Box Office / BP Trend about to be broken???

Thanks for the other years. Is the Academy out of touch with the public or what? In fact, in the 2010's not one of the bp winners placed in the top ten. That's pretty bad.

Yeah, but I guess when a major trend like this is broken you kinda have to ask: why is this happening. Are people just going to the movies to see event films now? It you look at the past nominees/winners there used to be a time where the bp winner had made an impact. American Sniper is the only drama this decade that made an impact on the public and it wasn't even close to winning bp. Now we have a bunch of bp winners that nobody bothers to go see when they are in the theatre. People still go to the movies but there is a disconnect on what the public likes and the Academy. In a five picture bp slot, would a movie like Raiders score a nod with today's Academy? I doubt it.  

Given the decline in quality from the movies on those lists to the top movies now, I don't want to be "in touch" with the contemporary movie going public. 

Seriously, The Red Shoes was a no. 1 top grosser in a year. Today it would be an art film that would be very hard to see if you didn't live in a big city. Look at some of those other movies- The Graduate, The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, Rebecca. 

I think that the problem can be summed up in one word - franchises. #1 movies are almost exclusively franchise movies these days. And let's be honest other than The Dark Knight no other Box Office top grosser deserved to even be nominated.

I always enjoy your intelligent input and I almost clicked "like" here but while I think there is definitely some truth in your comment (passivity is definitely an "important" trait of our society), I think it also omits something.

Let's look at Mad Max (Fury Road) for instance. It is by every means a crowdpleaser but Box Office Mojo has it at #21 (holy cow). Now I'll do something perhaps a bit volatile, I'll list all the 20 films that scored more (in order of gross): San Andreas, Straight Outta Compton, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Fifty Shades of Grey, Hotel Transylvania 2, Home (2015), Ant-Man, The Revenant, Pitch Perfect 2, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Spectre, Cinderella (2015), The Martian, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, Minions, Furious 7, Inside Out, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I would aks anyone to apply perspective before all else. Because an important question is: Which of the 21 films mentioned is actually the biggest event going merely by the virtue of what is presented on screen? In those regards I'm of course very ignorant because I have only seen The Revenant, Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (I was also seen prequels to Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Minions, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and I think I've seen the animated Cinderella). However I still want to make an educated guess at least and my guess is Mad Max - which was praised to heavens by even the most snobbish critics and film people (or at least people that are percieved as such). If you go further back you will find that the Cahiers du Cinema voted Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way as #1 of the 90's (tied with 2 others but still), that John Hughes films get major critical acclaim and that Breakfast at Tiffany's places above Rohmer's Claire's Knee on TSPDT. In all of those cases I agree (to various extends). I do not think that Breakfast at Tiffany's is better than Calire's Knee but it's by no means a film that has to hide away from it. It's a much, much more intelligent film that even most people who love it would give it credit for (I've seen IMDB review that described it as fluff but still rated it very highly). I do not think that critical appreciation of such films has wavered at all, if anything vulgar films get more credit than ever before (Sirk for instance was very financially succesful director in the 50's but american critics bashed him to no end, it's not too dissimilar with Hitchcock). I think Mad Max shows that, it is directly in the line of films like Carlito's Way and Hitchcock and it works in very similar ways with very laconic but very important observations (again I do not think the extend of Mad Max's message is understood by most people even though it is incredibly reduced). What has wavered is the audience and the market. You will see from the list that the artistic aspirations in those films that did better than Mad Max is very limited, most seem like products constructed by corporations. Should any of the 20 highest grossing films of 2015 have been considered for the title best film of the year? It's very dubious if you ask me. I can of course see the artistic aspirations in films like The Force Awakens or Spectre or Revenant and Revenant is a very curious example, a film that was unlikely to be made and only was because of a number of coincidenses (the most important one is of course DiCaprio, the only actual star that yet exists). However as for TFA and Spectre the artistry comes in very restricted doses and it's scaled back to a monumental extend by the corporations behind them. I think in a way our filmlandscape has become very neoliberal (or perhaps 'reganesque' is better because neoliberal is too vague to describe anything beyond liberal). Today it's simple, capital = return + propaganda (it's not just studios that invest in the films). In a way even old Hollywood has something in favor of that because it was a totalitarian system with competition among the few big studios and they were of course hungry for innovation against their competitors (which is why it was actually a technically incredibly prosperous place, just look at everything that was going on in the 50's with widescreen and even 3D already, or with colour throughout the entire golden age history of Hollywood or with sound in it's early days, many studios had their own system in all those different regards). The problem is that today this has totally diverged to brand awareness, ticket sales are not that important anymore but it is important that people kow your film (much more than if it's any good). I'll give you a curious example: Fear and Desire, a film with a reputation of being plain bad but it has Kubrick on its cover (I have never heard anything good about that film, it's not like Ed Wood's films or the Room). Yet Fear and Desire has more IMDB votes than 46 of the 143 50's films on TSPDT's list (which actually run on a reputation of being great films). People will rather watch a film so bad that Kubrick himself disowned it than one of Renoir's best films (The River) or good films from Lang, Ophüls, Bunuel, Ozu, Sternberg, Rosselini, P&P, etc. All because of brand awareness. Kubrick himself would have deeply resented that we would watch Fear and Desire and much more that we would watch it over films like this (especially considering he named Ophüls the greatest of them all). And this is a recent phenomenon caused by the internet, I would wager that on their original release almost all of the unlucky 46 were seen more often than Fear and Desire (probably not the 2 Jean Rouch who wasn't even a filmmaker btw) and also still in the 60's, the 70's, the 80's, the 90's but then perhaps not anymore in the 2000's. And the most curious thing is that this example proves, that brand awareness is not merely an act of passivity (noone advertised Fear and Desire to people). So passivity can't be the root cause in the end (I think you could label watching the Avengers due to the marketing passive but not watching Fear and Desire). Perhaps the actual problem is the end of history (=no more narrative), perhaps the problem is freedom. In golden Age Hollywood you were forced to watch what studios presented (that is if you wanted to watch films and did not live in New York or so), you aren't anymore and it has arguably led to worse films in the big budget department because in that department films are not films anymore. Spectre is not Spectre, Spectre is James Bond, Inside Out is not Inside Out, it's Pixar. Even Fury Rod is Mad Max in the very end (however it was a comercially dead franchise when it comes to multi million dollar budgets, the film would have likely lost money if it was bad). Perhaps very cynically speaking the highest grossing "film" of 2015 is Dady's Home - which I have never heard of but it's a family comedy (a cousin of RomCom I would say), a genre that was really big in the 2000's when films like this placed in the top 10 (this is outside the top 20). However it still builds on the brand of Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg so you could still question it but I think in this case the brand is a much smaller part already (again because I think the only star in the movies today is DiCaprio and then there are perhaps a few supporting players). The highest grossing film of 2015 I have no f***ing clue about (i.e. I know of nothing associated to the film) is War Room (at #45) but I really don't want to know more.

I am myself curious about what excactly to take from all of this but in the end I would not oppose people who would describe TFA or Spectre as escapist fluff, though I would probably not do it myself (the answer is ambivalent, in part it is as escapist fluff as anything is). You can take interesting things from both but they also both feel woefully incomplete and the question wether either is really still a film is much more relevant than it should be. I understand what you say about the dangers (and in a way I deeply sympathize with it because you see it everywhere, most of all in politics, and I would very much use the same word: dangerous), it's like with contemporary philosophy (which is dead in the mainstream), if we all say that those films are none of our concern, they will reign and our opinion will die. This would of course be very resentful but do I really need to watch any of those films if the only one that seems remotely appealing is Inside Out (and maybe Mission Imposible and Cinderella)? I mean 16/16 people did not like my TFA review (maybe it was really very bad, certainly not sophistically written but still I think it presents a prime concern and the most important topic related to that film: myth), the most popular reviews were those that straightforward dismissed the film. The other modern film I reviewed on IMDB is Into the Inferno and there suddenly 17/19 people liked the review (it's actually the top review for the film but it was also the first), partly of course because as a review it's much better but also because of the different audience I would at least suspect. For this very question I think the answer is perhaps not in the movies because even if I would engage in them, it would change very little, the answer is much rather in hitting walls with hammers, in digging holes in the lawn of strangers, in stealing stones from public monuments, etc. It is film that has brought us here afterall, possibly the 20 highest grossing films of 2015 really are brands and not films (or only anymore in a very removed sense). The answer is probably rather to actively disengage than to engage in those films (and I'm not even saying all of them are bad but none of them are succesful as films in the sense that they make money because of their inherent filmic qualities). Afterall it is all a gigantic problem deeply engrained in society and popular films are merely a result of that but what is very disheartening that there is no voice for this. In Germany we have a Left Party that is among the most progressive in Europe I would say but it is really still a conservative party, they want to rule like 70's SPD. Allthewhile our 2 prime parties collude into inextinguishability. To me this screams anticipation of disaster. In the end a certain passivity seems engrained in our history but what is really necesarry is a narrative, the only problem is that we hate utopia and it sells like burning poop. Try to look at Sci-Fi, always dystopia (the Star Trek series is the only big utopia thing I can think of, and the films did not follow that formula). In that way someone like Trump is a chance because he is a common enemy but still the question is for meaningfull discourse which was the opposite of your presidential election (I mean Trump offered more meaningful discourse than Hillary, just look at their ads for instance, even threathening to jail Hillary in a very odd fashion had more substance than Hillary accusing Trump of racism/sexism - that I can just line them up beside each other is further proof I think*). I like Werner Herzog's line of thinking that you do have to do very vile things for your films (which he teaches in his Rouge film school) and that you do have to read ancient poetry (every filmmaker who does not do this is in a way an idiot). Maybe those are the cornerstones of meaningful opposition. Today I can make films for virtually nothing, I can distribute them to the entire world for virtually nothing but I do have to pay people to see it (aka advertisment), Old Hollywood reversed perhaps and certainly very ironic. I think somehow we need a movement in this, a (international) film-movement perhaps that produces films, distributes them and watches them. If the scale becomes large enough this would be real competition and people would be directly involved, perhaps reminiscent of Marker's request in Sans Soleil: "Poetry will be made by everyone" - maybe that's the only shot we have at survival in the digital age if all ends meet because our jobs are about to get worthless (unless we destroy everything and follow Trump back into the stoneage but really if the US takes this path, Europe will look towards China). I'm at the moment actually scrambling to make a crazy (aka. much too ambitious) feature film but it is filled with hardships and the project stands on a very shaky ground (in that I have nothing to make it, maybe a cameraman if I'm lucky, certainly no trained actors and only small timeframes). So maybe it will all revert back to nothing.

I'm off to watch Ashes and Diamonds now. Sorry for the crazy length but I sort of liked your comment actually and we can certainly find some sort of agreement in it but I think ultimately the actual answer is something else. I don't know it and I think I wrote this comment for myself aswell, because part of me is very sympathetic to your argument of passivity (which sounded very compelling also while reading it) but another part of me vehemently screams: NO - and whatever it is, I think that part is right.

*I know this is a very out there example, you mustn't take it too seriously.  

mikediastavrone96 - Well, I don't disagree with you on this specifically, I was trying to go in a different direction. I did not mean to say that Sirk or Carlito's Way were praised by critics or that people saw much in them (as for Carlito I don't even know if box office numbers were that good) but by all means it is vulgar cinema which is about the only form big succesful movies seem to be able to work in (even Kubrick typically worked on that premise and when he did Barry Lyndon he fell flat on his nose, otherwise he always promised sex or violence or horror and frequently went after the most popular novels - and we're talking Kubrick, a filmmaker with freedoms most would dream of). So I was actually suggesting the opposite, that they were in fact written of as fluff back in the day and that they find more appreciation today because the form is more appreciated and we are more openminded and have more channels to see through. A film today is filtered through hundreds of filters before it is considered fluff, while something like Femme Fatale is far from being universally acclaimed, you can find immense praise on it very, very fast. And in this case I do not think it's that much a matter of time passing anymore. This kind of cinema gets an instant critical appraisal like never before today. Think about Spring Breakers for instance, had it been released 10 years earlier, the metacritic numbers would be at least 10 points lower. My argument was very much about a different context of work. I think that if you strip all of those 2015 releases lose of their connections and present them (the "naked" films) in a matter more akin to the 50's, Mad Max would have been the most succesful film (and it's not my favorite of 2015, that wasn't the point, the point was about the nature of the film as an intelligent and acclaimed crowd-pleaser). However critics with 1950's mentality would not have seen any sense in the film (of course this is a hypothetical scenario and we must adjust for technical innovation and social morality quite a bit). Likewise the further you drop these (vulgar) films back in time, the less praise they would get. Carlito's Way was actually in Cahiers top 3 in '94 already, higher than Mad Max and De Palma said he could not make a better film. However Sirk was really torn to shreds by critics and Hitchcock lived in a similar world. Today the school of criticism is much different, much more in line with the cahiers and I'd argue that part of this has even made it's way to the Academy (otherwise something Tree of Life would not get nominated). So my argument is that you're drawing a false equivalence between the past and now. The succes of Gone with the Wind or Star Wars is largely incompatible with the succes of The Force Awakens. It is somewhat compatible with Avatar though (which is also much, much more critically acclaimed than TFA - in this case I like Avatar less but I think critics have a point).

As far as the passivity goes, I think you reiterated the points about it I did agree with. Some of the key pressumptions of from Caligari to Hitler are quite arrogantly overwrought as any student of history will tell you but there obviously is a lot to the key premise, films shape culture and films shape culture through passivity, moreover films are a reflection of culture and films can be abused for your own means. I very rarely write something off as complete fluff myself. When I watch a film I'm always deeply analytical, I would not watch the film otherwise. So this wasn't my point. I don't know if this came across but I very much would reinforce the cultural significance of popular films but cultural significance is never in opposition to fluff because popularity creates the significance, regardless of fluff or no fluff. I do take Micheal Bay films very seriously for instance, we have to understand that this is all for real, those are not "just movies" but this does not make the movie better, Transformers is still one of the most boring films I ever watched, perhaps just the worst feature film I ever watched (I like The Rock a lot though), it should not get a BP nomination and it would not by the standards of previous eras. Longer time ago different films were popular and they alligned better with the academy. Around the World in 80 Days ranks #49 among the highest grossing films of all time (adjusted), yet today everyone thinks it's amazingly boring (at least that is the picture I get, I have not seen it). I think this dilemma stems from freedom as I have said earlier. No more restrictions but also no more goals, no more values, no more big budget films that care (of course a hyperbolic statement). I think Three Colours: Blue has the most apt observation on this stigmata in our culture today. We (or lets say you especially, the Americans) love to cherish freedom but we have considered it very little. As a society we have failed to understand the burden of freedom. Everyone thought that the post Sovjet days were so great, everything seemed solved but today we slowly start to realize that little did turn to the better and suddenly we start to antagonize Russia again and we invade the middle east, again and again and again and again and again (and really, our reasons are bullcrap most of the time and most people fail to understand that Putin's actions were defensive, awful but perhaps actually better than what we did) because we need an enemy. I think the filmoutput reflects that aimlesness and not in a positive manner, we always look back, there is no more sense of future: remake this, sequel that, reboot my ass and prequel this. I agree that this is very dangerous and I agree that the films are very dangerous (even good films can be) because we live under the guise of see no evil, hear no evil: "this could never be propaganda right"? "They don't mean it, the blood, the violence, it's only in film". Yes, sure, sure. I loved Kyle Kallgren's ending segment from his Caligari to Hitler video on this (that's what I call great satire for once, far removed from the way kids use it for "edginess"). The rest of the video was a slightly redundant summary (still well done though) but the ending completely knocked it out of the park and made me love the video. However if we take this for 100 % face value, we're cheating ourselves. There is a lot of non-passivity today, as much as there has always been but the energy needs to go somewhere but there is no narrative.

If we break this down the prime question is: what does my engagement mean? Surely I have to defend myself from the film, if I let down my analytical guard the film has total power over me. But while this is a common problem, I think in this context it is again slightly redundant because this is a purely personal discussion in the sense that you do it for the benefit of yourself, this is you synthezizing culture but not reacting to it. What I'm talking about is my physical engagement: What can I do against films as big as this or against peoples understanding of them? And I think this is were I differ because I don't think discussion matters anymore. The only defense against propaganda, against mass market, against "collective fantasies turned film" is to counter it, you can't defuse it. Ultimately a billion remakes are not our collective fantasies turned film, that's the point. Superhero films turning so popular is a magic trick of the industry. They tell us that superhero films are popular and suddenly everyone loves the injokes in Avengers without understanding them. But saying this does not matter, that's my point.

I think it all boils down to something Werner Herzog said in the film where he eats his shoe (a film that never fails to be relevant). I love the young Herzog for something like that but he says with utter seriousness, the eyes almost a little teary:



Maybe there is also some relevance in the line:



What I mean by this is that if we quote Caligari to Hitler we're unbelievable hypocrites if we stand around doing nothing, in a way we're worse than the nazis, they only followed orders, right? What Krakauer overlooked is that expressionism collapsed very early. It died in '24, maybe '25 and Neue Sachlichkeit took over (in many ways the opposite of expressionism). The nazis only ever happened because of the big crash (their numbers were dwindling to insignificance before). Debate did not work but pulling out the rug from underneath did work. Maybe we did not want to eat this shoe in the public but now we have to - but as Werner Herzog will tell you: The trouble with eating shoes is that they are extremely tough, very hard to eat.

Well thanks to the internet & things like streaming, people can see films whenever they feel like it, so they now they usually only go to the theaters to see event films or so-called big films, with the occasional indie / mid-budget that might break-out. This trend has been going on for a while now.