By: Eisa Hashmi
While we’ve started to expect huge, blockbuster, tent-pole movies year round, the summer still remains as the number one movie going season. Hollywood has brought the summer movie season down to a science: generate hype with a few awesome trailers, have the star make an appearance on The Tonight Show and you have a multi-million, perhaps even billion, dollar money making machine primed and ready to stuff the pockets of every studio executive. But this summer, it seemed that Hollywood’s system failed them.
Hollywood made plenty of money, as was expected, but audiences left theaters less than pleased. Movies like X-Men: Apocalypse and Jason Bourne cashed in well at the box office, but when it came to fan service, the one thing summer blockbusters are supposed to do, they both fell flat. Coming out of movies like these, and most movies this summer, the most that audiences could say was, “Meh.” While Jason Bourne still managed a “fresh” audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, many felt that it paled in comparison to the other great films in the franchise. East student and long time fan of the Bourne franchise, Drew Kleinmann said, “The action was pretty great, but the compared to the other ones, it wasn’t nearly as good.” The summer was filled with movies that didn’t live up to expectations. X-Men: Apocalypse, Independence Day: Resurgence, and Suicide Squad all make the short list.
But while these big summer blockbusters didn’t succeed with critics or audiences, many smaller, independent films did. Films like Sing Street, Hell or Highwater, The Lobster, and Don’t Think Twice were all embraced and loved by critics and the small audiences that got the chance to watch them, but were almost completely unknown to the general public. This summer even had some bigger budget films that didn’t receive the attention from audiences they deserved. Kubo and the Two Strings and The Nice Guys were excellent films that audiences weren’t excited to see.
While the summer is known for big-action blockbusters, other genres performed much better with critics and audiences. This summer was filled with excellent horror movies and animated family movies, two genres that aren’t usually in the same sentence together. The Conjuring 2, Lights Out, and Don’t Breathe were all well received by audiences and critics as were Finding Dory, Zootopia, and The Secret Life of Pets (try to guess which ones the horror movies are).
The one thing Hollywood studios may have actually done well this summer was produce box office flops given that there were four notable ones this summer. 13 Hours only made 2 million some dollars, The Free State of Jones lost 29 million, Ben-Hur lost 75 million, and Alice Through The Looking Glass won the summer box office flop race by losing 93 million dollars.
It’s safe to say that this summer was a disappointing one. Hopefully, Hollywood learns from their mistakes and realizes that audiences won’t just pay for any loud CGI explosion fest. Audiences still want good movies, not lazy ones that are designed simply for the purpose of gaining money by cashing in on our nostalgia and fandom. But while Hollywood figures out what they’re doing, it’s up to movie going audiences to show them what we want. We need to start paying for good movies and start leaving awful ones to bomb at the box office. Give any of the indies from this summer a watch and you’re guaranteed a better experience than whatever blockbuster you watched this summer.
