Barbenheimer and The Summer Movie Wrap Up

I did very badly in the Summer Movie Wager this year, but so did just about everybody else.

So here's the actual domestic box office rankings for this summer:

1. Barbie

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

4. Oppenheimer

5. The Little Mermaid

6. Sound of Freedom

7. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

8. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part I 

9. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

10. Elemental

And here's what I predicted back in April:

1. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part I 

2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 

3. Fast X 

4. The Flash 

5. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 

6. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 

7. The Little Mermaid

8. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

9. Oppenheimer 

10. Barbie

I didn't manage to get a single film in the right position, but I got three pretty close ("Guardians," "Indiana Jones," and "Transformers"), "Mermaid" in the right ballpark, and nothing else remotely right.  Frankly, like most people I did not see the Barbenheimer behemoth coming.  I did not expect "Fast X" and "The Flash" to bomb so badly they didn't make the top ten.  And nobody saw "Sound of Freedom," an action film that was independently produced by some incredibly shady people, breaking into the mainstream.  This is the most fun I've had watching the box office in a long time, and honestly I'm delighted that art seems to have kinda won out over commerce this year.  The movies at the top of the chart are mostly very well reviewed, and display more ambition and originality than the bombs.  Of course, that's not the whole story.

The summer of 2023 is going to be one we're talking about for a long time.  Ticket sales are finally back to pre-pandemic levels.  There's a historic strike going on, though It's hard to say how much of an effect it had on any specific marketing campaigns.  The lack of talk show appearances certainly didn't seem to hurt the more popular films.  I had a post earlier about the disastrous underperformance of many major franchise titles that were released in June, but then came July and the incredible success of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."  Superhero fatigue has been pointed to as a potential reason for the failure of films like "The Flash," but after "Indiana Jones" and "Mission: Impossible" both stumbled, I think the issue may be broader.  

My pet theory is that the current crop of action-adventure films aimed at the young male demographic have just gotten too safe and repetitive.  A few superhero films did great, like "Guardians" and "Spider-Verse," which had strong reviews and really felt like proper event films.    However, it proved much harder to drum up excitement for the fifth "Indiana Jones" adventure, the seventh "Mission: Impossible" and "Transformer" bouts, the tenth "Fast" cameo-fest, and however you want to count "The Flash."  This isn't an issue with their quality - "Mission: Impossible" got fantastic notices and I adored the stupid fun of "Fast X."  It's an issue with their familiarity.   

And Barbenheimer?  The memes helped with the hype, and the "Barbie" marketing campaign was fantastic, but what really sealed the deal was that both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" pinged as different enough from the fantasy-action slurry that they came across like something new and interesting.  They got lots of people who hadn't been in a theater since before the pandemic to come out and have a good time.  Though "Barbie" is based on a toy brand, it felt like an auteur-driven project with genuine artistic credibility thanks to Greta Gerwig.  Though "Oppenheimer" is a three hour biopic, Christopher Nolan's reputation for quality filmmaking got people in seats.    

What I find the most exciting about Barbenheimer is that audiences were clearly ready for this.  They wanted to be in theaters with big crowds.  The studios have been so fixated on catering to the action audience, it feels like they just forgot about everyone else over the past few years.  All the metrics for success have been based off of the performance of superheroes and endless franchises.  And this summer, that all had to be thrown out the window, because things have changed.  "Barbie" is the biggest film in Warners' entire hundred year history.  Jim Caviezel is completely off his rocker and a bona fide leading man again.  A PIXAR movie turned out to be a minor sleeper hit.  

Alas, the strike makes capitalizing on this new box office momentum difficult, but that's a post for another day…      

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