Here are five lessons that the box office leaves us:
Animated/family movies seem to have been left home bound
“A Weird World,” “Lightyear,” “Bad Boys” and “Minions: A Villain Is Born” were the top titles the studios released to cater to children and families. However, only “Minions: A Villain is Born” was placed as one of the ten highest grossing films of the year, ranking at number four and with an income of more than 900 million dollars. 2019, by comparison, had two animated titles, “Frozen II” and “Toy Story 4.” Even more interesting, the two Disney bets, “A strange world” and “Lightyear” have been considered critical and box office flops.
There are a couple of important factors to consider. For many parents, after the pandemic, it has been difficult to differentiate what is released in theaters and what is on platforms, on the one hand. On the other hand, the cost of going to the movies is greater than that of paying the monthly fee for a streaming service. If you also consider that many children “can’t stand it”, it makes a lot of sense to really wait at home and stop suffering because the child wants to go to the toilet or falls asleep. The risk is lower at home.
Super productions, sequels and franchises continue to dominate
Among the ten highest grossing films only one, “Water Gate Bridge”, is an original property and another is a reboot, “The Batman”. The rest are sequels (“Top Gun: Maverick”, “Thor: Love and Thunder”, “Sonic 2”, among others). It is a trend that has been going on for several years, since before the pandemic, and the pandemic seems not to have affected it. Movies with these characteristics tend to have many special effects, action sequences, and even, in the case of Marvel, post-credits scenes that refer to something else that could happen in the future. This seems to indicate that their spectacularity makes them more suitable for a movie theater, since they will indisputably not be seen or heard the same at home.
Super heroes still dominate
Of the ten highest grossing movies, four are about superheroes. “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is in third place with just over a billion dollars. “The Batman” is in the fifth, “Thor Love and Thunder” (770 million) in the sixth and, curiously, in the seventh “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (737 million and counting). The last few years have had the constant questioning of how exhausted the genre has been. It is true that none of the Marvel titles achieved results similar or close to what they had before the pandemic. For example, “Captain Marvel”, the character’s debut film, exceeded one billion in 2019. There is also the fact that, compared to previous installments, Marvel films received lower evaluations from critics. “Thor: Ragnarok” had a 93% on the Rotten Tomatoes meta site from critics; “Love and thunder” stayed at 64%, the lowest of the four installments of the god of thunder. Doctor Strange did a little better at the box office, but it wasn’t any better critically either (89% vs. 74%). “Wakanda Forever” did not fare any better either (96% vs. 84%), which also became the first film of the genre nominated for an Oscar in the main category and obtained a box office of 1.3 billion dollars that is not seen already as a possibility for the sequel.
Are there movie stars?
A couple of weeks ago Quentin Tarantido said that there are no super stars anymore and that this is largely due to superhero movies. Under his logic, titles like “The Batman”, “Black Adam”, “Thor” or “Black Panther” do not depend on a superstar, but rather work due to ownership per se. That is, beyond which actor plays the character, it is in how the story works in general. It is a point to consider. Several, if not all, of Marvel’s lead actors have failed to prove that they are out-of-universe box office magnets. Neither Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth, nor even the very popular Tom Holland, have a history of titles that are, one after another, box office successes like Sylvester Stallone or Will Smith did at the time. 2022 only has one title, the one that occupies the privileged position, “Top Gun: Maverick” with a superstar: Tom Cruise. Without Cruise the film would not exist and would not exist in several ways. Cruise, at six decades old, is a producer of the film and was in the development of the sequel. What’s more, it was essential for the film not to be sent to platforms due to the pressure involved in keeping a production of 170 million dollars for more months. Furthermore, in front of the camera, the actor made it clear that his charisma, talent and presence are shared by few. You see Mr. Cruise and there is no doubt that he is a movie star, but how many more are there?
Hollywood needs China less
The pandemic has caused China to increase its requirements to release Hollywood films. Now, the tapes must meet thematic criteria, for example. That has left out all of Marvel, even Disney. The Chinese market is one of the most important and on many occasions it made the difference for a film to work at the box office. Wow, movies like “Pacific Ridge,” sequels to Transformers, and even the X-Men universe, included Asian actors as ways to increase their chances of connecting with the market. Several of the Top 10 and non-Top 10 films may have benefited from being released in China. However, “Top Gun: Maverick” was not released in China and shows that a movie can do very well without the need for such a market.