If Hollywood had stopped making bad films, they would have made more money…
2017 probably isn’t the year to say that the HL Mencken line about nobody losing money underestimating the public isn’t true, but it certainly looks like it no longer holds for the film industry.
Amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth from studio executives with the news that 2017’s summer crop of blockbusters have failed to bust any blocks, there is the hope that maybe people have finally realised that the general public might go and see franchise films, remakes and comedy reboots of bad TV shows, they won’t go and see just ANY old franchise films, remakes and comedy reboots of bad TV shows.
With studios looking likely to have their worst summer in ten years, the finger of blame is being pointed at an over dependence on stale movie ideas and big budget movies that failed to live up to expectations. It might be an obvious target, but it’s also probably correct.
One of the flopbusters coming in for most criticism has been Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – known as Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge in some countries (when a movie changes its title, it’s rarely a good sign). Looking at it, you wonder why anyone thought it would be a hit; the fifth instalment of a fifteen year old franchise based on a theme park ride, featuring an increasingly discredited lead actor doesn’t look good from any angle.
Not far down the list of 2017’s duds is The Emoji Movie – a terrible idea from the start; just because people like to use them doesn’t mean they want to see a film about them. It’s a relief that the story about there being a Meme Movie turned out to be a hoax. You cannot build a film around something a slight as a few pixels that people finish a text with because they don’t know how to end it. The fact that the movie even went into production felt like an insult to our intelligence, the studio lost in meaningless buzzwords and trying to keep up with the zeitgeist instead of making a decent film.
The list goes on – who thought Baywatch was a blockbuster in waiting? A 25 year old TV show that only got viewers because it featured women in swimsuits was never going to be a success on the big screen in 2017; you have more nudity on HBO, and those that want to see Kelly Rohrbach and Alexandra Daddario running in slow motion will presumably wait for the Blu-ray and enjoy it in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
It’s headbangingly obvious that these movies wouldn’t be a success, while it’s pretty obvious that a decent, female led comic book movie like Wonder Woman would be a hit in 2017. It really isn’t surprising that this summer has been bad at the box office. Let’s hope the studios have learned their lesson.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
For this movie-goer, there has been very little to drag me out to the cineplex. Everything looked so terrible. Locally, theatres are amplifying it: local theatres have been maximizing take on opening weekend by *only* playing new movies in either 3D or Ultra-AVX near me. I may have attended a borderline movie at normal prices, but jack that up to $16? All the nopes.
Dunkirk was obvious, and probably my favourite movie this year. Wonder Woman was kinda meh…although I don’t feel like I wasted my two hours. Maybe it’s superhero fatigue? They were “the best!” 10 years ago. Now that it’s now, it seems like nothing more than an exercise to pay Industrial Light and Magic lots more money for a slightly modified script. I miss the cool buddy cop movies (which btw, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is totally fun). The summer blockbuster needs to be more than another superhero origin story.
Side note: Did the producers of Baywatch not know what made Baywatch a fun thing to watch? They made a movie about lifeguards that spent 3/4 of the movie off the beach in their civies. They needed to go back and watch Joey and Chandler watch Yasmeen to get it.
“Side note: Did the producers of Baywatch not know what made Baywatch a fun thing to watch? They made a movie about lifeguards that spent 3/4 of the movie off the beach in their civies. They needed to go back and watch Joey and Chandler watch Yasmeen to get it.”
They thought Priyanka Chopra as the villain in a Baywatch movie was a prudent investment and set 3/4 of the movie off the beach to justify focusing more on her and less on the more popular elements of the show. Whatever expectations people had about the Baywatch movie, it didn’t even reach basic common sense expectations.
I’ve given up at the movie theater. I know Hollywood is deep blue and has been for many years, but when everything they do is blasted with PC virtue signalling, it stops being a movie and starts being Propaganda.
I heard about the Spiderman movie, right after opening weekend, mentioning the Washington monument being built by slaves. I’m so sick of it. I don’t care. I don’t want any part of this nonsense Cultural Marxism, there should be no place for it in our society.
If and when Hollywood Propoganda reverts back to what it was meant to be, I’ll show back up in the theaters.
Conclusion: Keep politics out of entertainment and sports. No matter which side of the aisle, we go to these events to escape.