How Did Popular Movies Become So Unpopular?
On the era of the franchise endgame — or the marketing-curated “serialized storytelling” — every major Hollywood studio chasing the double digits on the billion dollar yearly income is now desperate to create, recreate or linger on to any possibility of spin-offs of their cinematic universes or the nostalgia of previous success with reboots. Somehow paradoxically, their efforts to achieve sustainable profits are beginning to fail. Why did this happen?
Lights, Camera, Action Movies!
There’s something intrinsically attractive about blockbusters. Imbued with infinite out-of-this-world possibilities, cinematic action set-pieces and irreverent character portrayals, these movies — often accompanied with (literal) explosions of color and sound — are capable of defying our imagination, making us experience something unique.
More than just entertainment, these box-office phenomena capture the fascination of the masses, while participating in (and sometimes creating) a new commonplace, or better yet, their own suis generis agora. Therefore, blockbusters too can incorporate a fundamental aspect of art — an opportunity for individuals and society to confront different or similar needs, values and preoccupations, asking us to react and reflect upon them and, if need be, to evolve and change accordingly.
Even you if you’re not fond of spaceships, intimate personal dramas or buddy cop movies, there’s something universal to the best of these movies — they are consequential, leaving an indelible impact on our personal journeys or on our collective discussions. Consequently, through an accessible entry point to more serious or complex issues, they try to infuse pop culture with themes like diversity and tolerance, which might not be the first reason why the moviegoer bought a ticket — but which hopefully will leave them pondering.
However, as of late, suspense of disbelief has transformed into cynicism and the genre — if the term is at all fitting — is suffering vulgarization and depreciation. And maybe understandably so. For the last couple of years, cinemas have been flooded with multi-million-dollar tentpole movies of franchised intelectual properties, which are now released every other month. Huge ads for cinematic events, reboots and…
