Is “Beauty and the Beast” an Appropriate Movie to Watch with Your Kids?
Summer, in my opinion, is the worst season for movies. Sequels, reboots, franchises, superhero sagas, action flicks—big-budget blockbusters just aren’t my thing. Take a look at the 2013 May through August lineup: Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, Star Trek into Darkness, The Wolverine, 300: Rise of an Empire… The list goes on and on.
But these movies are the industry’s lifeblood, and audiences seem to love them. According to Box Office Mojo, a website that tracks ticket sales, the 10 top-grossing movies worldwide in 2012 were animated films, action sequels, or franchises, and they propelled the major studios to record profits. So, to use superhero parlance, are blockbusters a force for good or evil?
After reading books from several experts on the topic—a lover of big-budget movies, a producer, and a film critic—I’m torn. First let’s take a close look at an ultra-expensive blockbuster that crashed and burned. Michael D. Sellers’s John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood chronicles Disney’s 2012 release of a movie that cost more than $250 million to make and $100 million to market and then bombed at the box office, forcing the company to take a $200 million write-off. This came as a big surprise.
The film critic David Thomson is equally concerned about this trend. If you look back through movie history, as he does in The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies, you’ll see that the industry’s most fertile and creative periods weren’t driven by blockbusters; they were fueled by filmmakers who had the budgets.
After all, Hollywood is still innovating—even in some action films. Look no further than the special effects and sound wizardry in Avatar and Hugo. And even if the big studios are financing more John Carters than they are commercial art films with creative storytelling, others are filling the void. I think the movies are going to be OK. We cinephiles will still be able to get our fix in the autumn run-up to awards season; you blockbuster lovers can spend the summer eating popcorn and watching stuff blow up.
Catherine Payne
Thank you for such an amazing and informative article! It’s useful to know how movie industry changes and what makes CEOs of movie studios create more blockbusters.
Ronald Chen
Catherine PayneThank you for your comment! I will post more interesting news about what’s happening in the industry in my next posts, so stay tuned!
Philip Bowman
This article was worth reading. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and words of experts on this topic. I hope to hear more from you and your team of bloggers in the next posts.