skeptic" implies people who are honestly and seriously considering the evidence for climate change and rejecting it. Some of those rejecting the consensus may fit this description--but hardly all.
The person who rejects the science without really having done the homework--whose answer may simply be "What the hell do scientists know?"--would seem more remote from the characterization. Of course, one may generously allow that perhaps they are skeptical of science broadly. However, after dismissing climate science, we may see them point to a study that correlated low IQ scores with poverty as evidence that economic and social outcomes are a matter of personal failings and not societal failings and confidently underline their position by adding "It's science!" with Ron Burgundy-like assurance.
Rather than any real skepticism there was just denial--and to call it "skepticism" with all the brain-work the term implies dignifies it excessively. But that is what the mainstream media does, and can be expected to do, given that its business imperatives and professional culture, its ideological inclinations, and much, much else, bias it toward extreme deference toward those interests and groups which champion climate denial, and their representatives. The readiness to "both sides" the issue when on so many other points they acknowledge only one side is one way in which this has been the case. The use, down to the present moment (just do a keyword check of recent news stories and you will see this for yourself), of the term "climate skepticism" when they should be saying (as only occasionally they say) "climate denial" is another.
The Politics of "Epistemological Nihilism"
All across history the view of those who sought a more just and flourishing world have, like the protagonist of a recent Oscar-winning film, said that "If I know the world, I can improve it."
Those threatened by the prospect of such change, not only its failing but even worse its succeeding, have always had as an important weapon in their intellectual arsenal the counter-assertion that "You can never know the world"--and therefore cannot improve it; what I call "epistemological nihilism."
The result is that, as Carroll Quigley makes clear in his flawed, at times tiresomely pedantic, but still worthwhile The Evolution of Civilizations; and as one sees when working their way through the tradition of Western philosophy themselves; skepticism has overwhelmingly been utilized by those on the side of "things as they are" against those desirous of what we would call progress. And it says everything of just how muddled intellectual life has been that in recent decades postmodernists, even as they cite Nietzsche and Heidegger(!), think themselves espousing not the darkest of the Counter-Enlightenment, but some kind of progressive philosophy.
Those threatened by the prospect of such change, not only its failing but even worse its succeeding, have always had as an important weapon in their intellectual arsenal the counter-assertion that "You can never know the world"--and therefore cannot improve it; what I call "epistemological nihilism."
The result is that, as Carroll Quigley makes clear in his flawed, at times tiresomely pedantic, but still worthwhile The Evolution of Civilizations; and as one sees when working their way through the tradition of Western philosophy themselves; skepticism has overwhelmingly been utilized by those on the side of "things as they are" against those desirous of what we would call progress. And it says everything of just how muddled intellectual life has been that in recent decades postmodernists, even as they cite Nietzsche and Heidegger(!), think themselves espousing not the darkest of the Counter-Enlightenment, but some kind of progressive philosophy.
Of "Skepticism": A Few Words
In a consideration of David Hume I recently ran across one writers, considering Hume's notorious extremism in this respect, he asked "How much skepticism is enough?"
I am not sure that I would think of the issue in terms of "how much"--of an appropriate quantity or proportion of skepticism.
Rather I would say that there is a world of difference between the skepticism of those who think the world is knowable, and are trying to work their way toward such knowledge, and the skepticism of those who deny the possibility altogether--the more in as, as is so often the case with the latter, their purpose is sabotaging someone else's search for fear of where it will lead.
Indeed, the "skeptic" who denies the possibility of knowledge altogether strikes me not so much a skeptic as an epistemological nihilist--and like all nihilists in the sense I am talking about when it comes down to it, a bullshitter in the philosophical sense. After all, one cannot get out of bed in the morning--or decline to get out of bed in the morning--without acting on assumptions about what will come from that (overwhelmingly, correct ones), and anyone who is a "skeptic" for long always does so, while one might add the skeptic never hesitates to inflict their opinions about this, that and the other thing on the world with that very self-assurance their supposed skepticism should make impossible.
Hume, of course, was no exception to that, the philosopher famed for his attack on induction never worrying about his own conclusions about it when engaging in induction himself on matters such as the inferiority of one race to another. His outsized reputation today (and for that matter the extent to which criticism of Hume has been so limited to relatively narrow aspects of his legacy) is no testament to the vitality or rigor of thought in our time.
I am not sure that I would think of the issue in terms of "how much"--of an appropriate quantity or proportion of skepticism.
Rather I would say that there is a world of difference between the skepticism of those who think the world is knowable, and are trying to work their way toward such knowledge, and the skepticism of those who deny the possibility altogether--the more in as, as is so often the case with the latter, their purpose is sabotaging someone else's search for fear of where it will lead.
Indeed, the "skeptic" who denies the possibility of knowledge altogether strikes me not so much a skeptic as an epistemological nihilist--and like all nihilists in the sense I am talking about when it comes down to it, a bullshitter in the philosophical sense. After all, one cannot get out of bed in the morning--or decline to get out of bed in the morning--without acting on assumptions about what will come from that (overwhelmingly, correct ones), and anyone who is a "skeptic" for long always does so, while one might add the skeptic never hesitates to inflict their opinions about this, that and the other thing on the world with that very self-assurance their supposed skepticism should make impossible.
Hume, of course, was no exception to that, the philosopher famed for his attack on induction never worrying about his own conclusions about it when engaging in induction himself on matters such as the inferiority of one race to another. His outsized reputation today (and for that matter the extent to which criticism of Hume has been so limited to relatively narrow aspects of his legacy) is no testament to the vitality or rigor of thought in our time.
David Hume's Criticism of Induction
There is nothing so cheap as nihilism--and in philosophy, nothing so cheap as epistemological nihilism. The reality is that, as any even slightly serious student of the scientific method knows, even the most well-grounded knowledge claims come with qualifications, with fine print. What the epistemological nihilist does is to pretend that this fine print is a discovery new to the world as they scream about it so loud and so long that after enough time passes those of weaker mind can think of nothing else, while a certain kind of pseudo-intellectual does not even have to have their minds broken down that way before falling into line with such nonsense. These persons, after all, are, as Eugene Earnshaw put it, "sadistic contrarians" that delight in "making people feel stupid" by appearing to prove that false propositions are true."
Alas, the weak-minded and pseudo-intellectual are no rarer in this time than any other, and frankly, probably more common. Indeed, in certain corners of academia and culture being such a person is probably a career requirement.
David Hume's attack on induction has always struck me as exemplary of that sort of screaming that so impresses the weak-minded and delights the pseudo-intellectual. And it was thus refreshing to see Dr. Earnshaw point out the obvious--which is that, if far too few card-carrying philosophers paid attention to them, remind us that over the years many have debunked Hume again and again in many different ways (pragmatism, mathematical probability, and best of all for he was thus "hoist by his own petard," a subtler grasp of induction than Hume ever displayed), to the extent that his "argument" ever needed to be debunked at all. It is all the more refreshing in as this particular bit of such screaming gets such a ridiculous amount of respect, and in turn makes Hume's one of those names with which those who prefer to drop names rather than actually read books like to beat their opponents over the head with in argument.
Alas, the weak-minded and pseudo-intellectual are no rarer in this time than any other, and frankly, probably more common. Indeed, in certain corners of academia and culture being such a person is probably a career requirement.
David Hume's attack on induction has always struck me as exemplary of that sort of screaming that so impresses the weak-minded and delights the pseudo-intellectual. And it was thus refreshing to see Dr. Earnshaw point out the obvious--which is that, if far too few card-carrying philosophers paid attention to them, remind us that over the years many have debunked Hume again and again in many different ways (pragmatism, mathematical probability, and best of all for he was thus "hoist by his own petard," a subtler grasp of induction than Hume ever displayed), to the extent that his "argument" ever needed to be debunked at all. It is all the more refreshing in as this particular bit of such screaming gets such a ridiculous amount of respect, and in turn makes Hume's one of those names with which those who prefer to drop names rather than actually read books like to beat their opponents over the head with in argument.
Saturday, May 11, 2024
The Fall Guy in 2024 vs. Mission: Impossible in 1996
Remarking The Fall Guy's "playing like a deflated balloon" Anthony D'Alessandro raised, and dismissed, the faintness of pop cultural memory of the show the film adapts. Up to a point he is right--correctly observing that he does not "think Universal sold the movie on that"--but he also struck me as superficial, and wrong when pointing (with an obnoxious "Hello") to how Mission: Impossible became a franchise-launching hit in 1996. "What Gen Xer had actually watched Mission: Impossible back in the late '60s?" he asked, implying the brand name's irrelevance to the critical youth market.
It was indeed the case that the young had not seen the show during its '60s-era original run. But they had chances to see at least some of it in the reruns that were a rather bigger part of our TV consumption (I specifically remember the cable channel FX airing the show before Mission: Impossible hit theaters), while there had been a two-season revival of the show in the late '80s (1988-1990) which actually brought back Peter Graves as Jim Phelps. All of this helped sustain the brand name in pop cultural memory even among those who never saw an episode of the show. The memory was, as I remarked last year, hazy, but that was probably an advantage in its way--enabling the audience to associate "Mission: Impossible" with cool spy-fi adventure, heralded by celebrated composer Lalo Schifrin's famous theme, the burning fuse graphic, the exploding tape recorded messages, sufficiently for reports of a Mission: Impossible movie to catch their interest at least a little, while keeping them from being purists who would get mad about what the film did with the characters. ("Jim, how could you!")
Rather than being recalled in that hazy but plausibly intriguing way The Fall Guy was simply not recalled at all by most, denying it the advantages that I do think Mission: Impossible managed to derive then, even among the young.
One may add that the market at the time was less crowded with action blockbusters generally and contemporary American spy-fi blockbusters still a comparative novelty (that boom just getting underway), and the audience less tough to bring to theaters (on average making four to five trips per year to the theater then, as against two now.) And I dare say that circa 1996 Tom Cruise's star power was considerably greater than that of Ryan Gosling, and perhaps anyone else in this post-star era. (Indeed, it seems telling that writing the prior sentence just now I had to look up Ryan Gosling's name just to be sure I remembered it correctly--again, proof that, contrary to how that stupid "Everything" trailer had it, Ryan Gosling does not "warrant introduction as RYAN M@TH?RF#*&!NG GOSLING.")
The result is that what we are seeing with The Fall Guy is, in part (but only in part), a lesson in what happens to a franchise when its movie stays in development hell for far too long--so long that people forget the franchise ever existed, and the cinematic market at which it is aimed changes profoundly. Indeed, this seems to me so important as to moot the other ways (gambling on a May opening for a sub-May opening movie, the handling of the protagonist and broader tone, etc.) in which Universal mishandled the release of the film.
It was indeed the case that the young had not seen the show during its '60s-era original run. But they had chances to see at least some of it in the reruns that were a rather bigger part of our TV consumption (I specifically remember the cable channel FX airing the show before Mission: Impossible hit theaters), while there had been a two-season revival of the show in the late '80s (1988-1990) which actually brought back Peter Graves as Jim Phelps. All of this helped sustain the brand name in pop cultural memory even among those who never saw an episode of the show. The memory was, as I remarked last year, hazy, but that was probably an advantage in its way--enabling the audience to associate "Mission: Impossible" with cool spy-fi adventure, heralded by celebrated composer Lalo Schifrin's famous theme, the burning fuse graphic, the exploding tape recorded messages, sufficiently for reports of a Mission: Impossible movie to catch their interest at least a little, while keeping them from being purists who would get mad about what the film did with the characters. ("Jim, how could you!")
Rather than being recalled in that hazy but plausibly intriguing way The Fall Guy was simply not recalled at all by most, denying it the advantages that I do think Mission: Impossible managed to derive then, even among the young.
The result is that what we are seeing with The Fall Guy is, in part (but only in part), a lesson in what happens to a franchise when its movie stays in development hell for far too long--so long that people forget the franchise ever existed, and the cinematic market at which it is aimed changes profoundly. Indeed, this seems to me so important as to moot the other ways (gambling on a May opening for a sub-May opening movie, the handling of the protagonist and broader tone, etc.) in which Universal mishandled the release of the film.
How Much Money Did The Flash Really Lose?
Back in June 2023 when the promised "greatest superhero movie ever!" instead crashed and burned at the box office, the reports were that the lousy gross for The Flash meant the movie possibly losing the studio $200 million.
However, that was back when people thought the production budget was in the vicinity of $200 million. A little while later we were told that it was $300 million--implying the possibility of much more than $200 million being lost.
Yet, even as the budget appeared larger than first reported, Deadline reported a mere $155 million studio loss on the film during its "Most Valuable Blockbusters" tournament.
Odd, isn't it?
Well, when you take a closer look at the numbers you see that Deadline went with the $200 million production budget figure, not what we heard later.
At the same time, where in June we heard the marketing campaign was running $150 million, Deadline claims just $120 million were spent on prints and ads.
All of this allows the number to make sense--all as one could find still more room for it to do so if these were gross rather than net figures (if subsidies and the like offered offsets to the numbers then being thrown about).
However, if we go with those higher numbers things move in the other direction. A $300 million production budget, a $150 million marketing campaign, work out to an addition of $130 million+ in extra expenses. Tacked onto the $155 million loss Deadline reported, in fact, the loss nearly doubles, approaching $300 million.
It may well be that the lower numbers Deadline used are the correct ones. Still, given what we previously heard, doubt seems far from implausible here--and I would not be shocked by later revelations calling the Deadline numbers into question.
However, that was back when people thought the production budget was in the vicinity of $200 million. A little while later we were told that it was $300 million--implying the possibility of much more than $200 million being lost.
Yet, even as the budget appeared larger than first reported, Deadline reported a mere $155 million studio loss on the film during its "Most Valuable Blockbusters" tournament.
Odd, isn't it?
Well, when you take a closer look at the numbers you see that Deadline went with the $200 million production budget figure, not what we heard later.
At the same time, where in June we heard the marketing campaign was running $150 million, Deadline claims just $120 million were spent on prints and ads.
All of this allows the number to make sense--all as one could find still more room for it to do so if these were gross rather than net figures (if subsidies and the like offered offsets to the numbers then being thrown about).
However, if we go with those higher numbers things move in the other direction. A $300 million production budget, a $150 million marketing campaign, work out to an addition of $130 million+ in extra expenses. Tacked onto the $155 million loss Deadline reported, in fact, the loss nearly doubles, approaching $300 million.
It may well be that the lower numbers Deadline used are the correct ones. Still, given what we previously heard, doubt seems far from implausible here--and I would not be shocked by later revelations calling the Deadline numbers into question.
Is The Flash Really the Biggest Box Office Flop of 2023?
Previously considering the numbers Deadline presented in the course of its "Most Valuable Blockbusters" tournament I mentioned that I was surprised that the figures for the film that was ranked the biggest money-loser of the year, Captain Marvel 2 (aka The Marvels), did not include the reported subsidy that cut the net production cost from $270 million+ to $220 million.
I also noticed that the budget for The Flash last year was reported as over $200 million, and then $300 million later, in a tone of scandal.
Had Deadline gone with the net production cost of $220 million for Captain Marvel 2 they would have shaved $50 million off the loss--and had they gone with the $300 million figure for The Flash's production budget they would have added an extra $100 million to its loss. The result of these two changes would have been to lower the loss on Captain Marvel 2 from $237 million to $187 million--and raise the loss on The Flash from $155 million to $255 million. The number would still be terrible for Captain Marvel 2, but even worse than it is now for The Flash, with the result the two movies still being at the top of the "biggest" flops list, but switching places to make The Flash #1 in this unenviable category (all as a fuller accounting could easily translate to an even worse picture for The Flash).
I also noticed that the budget for The Flash last year was reported as over $200 million, and then $300 million later, in a tone of scandal.
Had Deadline gone with the net production cost of $220 million for Captain Marvel 2 they would have shaved $50 million off the loss--and had they gone with the $300 million figure for The Flash's production budget they would have added an extra $100 million to its loss. The result of these two changes would have been to lower the loss on Captain Marvel 2 from $237 million to $187 million--and raise the loss on The Flash from $155 million to $255 million. The number would still be terrible for Captain Marvel 2, but even worse than it is now for The Flash, with the result the two movies still being at the top of the "biggest" flops list, but switching places to make The Flash #1 in this unenviable category (all as a fuller accounting could easily translate to an even worse picture for The Flash).
Is Hollywood Becoming More Careful With its Movie Budgets?
Last year, considering the ways in which The Flash and Indiana Jones 5 in particular flopped I predicted massive losses for each--rather more massive than those films actually suffered according to Deadline, which reported losses of around $150 million for each of those films.
There seems ample reason to be surprised by this, starting with the budgets on which Deadline bases the calculation. In spite of a more than 20 percent jump in prices according to the Consumer Price Index since 2018-2019, and the spiking of interest rates raising the cost of borrowing, the reported production costs do not seem much higher than before, big superhero films, for example, still commonly reported as $200 million productions. The constancy of the budgets is the more surprising given how what we were given in 2023 at least appeared to be gross, not net, figures; and how many major releases of 2023 suffered from cost-raising pandemic-related disruptions.
I am even more struck by the expenditures on prints and ads, which for the films identified as the biggest failures were low relative even to their reported budgets and to what was spent on other comparable productions--$110 million for Captain Marvel 2, $120 million for the Flash and Indiana, whereas the expenditure was $160 million for Disney's Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the $150 million and $175 million for the much cheaper Super Mario Bros. and Barbie. (The figure for The Flash is actually lower than the $150 million we were told was budgeted for the marketing campaign last June--while if the figure for Captain Marvel 2 is correct Disney-Marvel spent a third less, adjusted for inflation, to promote Captain Marvel 2 than it did to promote the original Captain Marvel back in 2019.*)
One might conclude from the lower-than-expected numbers that Hollywood has become more astute financially, with the low figures for prints and ads perhaps indicating that studio heads who knew they had losers on their hands cut their losses. (Indeed, there was speculation about this in the case of the surprisingly low profile Aquaman 2.) Yet, even if we take the numbers presented as absolutely reliable (and one cannot know that), a handful of films made in these chaotic times tell us only so much, and may be slight grounds for claiming any great shift in the way Hollywood funds filmmaking.
* The figures are $110 million for Captain Marvel 2, and $140 million for the first film (which is more like $170 million when early 2019 prices are adjusted for late 2023 prices).
There seems ample reason to be surprised by this, starting with the budgets on which Deadline bases the calculation. In spite of a more than 20 percent jump in prices according to the Consumer Price Index since 2018-2019, and the spiking of interest rates raising the cost of borrowing, the reported production costs do not seem much higher than before, big superhero films, for example, still commonly reported as $200 million productions. The constancy of the budgets is the more surprising given how what we were given in 2023 at least appeared to be gross, not net, figures; and how many major releases of 2023 suffered from cost-raising pandemic-related disruptions.
I am even more struck by the expenditures on prints and ads, which for the films identified as the biggest failures were low relative even to their reported budgets and to what was spent on other comparable productions--$110 million for Captain Marvel 2, $120 million for the Flash and Indiana, whereas the expenditure was $160 million for Disney's Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the $150 million and $175 million for the much cheaper Super Mario Bros. and Barbie. (The figure for The Flash is actually lower than the $150 million we were told was budgeted for the marketing campaign last June--while if the figure for Captain Marvel 2 is correct Disney-Marvel spent a third less, adjusted for inflation, to promote Captain Marvel 2 than it did to promote the original Captain Marvel back in 2019.*)
One might conclude from the lower-than-expected numbers that Hollywood has become more astute financially, with the low figures for prints and ads perhaps indicating that studio heads who knew they had losers on their hands cut their losses. (Indeed, there was speculation about this in the case of the surprisingly low profile Aquaman 2.) Yet, even if we take the numbers presented as absolutely reliable (and one cannot know that), a handful of films made in these chaotic times tell us only so much, and may be slight grounds for claiming any great shift in the way Hollywood funds filmmaking.
* The figures are $110 million for Captain Marvel 2, and $140 million for the first film (which is more like $170 million when early 2019 prices are adjusted for late 2023 prices).
What 2023 Teaches Us About the Film Business
1. The cinematic market has shown considerable evidence of having shrunk significantly and over the long run. North Americans went from making 4-5 trips to the theater before the Great Recession, to 3-4 in the 2010s, to from 2022 on making just a couple of trips a year--this "the new normal." Meanwhile the foreign markets offer no chance of rescue as others similarly go to the movies less (and the China market that looked so promising a few years ago becomes increasingly closed to American fare).
2. The genres and brands that were long the foundation of Hollywood profitability--sci-fi action-adventure spectacle of the superhero, space opera and spy-fi types, and the splashy family-oriented animated adventures; Marvel and Star Wars and Pixar and the rest--are offering rather less return on investment than before within the shrunken market, partly because filmgoing is less casual, the threshold for getting people to the theater higher (at least partly because they have been so heavily exploited for so long).
Of course, registering this is comparatively easy (much as it seems to have eluded much of the commentariat). It is harder to say what can be done about it, but the list of films that were profitable in particular offers some hints, not least in how relatively low-grossing films managed to be very profitable. Specifically, with the general audience tougher, it seems that the bottom line-minded studio has more than ever before to look for film projects that have a deep appeal to portions of that audience big enough to be worth bothering with, especially where they can offer more than the ticket sale to the bottom line (i.e. buy merchandise), and keep costs down as they go about it. Thus did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which was ranked only #34 in gross, end up the #4 profit-maker on Deadline's list, with the strategy similarly working for movies from Five Nights at Freddy's to Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Here it seems no accident that the list is dominated by movies aimed at the young (more susceptible to such enthusiasms), and by tie-ins to video games and other toys, with these indeed the basis of the top full-blown blockbusters in a year in which a Super Mario Bros. movie got the #1 spot and a film about Barbie ranked just behind it at #2 (with nostalgic appeal likely helping with older persons here). One can see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as to some extent benefiting from the same logic--a cartoon as a way of telling such a story a tougher sell than the live-action films internationally, but the first film won a loyal following, and animation helped keep costs down (the "mere" $100 million spent on it enabling this movie to rank at #3 on Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbusters" list even as the significantly higher-grossing Guardians of the Galaxy film ended up at only #9).*
Does this betoken a revival of cinematic art? Alas, no. Rather it seems to me an evolution of the high concept model of filmmaking so long in decay--albeit one more demanding than the strategy of just buying up brands like Star Wars and Marvel and pouring money into them, the canny studio executive now having to select their projects more judiciously, and do more such selection given the proportion of the disposable capital to the number of projects to be funded, than when circa 2019 Disney seemed capable of mass-manufacturing billion-dollar hits.
* Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had a production cost of $100 million, and with prints, ads, interest and overhead counted in outlays a bit over $200 million in these categories--whereas for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 the comparable figures were $250 million for production and north of $450 million for the equivalent outlays. The result was that Spider-Man's $690 million gross permitted it a "studio net" of $328 million according to Deadline's calculations, whereas Guardians' nearly $850 million gross left it with a net of just $124 million (not quite two-fifths as much in a poorer rate of return and smaller overall mass of profit).
The First Third of 2024, Again
Deadline's Anthony D'Alessandro recently reported that in the four month January-April period the cinematic box office in 2024 ran 21 percent behind the preceding year--and that the summer was likely to see 2024 continue to run well behind 2023 that way. (Last summer the box office took in over $4 billion; this summer it may be lucky to get to $3 billion.) The result is that, with January-April over a half billion behind the preceding third for the year, and summer likely to mean the season being another billion short of last year, the $8 billion projection for 2024 we had at the end of last year .
And that, of course, is while remembering that 2023 itself was a very disappointing year, seeing as it did not the return of the box office to pre-pandemic levels but finishing up a third of the way down from the 2019 level that itself reflected a decade of erosion. The result is that 2024 is only confirming what last year seemed to suggest, namely the box office's stabilizing at a lower level, the pandemic-era collapse more or less enduringly reducing theatergoing--such that North Americans might now be expected to go to the theater just a couple of times a year now, as against the 3-4 times a year before the pandemic (never mind the 4-5 times that were the norm before the Great Recession).
And that, of course, is while remembering that 2023 itself was a very disappointing year, seeing as it did not the return of the box office to pre-pandemic levels but finishing up a third of the way down from the 2019 level that itself reflected a decade of erosion. The result is that 2024 is only confirming what last year seemed to suggest, namely the box office's stabilizing at a lower level, the pandemic-era collapse more or less enduringly reducing theatergoing--such that North Americans might now be expected to go to the theater just a couple of times a year now, as against the 3-4 times a year before the pandemic (never mind the 4-5 times that were the norm before the Great Recession).
David Walsh Looks Back at the New Hollywood
This year can seem a fairly good time to look back on the history of film, and especially the film of the past half century. After all, the model of "high concept" filmmaking that emerged from it, long in decay, seems to be in the last stages of its breakdown amid a protracted, structural crisis in the cinematic market all too tied to the bigger crises through which we have been living these past many years. (It seems no accident that American theatergoing slipped importantly in the wake of the Great Recession, continued to erode in the years that followed, and collapsed after the pandemic only to stabilize well below the pre-pandemic level.) This can seem underscored by the extraordinary commercial success of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, a film that from the high concept standpoint was an exceedingly unlikely hit--and may suggest a return to "adult" cinema making for big hits in the way that we saw before high concept, in the New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and 1970s.
As it happens, David Walsh recently announced just such a look back, marking the 50th anniversary of what he considers the peak of New Hollywood in 1974 with a series of articles about the films that made that year what it was. To date he and his colleagues have published three of those promised pieces, remembering Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (both of which films, not coincidentally, were written by Robert Towne and starred Jack Nicholson), and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. Critical to Walsh's interest, and for many others looking at the New Hollywood's output, these were socially critical films, making for a sharp contrast with what we have got out of a Hollywood whose neoliberalism was evident not just in the structure and functioning of the business, but the politics of its content (as Walsh, of course, has remarked just about every year in his annual Oscar coverage). However, for critics like Walsh the limits to New Hollywood's more critical work also seem significant. If more than was to be the case later (as in this era in which wealth, power, status, traditional institutions and values, etc. are treated with so much respect by "artists") the makers of those movies looked at the world around them and saw much wrong in it and said so, they were also pessimistic about anything being done about the evils they identified--even though this did not wholly deny their criticisms force, or the richness their feel for and about the world brought to the films.
As it happens, David Walsh recently announced just such a look back, marking the 50th anniversary of what he considers the peak of New Hollywood in 1974 with a series of articles about the films that made that year what it was. To date he and his colleagues have published three of those promised pieces, remembering Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (both of which films, not coincidentally, were written by Robert Towne and starred Jack Nicholson), and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. Critical to Walsh's interest, and for many others looking at the New Hollywood's output, these were socially critical films, making for a sharp contrast with what we have got out of a Hollywood whose neoliberalism was evident not just in the structure and functioning of the business, but the politics of its content (as Walsh, of course, has remarked just about every year in his annual Oscar coverage). However, for critics like Walsh the limits to New Hollywood's more critical work also seem significant. If more than was to be the case later (as in this era in which wealth, power, status, traditional institutions and values, etc. are treated with so much respect by "artists") the makers of those movies looked at the world around them and saw much wrong in it and said so, they were also pessimistic about anything being done about the evils they identified--even though this did not wholly deny their criticisms force, or the richness their feel for and about the world brought to the films.
Back to the Planet of the Apes
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes hits theaters this weekend.
Boxoffice Pro, which only this week returned to the issuance of long-range forecasts (of a more limited nature than we were accustomed to in the past), predicted a $40-$50 million opening weekend for the film, and a $100-$140 million overall run, back in early April.
Their prediction this week is for an opening in the $40-$45 million range--not much different, save that the ceiling has fallen a bit.
Given what I argued about the film's prospects this does not bode well for the film. The preceding film in the series, which made rather more money domestically and globally than this one seems likely to do, failed to make Deadline's list of the more profitable films of its year--such that if 2024's film is budgeted the same way the backers will have a tough time breaking even, let alone turning a profit on this extension of what seemed to many an already concluded series.*
* War for the Planet of the Apes made $490 million in the summer of 2017, which is $600 million+ in 2024 dollars, whereas my prediction was for a much lower range of $250-$450 million globally for Kingdom.
Boxoffice Pro, which only this week returned to the issuance of long-range forecasts (of a more limited nature than we were accustomed to in the past), predicted a $40-$50 million opening weekend for the film, and a $100-$140 million overall run, back in early April.
Their prediction this week is for an opening in the $40-$45 million range--not much different, save that the ceiling has fallen a bit.
Given what I argued about the film's prospects this does not bode well for the film. The preceding film in the series, which made rather more money domestically and globally than this one seems likely to do, failed to make Deadline's list of the more profitable films of its year--such that if 2024's film is budgeted the same way the backers will have a tough time breaking even, let alone turning a profit on this extension of what seemed to many an already concluded series.*
* War for the Planet of the Apes made $490 million in the summer of 2017, which is $600 million+ in 2024 dollars, whereas my prediction was for a much lower range of $250-$450 million globally for Kingdom.
The High Concept Model of Popular Filmmaking and its Decline
Reading Justin Wyatt's High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood I was surprised by just what a variety of film he classed as "high concept." After all, the judgment of whether a film is or is not high concept is a matter of their salability in a brisk and visual way rather than anything else, and not necessarily restricted to a particular theme, or genre. Yet it is undeniable that high concept has since Wyatt's day come to be associated much more with certain themes and genres than others. The selling of films on the basis of sex, for example, became a good deal rarer and more circumscribed and less effectual than before, while comedies of various kinds--romantic comedies, ultimately comedies in general--also became less likely to make the cut. And so forth. As a result the main kinds of content that counted as high concept were megabudgeted sci-fi action-adventure spectacles of the superhero, space opera or spy-fi type; or similarly megabudgeted films connected with brand-name animation, generally light-hearted adventure stuff directed at a family audience. As 2023 showed, even that is a tougher sell than it used to be, with Disney, which had become the outstanding player of the game by these rules, conspicuous for its lack of hits and abundance of box office failures when Deadline put out its lists of most and least valuable blockbusters these past couple of weeks. In that it can seem that high concept as we knew it has run its course--though I do see a "high concept 2.0" emerging.
Look for my thoughts on that in an upcoming post.
Look for my thoughts on that in an upcoming post.
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbusters" Tournament, 2023 Edition: Eight Observations
Deadline has wrapped up its latest "Most Valuable Blockbuster" tournament--rounded off its lists of 2023's most profitable, and least profitable, films.
As sophisticated box office-watchers know, the tournaments are an imperfect source of data. Just consider how in the past the production budgets they reported proved understated in the wake of later revelations (the more significant in that some of these figures are lower than we were told they were before, as with the $100 million rather than $150 million figure for Spider-Man), the inconsistent use of information about the part subsidies played in the making of the bottom line (we were told the net production cost of Captain Marvel 2 was $220 million after a significant subsidy, but this is not acknowledged here), the similarly inconsistent use of merchandising data, the ambiguities involved in the related-party transaction that is a studio selling the streaming rights to its own movies to its own platform, etc.. However, for lack of any comparably systematic round-up it seems well to go with this report's findings for now, reading which I was struck by the following:
1. There Were Four Superhero Films on the List, But . . .
We hear much talk these days of superhero fatigue--and much sneering about that talk. "Look at all the superhero films on this list!" some might say. However, one could equally well say, look at all the superhero films that did not make the list, among them two of the year's Marvel Cinematic Universe films (Ant-Man 3 and Captain Marvel 2), and four WBD/DC films (Shazam 2, Blue Beetle, The Flash, Aquaman 2), while two of these topped the list of the year's biggest money-losers (with Captain Marvel 2 heading the list, and The Flash right behind it in second place). One may also note that the one live-action superhero film placing among the top ten this year (a very low proportion by recent standards, especially when one considers the number of releases in this genre the year had), Guardians of the Galaxy 3, was down in ninth place (and the least profitable entry in that series to date). Of the other three superhero films two--PAW Patrol and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--were Paramount productions that were low grossers (failing to make the list of the top 30 worldwide grossers of the year), but whose low costs, and the inclusion of merchandising revenue in their cases, enabled them to place among the top ten in a year of weak competition. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which considerably bettered the gross of the well-received original, can more justly be regarded as a cinematic hit--though it may be noted, its performance is still a far cry from what the Spider-Man franchise accomplished at its strongest (exemplified by the near $2 billion take of Spider-Man: No Way Home back in late 2021). The result is that I would consider the fuller picture evidence for, rather than against, superhero fatigue.
2. There Were Four Animated Films, But . . .
Per usual animation was well-represented on the list of the biggest money-makers of the year. However, in line with what was stated above low budgets were key to their reported profitability (each and every one of the movies reported as having a production cost of $100 million or less), the more in as, gross-wise, only The Super Mario Bros. Movie really soared at the global box office. (Spider-Man was more respectable than sensational internationally, adding just $300 million in those markets to its North American gross--as compared with Super Mario's $800 million in the international market.) And again, merchandising revenue was key to the profitability of two of the four (PAW Patrol and Turtles). As the titles, and low budgets, imply, Disney was not represented here--Pixar's Elemental, if reportedly turning a profit in the end, still failing to make the cut here, while Wish ended up one of the year's biggest flops.
3. Most of the Films Were Surprise Overperformers Rather Than the Predicted Successes.
As the big superhero films and franchise films generally and the Disney productions underwhelmed, the way was cleared for other movies that would ordinarily not have ranked very highly--those lower-budget and less "conventional" blockbusters--to top the charts. According to my reading of the market at a minimum six of the listed movies fall into this category--namely The Super Mario Bros. Movie (few if any anticipated $1 billion+ for this one), the animated Spider-Man film (which so much bettered the performance of the original), Barbie (Boxoffice Pro's prediction for the domestic gross had been in the vicinity of a mere $200 million for this one mere weeks before a release that launched it far, far past that mark), Oppenheimer (ditto), Taylor Swift's concert film (an extraordinary performer by concert movie standards), and Five Nights at Freddy's (again, going above and beyond as it approached $300 million globally).
4. The Profits Were Low, Individually and Collectively.
Together the ten films on the list of most valuable blockbusters made a bit under $2.5 billion in profit. This sounds like a lot. However, compare it to the figures for the 2015-2019 period before the pandemic, when the studios established their current pattern. During this period the profits for the top ten movies, when adjusted for 2023 prices, ranged from $3.3 billion in the lowest-earning year (2016) to $5.4 billion in the highest (2019), and averaged $4.2 billion (leaving 2023 about 40 percent down). Granted, later revelations suggest those profits were overstated--with reports of the third and fourth Avengers films having been much more expensive than originally indicated quite enough to skew the figures. However, the gap is quite large enough that it would take a lot of downward adjustment to narrow it much, while, again, the figures for 2023 are at least as suspect as in prior years. The result is that it seems worth taking the figures at face value for now--the more in as the way in which those films became profitable varies significantly over the period.
5. Those Profits Tended to Reflect Low Costs Rather Than Colossal Grosses.
While I raised the point earlier in relation to the animated films, the truth is that this pattern of low costs translating to surprising profitability--far better profitability than the megabudget movies had--carried over to the year's more successful releases broadly in this year when of the top 10 most profitable films four did not make the list of the top 10 grossers worldwide, three did not make the top 20, and two did not even make the top 30 (with Freddy's at #19, Taylor Swift at #23, PAW Patrol at #31, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at #34 on the box office charts, despite which the Turtles movie was #4 on the "Most Valuable" list). If Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was a standard megabuck Marvel production (running the studio $250 million), the production cost of every other movie here was reportedly under $150 million--and in many cases much less (Barbie coming in just below that, Wonka lower still at $125 million, Oppenheimer, Spider-Man and Super Mario Bros. as "mere" $100 million productions, and the rest even less, with the Turtles movie made for $70 million, PAW Patrol $30 million, Freddy's $20 million, the Taylor Swift film a mere $15 million). The more striking given the galloping inflation of recent years, it is more striking still in comparison with the films on the flop list--the $200 million reported for The Flash and Wish, the $270 million for Captain Marvel 2, the $300 million for Indiana Jones 5 (by itself, exceeding the combined production costs of the five cheapest of the "most valuable blockbusters" list combined).
6. Thematically it Seems Notable That So Many Movies Were Based on Toys.
I can remember how not so long ago sneering at the video game-based movie as such was virtually universal. Going by the reviews of Super Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's films the critics' attitude toward such films remains less than kind. (Even as critics grew insanely generous in their evaluations of movies in general those two movies got a mere 59 and 32 percent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.) Still, in contrast with before the broader audience has made clear that it does not necessarily feel the same way as the professional critics--with those two movies, again, making the list of the top ten moneymakers of the year and Super Mario in the #1 spot. The movie that came right after it was Barbie--also a movie based on a popular toy. Meanwhile those two lower-cost animated hits, the PAW Patrol and the Turtles, also have a significant toy angle, rounding out the picture.
7. Disney No Longer Rules Hollywood.
Those who have been watching the box office for some time likely remember how back in the 2010s Disney seemed unstoppable. However, between how few hits it scored in 2023, and how many flops it suffered as those very expensive would-be hits proved the opposite, those days seem long past-- Disney's sole representation on the top profit-makers list Guardians at #9, and four of the five biggest money-losers (Captain Marvel 2, Indiana Jones 5, Wish, the remake-no-one-asked-for of Haunted Mansion), including the biggest loser of all (Captain Marvel 2), are Disney productions, with each of these reported as losing $100 million+ and the lot a combined $600 million+. Taking into account the at best lackluster performance of other major Disney productions--like Ant-Man 3 and the live-action adaptation The Little Mermaid--makes Disney's situation look worse still.
8. The Cinematic Market Has Shrunken--and Fragmented.
Listening to the reports of Disney's troubles we hear much about the mismanagement of particular films, usually blaming anyone and everyone but the executives who actually have the power and responsibility in the situation (as in the whining about a lack of "supervision" on the projects, and the stupid and shabby scapegoating of the writers). However, the problem looks structural. During its glory days in the '10s Disney managed to dominate the market through a particular strategy, but that market appears to have since changed, particularly with respect to what moviegoers think is an "event" worth the trip to the theater calling that strategy into question. Until recently it was obvious that a new Star Wars, Marvel or Pixar movie, for example, was usually regarded by a critical mass of moviegoers worthy of being identified with the "general audience" as such an event. However, this has become less clear, the bar for what constitutes an event for the audience raised, so that really wide-audience events are more elusive, and relative to mass audience hits we are seeing more movies become hits on the basis of intense appeal to a limited but very enthusiastic portion of the audience, and particularly a young portion of the audience. Thus did Freddy's, and those Paramount cartoons, become moneymakers--part of the audience really excited about them, the rest not caring at all. Thus did it go with Taylor Swift's film. Even those really big hits, Super Mario and Barbie, seem to have had something of that flavor about them, just on a larger scale (the more in as Barbie was such a divisive, polarizing, film).
As that last especially shows, 2023 was anything but the business as usual to which I had thought the year returning--and it does not seem implausible to imagine that it portends changes in the business.
Look for my thoughts about that in an upcoming post.
As sophisticated box office-watchers know, the tournaments are an imperfect source of data. Just consider how in the past the production budgets they reported proved understated in the wake of later revelations (the more significant in that some of these figures are lower than we were told they were before, as with the $100 million rather than $150 million figure for Spider-Man), the inconsistent use of information about the part subsidies played in the making of the bottom line (we were told the net production cost of Captain Marvel 2 was $220 million after a significant subsidy, but this is not acknowledged here), the similarly inconsistent use of merchandising data, the ambiguities involved in the related-party transaction that is a studio selling the streaming rights to its own movies to its own platform, etc.. However, for lack of any comparably systematic round-up it seems well to go with this report's findings for now, reading which I was struck by the following:
1. There Were Four Superhero Films on the List, But . . .
We hear much talk these days of superhero fatigue--and much sneering about that talk. "Look at all the superhero films on this list!" some might say. However, one could equally well say, look at all the superhero films that did not make the list, among them two of the year's Marvel Cinematic Universe films (Ant-Man 3 and Captain Marvel 2), and four WBD/DC films (Shazam 2, Blue Beetle, The Flash, Aquaman 2), while two of these topped the list of the year's biggest money-losers (with Captain Marvel 2 heading the list, and The Flash right behind it in second place). One may also note that the one live-action superhero film placing among the top ten this year (a very low proportion by recent standards, especially when one considers the number of releases in this genre the year had), Guardians of the Galaxy 3, was down in ninth place (and the least profitable entry in that series to date). Of the other three superhero films two--PAW Patrol and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--were Paramount productions that were low grossers (failing to make the list of the top 30 worldwide grossers of the year), but whose low costs, and the inclusion of merchandising revenue in their cases, enabled them to place among the top ten in a year of weak competition. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which considerably bettered the gross of the well-received original, can more justly be regarded as a cinematic hit--though it may be noted, its performance is still a far cry from what the Spider-Man franchise accomplished at its strongest (exemplified by the near $2 billion take of Spider-Man: No Way Home back in late 2021). The result is that I would consider the fuller picture evidence for, rather than against, superhero fatigue.
2. There Were Four Animated Films, But . . .
Per usual animation was well-represented on the list of the biggest money-makers of the year. However, in line with what was stated above low budgets were key to their reported profitability (each and every one of the movies reported as having a production cost of $100 million or less), the more in as, gross-wise, only The Super Mario Bros. Movie really soared at the global box office. (Spider-Man was more respectable than sensational internationally, adding just $300 million in those markets to its North American gross--as compared with Super Mario's $800 million in the international market.) And again, merchandising revenue was key to the profitability of two of the four (PAW Patrol and Turtles). As the titles, and low budgets, imply, Disney was not represented here--Pixar's Elemental, if reportedly turning a profit in the end, still failing to make the cut here, while Wish ended up one of the year's biggest flops.
3. Most of the Films Were Surprise Overperformers Rather Than the Predicted Successes.
As the big superhero films and franchise films generally and the Disney productions underwhelmed, the way was cleared for other movies that would ordinarily not have ranked very highly--those lower-budget and less "conventional" blockbusters--to top the charts. According to my reading of the market at a minimum six of the listed movies fall into this category--namely The Super Mario Bros. Movie (few if any anticipated $1 billion+ for this one), the animated Spider-Man film (which so much bettered the performance of the original), Barbie (Boxoffice Pro's prediction for the domestic gross had been in the vicinity of a mere $200 million for this one mere weeks before a release that launched it far, far past that mark), Oppenheimer (ditto), Taylor Swift's concert film (an extraordinary performer by concert movie standards), and Five Nights at Freddy's (again, going above and beyond as it approached $300 million globally).
4. The Profits Were Low, Individually and Collectively.
Together the ten films on the list of most valuable blockbusters made a bit under $2.5 billion in profit. This sounds like a lot. However, compare it to the figures for the 2015-2019 period before the pandemic, when the studios established their current pattern. During this period the profits for the top ten movies, when adjusted for 2023 prices, ranged from $3.3 billion in the lowest-earning year (2016) to $5.4 billion in the highest (2019), and averaged $4.2 billion (leaving 2023 about 40 percent down). Granted, later revelations suggest those profits were overstated--with reports of the third and fourth Avengers films having been much more expensive than originally indicated quite enough to skew the figures. However, the gap is quite large enough that it would take a lot of downward adjustment to narrow it much, while, again, the figures for 2023 are at least as suspect as in prior years. The result is that it seems worth taking the figures at face value for now--the more in as the way in which those films became profitable varies significantly over the period.
5. Those Profits Tended to Reflect Low Costs Rather Than Colossal Grosses.
While I raised the point earlier in relation to the animated films, the truth is that this pattern of low costs translating to surprising profitability--far better profitability than the megabudget movies had--carried over to the year's more successful releases broadly in this year when of the top 10 most profitable films four did not make the list of the top 10 grossers worldwide, three did not make the top 20, and two did not even make the top 30 (with Freddy's at #19, Taylor Swift at #23, PAW Patrol at #31, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at #34 on the box office charts, despite which the Turtles movie was #4 on the "Most Valuable" list). If Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was a standard megabuck Marvel production (running the studio $250 million), the production cost of every other movie here was reportedly under $150 million--and in many cases much less (Barbie coming in just below that, Wonka lower still at $125 million, Oppenheimer, Spider-Man and Super Mario Bros. as "mere" $100 million productions, and the rest even less, with the Turtles movie made for $70 million, PAW Patrol $30 million, Freddy's $20 million, the Taylor Swift film a mere $15 million). The more striking given the galloping inflation of recent years, it is more striking still in comparison with the films on the flop list--the $200 million reported for The Flash and Wish, the $270 million for Captain Marvel 2, the $300 million for Indiana Jones 5 (by itself, exceeding the combined production costs of the five cheapest of the "most valuable blockbusters" list combined).
6. Thematically it Seems Notable That So Many Movies Were Based on Toys.
I can remember how not so long ago sneering at the video game-based movie as such was virtually universal. Going by the reviews of Super Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's films the critics' attitude toward such films remains less than kind. (Even as critics grew insanely generous in their evaluations of movies in general those two movies got a mere 59 and 32 percent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.) Still, in contrast with before the broader audience has made clear that it does not necessarily feel the same way as the professional critics--with those two movies, again, making the list of the top ten moneymakers of the year and Super Mario in the #1 spot. The movie that came right after it was Barbie--also a movie based on a popular toy. Meanwhile those two lower-cost animated hits, the PAW Patrol and the Turtles, also have a significant toy angle, rounding out the picture.
7. Disney No Longer Rules Hollywood.
Those who have been watching the box office for some time likely remember how back in the 2010s Disney seemed unstoppable. However, between how few hits it scored in 2023, and how many flops it suffered as those very expensive would-be hits proved the opposite, those days seem long past-- Disney's sole representation on the top profit-makers list Guardians at #9, and four of the five biggest money-losers (Captain Marvel 2, Indiana Jones 5, Wish, the remake-no-one-asked-for of Haunted Mansion), including the biggest loser of all (Captain Marvel 2), are Disney productions, with each of these reported as losing $100 million+ and the lot a combined $600 million+. Taking into account the at best lackluster performance of other major Disney productions--like Ant-Man 3 and the live-action adaptation The Little Mermaid--makes Disney's situation look worse still.
8. The Cinematic Market Has Shrunken--and Fragmented.
Listening to the reports of Disney's troubles we hear much about the mismanagement of particular films, usually blaming anyone and everyone but the executives who actually have the power and responsibility in the situation (as in the whining about a lack of "supervision" on the projects, and the stupid and shabby scapegoating of the writers). However, the problem looks structural. During its glory days in the '10s Disney managed to dominate the market through a particular strategy, but that market appears to have since changed, particularly with respect to what moviegoers think is an "event" worth the trip to the theater calling that strategy into question. Until recently it was obvious that a new Star Wars, Marvel or Pixar movie, for example, was usually regarded by a critical mass of moviegoers worthy of being identified with the "general audience" as such an event. However, this has become less clear, the bar for what constitutes an event for the audience raised, so that really wide-audience events are more elusive, and relative to mass audience hits we are seeing more movies become hits on the basis of intense appeal to a limited but very enthusiastic portion of the audience, and particularly a young portion of the audience. Thus did Freddy's, and those Paramount cartoons, become moneymakers--part of the audience really excited about them, the rest not caring at all. Thus did it go with Taylor Swift's film. Even those really big hits, Super Mario and Barbie, seem to have had something of that flavor about them, just on a larger scale (the more in as Barbie was such a divisive, polarizing, film).
As that last especially shows, 2023 was anything but the business as usual to which I had thought the year returning--and it does not seem implausible to imagine that it portends changes in the business.
Look for my thoughts about that in an upcoming post.
How Did The Fall Guy Do in the End?
This past weekend The Fall Guy hit theaters. It ended up making a bit under $28 million--under the bottom end of the range projected by Boxoffice Pro, and well under the $35 million that seems to have been conventionally projected for it.
That is to say it performed below even the very low expectations held for the film--with the result that the movie was not only outgrossed by 2005's Kingdom of Heaven, but by every first weekend of May release going back to the 1990s, back when the blockbuster season properly began only a little later. (Consider, for instance, how things stood in 1998, when the first real summer release was Deep Impact--which appeared the second weekend in May, and collected $41 million then, as that first weekend of May was left to a Spike Lee movie.*)
Of course, one can counter that the film's being given this release date was not quite what was never Plan A, that this would never have happened but for last year's strikes, that it is unfair to judge it by big summer movie standards. (Indeed, as Anthony D'Alessandro remarked, "it's a movie you find either in August, the second weekend of June or even the off season, which is where this was originally scheduled on March 1.") However, no one forced the studio to opt for that release date--they had plenty of other choices over the course of this so far very weak year, while one can add that the Ryan "Kenough" Gosling hype may have conduced to more optimism than was warranted. Moreover the money they sank into it (which has had some analysts scratching their heads) is not dump month money but summer month money, such that the studio hoped the prime stretch of year in which it launched it would give the studio a better chance of recouping a considerable investment than otherwise.
Alas, the movie will have to have a lot of staying power at the box office to do that--enjoy very good week-to-week holds again and again. Where this is concerned the fact that those bothering to show seem to like it (the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 87 percent, not rapturous but not bad), and the weakness of the competition in coming weeks, may make this a possibility. Still, it is an inauspicious opening for the movie--and for the summer season that was so thinned out as to make this one look like it "coulda been a contender," and as yet all too likely to end up looking like 2023 would have, minus its eleventh hour rescue by Barbie and Oppenheimer.
* Of course, that $41 million is, before inflation, about 50 percent more than The Fall Guy picked up, and adjusted for 2024 dollars $79 million, or almost three times as much.
That is to say it performed below even the very low expectations held for the film--with the result that the movie was not only outgrossed by 2005's Kingdom of Heaven, but by every first weekend of May release going back to the 1990s, back when the blockbuster season properly began only a little later. (Consider, for instance, how things stood in 1998, when the first real summer release was Deep Impact--which appeared the second weekend in May, and collected $41 million then, as that first weekend of May was left to a Spike Lee movie.*)
Of course, one can counter that the film's being given this release date was not quite what was never Plan A, that this would never have happened but for last year's strikes, that it is unfair to judge it by big summer movie standards. (Indeed, as Anthony D'Alessandro remarked, "it's a movie you find either in August, the second weekend of June or even the off season, which is where this was originally scheduled on March 1.") However, no one forced the studio to opt for that release date--they had plenty of other choices over the course of this so far very weak year, while one can add that the Ryan "Kenough" Gosling hype may have conduced to more optimism than was warranted. Moreover the money they sank into it (which has had some analysts scratching their heads) is not dump month money but summer month money, such that the studio hoped the prime stretch of year in which it launched it would give the studio a better chance of recouping a considerable investment than otherwise.
Alas, the movie will have to have a lot of staying power at the box office to do that--enjoy very good week-to-week holds again and again. Where this is concerned the fact that those bothering to show seem to like it (the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 87 percent, not rapturous but not bad), and the weakness of the competition in coming weeks, may make this a possibility. Still, it is an inauspicious opening for the movie--and for the summer season that was so thinned out as to make this one look like it "coulda been a contender," and as yet all too likely to end up looking like 2023 would have, minus its eleventh hour rescue by Barbie and Oppenheimer.
* Of course, that $41 million is, before inflation, about 50 percent more than The Fall Guy picked up, and adjusted for 2024 dollars $79 million, or almost three times as much.
Centrism and the Mainstream News Media's Complete Incapacity for Substantive Self-Criticism
A couple of years ago I took up the issue of "media bias", and identified six traits of the mainstream news media's modus operandi that seemed to me to be caused, or at least rationalized, by its centrist political tendency, namely:
1. A tendency to deluge audiences with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information.
2. A tendency to treat experts, and especially "Establishment" experts, as authorities, and make a reliance on their judgments the alternative to coping with the disconnected bits of information.
3. A deference to--and promotion of--Establishment sources, experts and figures generally (and disregard of those who are not), translating to a deference to Establishment opinions (and disregard of other views).
4. The drawing of the boundaries of the acceptable spectrum of political opinion so that they extend much further to the right of center than they do to the left of center.
5. A tendency to "both sidesism" within the above parameters over striving for the truth about a contentious matter. 6. An emphasis on politics over policy.
One may debate whether the tendencies above really are problematic. Certainly from the standpoint of centrist ideology they are not wrong. That the news media gives audiences disconnected bits of information, or Establishment expert opinions, rather than endeavoring to explain the issues to them; that it is more prone to provide a platform to the right than the left, and to treat many a subject as a "both sides" matter; that it devotes so much attention to politics over policy; can, from the standpoint of a centrist deeply pessimistic about the public's capacity to understand complex issues; deferential to Established expertise and its judgments as the sole alternative to being overwhelmed by a confusing reality; viewing the right as legitimate but the left as not on the grounds that they are "ideologues"; and stressing the formation of consensus rather than truth-seeking, and on the political process rather than the ends they treat as generally and appropriately only small adjustments; as quite appropriate.
However, not all will agree with that judgment--that the media has a responsibility to attempt to explain the issues to the public, the more in as there is no understanding of democracy which does not require that the public be given the opportunity to educate itself and make informed decisions about the matters set before it--the more in as Authority has been an imperfect guide in the past, wrong again and again. (Just consider, for instance, how Authority said that a financial crisis like 2007 was impossible; and then when it did happen said "No one could have seen it coming"; and then after the impossible and unforeseeable happened said that the world got over it quickly, when in fact, as Adam Tooze realized, the crisis "broke the world," and we have been living with the aftermath ever since; Authority was wrong, disastrously wrong, at every turn.)
However, within the media respect for authority prevails, with the result that those who are authorities can never be held to account for being wrong, and command the same respect as ever they did as a result, while those who do not enjoy standing as authorities can never be given credit for being right when they were right, period, such that they can never win a way into the conversation. According to the same logic the media has not been wrong in covering these matters in the manner that it has, those among the public questioning it are instead the ones who are wrong from the centrist's standpoint--while the media's feeble shows of self-criticism when the undesirability of what it is doing appears undeniable only underscore this in such self-criticism generally ending in a declaration that someone else was really at fault. (Thus, as Hiram Lee noted, amid its breathless coverage of O.J. Simpson the talking heads "occasionally pose the question 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?'"--blaming the public for "forcing" them to attend to tabloid idiocies when the reality was the other way around.)
Given what in the view of anyone not blinded by its ideology are the news media's colossal failings it seems less implausible that those discontented with the quality of the news coverage available to them should look beyond the most mainstream sources--to which course of action the media, in line with all that brought everyone to this point, respond not by endeavoring to do better, but by screaming for the gatekeepers. Ironically, the mess that the Internet is means that the alternatives people are most likely to find are the ones that the mainstream media itself has promoted in ways from abundant mention of them in its coverage to mainstreaming their views and even their personalities, even as they put on a big show of criticizing them and all they do, the Establishment media never worrying about their massive role in the relentless manufacture of "fake news" in which we are all drowning.
1. A tendency to deluge audiences with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information.
2. A tendency to treat experts, and especially "Establishment" experts, as authorities, and make a reliance on their judgments the alternative to coping with the disconnected bits of information.
3. A deference to--and promotion of--Establishment sources, experts and figures generally (and disregard of those who are not), translating to a deference to Establishment opinions (and disregard of other views).
4. The drawing of the boundaries of the acceptable spectrum of political opinion so that they extend much further to the right of center than they do to the left of center.
5. A tendency to "both sidesism" within the above parameters over striving for the truth about a contentious matter. 6. An emphasis on politics over policy.
One may debate whether the tendencies above really are problematic. Certainly from the standpoint of centrist ideology they are not wrong. That the news media gives audiences disconnected bits of information, or Establishment expert opinions, rather than endeavoring to explain the issues to them; that it is more prone to provide a platform to the right than the left, and to treat many a subject as a "both sides" matter; that it devotes so much attention to politics over policy; can, from the standpoint of a centrist deeply pessimistic about the public's capacity to understand complex issues; deferential to Established expertise and its judgments as the sole alternative to being overwhelmed by a confusing reality; viewing the right as legitimate but the left as not on the grounds that they are "ideologues"; and stressing the formation of consensus rather than truth-seeking, and on the political process rather than the ends they treat as generally and appropriately only small adjustments; as quite appropriate.
However, not all will agree with that judgment--that the media has a responsibility to attempt to explain the issues to the public, the more in as there is no understanding of democracy which does not require that the public be given the opportunity to educate itself and make informed decisions about the matters set before it--the more in as Authority has been an imperfect guide in the past, wrong again and again. (Just consider, for instance, how Authority said that a financial crisis like 2007 was impossible; and then when it did happen said "No one could have seen it coming"; and then after the impossible and unforeseeable happened said that the world got over it quickly, when in fact, as Adam Tooze realized, the crisis "broke the world," and we have been living with the aftermath ever since; Authority was wrong, disastrously wrong, at every turn.)
However, within the media respect for authority prevails, with the result that those who are authorities can never be held to account for being wrong, and command the same respect as ever they did as a result, while those who do not enjoy standing as authorities can never be given credit for being right when they were right, period, such that they can never win a way into the conversation. According to the same logic the media has not been wrong in covering these matters in the manner that it has, those among the public questioning it are instead the ones who are wrong from the centrist's standpoint--while the media's feeble shows of self-criticism when the undesirability of what it is doing appears undeniable only underscore this in such self-criticism generally ending in a declaration that someone else was really at fault. (Thus, as Hiram Lee noted, amid its breathless coverage of O.J. Simpson the talking heads "occasionally pose the question 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?'"--blaming the public for "forcing" them to attend to tabloid idiocies when the reality was the other way around.)
Given what in the view of anyone not blinded by its ideology are the news media's colossal failings it seems less implausible that those discontented with the quality of the news coverage available to them should look beyond the most mainstream sources--to which course of action the media, in line with all that brought everyone to this point, respond not by endeavoring to do better, but by screaming for the gatekeepers. Ironically, the mess that the Internet is means that the alternatives people are most likely to find are the ones that the mainstream media itself has promoted in ways from abundant mention of them in its coverage to mainstreaming their views and even their personalities, even as they put on a big show of criticizing them and all they do, the Establishment media never worrying about their massive role in the relentless manufacture of "fake news" in which we are all drowning.
The "Americanness" of the Superhero: A Few Thoughts
As any decent history of the superhero will tell you--not just the superhero in a broad sense going back to Gilgamesh but the comic book-based superhero tradition defined by Superman, the concept of the superhero has not been exclusively American, nor without its popularity outside the United States. (Indeed, just consider how much Marvel owes to the international markets, with these providing 69 percent of the nearly $3 billion gross of Avengers: Endgame.)
Still, it is common for observers to remark the idea of the superhero--the costumed, public persona-possessing comic book superhero--as having struck a particular chord in the United States, to somehow appeal more widely and deeply here than in many other places. I can think of at least two reasons for that, both suggested by my reading of Umberto Eco's essay "The Myth of Superman" (which I previously discussed here):
1. In the aforementioned essay Umberto Eco treated Superman as a myth--while noting that this myth differs from other myth in being a myth of the present-day rather than the past. The idea of a present-day myth seems to me to befit a country that, as the clichés have had it, has always been less preoccupied with the past than other countries, and more preoccupied with the present and future.
2. The attraction of the superhero is for many a sort of vicarious grandiose compensation for the mediocrity, inferiority, frustration that characterize the lot of most in this world, for many reasons. Of course, the desire for such compensation is universal, but again, in a society so atomized, individualistic, unequal, restless, insecure; so saturated with aspirationalism and thwarted aspirationalism and blame and self-blame of the thwarted for what they suffer; and offering so little else to hope for, ever fixing their eyes ever on individual "success," ever encouraging identification with such success and those who have it in that way that C. Wright Mills wrote about in White Collar; the desire, and the superhero as a way of gratifying it, seems likely to be the stronger. Indeed, if it is really the case that poor Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," this is probably an easier sell--habituating people to the thought that they are exemplary in some way temporarily unrecognized by others, as if the real them is some more glamorous self behind the mundane surface and its unenviable treatment by others, or that the transformation of their situation is somehow always very close at hand, that they are ever just a radioactive spider bite away from greatness.*
* In light of inflation we should probably revise that to "temporarily embarrassed billionaires." I put the reader on notice that that is the form I will use from here on out.
Still, it is common for observers to remark the idea of the superhero--the costumed, public persona-possessing comic book superhero--as having struck a particular chord in the United States, to somehow appeal more widely and deeply here than in many other places. I can think of at least two reasons for that, both suggested by my reading of Umberto Eco's essay "The Myth of Superman" (which I previously discussed here):
1. In the aforementioned essay Umberto Eco treated Superman as a myth--while noting that this myth differs from other myth in being a myth of the present-day rather than the past. The idea of a present-day myth seems to me to befit a country that, as the clichés have had it, has always been less preoccupied with the past than other countries, and more preoccupied with the present and future.
2. The attraction of the superhero is for many a sort of vicarious grandiose compensation for the mediocrity, inferiority, frustration that characterize the lot of most in this world, for many reasons. Of course, the desire for such compensation is universal, but again, in a society so atomized, individualistic, unequal, restless, insecure; so saturated with aspirationalism and thwarted aspirationalism and blame and self-blame of the thwarted for what they suffer; and offering so little else to hope for, ever fixing their eyes ever on individual "success," ever encouraging identification with such success and those who have it in that way that C. Wright Mills wrote about in White Collar; the desire, and the superhero as a way of gratifying it, seems likely to be the stronger. Indeed, if it is really the case that poor Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," this is probably an easier sell--habituating people to the thought that they are exemplary in some way temporarily unrecognized by others, as if the real them is some more glamorous self behind the mundane surface and its unenviable treatment by others, or that the transformation of their situation is somehow always very close at hand, that they are ever just a radioactive spider bite away from greatness.*
* In light of inflation we should probably revise that to "temporarily embarrassed billionaires." I put the reader on notice that that is the form I will use from here on out.
A Closer Look at How Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Did in Deadline's 2023 Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament
Previously when speculating about the outcome of Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament this year I guessed that Oppenheimer would make the top five--and indeed it did, making exactly the #5 position.
How did the economics of that work out? Deadline reports that the production cost $100 million. But, as is the case when a movie does really well, participations and residuals were hefty--making the eventual outlay over five times that. At the same time the revenue from ticket sales was lower than one might have thought given the near billion-dollar gross, just $422 million (43 percent of the worldwide gross, where often it approaches 50 percent). This may have been a function of the high share of international sales (the movie did two-thirds of its business internationally, which has been known to skew the cut downwards), and the film's "legs" (the usual arrangement with leggy movies being the studio keeping less and less of the take in return for theaters running the movie longer). All the same, if the participations and residuals took a big bite out of revenue that might have been a bit lower than one might have guessed from the gross, it still worked out to an over $200 million net on the production, an extraordinary sum for a film such as this one.
How did the economics of that work out? Deadline reports that the production cost $100 million. But, as is the case when a movie does really well, participations and residuals were hefty--making the eventual outlay over five times that. At the same time the revenue from ticket sales was lower than one might have thought given the near billion-dollar gross, just $422 million (43 percent of the worldwide gross, where often it approaches 50 percent). This may have been a function of the high share of international sales (the movie did two-thirds of its business internationally, which has been known to skew the cut downwards), and the film's "legs" (the usual arrangement with leggy movies being the studio keeping less and less of the take in return for theaters running the movie longer). All the same, if the participations and residuals took a big bite out of revenue that might have been a bit lower than one might have guessed from the gross, it still worked out to an over $200 million net on the production, an extraordinary sum for a film such as this one.
Martin Caidin's Steve Austin, and TV's
In adapting Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man was rather more faithful to the original material than I had guessed before picking up the first of those books. Steve Austin's accident as a test pilot of a prototype shuttle; his physical reconstruction with all its mental as well as physical agonies; his promptly being packed off on missions to South America and the Middle East--we see all this in the TV movies, with most of the modifications probably understandable given censorship, budgetary constraints and the like. However, some were clearly more deliberate choices, not least the reimagining of Austin himself. Caidin, who could be very much the edgelord, had a fondness for extremely unlikeable protagonists--and while Austin is no Doug Stavers-like supervillain, the runners of the show took it on themselves to considerably humanize him. Given that the intent was a weekly TV series people could enjoy as easy viewing it seems to me that it was a sound decision--one that has probably helped to give the show its extremely long life in reruns.
Remembering The Six Million Dollar Man
One of the ironies of there being a Fall Guy movie is that we had for so long heard about a movie based on Lee Major's other, more successful, TV series The Six Million Dollar Man being in the works--but as yet to no result.
That show was an adaptation of Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels--initially as a trio of made-for-TV movies, and then a weekly series that ran for 99 additional one-hour episodes over five seasons, while launching a successful spin-off in The Bionic Woman, both of which can be credited with lingering in pop cultural memory to a far greater degree than The Fall Guy did. (I remember how those reruns were a staple of what became the Syfy Channel back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they still seem to get a fair amount of play on the classic TV-oriented broadcast and streaming channels, while The Bionic Woman got a short-lived remake on NBC starring Michelle Ryan in the lead back in '08.)
Of course, even if it was being talked about in Hollywood offices the idea only became increasingly implausible. The salability of classic TV show-based feature films has only declined since the '90s, for many reasons, while in this case even the title came to seem dated, not least due to inflation, above all in the medical realm. (The Social Security Part B premium was $6.30 back in 1973; it is $174.70 this year, a 28-fold surge over the last half century. And never mind that the New York Times will tell us "Don't worry. Be happy" regarding the skyrocketing of prices.) Given that no one is becoming a Steve Austin-type cyborg on the basis of six million dollars even the title of the show and its associated brand name recognition would have to be dispensed with--which is all that the kind of people who run the studios really care about in the end.
That show was an adaptation of Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels--initially as a trio of made-for-TV movies, and then a weekly series that ran for 99 additional one-hour episodes over five seasons, while launching a successful spin-off in The Bionic Woman, both of which can be credited with lingering in pop cultural memory to a far greater degree than The Fall Guy did. (I remember how those reruns were a staple of what became the Syfy Channel back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they still seem to get a fair amount of play on the classic TV-oriented broadcast and streaming channels, while The Bionic Woman got a short-lived remake on NBC starring Michelle Ryan in the lead back in '08.)
Of course, even if it was being talked about in Hollywood offices the idea only became increasingly implausible. The salability of classic TV show-based feature films has only declined since the '90s, for many reasons, while in this case even the title came to seem dated, not least due to inflation, above all in the medical realm. (The Social Security Part B premium was $6.30 back in 1973; it is $174.70 this year, a 28-fold surge over the last half century. And never mind that the New York Times will tell us "Don't worry. Be happy" regarding the skyrocketing of prices.) Given that no one is becoming a Steve Austin-type cyborg on the basis of six million dollars even the title of the show and its associated brand name recognition would have to be dispensed with--which is all that the kind of people who run the studios really care about in the end.
Martin Caidin's Cyborg as Proto-Techno-Thriller
Cyborg's military-espionage, technological and geopolitical themes, and its action-adventure-oriented and action-packed treatment of them, not least in its technically detailed flying sequences, are certainly consistent with the military techno-thriller's character. Still, there are reasons for thinking of the book as less techno-thriller than proto-techno-thriller. After all, if the flying scenes would do a later techno-thriller credit the real star of the show technologically is Austin's bionics, not a major theme of that form, not least because they are more than usually futuristic for the genre--science fiction-al, in a way that subsequent Steve Austin adventures were. Thus did the third book in the Cyborg series offer crypto-history involving "ancient astronauts," the fourth an artificially intelligent computer. such details Cyborg and its sequels look a lot more Clive Cussler than Tom Clancy, even if representative of the trend leading to the latter.
Saturday, May 4, 2024
The First Weekend of Summer is Upon Us. How Will The Fall Guy Do?
These days Boxoffice Pro seems to be out of the long-range forecasting business, and so all we had to go on from the first week of April up until now in regard to The Fall Guy has been its initial prediction of a $20-$40 million opening weekend for the movie, without the usual updates. The weekend forecasts, if less comprehensive than before, still appear, however--and the estimate they published Wednesday has that movie pulling in $30-$40 million, suggesting that the outlook has become a little more bullish over the past month, with regard to the bottom end of the range if not the top. Still, the publication's staff are not unmindful of the film's disadvantages, noting here that even compared with projects like Charlie's Angels (which did not do so well in 2019), the original "The Fall Guy did not leave a substantial cultural footprint," that indeed "[a] vast majority of audiences under the age of 30 probably wouldn't remember who Lee Majors was," while those who were actually fans of the original "may be put off" by what they have done with the material (certainly I think they would not care for "Kenough" crying in his truck to Taylor Swift, among much, much else in just the few bits of the film we saw in that "Everything" trailer), such that this movie "may be one of those cases where the filmmakers wind up pleasing no one in trying to please everyone."
Of course, the critics loved it--but then claquing is their job. The audience gets its say now, and we will see if the film's strengths will outweigh its all too numerous and obvious disadvantages. But where the bigger picture is concerned one does well to remember that even the $40 million of the high end of this film's range will still work out to the weakest opening for the first big movie of the summer in nearly two decades, making for an inauspicious beginning to this hugely important season for the industry.
Of course, the critics loved it--but then claquing is their job. The audience gets its say now, and we will see if the film's strengths will outweigh its all too numerous and obvious disadvantages. But where the bigger picture is concerned one does well to remember that even the $40 million of the high end of this film's range will still work out to the weakest opening for the first big movie of the summer in nearly two decades, making for an inauspicious beginning to this hugely important season for the industry.
The North American Box Office During the First Third of 2024
During 2015-2019 the first third of the year--the January through April period--the North American box office averaged $4.4 billion in 2023 dollars. In 2023 the figure was a comparatively meager $2.6 billion--about 59 percent of that total.
By contrast the North American box office just barely broke $2 billion (taking in $2.04 billion by April 30, or more like $1.97 billion when we adjust for inflation)--a more than one-fifth drop from 2023 for the same four-month period, and an even larger, more than halfway, drop, from the 2015-2019 average. Putting this situation more fully into context one may say that it continues the pattern from the last third of 2023, which had similarly been depressed--or, rather, the pattern evident for the last year. (The twelve month May 2023-April 2024 period saw just $8.25 billion collected in 2023 dollars--as against $14 billion for the equivalent periods between May 2014 and April 2019, with even that including the bump from the extreme overperformances of Barbie and Oppenheimer.)
Thus do the hard times continue.
By contrast the North American box office just barely broke $2 billion (taking in $2.04 billion by April 30, or more like $1.97 billion when we adjust for inflation)--a more than one-fifth drop from 2023 for the same four-month period, and an even larger, more than halfway, drop, from the 2015-2019 average. Putting this situation more fully into context one may say that it continues the pattern from the last third of 2023, which had similarly been depressed--or, rather, the pattern evident for the last year. (The twelve month May 2023-April 2024 period saw just $8.25 billion collected in 2023 dollars--as against $14 billion for the equivalent periods between May 2014 and April 2019, with even that including the bump from the extreme overperformances of Barbie and Oppenheimer.)
Thus do the hard times continue.
How Did April 2024 Go For the Box Office?
In 2015-2019 movie ticket sales in North America during the month of April averaged $1.1 billion in 2023 dollars. Admittedly the number was bumped up by summer beginning early in 2018-2019 with the release of the two parts of the big climax to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Three with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but the average for 2015-2017 is still $1 billion without them. In 2023 April did fall a bit short of that, but not by much--the mega-hit that The Super Mario Bros. Movie was raising the total to $900 million in the same terms--90 percent of the 2015-2017 figure. (Had the rest of the year gone as well we would have spoken of a near-complete recovery of the box office to its pre-pandemic level, rather than a "new normal" for it such as I am discussing now, with North Americans going to the theater a couple of times a year instead of four times a year as before.)
As I remarked a few weeks ago, while after a depressed fall, and January-February period, March saw the box office finally improve on the prior year's performance (largely thanks to Dune, with a little help from Ghostbusters and Godzilla), I expected that April would bring with it a return to the earlier, depressed condition. And indeed, while Godzilla performed more or less in line with reasonable expectations for the film, Ghostbusters less well than some hoped though far from the total flop some might also have feared in light of how unimpressed people were with it, it was far from enough to carry the month the way the releases of prior years have. Ending up with a mere $427 million grossed (assuming the 3.2 percent inflation seen over the past year, $414 million in 2023 dollars), this makes for a take about 38 percent of the 2015-2019 average, and 43 percent of even the more modest 2015-2017 average. The result is that the year continues to see the box office take run far behind that of the equivalent period in 2023, never mind the pre-pandemic years--with, for the time being at least, May not seeming to offer much respite, certainly going by the numbers I have seen for The Fall Guy, the next Planet of the Apes film and the plausible prospects of the next Mad Max movie.
As I remarked a few weeks ago, while after a depressed fall, and January-February period, March saw the box office finally improve on the prior year's performance (largely thanks to Dune, with a little help from Ghostbusters and Godzilla), I expected that April would bring with it a return to the earlier, depressed condition. And indeed, while Godzilla performed more or less in line with reasonable expectations for the film, Ghostbusters less well than some hoped though far from the total flop some might also have feared in light of how unimpressed people were with it, it was far from enough to carry the month the way the releases of prior years have. Ending up with a mere $427 million grossed (assuming the 3.2 percent inflation seen over the past year, $414 million in 2023 dollars), this makes for a take about 38 percent of the 2015-2019 average, and 43 percent of even the more modest 2015-2017 average. The result is that the year continues to see the box office take run far behind that of the equivalent period in 2023, never mind the pre-pandemic years--with, for the time being at least, May not seeming to offer much respite, certainly going by the numbers I have seen for The Fall Guy, the next Planet of the Apes film and the plausible prospects of the next Mad Max movie.
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