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Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops
Nerval's Lobster writes "In June, Steven Spielberg predicted that Hollywood was on the verge of an 'implosion' in which 'three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing to the ground.' The resulting destruction, he added, could change the film industry in radical and possibly unwelcome ways. And sooner than he may have thought, the implosion has arrived: in the past couple weeks, six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.' These films featured big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects—exactly the sort of summer spectacle that ordinarily assures a solid run at the box office. Yet all of them failed to draw in the massive audiences needed to earn back their gargantuan budgets. Hollywood's more reliant than ever on analytics to predict how movies will do, and even Google has taken some baby-steps into that arena with a white paper describing how search-query patterns and paid clicks can estimate how well a movie will do on its opening weekend, but none of that data seems to be helping Hollywood avoid shooting itself in the foot with a 'Pacific Rim'-sized plasma cannon. In other words, analytics can help studios refine their rollout strategy for new films—but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck."
These films featured big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects
Maybe they'll start making... (gasp)... actual plots to accompany those stars/explosions/special effects?
Don't do the following: 1) make shitty movies (overbroad but use the smell test) 2) Make sequels to shitty movies that might have barely made a profit 3) Make 18 superhero movies, reboot them, and complain when they flop 4) Don't let a fucking formula from a has-been screenwriter dictate the structure of every movie (http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/8947871/The-origin-of-the-latest-Hollywood-formula) You can pay me now or later. I just want a 1% cut of all new movies.
The same thing that is killing USA's Auto companies (save tesla), Boeing, and hollywood, is that MBA's now run things.
Hollywood USED to be about making the best ART. Now, with the MBA's, it is about making short-term profit.
Likewise, Boeing used to make the best aircrafts (in both military AND commercial). The 787 is all about making short-term profit (in the same way that GE does).
Then US car companies, GM and Ford, used to be about making the best car possible. Now, it is about making short-term profits.
If we really want to restore America, we need to roll back the changes that reagan did. In particular, we need to require that executives NOT own any of the publicly-traded stock in that industry.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Blu ray is $25 or so
Movie theater is $30 plus the junk food and other costs to see a movie once
If they want people to pay premium prices offer a premium experience
Roomier seats
Kick out people making noise
No kids in adult movies
No babies
Even the Hobbit was a bit disappointing.
What do you mean, "a bit"? Bunny sled... birds crapping in the hair of 99% invented character... chased by tens of thousands of orcs, no problem... axe embedded permanently in skull of living dwarf... more Hollywood screen writing than actual Tolkein content... just for starters...
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I minimized my browser with this thread as the active tab.
When I looked at my taskbar, the text showing was...
"Hollywood's love of Anal"
I suppose that says something about windows? Like, taskbar entries only support so many characters, or something? :)
I came up with the exact same summation; too much Indiana Jones. Some parts were great. Bilbo and Gollum under the mountain were truly excellent; it really did the book justice. The trolls weren't bad. The dwarf backstory was ok, going far beyond the book and doing it well.
But damn... Radagast the rabbit sledding superhero? The interminable goblin chase sequence....? wow. The whole mountain giant sequence was an exercise in excessive CGI combined with some unexplainable contempt for continuity. At some point during production someone had to think "wtf is this?"
There are two more. It is conceivable they didn't promulgate these mistakes to the remainder, but given that they've undertaken to stretch this relatively simple story over, what, 7.5 to 8 hours of movie... we could be in for a lot more fail.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.
As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm
It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".
The jury is still out.
The problem with Hollywood films right now can be summed up by they're killing the cat in an attempt to save it. What do I mean?
There's a popular screenwriting book called Save The Cat - The Last Screenwriting Book You'll Ever Need that sets a page by page forumla for events within a typical movie. Things like, an opening image, setting the theme, introducing the hero, start of a B plot at the beginning of Act II, cross points for A and B plots, the great False Defeat, leading up to a Crisis of Self Confidence, and then the Big Payoff.
Blah blah blah blah.
Slate has a good article on how this book as turned movies into showdown of formulaic familiarity.
It's not like the forumla is bad, per se. But if every film had been made this way we'd never have classics like Bridge Over The River Kwai, Laurence of Arabia, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, yada yada yada. Because the formula is limited. At its heart, it harkens back to Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces thesis (which every /. nerd into Star Wars should have heard about). A fine way to tell the Great Hero story, but terrible for deep character studies. And that's what's missing in Hollywood film and why good television like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Mad Men have become so popular (and let's not forget the first few seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which were fantastic).
In fact, George R. R. Martin's entire Song of Ice and Fire series eschews the whole Great Hero narrative and offers flawed characters with conflicting motivations told from multiple points of view, and - sorry to bring this word in on a tech site but... - that's why it's art. Which is also why Transformers isn't.
A lot of people have been discussing issues with the blockbuster cycle and financing, and that's all part of it too. But there is a serious dearth of experimental writing involved too. The whole Hollywood system is screwed up. But let's at least Thank God for HBO and other cable network financing of long form multi-episodic storytelling.
Storytelling was recognized as formulaic as far back as Ancient Greece by Aristotle in his book Poetics. He knew then that most people like their stories to end up with the suffering hero redeemed, the villain punished for his misdeeds, forbidden love triumphant, etc. Therefore, that's what the moviegoers have paid for year after year, and that's what Hollywood continues to deliver today. It sells.
I think the problem is pretty simply a glut. Thanks to modern media and communications, and extra thanks to cheap filmmaking gear, everyone is constantly exposed to endless variations and combinations of these stories. Flip on the TV and there are dozens of movies waiting to stream into your brain. Even if a few are decent, most don't even rise to the level of Sharknado or Snakes on a Plane. And with so many choices, we lack the editorial reviews and critics we might otherwise use to keep out the dross.
When you see a movie that's truly new and novel, it sticks with you. Sometimes its a good story or came from a good book, sometimes it's a great actor, sometimes it's a new special effect or cinematography trick, or sometimes it plays on our childhood memories. Of course success quickly breeds imitation, and within months there are 58 variations on the theme, adding to the glut. And when the producers tire of the imitators, they release an official sequel or three, and eventually add a "reboot" or "remake" of the originals that captured our imaginations so long ago. They snazz it up, apply extra-modern graphics, bring in Daft Punk to record the soundtrack, hire sexy-fresh new kids to be tomorrow's stars, and retell the same old stories.
Spielberg knows his problem is not that his next movie will have trouble competing with the current releases. It's that he's really competing against our fondest memories of classics such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Shindler's List, Star Wars, Jaws, Casablanca, Snow White, and Toy Story, all of which are still busily crowding themselves onto our cable channels and Netflix queues. So other than the fact that he's got a billion dollars in the bank already, he's completely screwed.
John
I'll drop my two cent's worth here...
For a long time, movies have been losing their appeal to me. The "theatrical experience" is not near what I expect anymore.
I am told the movie starts at 7. I arrive no later than 6:45 so I can be seated well before the movie starts. So its already dark in the theater and they continuously bombard me with loud ads, keeping me from conversing with my friends. And I am considered rude for trying to communicate with my friends before the movie even starts? Ok, 7PM arrives. Movietime! More ads. Previews. Yet more ads. Coke, cars, TV personalities. When is the show? Ok, 30 minutes go by - they have screened all their crap and finally the splash screen for the feature presentation. By this time I am wondering just what I am doing here. This was delay upon delay trying to get eat the popcorn I had ( served in a little box ) so I would have to get some more. And the drinks are single served so I gotta pay for another specimen.
Kids laughing. Babies crying. Phones ringing. Lots of distracting lights from texters. The guy behind me taking off his shoes and propping his feet up on the vacant seat right next to my nose. I ask myself why oh why did I do this?
It took several years to delete my old ways, as the old perceptions I had of the theatrical experience had lost its flavor and no longer delivered satisfaction. I felt entering into a theater was just dropping my pants for a financial screwing at the snack counter, and a royal waste of time in front of the screen. If they are going to screen all those ads to me on my time ( time between when they *say* the movie starts to when the movie actually starts ), they should at least compensate me with free snacks.
Many industries abuse their customer base. This is what happens. Demand destruction will not happen overnight, as there is a lot of habits formed over the years that have to be broken. But once broken, the onus is now on the marketer to re-establish the habit if they want to have a viable business model.
It may look like a good business move to go ahead and hike the admission price to $15, surcharge the "silver experience" tickets sold last year, take money from other businesses to run ads to your audience when they came for the movie, mark up the snacks ungodly amounts, and sell dirt-cheap popcorn in little boxes to encourage repeat sales. Consider the demand destruction as your neglected audience finds other things to do. Then make your business decision.
Consider once your customers have other plans, how do you lure them back?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I haven't see all of last year's or this year's "big" films, but the five minute answer covering '82 to '11:
1982 Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
1983 Scarface (Brian De Palma)
1984 The Terminator (James Cameron)
1985 Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes)
1987 The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner)
1988 Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)
1989 A Grand Day Out (Nick Park)
1990 Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
1991 Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton)
1992 Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
1993 Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg)
1994 The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)
1995 Crying Freeman (Christophe Gans)
1996 Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
1997 Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
1998 Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer)
1999 Fight Club (David Fincher)
2000 Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky)
2001 Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
2002 The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
2003 Dogville (Lars Von Trier)
2004 Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
2005 Hard Candy (David Slade)
2006 This Is England (Shane Meadows)
2007 Juno (Jason Reitman)
2008 Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman)
2009 The Scouting Book for Boys (Tom Harper)
2010 Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
2011 We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay)
No remakes (that I'm aware of), no sequels, and no easy formulaic films here.
Shit, cutting down to a single film from some of those years was raw pain. '94 and '05 in particular.