Noel: Scott, last week you scrambled out onto a shaky limb, suggesting in a blog post that Spider-Man 3 might have trouble recouping its exorbitant cost. Then the movie went on to have the biggest opening in history, and while that still just only half-covers the production and marketing budgets, I think it's fair to say that with the big numbers it's putting up overseas—and DVD revenue still to come—nobody's going to lose their jobs or their savings because of Spider-Man 3.
So you probably picked a bad example. But I still think you may be onto something.
We should probably say up-front that neither of us are inherently opposed to blockbusters. We like spectacle. We like to be entertained. We like to share an experience that the whole culture is experiencing at the same time. And I've never bought the old argument of "the money spent on Spider-Man 3 could've financed 100 The Squid And The Whales." Anyone who's ever worked for a corporation or bureaucracy knows that money not spent on one budgetary item doesn't automatically get re-appropriated. In other words, the nearly $300 million spent on Spider-Man 3 was raised to make Spider-Man 3. The people who provided that money weren't waiting around to spend it on something else—unless it was Pirates Of The Caribbean.
People want to make big movies, and other people want to watch them. What business is it of ours if a bunch of rich people want to go bankrupt trying to entertain us?
The issue as I see it is that—as you suggest in your blog post—special effects in and of themselves aren't as exciting as they used to be, and yet the studios and directors keep trying to outdo each other in that area, leading to more and more movies where the effects are intended to be the whole show. There's nothing wrong with that per se. Hollywood has a long tradition of lulling us with shiny things, and as long as we enter into that relationship honestly and openly, nobody gets hurt. But film history has also shown that effects sequences work best if we're invested in the story, or at least captivated by the situation. The origin of the Sandman in Spider-Man 3 is probably the most amazing effects sequence in the whole movie, but the amazement stems from the horrific circumstances as much as the effects themselves.
If audiences don't have even a rudimentary interest in the characters, the setting and the situation, all the neat effects in the world won't push a film to profitability. That's the difference between Spider-Man 3 and, say, Ultraviolet. And that may partly explain why King Kong was a relative box office disappointment—the shocking turn of events that first got a lot of media pundits wondering whether blockbuster filmmaking was becoming financially unviable.
The thing is though, while the sky may soon fall for the blockbuster, I don't think this is the summer it's going to happen. If anything, looking down the list of sequels and potential crowd-pleasers, I'm seeing a summer that's either going to revive the old-school blockbuster filmmaking model, or serve as its last hurrah.
I'll talk more about this "North Sea Bubble" effect in a minute, but first I'm curious. You were wrong—mostly wrong anyway—about Spider-Man 3, and your other big example of outsized cost compared to potential return is Evan Almighty. What else have you pegged as a disaster waiting to happen? I have my own list, but I'd like to hear yours first.
Scott: I'm more than a little embarrassed that Spider-Man 3 was that huge a success on its opening weekend; clearly, my skills as a box-office prognosticator are roughly equivalent to my skills as a nuclear technician. My argument, for those who missed the blog post, was this:
1. Spider-Man 3 isn't a particularly good film relative to the first two and stands to disappoint fans with its misshapen bloat.
2. The film cost somewhere between $250-$300 million to make, and when you factor in marketing and distribution costs, was starting its life about half a billion in the hole.
3. It only has two weeks to recoup the bulk of that half billion before Shrek The Third and Pirates Of The Carribbean The Third come along to claim its market share. Of course, now that it's raked in $227 million worldwide in one weekend, my feeling that Spider-Man 3 would serve as a cautionary tale for Hollywood spend-o-crats was rendered pretty much moot.
Of course, what I failed to consider was the built-in audience for sequels. When you think of the colossal failures of blockbuster past, they've usually been original films that arrived on a wave of bad buzz: Cutthroat Island, Waterworld, Wild Wild West. Audiences had nothing invested in the characters in these films, so they had to be sold on the idea of seeing them, which of course is a far greater marketing challenge than repeating a successful formula with only slight modifications. Truth be told, Tobey Maguire could have shit in a bag for two hours and Spider-Man 3 would have still made $200 million on opening weekend. Having a summer this choked with sequels doesn't stimulate me too much as a moviegoer, but the rationale of making them can't really be questioned, because studios don't have to sweat over generating a new audience for their expensive investment.
Still, I don't think my prediction was all that irrational and I believe pretty firmly that the Blockbuster Era may be reaching a crisis point. Last summer's box-office boon was considered salvation for Hollywood, which had in previous summers seen much of its audience siphoned off as the cost of movie tickets and the availability of high-quality formats like DVD had convinced many to stay at home. To say that's somehow changed on the strength of one summer—and probably two, given the can't-miss quality of much of this year's crop—is like saying an especially bitter winter in Chicago is evidence that global warming isn't a problem. While production costs continue to escalate, the audience for movies (at least in theaters) will continue to diminish, and these trends are merging into a real crisis. Is there a point at which studios will be taking maximal risk for minimal gain? And will that even force them to change their ways? Here's a cynical assessment from "Tourneur" on the blog comments for my Spider-Man 3 post:
We are in the era where no failure is big enough to change our predetermined course—corporately determined course, naturally - or to become successful. If anything, we the people will just have to adapt to liking these films, not the other way around. Same with weather... war... reality TV... Dane Cook and Jamie Kennedy... visionary music collectives from Canada... and so on.
I'm not so sure I'd lump Arcade Fire (a genuinely visionary music collective) or Jamie Kennedy (whose Kickin' It Old Skool just tanked) into the mix, but I think the point still stands with regard to how studios operate. If only the war in Iraq were going as well as Spider-Man 3, we'd have reason to "stay the course," but the summer blockbuster season does have an element of predetermination that makes you feel powerless as a viewer. Like the military-industrial complex, it's a beast that needs to be fed and it will keep on eating long after it's healthy to do so. This causes all sorts of creative problems—which I'll address later—but from a business standpoint, I'm left to wonder: If the studios ever found themselves in a quagmire over high costs and low returns, would they ever change course? After feeding gigantic corporations on nine-figure-grossing blockbusters, is it even possible to imagine a studio settling for modest spending and solid singles up the middle? I'm guessing not.
To address your question about this summer, I think the sequels will have no trouble by-and-large; I've learned my lesson on Spider-Man 3, and have no intention of learning it again with Pirates Of The Caribbean, Shrek, Ocean's 13, Live Free Or Die Hard, Fantastic Four, or The Bourne Ultimatum. Of course, Evan Almighty stands out as a probable flop in relation to its absurd $175 million budget, though its kid-friendliness and Biblical themes may well drag it out of the muck. As for other possible bombs, there has been some grumbling lately that Ratatouille—an original project with a hard-to-pronounce title and a story about a rat infiltrating the rarified world of French haute cuisine—but it's a Brad Bird/Pixar film, so how can it lose? I guess I'll have to go with Hairspray, which actually looks worse than The Producers, a more successful musical that flopped in big-screen form. I also have my doubts about The Simpsons Movie, but only because the creators have sat on the idea of a Simpsons movie for over a decade after the show reached its creative peak.
So on your list of potential disasters, Noel, are there any sequels beside Evan Almighty? Or are all the problem pictures unknown quantities? Be sure to bold in your predictions, so you'll be extra embarrassed when they don't pan out in a few months.
Noel: Actually, I think Evan Almighty is probably a slam-dunk success. Comedy, animals, God…unless it's so sacrilegious that it has protesters camped in front of multiplexes, I see it going over well with families and church groups. I have far more doubts about Live Free Or Die Hard, a sequel that dials down the R-rated action of the earlier films to PG-13, presumably because there's nothing that that the under-17 crowd likes more than action heroes their dads think are cool.
I'm also starting to wonder about Shrek The Third. Computer animation seemed to have a built-in audience before last year, when cartoon after cartoon went into ol' tankeroo. As an established franchise, Shrek might duck the curse, but isn't in the nature of kid-dom to move onto the next snazzy thing? At a certain point, doesn't a new Shrek movie have about as much cachet as another Rugrats movie? Y'know, there's a reason why Disney releases the sequels to their classic features straight-to-DVD. They know Cinderella has brand recognition, but they don't trust that brand enough to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into a feature film that has a very definite audience ceiling.
This is why your predictions about Spider-Man 3 weren't entirely crazy, Scott. The problem with franchises is that the fees for all the participants go up while the box office—usually—doesn't. Don't be surprised if Sony takes the massive success of this movie as a sign that they can make money off Spider-Man no matter the quality of the product, which means there's no need to pony up big dough for Tobey, Kirsten and Sam next time. In the end, maybe it may be the effects and the costume that are the stars.
Other would-be blockbusters in trouble? Ocean's Thirteen, because tongue-in-cheek only carries so far, and because it's got a cast full of people that I think the public is getting kind of sick of. (Not me, though—it's one of the movies I'm most looking forward to this summer.) Ratatouille, because the subject matter's a little esoteric for a family film. (Though again, I'm stoked to see it.) Stardust, because fantasy whimsy's a hard sell, even when it's from the mind of Neil Gaiman. And finally, Rush Hour 3, because can't people already see it on TBS?
Even if any one of these movies has a decent opening, they're going to find it hard to maintain momentum with so many other big movies on their heels. Because studios really don't give each other room to breathe, do they? It would be one thing if each major only had one big film to trot out every summer, and they could stay out of each other's way. But none of them can afford to put all their eggs in one basket and hope a fickle audience doesn't upset it. So we get this weekly derby, set up with two ideas in mind: that more than half the audience will quickly forget "the biggest motion picture event of all time" in a week, and the other half, just looking for something to do on a hot summer night, will go see just about anything. The release date alone is enough to put at least 10-20 million in the bank for just about any big studio summer movie. But how long can this model—still relatively new—remain profitable? It already seems like some movies have been out forever, long before they actually get released. At what point does the crowded schedule cause audiences to forget when a movie's opening day actually is?
I've got some further thoughts on how math-based business decisions are both good and bad for us, the audience. But first I want to hear what you think is wrong with the blockbuster. What makes a good one? What makes a bad one?
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