Flopbusters
2023 has been a year of some major box office bombs, and we're only at the halfway mark. In his assessment of what might be going wrong for the current slate of tentpole releases alongside Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Nicholas Barber mentions such notable disasters as The Flash; Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken; Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania; Fast X; and Elemental. He omits Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Little Mermaid though.
Do you see a pattern here? That's right, half of them come from the House of Mouse. And that's not including The Marvels, the release of which is hotly anticipated by Terpsichore's devotees. As it is, it's enough to give me itchy feet…
[ dances the DIE DISMAL DISNEY dance ]
Barber attempts to rationalise why audiences aren't flocking to see films that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to get to the screen, yet recoup pennies on the dollar. It can't be that people are uninterested in going to the cinema entirely, the successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as well as last year's Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water, among others over the past year, belies that.
But he overlooks the elephant in the (writers') room. One potential reason, and possibly the most significant one at that, relates to the substitution of talented writers with hacktivist wannabes shoving TeH M3sSAg3 down audiences' throats, while denigrating beloved cultural icons to suit their own sociopolitical ideology. Perhaps that has something to do with repelling cinemagoers? (thinking)
The lack of creativity that comes with rebooting and reimagining may not be too helpful in exciting prospective audiences either. Barber doesn't explore that particular avenue, other than referencing a tweet claiming …a dread that Hollywood's best creative days are behind it…
. (shrug)
In addressing the influence of streaming—which, incidentally, hasn't affected box office returns across the board—I think Barber overplays its impact somewhat.
Streaming is undoubtedly a factor. All four of Indiana Jones's previous adventures are currently available on Disney+ at the touch of a button, so why buy tickets to see an inferior version?
Nicholas Barber, Does Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny mark the era of the 'flopbuster'?, BBC Culture
Irrespective of the previous adventures' availability, why buy tickets to see an inferior version, period? Conversely, why allow the availability of those previous instalments to stop one from seeing the newest, unless you're waiting for it too to come to Disney+? It's a non sequitur. And I'm not sure whether he's being disingenuous or ingenuous when he proffers this observation:
It's significant that Britain's biggest film magazine, Empire, has put such Disney+ TV shows as The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and Secret Invasion on its front covers in recent months, rather than actual cinema releases.
Nicholas Barber, Does Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny mark the era of the 'flopbuster'?, BBC Culture
Another interpretation is that Disney's buying prominent advertising space; paying Empire to drum up interest in its bargain-basement streaming melodramas, which have otherwise failed to impress of late.
Explanations for cinematic failure are like ways of skinning a cat: there's more than one.