Hollywood's Endless Bummer

Ok, so, this is a letter of complaint. In my long, long history of movie-going, I don't think I've seen the likes of the box office--much less creative--returns from the summer's "blockbusters" since ... well, actually I can't think of a worse time to be an avid moviegoer.

Another in an unending number of Alien sequels

Hollywood, running itself into the ground out of an intense fear of failure, is giving us tent pole sequels and pre-fab titles like Baywatch, which was neither an extraordinary--or even mediocre--television show. Baywatch the movie has suffered a worse fate. It was dead on arrival, one of 2017 summer movie season's many casualties. I have to ask the question: Who the f*** are running these studios? Why oh why can't these Hollywood movie conglomerates remove their heads from their backsides and come up with something worthwhile? Remakes, retreads, reboots, sequels, prequels, and rip-offs dominate and strangle our cinema screens. Turning back the clock seems to be the go-to action rather than actual creativity.

Does this poster really make you want to see this movie?

There are many, many, many things wrong with Hollywood and its movies today, and one of the biggest flaws is the advertising. I mean, the Baywatch movie was DOA anyway, but its poster doesn't do it any favors. Other movies this season include a reboot of The Mummy franchise, Universal Pictures' effort to relaunch its classic horror icon. When I heard about this project, I questioned its validity. I mean, why make another Mummy movie? I understand that Universal has a strategy to remake its classic monster movies, bringing them up to date with the best CGI money can buy and signing a big, big star. With that combo who needs a original script? Well, I guess John Q. Public decided he did. The Mummy was budgeted at $125 million. As of this past weekend the film's has grossed about $75 million in the USA. Not exactly overwhelming box offices numbers.

Screen capture from the original 1932 version  of The Mummy

Poster for The Mummy, 2017
Compare this with the previous picture and tell me which one looks creepier.

                                        


















All of this isn't new. Many critics have voiced this opinion before: Hollywood is creatively barren, especially when it comes to the summer movie season. There was a time when summer movie fare wasn't all sequels, comic books, and special effects. But something happened in the past twenty or thirty  years. Success is one of the curses of the film business: Hollywood always thinks it can create, capture, seal, and maintain lighting in a bottle. But Hollywood is most exciting when a movie that no one thought would amount to much defies the odds and becomes a huge hit. Star Wars did it. So did Jaws. Home Alone is another example. The Matrix was unleashed without its own studio knowing the impact it would make. Like them or loathe them, these movies became box office record breakers, and they were all surprise hits. Even James Cameron's Titanic was predicted to flop due to its enormous cost. Yet the film became a phenomenon that millions went to see over and over again. And that leads me to another gripe I have with Hollywood: tracking box office returns.

Websites such as Box Office Mojo as well as more traditional sites like Variety report on the weekly returns of Hollywood's latest movie releases. However, these organizations routinely post results on a movie's gross intake. That is misleading. True box office success is the return on investment to the studio producing a movie. In other words, box office success is not about grosses but about rentals, and they account for about half a film's box office intake. Rentals are what the studios get back after theaters take their share. Gross doesn't mean anything. When The Godfather became an all-time box office success, it was a movie's rentals that was the standard, and that figure was approximately $100 million (around 500 million in 2017 dollars) in 1972-73. And that was only in North America. How many films today can make that claim? Today's movies--especially summer movies--are like television reruns. Alien: Convenant; Spider-Man: Homecoming; The Mummy; Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales; Transformers: The Last Knight; Cars 3; Despicable Me 3; and on and on. Of course, there are a few adult-themed films out there (My Cousin Rachel and The Beguiled, for example), but these movies are pushed so far under the radar that it's difficult even to find them in smaller markets. High quality as they may be, these movies get almost no publicity and are not tracked by programs like Entertainment Tonight due to their small theatrical roll out (around 750 screens versus 2,000-3,000 screens for the upcoming Spider-Man release). Consequently, the public is not aware these films are even out there.

With all this said, it's not just the major film studios that catch the brunt of my disdain. A good portion of it must go to today's movie-going public. People don't want to see something good--something that moves them, makes them laugh or cry. What was the last romantic comedy--once a staple of filmmaking--you saw? Was it any good? I cannot remember one. To me, it seems folks don't want to be surprised by the emotions a good movie may generate. It's like a mantra: give us the familiar s*** that we have seen over and over again. Reruns.

Any era in which The Rock is the country's number one box office draw is in trouble. Can anyone remember a line of dialogue from any movie of the past five years? Nothing like, "We're gonna need a bigger boat" or "Go ahead, make my day" or "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" or "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." No? Me neither. Now I hear Paramount is moving forward with a sequel to (cue sarcasm) that all-time great movie, Top Gun. Is this what America and countries around the globe want? This latest example of Hollywood's creative bankruptcy is due to explode (like a bomb?) into your local cinemas in July 2019. Gee, I can hardly wait.