When Ben Affleck was cast as Batman in Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” sequel this past week, the Internet’s subsequent explosion of jokes and boos and hatred and memes over absolutely nothing summed up the odd state of mainstream movies in 2013.
You’ll recall that the crazed reaction to the announcement of this year’s lineup sounded no different a year ago than it does now. And yet the resounding verdict about Summer 2013 was that it was “The Year of the Flop.”
On sheer numbers alone, this is perhaps misleading. “White House Down,” “Elysium,” “The Lone Ranger” and “Pacific Rim” did in fact flop… big time. The studios responsible for these films will take significant losses financially, despite the fact that they rank amongst the highest grossing films of the year.
Most of the others however have done quite fine. The worldwide box office will salvage poor domestic receipts and Hollywood will continue making movies that speak the universal language of PG-13 explosions. “Pacific Rim” alone made nearly 75 percent of its overall gross overseas.
So for the present, Hollywood may not change a damn thing. The movie industry is doing well enough.
But if you ask me why the summer was such a letdown, and ask anyone, it’s because the biggest movies this summer were all so meh.
None attained the level of pop culture phenomenon even if the dollars said otherwise. “Iron Man 3” was not “The Avengers.” “Man of Steel” was not “The Dark Knight.” “Elysium” was not “District 9.” “The Heat” was not “Bridesmaids.” “Star Trek Into Darkness” was not the original “Star Trek.” “The Hangover Part 3” was not the first or second. “The Wolverine” was not any of the X-Men incarnations. “Monsters University” was not “Up.” Perhaps only “Despicable Me 2” was as huge as “Despicable Me.”
We’re currently operating in a culture where there’s a lot of excitement for movies frankly no one cares about.
This goes beyond whether or not any of these movies are any good. If A.O. Scott made one thing clear in his movie wrap up, it’s that time will tell a different story after the haze of the press disappears.
But that time may come sooner than any of us expects. Right now there is a media industry that operates on feeding the monster that is mainstream movies. Speculation is made, hash tags are concocted, teasers are leaked, casting is debated, individual frames within trailers are scrutinized, and then maybe some actual criticism occurs.
If these movies were to disappear, if suddenly the superhero franchise released every week were to no longer be financially viable or possible, and if the supposed underdog nerd culture really did fade back into the niche minority and not the mainstream, what would happen to the hype machine that surrounds it?
There will always be journalists reporting casting rumors and there will always be people on the Internet debating on message boards, but either the audience or the industry will need to be fixed first. If more of these movies are released and the nerds stop arguing and the blogs stop prognosticating to the level done today, cinema will look very old very fast. And if most of the studios shift course away from multi-million dollar tent pole franchises for financial reasons and the debate over who will play the Flash rages on, the movies will sink deeper into niche territory as TV grabs their market share.
Something like the #Batfleck hash tag is already looking dated and exhausting. It’s become the norm that hype is blown way out of proportion and that people on the Internet will complain about anything.
But there was a time when excitement for a movie and its release was a surprise and not just a foregone conclusion.