The Hot Button by David Poland

Wednesday, 29 July 1998

RANTING & RAVING

I thought I would take a look back at last year this week. Have things really changed, or are we all just always searching the figurative tea leaves for change? Perhaps it's a little of both. The broad strokes certainly do change. Last year, audiences were sucked into The Lost World and Batman & Robin before the buzz could snap back and destroy them. Not quite that kind of luck this year, though the room seemed to be getting hipper as last summer proceeded with the $229 million domestic gross for Jurassic 2 more than doubling that of B&R: The Lost Franchise, which opened a month later. Likewise, studios seem to have been emboldened by the surprisingly leggy Contact last year, releasing more traditionally "fall" films in the middle of summer. That didn't work this year, as Out of Sight, A Perfect Murder and Bulworth all bit the dust. Perhaps the analogy for the success of Contact is The Truman Show, though that film had a lot more hype than Contact going in and featured Jim Carrey to boot.
The Top 10 box office results for the fourth weekend of July 1997 are remarkably similar to this year's numbers. There are six films that have passed $100 million or are likely to pass that number. (There could be a seventh this year, if Zorro and There's Something About Mary both make it.) The top film is more than $30 million both years with big names in tow. Last year, Harrison Ford (in AFO). This year, Tom Hanks. And Ryan now seems to have a legit shot at matching AFO's $173 million domestic take and to beat its $313 million worldwide take. (Though I felt going into last weekend that $100 million for SPR would be strong. We'll see. The worldwide target may be more likely than the domestic one.) The losers that made the Top 10 were two comedies (one teen, one adult in Good Burger and Nothing To Lose) and an action film (Operation Condor). This year, it's a comedy (MAFIA!) and two action films (one teen and one pre-teen in Disturbing Behavior and Small Soldiers).
Both Armageddon and Men in Black had their fourth weekends in July's fourth week. MIB would be $50 million ahead at this juncture and would end up about $75 million ahead in the end. Godzilla and The Lost World were both way out of the Top 10 by this point, though JP2 was $90 million ahead. George of the Jungle was 1997's There's Something About Mary: both surprise comedies within shouting distance of $13 million in each of their second weeks. And George was the low-dropper of that weekend, too. There is a somewhat strained analogy to be made between My Best Friend's Wedding and Dr. Dolittle: each was the hit comedy of the summer as well as being one of the three most profitable films of their respective summers. With one less week under its belt(using this date as a marker), Dolittle is almost $15 million ahead already, but one is purely a family comedy and the other is a screwball farce -- an interesting match anyway. The big differences are that last year's Lethal Weapon 4, the big-budget bust Speed 2, exploded in dock. This year's Face/Off, The Mask of Zorro, isn't doing quite as well as last year's youthful action smash. But the slots are filled.
You should be getting some sense of the big picture about now. Lots of things change every year. People develop, produce and market their films individually and take each film very seriously. It's all so personal. But in the end, only a few films avoid becoming part of the blur of Hollywood. You win some, you lose some, but in the end, the song remains the same. I'm just here to point out those tiny variations.
WEEKLY CHAT: Once again, my weekly chat on Yahoo! Chat will be this Friday at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m.ET/10:00 p.m. GMT. This week, I'm in Chicago, but we'll still just be talking movies. Next week, my first chat guest, Natasha Gregson Wagner.
READERS OF THE DAY: First, a reader named Mark sent me a link to what has to be seen as a remarkable dual review of Saving Private Ryan and Small Soldiers by Jonathan Rosenblum of the Chicago Reader. He rates Soldiers as a four-star "masterpiece" and Ryan as a one-star disaster, having a "redeeming facet." And if you want to know just what kind of self-indulgent poseur sees movies this way, check out his Top 10 list for 1997. Only one studio film on the list (As Good As It Gets), and only two that more than a handful of you have probably seen (though you should have seen the documentaries that share one of the spots). This guy is a truly retro throwback to the bad old days of 1970s auteurist crap reviewing. Not that today's crass commercialism is much better, but at least it's not as smug.
Next, one of the many Saving Private Ryan letters that will serve as consensus for today. From Steve: "I personally enjoyed Spielberg's rather graphic tale of one private's ticket home. I can't understand how so many reviewers (at least the one's you mentioned) could only see this movie as a Spielberg movie and not just a very well-done war movie. I do have to say, Spielberg did have one of his usual tricks up his sleeve, though. When Hanks and his squad 'come together' [edited for spoiler]; this is vintage Spielberg. The whole, 'The only way we can do this is together' schtick seems to be a running theme in his movies. But I digress. The fact is, this movie is extremely compelling. If Ella Taylor had any real sense of emotion herself, how could she not be moved by the images that Spielberg throws at us? Spielberg has always been one to tell a story as much with pictures as with words and anyone who sees the storming of the beach in the first 20 minutes cannot help but feel the futility of war and the needless death that it craves. This movie has disturbed me in a way that causes me to think about what goes on around me. That is the point of movies: To reach us and somehow become more than just a series of pictures and words. Isn't that why we love them?"
Finally, a very different and rare take from Michael of Orlando, Fla.: "Yes Private Ryan is well done, acted and so on, but it is also a nearly three-hour bore! Please don't compare this war crap to Titanic. I found this to be typical of the old John Wayne-type war films of long ago and found nothing new, except the extreme gore at the start of the film. Ryan surely will not have the legs of Titanic and will not win best picture next year. This summer, it seems that any huge ad budget will push a film to huge box-office totals for the opening week, but do any of these summer films have the legs of Titanic, which is still in theaters in week No. 32!? I agree, Armageddon was horrible -- no real disaster scenes, just stupid macho talk. The reason these films do well is because people who go to movies are easily pleased. Don't forget there are millions of trailer parks in the United States!"

E ME: Any crackpot theories on box office flux for me? Ryan reactions?