| The summer of 2003 has proved without a doubt that there are not enough weekends to go around for the major Hollywood releases. The current practice of advertising hard and fast to win the box office race has culminated in a weekly exchange of champions from May to August. Other than Finding Nemo, The Matrix: Reloaded and Pirates of the Caribbean, few movies had the staying power to capture the public’s attention for more than two days this summer.
This pattern has been a long time coming and, for the most part, was inevitable. There is more cinematic product coming out of Hollywood nowadays than there are spaces in theatres (and, assumedly, the public’s imagination). While budgets soar and studios relentlessly marketed their films to a entertainment-hungry audience, a few cinematic trends continued to gather momentum this summer.
Capture an existing audience
The wealth of sequels this year – 15 by one count – shows that Hollywood is not using the summer to take risks with new material. Sequels appeal to a pre-sold audience, so story issues like character development and unconquerable antagonists are unnecessary. Even films that aren’t sequels, like Hulk and Pirates, worked with familiar subjects. When a sequel wasn’t available, tried-and-true formulas – Jim Carrey in a wacky comedy, Pixar-produced kids’ movies, Kevin Costner riding a horse – offered a safe fallback position. Although this might suggest that counter-programming with original or unusual fare such as 28 Days Later, Down With Love or Seabiscuit would engage audiences, that was not the case this summer.
Bigger is better
Since the release of Jaws and Star Wars in the mid-‘70s, summer movies have always been about bigger explosions, faster chases, and more unbelievable stunts – and the summer of 2003 was no exception. Directors embraced computer animation to destroy more property and assault more actors than ever before. There was a disturbing trend towards showcasing fights between super-human characters – robots in Terminator 3, virtual characters in The Matrix: Reloaded, mutants in X-Men 2 – so that humanoids could be seen beating the crap out of each other in a way no mortal could tolerate. Bad Boys II and T3 showed that there is no limit to the wanton destruction that Hollywood – or its moviegoers – are willing to witness.
Death of the Great American Hero…
… as played by Americans, anyway. From X-Men to Matrix, key good guy roles are going to Australians, Brits and even Canadians (Johnny Depp being the exception in Pirates of the Caribbean, and even he isn’t very heroic). Even the villains (Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush) and damsels (Anna Paquin, Carrie-Ann Moss, Keira Knightley) are being played by people who don’t have a U.S. passport. Even an icon like Schwarzenegger, who has been almost completely assimilated into American culture, appears to be fading away due his high price tag in favour of ensemble action adventures?
This past summer underlined a trend that has been steadily taking hold: box office take is becoming less important to the overall profit of a motion picture. As studios battle Internet file sharing and other forms or piracy by enticing moviegoers into the theatres, they are also well aware of the money making potential of home video, especially DVD. Coupled with income from overseas sales, merchandising tie-ins, and secondary markets (pay-per-view, airlines, network television, etc.), bad opening weekend numbers aren’t necessarily as disastrous as they once were. Box office take is important to every major Hollywood movie, but creating a summer buzz and winning a weekend is potentially more crucial to generating more DVD sales. |
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