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Friday, Nov 21, 2008
As the summer movie season drags on, it's time to ask whether there's a limit to how much hype we can take.
By Stephanie Zacharek
Read more: Hollywood, Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Steven Spielberg, Arts & Entertainment
From left: Paramount, Warner Bros., Paramount
From left: Indiana Jones, the Dark Knight, and Iron Man.
Aug. 12, 2008 | No matter how big our TV screens get, no matter how little patience we have for sitting in the dark with text messagers and candy-wrapper crinklers, there's still one good reason that a movie like "The Dark Knight" can make more than $400 million domestically in just three weeks: The whole point of going to the movies in the first place is to be overwhelmed, to give ourselves over to images that are bigger than we are. That's the purpose of the summer blockbuster: To movie studios, they're commerce; to us, they're a chance to escape for a few hours into another, bigger world, or at least just into air conditioning.
There's a place for big, dumb entertainment with lots of car chases and explosions, and this summer we've seen our share of mindless-fun action movies ("Wanted") and pictures based on comic books ("The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"). We've also seen animation of both the ultra-prestigious and the take-the-kiddies varieties ("Wall-E," "Kung-Fu Panda") and big-budget girls-night-out pictures ("Sex and the City," "Mamma Mia"). In theory, at least, this year the assortment of big summer movies hasn't been that different from other summers in recent memory.
So why has the summer of 2008 seemed exhausting in a way previous summers haven't? The summer-movie season, which used to begin in June and would be finished by the last week of July, after the release of all the big "event" movies, now begins in early May and is beginning to creep well into August -- the movie equivalent of the endless presidential election season. This year, it kicked off with one whimper ("Speed Racer") and also with one bang ("Iron Man"). But the movies of summer 2008 seemed to become bigger, noisier, more ambitious and more expensive with each passing week. By the time "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" limped into theaters on Aug. 1, trailing lots of sand and dead skin behind it, audiences could be forgiven for feeling fatigued. The movie had a respectable opening weekend, taking in more than $40 million, but clearly "The Dark Knight," still drawing audiences after two weeks in theaters, had siphoned off some of its business.
Then again, maybe "The Mummy 3" was just too much, too late, and it points toward some bigger questions about the nature of the modern summer blockbuster: Just how much excitement can movie advertising realistically whip up? Is there a limit to how much movie hype we can take in before we say, "So what?" And when it comes to the movies themselves, how big is too big, and how much is too much -- in terms of money spent on special effects and marketing at the expense of the basics, like having a decent script and a director who knows how to tell a story visually? At what point does blockbuster movie culture become draining rather than exhilarating?
The most important element of summer-blockbuster culture isn't the selling of movies; it's the selling of anticipation, because the amount of time we might spend looking forward to a big summer movie is almost always longer than the shelf life -- in theaters, at least -- of the actual movie. In New York, where I live, the subway platforms are perpetually adorned with posters for "big" movies that came and went in a blink. Generally, the posters stick around for much longer than the movies do, often defaced and decorated with Situationist-style détournement: The line between "I can't wait to see that!" and "Who gives a rat's ass?" is razor thin, and you know that line has been crossed when bored subway riders feel compelled to scribble all over Edward Norton's face.
The studios themselves inadvertently invite blockbuster fatigue. Go to see a summer action movie, and you'll be walloped beforehand with at least three trailers -- all featuring the usual assortment of generic explosions, car chases and unshaven tough guys -- for forthcoming action movies that you're supposed to be looking forward to. These trailers all look the same (how exciting is that?), and they're usually so nonsensical and assaultive that they grind you down even before the nonsensical, assaultive movie you've paid to see has begun.
Summer blockbusters have been a staple of the movie calendar since the 1970s, and every year has its share of big hits and surprise (or even not-so-surprising) duds: Last summer "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" raked it in at the box office, and even though many die-hard fans of the "Pirates" franchise found the final installment disappointing once they saw it, the picture was so highly anticipated that its quality -- or lack thereof -- barely mattered. Blockbusters are built, and marketed, to make money, and more often than not, they do.
The two biggest hits of summer 2008 -- "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" -- are based on comic books. The third- and fourth-biggest -- "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Hancock" -- are, respectively, a long-awaited entry in a popular franchise and a vehicle, albeit an unusual one, for one of Hollywood's most popular stars. It's no surprise that those movies made money, although the idea of "making money" is relative: "The Incredible Hulk," conceived as a way of making amends after Ang Lee's "Hulk" so gravely disappointed comic-book fans, had a reasonable opening weekend, making around $55 million. But less than two months after its release, who even remembers it?
Next page: What is the ideal summer movie?
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"The Dark Knight"
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army"
"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor"
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