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Bad Movies to Blame for Box Office Slump
macklin01 writes "The LA Times is reporting that box office executives are finally fessing up and taking the blame. Poor box office receipts over the summer weren't caused by surging fuel costs, changes in audience preferences, or anything else. As Slashdot readers might have put it (and as it comes out in the article), 'It's the movies, stupid.'"
It's almost amazing the movie industry gets away with this. They scream and throw tantrums over any overtures, any market that dares step foot in their domain. How? By threatening to sue almost anyone! How? By demanding the electronics industry put "safeguards" in dvd players (more on that in a second). How? By spending millions in D.C. demanding laws be passed to protect their eroding stranglehold on an evolving market place. How? By doing everything in their power to prevent evolution (read: progress).
In the meantime, they approve pap for movie plots and ideas, pander to the idiotic mainstream thinking that's their meal ticket (it mostly is). But their offerings have become so predictable, so terrible, and so terribly produced and directed people are starting to feel ripped off for the small fortune they must spend for a night out of movies and popcorn. They've sown these seeds, they're reaping their own rewards.
What I think funny in the article is their collective sigh of relief some recent movies are getting viewers. I suspect when movies like "Transporter 2 are raking in blockbuster revenues it's more about their concerted ramped-up advertising and less about the quality of their movies.
It does appear there may be some good movies this fall ("History of Violence" is high on my list), I'm guessing we'll see more of the same crap. I don't know how many times they can go to the well with their overproduced special effects stories with no plot or believable ideas and keep the public coming back (but don't underestimate the masses to continue to believe, ever heard of Charlie Brown and Lucy?), but they're creating their own misery.
As for their heavy handed fingers-in-the-distribution-and-technology pie, give me a break. I set up a dvd recorder for my dad. I LOVED how simple it was to operate, and it did an excellent job of recording shows for him. He was a happy camper too. He loves to watch PBS, and was excited to record a recent Civil War special on his new dvd recorder and wanted to send the dvd to me to watch. He was concerned because his dvd would not play on other dvd players, something about a region code violation (we know what that is).
Anyway, the disk arrived today, and it's NOT playable on my player. Fuck the movie and entertainment industry. They've made my dad unhappy, they've prevented me from watching a show which, had I watched, could only have helped their cause (exposure, exposure, exposure).
This isn't the first time I've had this technology dance with my dad, and I'm sure it won't be the last. But, I hate it, and the sooner the entertainment industry cleans up their act, the better. Sigh.
It's not the movies. Well, maybe it is, but it's not JUST the movies. It's the fact that there's more competition right now for the entertainment dollar then ever before, and it's going to get worse for them. Put on top of that the negative cultural ideal of the movie theatre right now (talking+cell phones..not my experience but I'm sure this thread will be full of the stories.) So what's the solution? I suspect cut the theatres loose. 0-day DVD/PVP-Online AND theatre releases. Allow the theatres to show more movies more often. So if you rally like The Empire Strikes Back, for example, then maybe next Tuesday evening there's going to be a screening. Digital distribution makes this possible
I think it is changes in audience preferences. Audiences don't want bad movies anymore. The Hollywood formula is starting to wear off on people.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
There is a lot more competition out there for our entertainment dollars that there used to be. Think of all the computer/console based activities which have sprung up in the last 2 decades, to name just one example. Like any industry forced from a near monoply position into one with competition, the movie industry complains and blames dubious straw men for their difficulties. Good movies can still compete.
Using plain ol' text since 1968
And it has nothing to do with the $8-$10 ticket prices that have sprung up across the country. It's not like I can get 3 used DVDs for $20. Oh wait a minute . . . yes I can.
Why don't you suggest a way to fix the problem, whether than just complaining. Movies are being illegally copied online. But nowhere in your rant do you place any blame on the real criminals. You just blame the victims for protecting themselves. Cleam up the problem of copyright infringement, and the movie industry won't waste their effort trying to protect content.
Cinema Fault:
Poor movies
Expensive Popcorn / Sweets / Drinks
Expensive Tickets
Can't use Gift Vouchers (Fully Paid) with new movies
Bad seating - I've seen some *shockers* in some cinemas
20 minutes of ads before the show
Those silly piracy ads on stealing music - yep thats right, we all have to put up with that
Customer Fault:
Noisy movie goers / pranksters
Mobile phone calls and constant rings
Children screaming in tense moments
Seat fighting
Its all just not worth it - wait a month or so, buy for it less than the cinema price, grab some take away and watch it on your nice big digital entertainment unit @ home - and keep the damn movie!
No wonder we don't bother going !
Duh.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I keep hearing that movies suck now, but personally I don't see it. Obviously some will disagree with my taste, but I've enjoyed a lot of movies recently like 40 Year Old Virgin, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, March of the Penguins, Constant Gardener.
And I'm just listing mainstream-ish stuff. I'm also a big fan of indie/experimental stuff.
This is just more people spouting theories. Let's see some research about people's movie satisfaction. Sales don't mean anything.
Personally, I think it's more likely that cheaper home theatre, the economy, and videogames especially contribute to lower box office turnout. The videogame industry has become huge, and IIRC it's outgrown the movie industry. People have a limited amount of time and money for entertainment...
I have to say it, I agree with that.
This summer had the worst movies that I've ever seen. Other summers had interesting Pixar movies. This summer had, chickflicks, lame action movies and uninteresting comedy.
Better luck next summer...
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Besides, the lack of good movies is hardly a new thing. Maybe the Internet has made people more aware of the problem, but do we really think that after a century people have just caught on, most movies suck? And if that was the case, wouldn't we expect Britney Spears and friends to take a hit as well?
No, I think they are barking up the wrong tree. Making better movies would probably help, but more likely they are facing an inevitable decline as newer technologies provide better entertainment. Now movie theatres have to compete with DVD, game consoles, online games, downloaded movies, web browsing, and probably other things that either weren't around or occupied far smaller niches ten (or even two) years ago.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Trailers give away the whole plot, especially when you watch more than one trailer for some movie.
They show all the good scenes, so no good surprises. Why bother going to the movie when you know what the heck will happen?
Actually, the big news in this case isn't the headline itself, the big news is that they are _admitting_ it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...the other patrons are my biggest problem.
There are many movies that I would be very willing to watch in the theatre if I only had the ability to do so with some guarantee of peace and quiet from those around me.
Since that is not going to happen, I prefer to hold off and wait for the DVD. Simple as that.
They've always been trying to make popular movies — they're just not any good at it. They're part of a system that is thoroughly dysfunctional. It discourages risk taking and creativity. Most of all, the idea of actually telling a story is completely overlooked.
Anybody who tries to point these problems out tends to lose their job. So everybody plays it safe and puts up with all the bullshit until they can't ignore it any longer. (Rather like most big companies I've worked for!) That's why they've been in denial. Not because they're too dumb to understand concept of selling stuff people want.
There is NOTHING that I can't wait for. I will pay cheap, drink beer, sit in my recliner in underwear and when I want some chow, I will stop the movie and go make a pizza and get another beer.
Movie theatres suck and I think more and more people are thinking like me.
Serenity, though? Ass kickery. So many flavors of goodness: "T'weren't been nothin between my nethers but was run on batteries..."
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
I worked in a Carmike during high school. You know that bag of small popcorn for $2.95? You know how much it cost to make it? 1/7 of a cent. It takes less than a penny to make a bag of popcorn. Because of the high profit ratio, they make more money off popcorn than they do candy and soda...
"That's awful," you say, but what about this: theaters typically make about 5 cents per movie ticket. On an independent film they might make 10 cents. Oh and by the way, they're exempt from overtime laws so their workers never get paid over $5.15 (much of the entertainment industry is exempt from overtime)
I think what it boils down to is people are turning from the theater experience. At home I have a 1024x768 Viewsonic projector, Onkyo 5.1 surround system and a Linux box where I keep tons of downloaded Xvid files. The fact is my home theater experience, even with a decent quality cam, is still better than the actual theater with the screaming kids and people throwing popcorn and $7 rape you in the ass entry fee; that is for an average film.
With electronics getting cheaper, it seems like my friends only make it a point to go see movies in the theater for films that really stand out. We make it a point and an ocasion to watch the midnight premier. But I agree with the arcile, there really haven't been a lot of good movies worth that effort lately, and with better home theater systems emerging, I think the movie industry will need to work harder to produce films worth the entertainment value of the theater.
Part of this is the whole blockbuster thing. It started in the '70's, with Jaws and Star Wars. This also coincided with the rise of the multiplex. Since then, Hollywood's gotten hooked on the idea of blockbusters, each bringing in 100+ million. kinda' like junkies, trying to reach that first high...
I drank what? -- Socrates
Copyright infringement is only a "problem" because a few industry dinosaurs have become dependent on charging for copies. The skill of making music, movies, and TV shows isn't in being able to press the button on a CD duplicator, folks - a trained monkey can do that. They need to get off their asses and move to a business model where they get rewarded for creating content, not duplicating it.
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It seems plausible that the massive increases in the propogation of information are the greatest factor. The industry used to spend enormous amounts of money to promote movies on the basis that no matter how badly the movie stank, hype could carry it for a month or so until everyone knew it sucked. Now, people leaving the 7 are using their cells to tell their friends not to go to the 9. Other people are voting or blogging and often reaching a huge audience.
Look at Gigli. Big Names with real-life romance. In '88 it would have pulled every New Wave date for a month. Instead, it was a flop before opening night.
It may not be that they are making worse films but simply that advertising is less effective.
"The only conclusive thing I found was that bad movies are not to blame for lower box office tickets. Why? Because the movies were better than last year."
Bold claim, lets see if you can back it up.
There are so many things wrong with your analyses of data here. Lets go statement by statement.
You state that you ran a "statistical analysis," when the only statistic that you've given us are measurements of central tendency (means, in this case).
You reference a group known as "the critics," however you do not specify who you consider to be members of this group. Did you count only critics that are published in major newspapers, or did you include internet only critics? If you chose to include internet critics, how did you choose which to count? Anyone who can write a review and post it to the internet can be considered a critic (if sources such as rottentomatoes.com are to be relied upon). In addition, some critics approach and rate movies from a certain orientation (for example, some internet critics write their reviews solely from the perspective of a parent). Your statements would be a lot more believable if there was some sort of qualifications required to be counted as part of this group.
Which brings me to question how you managed to assign a quantitative number to such a subjective activity as analyzing a movie. On his tv show, famous critic Roger Ebert rates movies with a thumbs up or thumbs down, then occasionally augments that. What number would you assign a movie that got a "thumbs up" when compared to a movie that got a "thumbs way up"? What number would you assign a movie that received a C+ rating (some critics like to grade movies on the classic academic scale)? Or do you forgo that and follow rottentomatoes' style, by deciding that a movie got a positive review or a negative review, and assign it 1 point or 0 points, respectively. If you used that style, how did you deal with critics that gave a movie a mixed review (e.g. a review that says "If you liked X, then you'll like this movie. If not, then don't see it.")
Almost all of the differences between 2004 and 2005 mvoies are small, and while you did not include size of your rater pools, I suspect that most of them are not statistically significant. ("The audience also posted better ratings for 2005 movies: 68.4% versus 67.9%" I can assure you that this is NOT a statisticallly significant difference, thus your statement is not supported by the data.) If you actually did run a "statistical analysis," you'd have given stats rating the reliability of your results.
Certainly, while the precentages are maybe a bit higher for 2005 vs. 2004 (which a very astute poster suggested might have to do with the phenomenon of grade inflation), you don't account for the fact that this year is not over. What you might have done was only included 2004 movies released in January to September.
All in all, while your numbers are interesting, they don't support your broad generalization that "The only conclusive thing I found was that bad movies are not to blame for lower box office tickets. Why? Because the movies were better than last year." Instead, they show that there is actually no powerful difference one way or the other between the quality of movies from last year compared to this year.
Jon
Psychology is really Biology, Biology is really Chemistry, Chemistry is really Physics, and Physics is really Math.
Is all about advertising. The costs are high.
It's much cheaper to advertise for one blockbuster than several regular movies.
Therefore the movie industry go for blockbusters.
The problem for the movie industry is that a failed blockbuster are very costly so they try to appeal too as large group of people as possible. This often lead to that the blockbusters loose its edge and often become dull and boring and noone will see it.
The movie industry seam to have forgotten that large profits can often come from a smaller movie that becomes an unexpected hot item.
Just saying it like it are.
We saw Serenity at 9 on Saturday night...the theater was only about a third full. Maybe the movie wasn't hyped as much as some of the summer blockbusters, or people didn't want to go to a film where they didn't know exactly what was going to happen (Anikin turns evil, Samuel Jackson kicks ass, animated critters crack wise). Either way, sometimes it seems like you can put good movies on the screen, and people just won't go!
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...or lack of. Seriously, every "horror" movie coming out (or even action movies and sci-fi) are coming out PG-13. Look at Alien Vs Predator. Yeah, the script was horribly flawed, and none of the characters left an impression like previous characters in their respective movies (people can list off quotes from characters in Predator and Aliens, for instance), but I am willing to bet that if they had at least shown some gore, it'd help. Hell, watch carefully, and you'll notice they never really show even one chest bursting scene. Hollywood needs to realize that some movies just have to be rated R, rather than PG-13 so some kids can come see it. Cuz the kids certainly aren't the ones with the money to see movies on a frequent enough basis, especially during summer.
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I absolutely HATE advertising. We are living in a world much like Lucas' THX-1138 - "Buy! Consume! Buy more! Consume more!" And with the cost of movies increasing to over $10 where I live, I just wait for the DVDs to come out. They usually have extended/deleted scenes, Director's Cut, making-of, etc. Couple that with a home theater system or even a home theater PC and the reason to go to the movies is almost nil. The last movie I saw - twice - was Star Wars III. I skipped work and saw it on opening day with a lot of adults (i.e. well-behaved audience). It rocked! I then saw it again on Friday night with a bunch of high school kids. They kept talking through the entire movie and it sucked - got my money back though. But now, DVDs are coming out 3 months after the movie stops playing in the theaters so I can wait. High on my list is Batman Begins, Sin City, Hitchhiker's Guide, and Kingdom of Heaven - Director's Cut.
As for TV shows, there's way too much advertising, especially on the Sci-Fi channel. So I just stopped watching TV. A 1-hour episode is only about 41 minutes of the actual episode and 19 minutes of advertising. Amazon.com sells boxed sets of the popular TV shows and I get those at the end of the season. High on my list for this fall/winter is Smallville Season 4, 24 Season 4, Battlestar Galactica Season 1, and Tru Calling Seasons 1 & 2.
Kevin Murphy of MST3K? Not sure if being "forced" to watch bad movies for 10 years makes one a critic...
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