Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd./Lucasfilm Ltd.
If someone had told me back in 2012 that in 2023 “The Flash” , “Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny” and a tenth “Fast and The Furious Film” would be among some of the biggest flops of the year, I would’ve looked at them like they had three sets of eyes. 2012 is the year “Avengers” came out. Middle school me was in awe for a month after watching it in theaters not because of the spectacular effects or the big name actors in it, but because seeing some of my favorite characters come to life on the big screen felt like magic. It felt as though superhero movies and blockbuster movies in general were such a beauty to behold, something to be cherished. Boy, was I naive in middle school, because in 2023, the stereotypical big-budget blockbuster has become a tired way to make a film and audiences are getting fed up.
“Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny” came to a total of a massive $300 million production budget (not including an additional estimated $100 million in promotion). To date, “Dial of Destiny” has only earned $375.4 million at the worldwide box office, making it only the 13th highest grossing film of 2023. “The Flash” is one of the most expensive superhero movies of all time, with a whopping $300 million budget (again, not including marketing and promotion). AAs of now has only made $270 million at the box office, making it only the 16th highest grossing movie. Reportedly, it has lost Warner Bros upwards of $200 million. How have blockbusters gotten to such a low point? Can they return to their former glory?
Big-budget blockbusters have been around for some time now. It all started back in 1975 with “Jaws..” Before then, film studios took very careful approaches to how they released their movies. They rarely advertised them on TV, kept to strict budgets and limited the first-week releases to significantly fewer theaters. But “Jaws” changed that completely. “The Godfather” (1972), for instance, only opened in five theaters its first week, before a large expansion later. “Jaws” opened in 409 theaters its first week, something unheard of at the time. “Jaws,,” for better or worse, was the catalyst for the summer blockbuster and the inflated budgets we see in movies today. Studios figured out that if you pour boatloads of money into your movie and marketing it, the profit will be worth the investment. Disney has been the biggest culprit of the big-budget method this year, with all their theater-played movies being made for at least $200 million. This strategy, while great for making a high-grossing movie, can be detrimental to creating a good and lasting movie because studios forget what made “Jaws” great: having Steven Spielberg at the helm.
The reason “Jaws” worked so well was because of its direction. Instead of investing into the teams behind these blockbusters, studios invest into special effects and huge set pieces, sucking the soul out of every movie. The team behind “Jaws” did innovative things, like its iconic two-note score, which strikes fear into the audience, or the brilliant decision to hardly show the shark that they’re hunting to make it seem more like a mythical creature than a real-world animal. Today, blockbusters have devolved to a state where, in “Fast X” (2023), Dominic Torreto in his dodge charger is the most unstoppable force known to man. The stunts and special effects are so over-the-top that the movie feels like just another cog in the Hollywood machine. The movies with the biggest budgets today lack all direction, almost as if the director isn’t even there.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Nia Decosta, director of the upcoming marvel film “The Marvels” (2023), was very transparent on how much control she had when making the film and how much of a hand the producer of the MCU, Kevin Feige, had in making the movie. “It is a Kevin Feige production, it’s his movie. So I think you live in that reality, but I tried to go in with the knowledge that some of you is going to take a back seat.” And it’s very clear to see this in practically every Marvel movie. They all follow the same “the good guy always wins and makes way too many jokes on his way to victory” formula. In the beginning it had a charm, but now it feels like watching the same movie over and over with different characters. As a result, audiences aren’t as interested anymore. The latest Marvel movie, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (2023), only made $853 million at the box office. It’s not a failure by any means, but compare that to 2021, where “Spiderman: No Way Home” (2021) made nearly 2 billion at the box office. Marvel is starting to make less money because their product is being made with less quality. “The Marvels,” their newest upcoming film, looks dead on arrival, with early predictions projecting a domestic opening of somewhere between $50 million and $75 million, less than half of the $153.4 million opening of its 2019 predecessor “Captain Marvel.” It’s not that audiences don’t want to watch big and explosive movies — I love watching something blow up just as much as the next guy — but rather that audiences are craving one thing that all of these movies are lacking: originality. The successes of “Barbie” (2023) and “Oppenheimer” (2023) are all the evidence we need.
“Barbie” is currently the highest grossing movie of the year and was the top selling movie domestically 42 days in a row, the most by any movie this year. “Oppenheimer” is the third highest grossing movie this year and the highest grossing biopic of all time. Both of these movies are oozing with originality and quality, and the reason is because of the directors. Greta Gerwig, the director of “Barbie,” and her team took such care to create the vibrant Barbieland we see in the movie, like using hand-painted backdrops instead of green screens to make the surrounding background. Christopher Nolan, the director of “Oppenheimer,” and his team engineered a completely new Imax camera that shoots in black and white instead of just editing the scenes to make them look black and white like most studios would’ve done. Meticulous details like this made these movies stand out, and audiences packed the theaters to see them. Studios should be giving the talented directors of today as much control as they need to create a movie with their vision in mind. In this way, filmmaking is quite similar to cooking: too many cooks spoil the broth.
Ultimately, the studios have to do better. They have to start coming up with new and innovative ideas to make high-grossing blockbusters. The reality is that the blockbuster isn’t going away and if they keep pumping out these mediocre movies, audiences will slowly lose interest.
Nathan Castimore is a third-year Communications Studies major. NC973905@wcupa.edu