Revisiting the Philosophical Controversy Over Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

When Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange hit theaters the movie was instantly and significantly controversial--not only for its brutal violence, but because of its politics, and in a way that seems of particular interest today. Where today it is standard to equate "liberal" and "conservative," "left" and "right" with grab-bags of opinions about laundry lists of hot button issues, the argument over Kubrick's movie addressed what these words have traditionally meant to the politically literate--stances toward that fundamental question of political philosophy since the Enlightenment, namely the nature of human beings, what this means for the possibilities for society's shape, and especially whether or not reason can be used to bring about a freer, more equal, more just, more flourishing order of things. It seems fairly uncontroversial to say that A Clockwork Orange, true to Anthony Burgess' source material, espoused a deeply pessimistic view of the matter identifiable not with the Enlightenment's liberalism, but the Counter-Enlightenment's anti-liberalism--the right, indeed the hard right, rather than the left, with this today bolstered by Kubrick's consistent, explicit, political statements at the time (in two interview-based pieces in the New York Times, and then again in a piece in the pages of that same publication). Moreover, at the time liberals called out the film as such--as a right-wing and even fascist movie (with it seeming significant that while Kubrick denied the film was fascist, he reiterated what would be conventionally taken as very right-wing views).*

Where the lack of comparable controversy over a piece of pop culture in a long time is concerned, it seems to me that besides the decline of the political literacy that made such argument possible there has been, essentially, a triumph of deeply conservative views among the mainstream commentariat--even those members of it who would not identify as conservative. In the view of a great many observers, David Walsh has remarked, "realism" has come to mean "presenting humanity in the dimmest possible light," with filmmakers endeavoring to "outdo each other . . . in their depictions of people’s depravity and sadism," not least by "sticking in all the sordid details one can think of," while far from being "indignant" at the state of the world, they show "a warm, almost grateful acceptance of the filthiness" that they hold to come "from the rottenness of humanity itself"--often, I would add, in a tone of self-satisfied, trollish, "Welcome to the real world!" swagger. They have thus come to take the kind of politics A Clockwork Orange presented in stride, as unworthy of remark, as mere conventional wisdom, with any other outlook so "dated" or otherwise out of touch with "reality" as to not be worth answering--a result not just the right but the political Center fought to achieve.

* Indeed, the film's star Malcolm McDowell remarked in an interview liberal dislike of the film. Sounding like what would today be called a troll ("Liberals, they hate Clockwork because they're dreamers and it shows them realities . . . Cringe, don't they, when faced with the bloody truth?" which was that "People are basically bad, corrupt," as he had "always sensed") McDowell claimed later in a letter to the Times that his remark was not "gleeful" but "despondent" (odd as that may seem to one who reads the whole interview, and little as this actually changes).

"Welcome to the Real World!"

The phase "Welcome to the real world!" is notoriously uttered with condescension and outright Schadenfreude in response to someone else being unpleasantly disillusioned, or more deeply pained, by contact with the supposed "real world."

Few ask what they mean by "real" here. Alas, in line with the standard of "realism" David Walsh describes as what the conventional have in mind, it means "presenting humanity in the dimmest possible light"--what is revolting, the "real," and all else somehow not real. Society as a Hobbesian state of nature on steroids, with anything else "fake," to be believed in only by the contemptibly naive.

Some grasp of reality, that--and all too much in line with the stupid swagger and general nastiness of the phrases that do so much to befoul spoken and written English in our time.

The Politics of Stanley Kubrick--and of A Clockwork Orange

It is very common for those discussing works of art and their creators to flub the characterization of their politics at their most basic level. Sometimes this is because the works and creators are genuinely complexly multi-sided, uncertain, drawn in different directions at once. However, it seems to me more common for them to get such things wrong because they are simply political illiterates--with this compounded by the way that some never miss a chance to confuse the issue.

One such case is Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. Interviewed in the New York Times by Bernard Weinraub and Craig McGregor in January 1972 Kubrick attacked as "[o]ne of the most dangerous fallacies" of politics and philosophy "that man is essentially good, and that it is society which makes him bad." He specifically singled out the philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau for criticism here, saying that "[m]an isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage . . . irrational, brutal . . . unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved . . . violent," while specifically criticizing Rousseau's "transferr[ing] original sin from man to society"--his view of man as good and society as corrupting--as having led to that fallacy, "creat[ing] social institutions" on which basis "is probably doomed to failure."

No one the least bit conversant in political philosophy should find these statements to be ambiguous in their political content. Here Kubrick zeroed in on the fundamental issue in modern political philosophy--the nature of human beings and their societies and what this means for attempts to bring about a more humane and justice order--and clearly took one side. Where the liberal-radical Enlightenment held humans to be rational, the conservative Counter-Enlightenment (the tradition of Burke, de Maistre et. al.) held humans to be irrational. Where the rationalistic and secular Enlightenment rejected talk of original sin, the Counter-Enlightenment regarded it as fundamental to its view of human irrationality, and human badness, which they held shut the door on all hope of "social institutions" that would be more free, more equal, more just, more humane than those existing. In his remarks Kubrick explicitly took the side of the conservative Counter-Enlightenment here (without even trying to dress it up in the "psychologism" that had become so fashionable by his time), underlined his stance with his criticism of Rousseau by name--and indeed, while expounding upon how "many aspects of liberal mythology are coming to grief now" was alert that he was "going to sound like William Buckley" (emphasis added).* The apparent inclination of Kubrick to a view of humans as "risen apes," specifically based on the work of the deeply pessimistic science writer Robert Ardrey, his combination of his pessimistic view of humans and human reason with a quasi-religious "hope" nin the thought of "God-like" "intelligence . . . outside the earth"--both of which aspects of his thinking could seem on pointed display in his preceding 2001: A Space Odyssey--would seem to complement, if not affirm, rather than contradict the view of Kubrick as deeply right-wing in his views. So too what his film seemed to say about welfare states, socialism, therapy as an alternative to "law and order" policies as a way of dealing with crime, Russian cultural influence, and much else.

Granted, Kubrick's career was a long and unusual one, and it seems plausible that there were shifts in his thinking and feeling through it. (It may seem difficult to reconcile Kubrick's statements here with the deeply humane and ferociously critical sensibility of his World War I film Paths of Glory, for example. Indeed, David Walsh has read Kubrick's career as, after the initial display of a "humanitarian impulse" going by that film, "a slow descent into the slough of misanthropy followed by, if not a climb out of it, at least a playing about on its far bank," with Kubrick "seeming to touch bottom" in A Clockwork Orange.) It seems plausible, too, that his outlook had its idiosyncrasies, that if philosophically very much of the right he may still have felt less than fully at home on the "actually existing" right per se. (Why should a right-winger be abashed about sounding like William Buckley?) Still, given what he himself said about his view of the world at the time it seems no oddity but quite natural that Kubrick was attracted to the idea of adapting a novel by a T.S. Eliot-influenced writer of similar religious-monarchical sympathies who rubbed this dark view of humanity in his reader's faces (to which work Kubrick admitted "respond[ing] emotionally . . . very intensely")--just as Kubrick was attracted a little while before to the work of another right-wing writer who had made a stir with material that, going by what Nabokov said about his own intentions, he had intended to provoke (Vladimir Nabokov)--and that Kubrick was well aware of what he was presenting as an artist, what his film was saying about humans and society. By the same token it seems that those who, like Roger Ebert and Fred Hechinger, recognized a very right-wing work at the time--part of a stream of right-wing work in Hechinger's view that was as much a part of the history of the New Hollywood as more left-wing fare--were quite correct to do so, whatever else one may say about any other rights or wrongs on the part of any of those involved.

* William Buckley, founder of the National Review, was of course a pillar of post-war conservatism in America.

Boxoffice Pro's Opening Weekend Projection for The Fall Guy

As you might recall I was fairly dubious about the idea of a Fall Guy movie--for many reasons. Still, it seems that the claquing for this one will be very loud. (Following the movie's debut at the SXSW festival the critics were raving, reflecting which response it has had an 89 percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.)

And I wondered how much it would matter. If, indeed, I could not be as far off the mark in judging this film's prospects as I was in judging those of Top Gun 2.

Alas, it does not look that way. Boxoffice Pro has put out its first forecast for The Fall Guy--which anticipates a mere $20-$40 million for the opening weekend. Even with its expectation of surprisingly good legs (the movie managing to make between three and four times the range of its opening weekend gross with a domestic run) that only leads to a final take of $75-$125 million.

For a low-budget film released in a quiet part of the year that would be decent. For a $125 million production budgeted release supposed to launch the summer season it is . . . not.

Let us consider the formula I discussed last year, that the full expense entailed in the movie's making and release was two to three times the reported production budget (counting in promotion, distribution, claims from residuals whose full weight will only become clear later, etc.), which works out to a figure of $250-$375 million. Very likely 60 percent of that has to be made at the box office ($150-$225 million, netted), and the studio gets at best 50 percent of the box office gross, which works to a plausible estimate of a global gross of at least $300 million (and perhaps much more) before the movie begins to look profitable. Even at the high end of the range predicted by Boxoffice Pro the movie would have to do very, very well abroad to hit that mark (making 1.5 times its domestic take abroad)--and it is very easy to see it falling short of it, especially with the international markets no more reliable than the domestic one these days, and of course, this relatively marginal opener facing competition from such movies as the new installments in the rebooted Planet of the Apes and Mad Max franchises in the weeks after Fall Guy's release. Both those movies, too, are facing a tougher market than they did at the time of their franchise's prior releases, but the point is that it may not take much to crowd out the Ryan Gosling vehicle--especially in the wake of what will likely be the weakest summer launch in nearly two decades (when Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven opened to $20 million in 2005, some $32 million in today's terms).

Of course, there is still a month to go before the movie's debut--and like Barbie this Ryan Gosling vehicle might see surging interest prior to release. But such changes of prospect are, of course, a rarity, and this the situation as it stands now--though box office-watchers may find it interesting to pay attention to the revisions in expectations between now and May 3.

Our First Non-Superhero Summer Movie Season Kickoff Since 2006

Surveying those films that launched the hugely important summer movie season over the course of the twenty-first century one finds that it is not only the case that nearly every first weekend of that season since 2008 has been launched by a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film (beginning with that year's Iron Man), with this the case for each and every proper summer season since 2015.* It is also the case that since 2002 just about every summer movie season was launched by a Marvel superhero epic--with the Spider-Man (2002, 2004, 2007) and X-Men (2003) movies arrived before the MCU came along, and filling in the gaps in most of those rare years after Iron Man when there was no MCU film scheduled for that weekend (2009, 2014).**

It was an extraordinary run testifying to the extraordinary popularity not just of the MCU, but the broader Marvel brand, and the superhero film generally.

Of course, 2024 will not be seeing an MCU, or any Marvel or even superhero, release on the first weekend of summer. Instead the season will open with . . . The Fall Guy.

This may seem just a blip. After all, Captain America 4 was supposed to open that critical first weekend, but this was made impossible by last year's double-strike by Hollywood's actors and writers. However, it is also the case that the MCU, and the superhero genre more broadly, have had a very rough year and a half at this point, with Marvel's Phase Four clearly troubled by the time of Thor 4 (from which point on sequels were making 20 to 50 percent less in real terms than the films which preceded them), and Captain Marvel 2 proved a catastrophe, its global gross ultimately a mere 15 percent that of the original. As the situation stands, Disney-Marvel may still plan to have The Thunderbolts, at least, out on May 2, 2025, and may still succeed in doing that--but barring a turnaround in the fortunes of the franchise and the genre the results will only testify to the passing of their old market dominance.

* The films are, respectively, Iron Man) (2008) and its two sequels (2010, 2013), the first Thor movie (2011), the third Captain America movie (2016), the four Avengers films (2012, 2015, 2018, 2019), the second and third Guardians of the Galaxy movies (2017, 2023), and Dr. Strange 2 (2022). (Where the exceptional 2020-2021 period is concerned it is worth remembering that Black Widow was scheduled for the first weekend of May 2020, and delayed only by the pandemic, which had a sufficiently distorting effect on the summer of 2021 that the author of this post also does not count it as a "proper" summer.)
** The films in question were X-Men: Wolverine in 2009 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. The sole years in which this did not occur were 2005 and 2006 (kicked off by Ridley Scott's historical epic Kingdom of Heaven, and Mission: Impossible III, respectively, both significant disappointments that ultimately underlined just how important the superhero film was to become in this period).

Checking in with Madame Web

Madame Web came out over Valentine's/President's Day weekend to a very weak, if not really worse than expected, audience response.

How do things stand now?

The film, which was in 27th place at the box office on the weekend of March 22-24, finished up well short of the $50 million mark domestically (under $44 million actually), and did not do much better internationally--pulling in just under $56 million there, to leave its global total a bit below $100 million at last report from Box Office Mojo. It is not inconceivable that the movie will somehow make the remaining $800,000 or so to break the $100 million barrier, and thus technically be a "$100 million hit," but that just does not mean what it used to--especially for a franchise superhero film, and at that, one from the Spider-Man universe.

One may add to this that the film's audience scores are 57 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 2.6 on Internet Movie Data Base.

The result is that in contrast with those role films that manage to triumph over a poor start (like last year's Elemental), this movie's flop status still stands--and shows every sign of continuing to stand, with all that implies for any schemes for spinning off other movies from this one, the Sony Spider-Man Universe that already took a hit rather than scored one with 2022's Morbius, every other scheme for squeezing more money out of audiences through the use of less well-known superheroes in lower-key films, and the superhero genre generally, though of course, a good many such efforts are doubtless locked in, and the fact remains that Hollywood has no plans for what to do with itself as its longstanding model of filmmaking becomes untenable. Except, perhaps, to bet on mighty Artificial Intelligences somehow coming to its rescue, the same as the rest of the business community these days (no matter how much certain billionaires would have us believe otherwise as they flog silly Frankenstein complex stuff on TV).

Went the Month Well? (And the Quarter?) The March 2024 Box Office

The box office receipts in January and February 2024 were significantly down from what they were a year earlier--the two months together down by perhaps a fifth relative to January-February 2023. A function of the lack of any Avatar-like holiday season hit, or even an Ant Man 3-like Valentine's/President's Day weekend release, to give the early part of the year a boost, it still threw more cold water on the hopes of some recovery of the box office toward its pre-pandemic norm.

Of course, many were more optimistic about March. That month had the second half of Denis Villeneuve's Dune, Kung Fu Panda 4, a new Ghostbusters movie and a Godzilla film opening. Of course, as I have been saying again and again, it is not just superhero films but franchise films of these types generally that have been suffering. Still, few have been ready to admit the fact, and anyway most professional commentators seem to be implicitly grading blockbusters on a curve (judging grosses they would have deemed mediocre pre-pandemic as brilliant successes now), and as it happens March 2024 did manage to beat out March 2023 with a gross of $753 million to $638 million, a decent 18 percent margin.

As a practical matter that still leaves the box office gross for the first quarter of the year well down from its predecessor (with just $1.612 billion as against the prior year's $1.722 billion), even before we consider year-on-year inflation (3.2 percent for the year, with this corresponding to the February 2023 to February 2024 period as wll).* Adjusting for the price rise works out to a first-quarter take down 9 percent from the prior year--all as the gross for the first quarter of 2023 was about 40 percent down from that of 2019, and halfway (48 percent) down from the 2015-2019 average.

Will things continue to improve from here on out? It is hard to say. If Godzilla was a decent performer on Easter weekend, it is a far cry from last year's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a half billion dollar hit that did much to carry the month, the spring season, the year--all as I do not see any movie likely to be a hit on that extraordinary scale not only in April (indeed, Boxoffice Pro does not project even a single movie reaching the $100 million mark during the month) but the entire year's schedule. The result is that I expect April 2024 to look much more like January and February in relation to its predecessor than it would to March, as March's apparent improvement (which still left March 37 percent down from the pre-pandemic average) proves noise rather than signal--a matter of comparatively marginal money-makers being clustered together in between longer patches unrelieved even by hits on these modest terms.

Went the Month Well? The Movies of the March 2024 Box Office

After a depressing first two months of disappointment for box office-watchers this year hopes revived somewhat with Dune, and then after that the arrival of Kung Fu Panda 4, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and the latest Godzilla movie.

Just how well have these movies done?

The second Dune film has, after a month in release, grossed $252 million domestically. Given the release of the first Dune film amid the pandemic, and the fact that Dune's complex and fairly dark source material is less a simple crowd-pleaser than most sci-fi spectacles, it has been thought excellent. Still, the exultation over such a reception reminds one that the standard is not what it used to be, when more would have been expected from movies such as this.

Thus does it also seem to go with the others. Ghostbusters 4 seems likely to finish well below $150 million--a performance paling next to that of its predecessors (inferior even to the much-maligned 2016 remake of the original film).

Kung Fu Panda 4's gross, which has broken past $150 million (it stands at $152 million as of its fourth weekend), but will not get much past it, similarly leaves it the series' weakest in real terms. If the 2016 third film's gross was $143 million, adjusted for today's prices it would not be much short of $190 million. (It is also worth remembering that this movie was a success mainly on the basis of tripling its domestic gross internationally, in part by outearning its U.S. gross in the Chinese market then burgeoning for Hollywood. By contrast there is no prospect of this movie quadrupling its domestic gross globally this time, compounding the significance of the domestic take.)

Godzilla seems more promising--but again, it has had an $80 million domestic debut, suggestive even in a positive scenario of a close in the vicinity of $200-$250 million, making it another Dune-like earner at best. However, especially if one takes inflation into account, its gross seems likely to be no better than 2014's Godzilla or 2017's Skull Island in the end, and like the lot not quite first rank blockbusters of the ever more elusive billion dollar club (like last year's Easter weekend release, Super Mario Bros.).

All of this sufficed to make this March's box office gross healthier than what was seen in last year's post-Avatar 2, pre-Super Mario Bros. dip, but it seems notable that it still left this March with a mere 63 percent of the pre-pandemic average for the month (its $753 million better than last March's $638 million, but comparing poorly to the $900 million+ they averaged in current dollars, the $1.17 billion they averaged in real, inflation-adjusted dollars). The result is that it seems to me fair to take March as, if an improvement on prior months, also proof that franchise films remain a tougher sell than they used to be, and in line with the fact the American box office seemingly stabilized at a level well below what we saw pre-pandemic. Going by 2022 and 2023 I would say the range of what we can expect from here on out is an annual box office in the vicinity of 50-65 percent of the 2015-2019 average, with this year showing little sign thus far, or in what can be expected of its later releases, of making the top end of that range. This is all the more in as I expect April will see another dip, and disappointing as the summer of 2023 was (especially prior to Barbie and Oppenheimer saving the season in its last weeks), this summer looks weaker still--such that its opening with a movie titled The Fall Guy seems all too likely to seem "on the nose" before too long.

The Fall Guy: Thoughts on the "Everything" Trailer

Seeing the "Everything" trailer for the upcoming film The Fall Guy I get an impression of a significant contrast in marketing strategy with what the prior trailer presented. Where humor was part of the package on offer, and indeed an important part, this one sells the movie as an over-the-top comedy--very bombastically. (Does Ryan Gosling really warrant introduction as RYAN M@TH?RF#*&!NG GOSLING and Emily Blunt introduction as EMILY M@TH?RF#*&!NG BLUNT? My first thought is a solid "No"--and it is far from the only way in which I found this sales pitch exceedingly obnoxious and off-putting.) It also places a heavy stress on Ryan Gosling's being the lead, it would seem drawing heavily on the success of Barbie last year. (This seems the more significant when the protagonist is seen sitting in the cab of a truck crying to a Taylor Swift song.)

Will it work?

The high concept comedy, alas, was in much-remarked decline before the pandemic, and such seems particularly risky fare to launch that crucial first weekend in May (the more in as this film looked risky enough to begin with, given its playing off of comparatively obscure source material, etc.). Trading on good will from last year's hit is also a chancy strategy--putting me in mind of how many thought the good will toward Tom Cruise after Top Gun 2 would translate over to Mission: Impossible 7 being a particularly big hit. Alas, things did not quite go that way . . . all as it should be remembered that if we generally hear from those who loved "Kenough" there were plenty who did not (and indeed, some of this seems to have translated over to Gosling).

In short, this approach to selling the movie is a gamble with a movie that was a gamble to begin with--I suspect, more of a gamble than the backers of this film planned on taking when they thought "Let's make another movie based off an old TV show practically nobody remembers even though those haven't done well in a really long time."

Naturally it will be interesting to see how it plays out--for the disinterested. By contrast those who put up the money ought to be quite anxious as to the outcome of their bet.

What Are We to Make of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Box Office-Wise?

Boxoffice Pro's last long-range forecast projected a gross in the $85-$126 million range, with which its final opening weekend forecast of $40 million was consistent.

It is worth remembering that this works out to, even at the high end, less than the much-mocked 2016 Ghostbusters remake made even before inflation ($128 million).

If we think in terms of inflation-adjusted numbers, it is much less than the 2016 movie made ($166 million in February 2024 prices), while that in its turn was much less than the gross of Ghostbusters II back in 1989 (which movie's $112 million take equals $281 million in today's money), a movie that was considered a disappointment at the time--because the original had made so much more (the first Ghostbusters pulling in $243 million, equivalent to a $729 million gross today, so that Ghostbusters II made only a little over one-third of what the first movie did).

The result is that if we look at the matter dispassionately we see Hollywood yet again venturing far, far down the path of diminishing returns with an '80s-era franchise in the usual, desperate and shameless, manner--the movie much more Indiana Jones 5 than Top Gun 2, and in the process extending the pattern of failure for such films seen last year.

Given all that the press and the chatter seem relatively upbeat.

Life After Ghostbusters II

It was, of course, the case that Ghostbusters II, while a big hit by almost any conventional measure (a near $300 million blockbuster domestically when we adjust its gross for February 2024 prices, which made it the fifth-biggest hit of the booming summer of 1989), was received as a big disappointment in 1989 (following up as it did the Avengers-caliber blockbuster that was the first Ghostbusters, a $700 million+ hit in today's terms).

Considering that movie I am struck by how the careers of many of those involved were on a downward trajectory afterward with respect to success in major feature film, with Ivan Reitman an obvious case. Besides having the Ghostbusters movies, in the '80s he scored big with Stripes, and Twins. The early '90s were not bad for him, with Kindergarten Cop, and Dave, reasonably well-received, but not on par with his prior hits, while Reitman's reteaming with Danny DeVito and that slapfight promoter who keeps dropping at every opportunity mention that he was once "governor of California" (1994's Junior) was received as a disappointment. Subsequently Reitman's remake of the French comedy Les Compères, which bringing together Robin Williams and Billy Crystal at the height of their careers, its Nastassja Kinski comeback hype, and June release date, was supposed to be the big summer comedy of 1997 . . . but wasn't. His next would-be "big comedy of the summer" Six Days, Seven Nights (which had Harrison Ford playing off of his Indiana Jones image) did not do much better than the preceding two movies, and his last would-be big summer comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, pretty much proved the end of the line for Reitman as a maker of big studio comedies, with just a couple more lower-profile feature films following over the next eight years.*

As it went for Reitman, so did it go with much of the cast, particularly those members of the actual Ghostbusters team whose careers had been most flourishing in the '80s. Bill Murray, to whom the '80s had been very good outside the franchise (he also had Caddyshack, Reitman's Stripes, Tootsie, Scrooged), saw things go south for him in much the same way. If in the early '90s he still had What About Bob? and Groundhog Day he seems to have found hits increasingly elusive, especially in those films where he was actually in the lead on screen rather than making cameos, or just lending his voice (certainly to go by the responses to Larger Than Life and The Man Who Knew Too Little). Apart from his role as Bosley in the McG-directed Charlie's Angels apart (which he did not even reprise in the 2003 sequel, that job taken over by Bernie Mac), and his voice role in the two Garfield films from the early part of the century, he would seem to have remained prominent mainly as a regular in the films of Wes Anderson and like directors--critical darling's films that get glowing reviews and win prizes, but generally do not become big box office hits, his days as a head-liner behind him.** Meanwhile Dan Aykroyd's post-Ghostbusters II career, as judged by that standard, makes Murray's look enviable.

Of course, even with the second film's perceived underperformance, and these careers going south, the studio (Columbia/Sony) still wanted a third movie. Going by what has been reported about the efforts to make that movie it seems that legalities, personalities and the like played their part in keeping the project in "development hell." Still, I also imagine that had the careers involved been doing better there would have been a greater push to get another movie done sooner--and that we started getting more Ghostbusters this past decade has been a reminder of how the franchise-addiction Hollywood was already displaying in the 1980s has got worse, the Suits ever less willing to let any possibility go. (Which is how the aforementioned slapfight promoter got to be in Terminator 6.)

* After My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which also seems to have been a turning point of sorts for its stars Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman) there was just No Strings Attached (2011), and the sports drama Draft Day (2014), though Reitman seems to have continued racking up producer credits on major films he did not direct (like 2007's Disturbia, 2009's I Love You, Man, his son Jason Reitman's 2009 Up in the Air, the 2017 Baywatch movie, and the three Ghostbusters movies of the past decade).
** Murray's credits in Anderson's films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Isle of Dogs (another voice role) and The French Dispatch--nearly every one of the lot. Murray has also been in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers and two Sofia Coppola movies, namely Lost in Translation and On the Rocks.

Global Box Office Performance: Barbie vs. Oppenheimer

As I previously wrote here, Barbie and Oppenheimer could be credited with saving the summer box office with their late season appearance (the two movies together adding $1 billion that turned what had been up to that point, for all its richness in big releases, a lower-grossing summer than its predecessor).

Both films were also impressive performers internationally, and thus globally. Still, they were far from identical in that respect. Domestically Barbie made about twice what Oppenheimer did ($636 million vs. $329 million)--but internationally the gap was a lot narrower, Barbie making just about a quarter more than Oppenheimer ($809 million vs. $628 million), a much smaller margin, with Oppenheimer's performance coming so close the more impressive given its lack of any marketing hook to compare with association with a famous Mattel toy, greater demands on the viewer's attention, disturbing and downbeat subject matter, and more "adult" rating with its implications for accessibility (an R rather than a PG-13 movie in the U.S., with this probably not very different anywhere).

Going by those ticket sales it does not seem to me unreasonable to say that, compared with the North American audience, the international audience was relatively much more interested in Oppenheimer--with this reaffirmed when one compares how the film did in many a major market. In France, Germany, Italy Oppenheimer was just marginally behind Barbie (by a tenth or less); while in China Oppenheimer came out far ahead (almost reversing the pattern seen in North America, as there Oppenheimer outgrossed Barbie by almost two to one).*

The result is that while it would be an extreme exaggeration to deny that Barbie managed to "travel well" (there is no arguing with an $800 million gross here), Oppenheimer did relatively much better abroad than here, a fact that seems to warrant a good deal more consideration than the matter has generally been given in the press amid all its cheerleading for Greta Gerwig's movie in particular. One plausible hypothesis is that Barbie's concerns and viewpoint were more distinctly American (and even more than that, distinctly of the very limited portion of the American public represented by the mainstream of the media)--and those of Oppenheimer of more genuine interest for the world public.

* The grosses of Barbie and Oppenheimer were, respectively, $44 million to $43 million in France, $57 million to $51 million in Germany, $$33 million to $30 million in Italy, and $35 million to $62 million in China.

David Walsh and the 2024 Oscars

Given David Walsh's deeply favorable response to Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer from his initial review of the film forward to his consideration of the movie's reception earlier this month, it was only to be expected that it would be prominent in his piece on this year's Academy Awards.

As it happened Walsh devoted the first eight of his article's paragraphs to the significance of Oppenheimer's popular, and critical, success, and their connection with the political reality of the time--and only then turned to the broader ceremony. Still, it seemed significant there too. As Walsh remarked in a ceremony dominated by the reception of Oppenheimer (and where Poor Things, to which Walsh had also been favorable, also had a strong showing so that, as Walsh noted, the two films took eleven of the seventeen awards), "[t]here was less garishness and self-involvement on display than usual," and "the identity politics fanatics . . . relatively quiet after" as on the "whole, the awards ceremony left the viewer with the impression of great social and psychological tension bottled up."

While Walsh's annual coverage of the Oscars is an annual tradition I cannot recall him writing anything comparable about the event in the past--the subtitle of his 1999 piece ("Hollywood at its Worst") summed up his attitude toward the matter, and the last words of the item's first sentence (a "celebration of conformism, vulgarity and mediocrity") left no doubt whatsoever about exactly what he meant, with that description pretty much consistently applicable to every ceremony since down to last year's ("The 'safe,' 'familiar' and 'reassuring; 2023 Academy Awards: tedious, self-involved and distant from the population"). Even the more than usually charged March 2006 ceremony (recognizing cinematic achievement in the year of films like Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, the film adaptation of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener) struck Walsh as "a sad and painful affair," in which the limitations of any liberal or left tendency in Hollywood were all too clear. Those limitations seem to have been much on Walsh's mind again in Tuesday's piece--but all the same his reading and expectations of the situation seem very different, such that where two decades he thought of the fickleness of even the well-intentioned in Hollywood, it may well be that he sees Hollywood not bumping up against those limitations, but possibly beginning to surpass them, with all that implies.

On Oppenheimer's Oscar Win(s)--and Poor Things Wins Too

As my remarks here going back to January indicate (and as was reaffirmed by more recent comment), I expected that Oppenheimer would claim Best Picture, and so it has. After all, as a highly stylized three-hour mid-century-set biopic the movie appears to be "natural" Oscar material--with the movie helped by how so many of its rivals could appear too "lightweight" (as with Alexander Payne's The Holdovers), too little-seen (almost all of them save for Greta Gerwig's Barbie), too foreign (as with Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall) for the Academy's taste. It also had on its side Christopher Nolan's powerful cheering section and the readiness of many in and out of it to see him as unjustly denied recognition in the past, adding the "his turn" element to the mix--with all this seemingly reaffirmed by the movie's progressing from one victory to another at the season's various awards ceremonies.

Still, if the film's taking Best Picture (and Best Director, and much else) could seem predictable given what we saw these past few months, I had previously thought Barbie the more likely winner given the Academy's greater openness to its themes (the kind of thing the Academy loves to honor) than those of Oppenheimer (the kind of thing that in so many recent years scared off the Academy).* The result is that there is still an element of upset here, affirmed by how not Gerwig's Barbie but Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things came in second, taking four statues home (including a second Best Actress win for Emma Stone, and Best Adapted Screenplay), as Barbie not only lost out on Best Director and Best Actress at even the nomination stage of things, and in the "major" categories in which it was nominated (Picture, Supporting Actor and Actress, Screenplay), but ended up with only one win (for "Best Original Song").

It does seem possible to take this as a sign of change, perhaps in multiple, era-changing ways. Scarcely a few days ago critic Bernd Reinhardt remarked Mati Diop's film Dahomey taking the Golden Bear at the year's Berlin Film Festival, suggested that it was "an indication that the dominant influence of identity politics in the cultural sector is losing ground."

Perhaps this turn of events at the Oscars is similarly indicative of the trend. Still, even if this is so we may feel ourselves in only a very, very, early stage of such a process.

* The film won a total of seven Oscars. Besides Best Picture and Best Director there were two acting prizes (Best Actor for Cillian Murphy and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr.), as well as prizes for Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema) and Film Editing (Jennifer Lame) in what, if not a sweep, is not too far off from it either.

The 96th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees' Chances: A Few Thoughts

Last summer, in the wake of the rapturous critical reception of Barbie, I thought it was certain to get Best Picture--but then Oppenheimer surprised me by winning over some very tough critics, and in the months since, dominating one awards ceremony after another. The result is that my intuitive guess has for some time been that it will win the Big Prize on Sunday night.

Still, that is far from a full consideration of the chances of the nominees (there are eight other movies to be thought about, after all), and so I found myself thinking about how they all stack up when considered in terms of factors more or less indicative of their chances (while, once again, setting aside any pretense that this is about "quality," so keep in mind I am not saying that any one movie here is better than another).

A Measure of Popular Success Goes a Long Way These Days
While box office performance has little-to-nothing to do with the actual quality of a film, the Academy (and other comparable institutions, one of which has gone so far as to produce the equivalent of a Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence) are concerned with popularity for the sake of keeping up public interest in the goings-on. As it happens of the ten films only two broke the now relatively modest $100 million barrier the extraordinarily weak box office year of 2023 (Barbie and Oppenheimer), only three the $50 million barrier (Killers of the Flower Moon also squeezed over the line to take in $67 million), and six have made $20 million or less (all of the rest except for Poor Things, which managed to take in half of what Killers of the Flower Moon did, with The Zone of Interest taking in $7 million, The Anatomy of a Fall taking in under $5 million to date and Maestro apparently enjoying only whatever minimum necessary to qualify).

Putting it another way, the issue is not just how much money Oppenheimer, and Barbie, made, but also how very little the rest made, that leaves Barbie and Oppenheimer with a considerable edge here over the rest.

A Best Director Nod isn't Essential--But it is a Favorable Sign
As I remarked in a prior post regarding Greta Gerwig's not getting a nomination for Best Director did not necessarily doom the chances of Barbie for winning Best Picture, other films having had that honor in spite of a lack of such recognition for the helmer (especially these days, one suspects, given the political pressure to spread the accolades around). Still, it is relatively rare. Of the ten films nominated for Best Picture only five have Best Director nods--namely Oppenheimer's Christopher Nolan, Killers of the Flower Moon's Martin Scorsese, Poor Things Yorgos Lanthimos, The Zone of Interest's Jonathan Glazer, and Anatomy's Justine Triet. This counts in those films' favor.

The "Lifetime Achievement" or "Making it Up to You" Element
Of the five directors who have been nominated, three have had prior nominations--namely Nolan, Scorsese and Lanthimos. Scorsese, of course, has ten nominations--but already has one win for his remake of the Hong Kong cinema classic Infernal Affairs (the wildly overblown yet inferior The Departed), and even if that was almost two decades no there is that much less reason for any rush to recognize him (especially because Killers of the Flower Moon has no "This is the one he will be remembered for" buzz). This means that this is more likely to work in favor of Nolan and Lanthimos--while the pressure would seem stronger in Nolan's case given that so many think him to have been so under-recognized in the past (because of his making Batman films and science fiction like Inception and Interstellar), while it might be added that he has a considerable popular cheering section in his corner such as, I think, Lanthimos does not (and so far as I know, Glazer and Triet do not, else we would have seen more people show up to their movies) . . ..

I am sure one can think of other factors than these, but you have probably noticed a pattern by now, namely that Oppenheimer again and again displays the advantage in the stakes, with its popular success, and the recognition accorded to a director whom some will see as entitled to "his turn," all as the competition is disadvantaged by the same factors (because "no one saw them," because of a lack of recognition of directorial achievement or pressure to reward them "this time")--all while Oppenheimer, as a lengthy period biopic with capital I Important themes and an ostentatious visual style is a natural for the prize in a way that much of the competition is not (because it is a brightly colored movie "about a toy," for example, or too light in tone in that "safe," familiar, Alexander Payne way, or disadvantaged simply by being "foreign" like Triet's Anatomy and Celine Song's Past Lives, etc., etc.).

The result of this little exercise is that Oppenheimer looks to me like even more of a lock for Best Picture than it was before--though of course the last act of Naked Gun 33 1/3rd--though of course, that particular ceremony had help from Lieutenant Frank Drebin of Police Squad and his colleagues.