Mad Ramblings of a Movie Geek 06.04.09: Sometimes A Movie Is Just A Movie
Posted by Jordan Bruns on 06.04.2009
Does it really matter if there are no mega blockbusters this summer?
Welcome to another edition of Mad Ramblings of a Movie Geek! This week I have inspired to write a short diatribe. I was recently reading in Entertainment Weekly that the summer box office is significantly lower than usual. So far, none of the summer releases are on par to make $300 million. According to them, this could very well be the first year since 2000 where no movie has made more than $300 million domestically. I respond with a "Who cares?" Ticket prices are sky high and times are tough economically. Not as many people are going to the movies, period. Now is also a good time to point out that the whole concept of a blockbuster has become warped.
My Mad Ramblings
In the days when Star Wars or E.T. caused lines more than a block long outside the theater, the term blockbuster was appropriate. When a movie like Titanic opens modestly then gains momentum as words of mouth spreads, it is a true blockbuster. These days, movies are called blockbusters if they make a couple hundred million at the box office, even when a large chunk of that money is made the first weekend and then business dies off. $2 million with modern day ticket prices is not that big a deal. Imagine if ticket prices were as high as they are now in 1977- Star Wars would have smoked Titanic. Too much emphasis is placed on a movie's weekly box office take. What people should really be looking at are :A. How many people are going to see the movie? And B. Is it any good to begin with?
As I stated earlier, the dwindling ticket sales for movies can be attributed to our own troubled economy as much as they can to any lack of big "event" movies. Although it can be assumed that fans who were disappointed with X-Men: Last Stand might have stayed away from Wolverine. The same can be said for die heard Star Trek fans who may have been disgusted to see anyone other than William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy portray their beloved heroes. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince may still be able to achieve the type of success that the industry usually expects from their major summer releases.
This is a departure from my usual style of writing, but I just felt the need to put my two cents out there about this issue after I read about it. The point of this rant is that I believe insiders are overanalyzing the reasons behind the underwhelming performances of the thus far released summer "blockbusters." There isn't always going to be a Star Wars or a Spider Man type of phenomenon, and that is something that people are just going to have to get used to. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and to paraphrase, sometimes a movie is just a movie.
