by Edward Baillargeon
While we’ve started to expect huge blockbusters 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 awesome trailers and cast/crew interviews and you have a multi-million dollar money making movie ready to stuff the pockets of every greedy studio executive. But this summer, it seemed that Hollywood’s system was hit and miss.
The largest genre in a summer movie season is usually the big action and superhero movies. Marvel Studios, as always, did well with critics and audiences by giving us Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming getting great reviews from critics and audiences alike and making $863 million and $823 million respectively. But this year the domestic summer box office champion was not Marvel, but DC. Early in the summer, DC made their big comeback with the universally loved Wonder Woman breaking many box office records, including highest grossing film directed by a woman, and making $816 million at the box office. Warner Bros. Pictures also made a lot of money not just from the Amazonian princess, but also from Christopher Nolan’s made-for-IMAX war epic Dunkirk making $492 million.
But there were other movies that audiences left theaters less than satisfied. Movies like The Mummy and Alien: Covenant did well at the box office, but they both were very mixed between audiences and critics. Coming out of movies like these, the most that audiences could say was, “Meh.” The summer had some movies that didn’t live up to expectations. Alien: Covenant, The Mummy, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales all make the short list. Also, Transformers: The Last Knight didn’t make a billion dollars, thank god, because audiences are now starting to agree with critics that they won’t just pay for any loud and pandering explosion fest.
But while most big summer blockbusters succeed with critics and audiences, many smaller films did as well. Films like The Big Sick and Baby Driver were all embraced and loved by critics and the audiences that watched them with the later become director Edgar Wright’s highest grossing film to date. This summer even had some films that didn’t receive as much attention from audiences they deserved. Logan Lucky and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets were pretty good films that audiences didn’t give very much money they deserved for being a welcome return for Steven Soderbergh like Logan Lucky or having a non-Star Wars or Star Trek space opera like Valerian.
While the summer is known for big-action blockbusters, other genres that did well last year had a harder time with critics and audiences this year. Horror movies had a mixed time at the B.O. with the aforementioned Alien: Covenant and the indie film It Comes at Night getting positive reviews from critics, but audiences were very mixed to negative. They ranged from positive with like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Annabelle: Creation, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Split to negative with films that should’ve been direct-to-DVD but were released in theaters like Wish Upon and 47 Meters Down. Animated films this summer had a very mixed track record as well both critically and financially ranging from pretty good to intelligence insulting. Pixar unfortunately had a box office disappointment with this summer’s Cars 3 making only $350 million worldwide making it the 2nd lowest grossing film from the studio to date. But, Illumination Entertainment, better known as The Minion Company, continues to make butt-loads of money with Despicable Me 3 making $1 billion making it the 6th animated feature to make $1 billion after Toy Story 3, Frozen, Minions, Zootopia, and Finding Dory. The Internet also exploded in rage when Sony Pictures Animation’s universally and kind off over-hated app commercial The Emoji Movie made $171 million causing said people to lose faith in humanity and start petitions to shut down Sony Pictures Animation that worked as well as when DC fanboys tried to shut down Rotten Tomatoes last year.
The one thing studios has done this year was produce box office flops and bombs with many notable ones released this year including A Cure for Wellness, CHiPs, Life, Monster Trucks, Ghost in the Shell, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (#NotMyRodrick).
It’s safe to say that this summer was a mixed one with our fair share of hits and bombs. Audiences still want good movies, and we did get some really good and even great movies. 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 fantastic movies and start leaving atrocious ones to bomb at the box office no matter how low the Rotten Tomatoes score is. We need to start watching more independent and original films. Give any of the original films from this year a watch and I’m sure you might have as good of an experience watching it as much as you had when watching a great blockbuster.
