2013 Summer Blockbuster: Imploding in on itself?

by Christopher Barr

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg at a panel at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, along with his long-time friend and filmmaking collaborator, George Lucas, spoke on the future of film at the cinema, “There’s eventually going to be a big meltdown, there’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground and that’s going to change the paradigm again.”

Spielberg said this early in the year and now we see a number of big ‘event’ movies crash and burn at the box office like; After Earth, The Lone Ranger (which lost a whopping $141,100,000), R.I.P.D and White House Down, all bad to horribly bad movies respectively.

This summer movie season, I think has, for the most part, been uneventful.  There have been a couple of highlights but for the most part, forgettable.  Starting the season off was Iron Man 3; this movie was pretty good but that’s about it.  The action was fun and Robert Downey Jr. is always enjoyable to watch.  Essentially the first two Iron Man films were about Tony Stark finding Iron Man, then becoming, then living with the fame and in some cases, misfortune of being Iron Man.  But the third one went the other way; it was about Iron Man finding Tony Stark.  It was also about turning a beloved comic book villain into a farce for cinematic laughs.  Over a billion dollars later, look out Joker, you may end up being the Riddler disguised as the Joker to misdirect Batman in the up and coming Superman sequel.
 
Star Trek Into Darkness was an adequate sequel.  Len flares anyone?  It was fun and adventurous and had a boring villain.  Too bad the Klingons weren’t able to stick around longer.  But overall the movie was enjoyable popcorn fun.   

The Great Gatsby was all style and no substance, which is shocking.  Not really.  The filmmakers clearly didn’t actually read the book.   I am a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio in spite of his performances being all too similar, but even he couldn’t save this mess.  Jay-Z is in the house!

The Fast in the Furious 6 is one of my guilty pleasures of the summer.  Sure they all weren’t superheroes but tried to behave as if they were, defying the laws of physics.  But as a street racing turn heist franchise, they keep getting better.  And I dare you to find a better, after credits scene this summer, than the one at the end of this glossy bromance flick.

Like The Hangover Part 2, Part 3 just fell flat, losing every bit of charm Part 1 had.  These sequels try, or in a lot of cases don’t try, (shame on you Part 2) to recapture the magic of the first film.  But unless you are The Empire Strikes Back or in recent years, The Dark Knight, good luck trying.  This franchise should have never been made, leaving the first film unharmed from the history of great comedies.  Unlike The Dark Knight trilogy, The Hangover Trilogy was simply a way to make more money, that’s it.  TDK Trilogy along with The Bourne Trilogy, made loads of money, but both sets of films maintained a high level of quality in their respective productions from the ground up.

After Earth was boring and I don’t really get bored.  That’s how boring this ‘Smith dynasty’ movie was.  And I wasn’t the only one; Will Smith looked bored to tears, cooped up in that crashed ship for over half of the film, - run, Jaden, run.  At least in last summer’s Men and Black 3 he looked like he was actually having fun, along with all his cast mates.  M. Night, please stop making movies.  It’s not funny anymore.

This is the End was a much needed relief from a movie season starting out on the rocks.  This movie was funny as hell with one of the great cameos of the year thanks to Michael Cera.  The Backstreet Boys thing at the end was the only downer for a movie that had a great concept, and some pretty hilarious bromance scenes between these long time acting buddies.

Man of Steel was exciting and I did like the costume, even without the shorts.  Now who’s having the bromance?  I found that this flick started out damn good but ended like a sledgehammer to the face, which isn’t always a bad thing if you are a sadist but I would have liked a much more calming conclusion, or at least less relentless.  Maybe I’m just getting old, who knows.

World War Z was one of the blockbuster highlights for me this summer.  I enjoyed the story, the action and the special effects, but also the characters, which is often hard to flesh out in big blockbuster movies.  I’m looking up at you Man of Steel.  Brad Pitt did some pretty good work here, obviously come awards season, this movie will be nowhere to be found in the acting categories, but don’t count out the technical awards like sound and visual effects.

The Heat was actually pretty funny, derivative I know, but give the people what they want, right?!  Melissa McCarthy is one of those ‘love her or hate her’ type of funny actresses, I personally subscribe to the former.  I thought she was hilarious in Bridesmaids and I thought she was in this one too.  Sandra Bullock held her own up against McCarthy which was nice to see.  McCarthy was quite funny in a scene she was in, in Hangover 3, one of the very few funny scenes in that movie, mostly you just felt bad for them.

White House Down was a remake of Olympus Has Fallen.  No, not really, but I’m convinced in a few years time, people may think it was.  In the near future, moviegoers will be far more use to movies vampirically feeding off other movies with far less time in between the old and the new.  Like rebooting Spider-man just five years after the horrible third installment of the Raimi trilogy, reboots of the future may be as little as a year apart, or in the case of Superman vs. Batman due out in 2015, just three years after Christopher, do-no-wrong, Nolan’s own Batman trilogy concluded. (Theory: When Bruce climbed out of that pit in India or where ever he was in TDKR, maybe that plot hole of how he got back to Gotham without anything could be later filled with….yes you guessed it.  Superman?)  Where was I?  White House Down, right, anyway, wait I already forgot.

The Long Ranger was, well, I walked out of the theatre a hour in.  I felt that if I stayed any longer my ears might begin to bleed.  This movie was a horrible, predictable, dumbed down, mess of a movie.  Johnny Depp couldn’t have saved it if he tried, which I’m pretty sure he didn’t.  I long for the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas days when Johnny was cool and far, far less predictable, dumbed down, you get the point.  Don’t see this movie, trust me, it’s not your father’s Lone Ranger.

Grown….Ups….2, my god.  I saw less than a half an hour of this crappy movie on a computer at my work. (I know, for once I should have been more responsible at work and read boring work emails that are more dull than Will Smith’s performance in After Earth.)  No way was I paying one red cent to go to the theatre.  The problem is, do we blame Adam Sandler for dumbing down his movies or do we commend him as a business man for seeing that there is a huge market for these types of stupid movies in the first place?

Titanic Robots fighting gigantic sea monsters in Pacific Rim.  What’s not to love, the people in the movie for starters, with the exception of Charlie Day and Ron Perlman, both playing obligatory roles, but doing a damn good job at it.  Besides, they were the only two characters in the movie that were having a blast, as actors and as their characters.

Red 2 was not as good as the first one but it was a fun and welcomed addition to the original.  The characters were fun and the actors playing them looked like they were having an awesome time.  I loved the action scenes and John Malkovich was hilarious to watch.

The Conjuring was an unexpected thrill ride into the paranormal.  The film was successful because of the well told story but also the performances.  This is one of those movies I’m glad is making lots of money because hopefully the stupid studio execs will clue in on upping the quality level of their future projects.  Who the hell am I kidding; of course they won’t, duh!

The Wolverine, as fun as it was at times, was ultimately forgettable, along with most of the movies out this summer.  As a matter of fact, I had to look up a list of 2013 movie releases just to remember what I saw this summer in order to write this article.  Hugh Jackman made women cream and men feel like shit with that body of….sorry, back to the bromancing and getting off topic.  Yeah, the movie was good.  The scene after the credits was better.

2 Guns.  There were two guys with each a gun, hence 2 guns.  Moving on…..

Meet the Millers was hilarious.  Dumb fun at the cinema, with almost every scene better than the last one, but I must admit, as a man, the three way kissing scene in the camper was my fav….

Elysium was a pretty good action movie about the one percent of inhumane white people, except for the Pakistani president, who was the only one that cared about the 99 percent on earth, orbiting the planet on a space station.  Matt Damon, raised by Latin people, wants to save his dying ass but must go to the big resort in space to get the job done.  White people try to kill him while the Latin people help him.  I always find that interesting, if the roles were reversed people would have flipped out.

Kick-Ass 2 was a violent mess of a movie that sheds a pretty shitty shadow over the much more fun and clever original.  Damn sequels suck, with the exception of the above mentioned.  It’s like getting back with your high school sweetheart in your thirties and expect all the newness and freshness to return.  Good luck.

Mud, Before Midnight and Blue Jasmine were the real exceptions of the summer and I think for the whole year.  Come award season, each one of these three remarkable films should be acknowledged with nominations if not wins, Mud for supporting actor, Sir Matthew, Before Midnight for writing and Blue Jasmine for best actress for Queen Cate.

All three of these films expertly dived into the human condition with cinematic realism.  Whether it was in the US south with Mud or the Greece landscape with Before Midnight or the hills of San Francisco with Blue Jasmine, these film were superbly written and directed, all the performances were top notch and long lasting, unlike the forgettable mess the rest of the summer was.

Spielberg’s quote spoke of a paradigm shift which I think he was right up to that point.  He optimistically believes that this ‘implosion’ will be a lesson for the studios to change what they’ve been doing.  Oh, look the cynic’s in the room, I don’t think they will learn shit because they are out of ideas; they’ve lost all imagination on the productions of creative films.  We are certainly at a crossroads, and unfortunately  Spielberg is referring to long term, so I’ll give in a little to optimism, hopefully the studios will realize that making good movies will draw crowds just as much as bad movies, but at the end of the day, it’s the movie business, business being the key component in that equation.