I'm kind of circling back to my post published last Friday about old directors needing to either contemporize or just quit instead of whining.
Christmas weekend, you had Spider-Man No Way Home in its second week of release. You had Spielbergo's West Side Story musical. And you had the Matrix sequel/reboot thing. Guess which movie won the weekend? [Cue Jeopardy music...]
If you said Spider-Man crushed the other movies, you would be correct. Of course critics loved West Side Story, but most of them are older and snobbier, not really the audience that makes money. That weekend answered something I had been wondering: would young people want to go watch a musical about the 50s? I'm pretty confident the answer to that was no. I don't think that In the Heights musical set in the 90s did great either, so maybe just cool it with retro musicals set in New York City.
I wouldn't be surprised if Spielberg joins those other old directors whining about those kids today, but let's think about this rationally. Teenagers today were born between 2002-2009, so they've pretty much grown up with superhero movies being the thing from the original Spider-Man trilogy to the MCU. When I was growing up some of the first movies I saw were the original Star Wars trilogy and the Star Trek movies, along with Spielberg's ET. So naturally those were the movies I loved--except ET, of which I was never really a fan.
So when you think about it, those pesky kids today have probably not even seen most of Spielberg's movies, just like when I was a kid I didn't watch The Godfather or Taxi Driver or Alien. My parents wouldn't have let me for one and for another I probably would have found the former two boring and the latter scary.
The failure of the Matrix isn't surprising either because again the teens of today were not born or barely born when the two crappy sequels came out. To them Keanu Reeves is John Wick, not Neo. "Bullet Time" was a long-established thing, not revolutionary like for those of us in our 20s in 1999. There's no reason they should want to go watch Generation X crap any more than Boomer crap.
Meanwhile, older audiences, probably in part because of Covid and in part because of the hassle of going to the theater in general, continue to largely stay away. I haven't been to a movie in the theater in over two years now. I can't say I really miss it.
Like old directors, producers and studio execs and financial backers need to start waking up to reality. The game has changed. Stuff that still made money in theaters in the old days of 10-20 years ago isn't making money in theaters today. If you're going to green light a more "adult" movie then you need to keep the budget down because most of the money is probably going to come from rentals and streaming. It'll be hard for West Side Story to make back the over $100 million budget, though rentals, streaming, and maybe a bump from awards buzz will probably help.
As far as relating to writing, you need to know your audience, and I always advise in keeping the costs down. Don't spend thousands on covers, editing, and marketing if you can't afford to lose it. Which you probably can't because you're not a movie studio.
1 comment:
As a Boomer-X, I've never had any interest in West Side Story or the Matrix. West Side Story seems old even to me, and there's only two musicals that I even like. Not sure why, but the Matrix never hooked me. I've seen bits of the Matrix and it seemed like a jumble of chaos. Perhaps these would have done better as a series on Netflix? That way they might reach an older audience. I like going to the movies, but I rarely go just out of having no time. If I did go, I would see Spider Man No Way Home. It sounds like the most fun on the big screen. I relate to the younger people because I never grew up. lol
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