J. Edgar
So, I’m here to talk about the death of Blockbuster… And of the blockbuster. Two birds, one stone. This was supposed to be a short note, but I can see I've missed that ambition by a country-mile. Actually, this 'note' came about as I was trying to Google a quote from Johnny Depp on the ‘death of the blockbuster’ (referring to recent big-budget flops, including his own The Lone Ranger). What I got instead was a lot of info on the bankruptcy of the Blockbuster rental chain, which also interested / slightly depressed me.
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| Haven't seen it yet, but my hopes aren't high. |
So, firstly, here’s a bit about the rental chain's misfortune.
I guess it was always bound to happen, sooner or later. In much the same
way on-line shopping led to the death of retail chains such as Woolworths, once
a common household name, the rise of the instant (supposedly) and ultra-convenient
‘digital delivery’ has ended a once great tradition: browsing the shelves with
your loved ones, trying to agree on what film to watch.
And I mean that without sarcasm; I’m a phenomenally difficult
person to take to the DVD store, and I find it difficult to agree with other
people’s choices, but it went a long way to the ‘experience’. Picking up cases
because the artwork was catchy or you liked the cast, scanning the back,
looking around for your family or partner because they’d wandered off. It made
the rewards so much sweeter. The drive home, the excitement (especially if you
were a kid), the hopes and expectations, or the crushing dissapointment that your choice wasn't picked. Nowadays, it’s just click clickety click click click. Dropdown
menus, pop-ups, catagorisation that defies any sort of logic by the definition that
I understand, and getting hold of anything more recent than 2011 is unlikely unless you're parting with serious money. I joined up to Netflix for a free trial, and all the films I actually
wanted to see weren’t even available to be watched online, I had to wait for a
fucking delivery:
“I want to watch a film NOW, not later FFS, What I feel like
watching now I’ll probably not be in the mood for in a few days when you
finally post it out!”
And as for ‘instant viewing’, that’s pending a decent
internet connection- don’t even get me started on that score! Fuck you, BT.
No, no, no. It’s all wrong. People are just too damn lazy
these days. And if Blockbuster couldn’t survive, then it’s only a matter of time
till the smaller independent rentals go the same way. The storm cannot be weathered. Sad times...
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| Giant monsters hitting big robots- how did this fail at the Box-office? |
Now, onto the death of the blockbuster.
God knows I’ve looked but I couldn’t find it, but Depp
was reputedly to have said (in some way) that the time of the blockbuster is coming to an
end. Film producer Jerry Bruckheimer has dismissed these claims, retaliating with
"a lot of movies are doing quite well this summer". Wow. Depp, you
got burned. “Quite well” huh, Jerry? That's a zinger. I'm guessing producers are hoping for their films to do a little better than “Quite well”.
Also speaking out less than optimistically on the subject are Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who have both said the industry is in
"meltdown". While being interviewed about Pacific Rim (also considered a box-office
disappointment) the film’s director Guillermo Del Toro had this to say;
"Every time a movie fails, it's not good for any other movie. Actually, every time a movie fails at the box office [it] is a curse for the entire craft. But I think that it's because we have made it so. We have effectively almost eliminated art house movie exhibition. We have limited the cinemas that show repertoires, so to speak, from other parts of the world and we have cornered ourselves into movies that need to grow so much."
Lucas and Spielberg also concur on that point, and have
expressed concern that Hollywood is ploughing so much money into failing
projects it will almost certainly make financing independent projects harder.
The important thing to
remember is this: the movie industry is a business like any other. That's something I’m
often told I overlook when I lay into terrible movies (as if that’s some sort of
excuse). I don't overlook that, I realise that all too well, that's what concerns me...
Consider the sums. Pacific Rim, estimated to cost £130m, took £59m in its opening weekend internationally. The Lone Ranger, estimated to cost £164m, has taken £77m internationally so far- not looking good. Here’s the kicker. After Earth, starring Will Smith, estimated to cost £85m, finished its run on £140m, and is STILL considered a flop. A film has to succeed at the box-office by a mammoth margin in relation to its estimated cost in order to be considered a success. To put this into perspective, The Dark Knight Rises, costing $180m to put together, made approximately $533m: now that’s a success.
Now, we all know that
Box-office figures are not the same thing as ‘critical successes'. A million
people might pay to see film A, and three quarters of them might hate it, while
only a hundred people see film B, but every one of them enjoyed it: therefore,
film A is a Box-office success and film B is a flop. For too long the film
industry has put together movies like keeping the figures balanced on a spreadsheet, with more concern
for the numbers on the page than the words in the script, and the result of
that now people are demanding more for their money. We’re all tight, the country
(and most of Europe) is in recession, and we don’t have money to fucking waste
anymore. That’s why less people are going to the multiplexes- this is why the
cinema industry is in tatters.
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| £140m may sound like big-buck to you an me, but in Hollywood that's a fail. |
But it’s a vicious circle.
Producers sink huge sums of money into big films that don’t yield the expected
financial gain (although, most of them easily make back their cost). That makes
them less likely to fund smaller, well thought-out projects, or films that don’t
neatly conform into the return=costx2+x mentality. Instead, they sink more
money into further flops. The public won’t pay to go see Jack & Jill 2, so the cinema cranks up
its prices to recuperate their losses. I seriously doubt piracy has as much of
an impact on the movie industry as this little rut, and if films were a better quality perhaps more of us would give up our hard earned cash rather than going online. And this, friends, is very
bad news for all of us...
That’s why it’s not only just
infuriating that so much money is wasted on terrible projects, but it's vital that
this downward cycle is broken.
So, is the industry, as well as the ‘summer
blockbuster’ dead and buried. No. Not really, not yet, and I doubt it ever will be. Almsot every movie still makes its money, even if the expectations are rarely met. For every five or six high-budget
flops there is also one Star Trek, one Inception or one Jurassic Park, and hopefully that will be
enough to sustain the industry while the Michael Bays and Paul Andersons of
Hollywood either get on board, or fall off the back of the cart… Hopefully?
