Time To Respect Comic Book Movies, Sequels and Star Wars.
As 2016 draws to a (merciful close), here’s one final box office look at the year no one will miss. But instead of offering a detailed (boring) analysis of all the dollars and cents that went through the box office this year, let’s take a look at a few particular trends that developed and how some of them look moving forward.
Time to Stop Bashing Comic Book Movies
When did bashing comic book movies became vogue? It seems that over the past year, taking shots at the genre and faulting it for the “decline in cinema quality” has become the cool thing to do. The perception seems to be that comic book movies are the only thing Hollywood is concerned with these days. Here’s news for the Hollywood hipsters and cultural elite; not only are you wrong about comic book movies taking over, but they’ve kept become one of Hollywood’s most dependable engines while other genres have struggled.
Hollywood released over 200 movies last year. Take a wild guess how many were comic book flicks? From all the complaining and Internet hate, you’d think it would be in the vicinity of 50 or more. So what was the whopping number of movies that has so many online pundits frothing at the virtual mouth? Six. That’s right, the spandex crowd accounted for less than two percent of tinsel town’s primary export last year, so if you continue to cling to the absurd idea that comic book movies are “taking over,” you either should have asked Santa for a new abacus or you need to stop listening to Donald Trump sound bites.
And if your argumentative comeback will be “well, the studios have a twenty year blueprint for their comic book movies,” you would be partially correct. Disney and Warner Bros, owners of the world’s two biggest comic book powers, have some very ambitious plans over the course of the next five years. Know how many comic book movies are on tap for 2017? Six. That’s right, the same number that graced multiplexes in 2016 (I’m not counting Ghost in the Shell because that’s an anime adaptation). In fact, no year in the immediate future will see the release of more than eight comic inspired or themed releases despite the grand plans of the big studios.
The reason movie studios have such far reaching plans for their respective comic book franchises is because they make serious money. Comic book movies have become Hollywood’s most reliable bank, veritably printing money with every release. Until Star Wars: Rogue One dethrones it (more on that later), Captain America: Civil War is the highest grossing movie released in 2016 with just over 1.15 billion worldwide. And for as much bashing as they took (and I did quite a bit of it), Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad combined to gross 655 million dollars domestically and over 1.6 billion globally. And let’s not forget Fox’s breakout hit Deadpool, which blew the box office doors off in the unlikely month of February. Everyone’s favourite Merc with a Mouth raked in 363 million North American dollars and collected 783 million worldwide.
A quick look at 2016’s top ten performers reveals just how valuable genre has become to Hollywood’s bottom line. Four of the top ten are comic book movies. Doctor Strange is knocking on the door in the eleventh spot and the virtually unknown character will wind up grossing around 230 million domestically when his current run is done and could hit 700 million total. X-Men Apocalypse was considered a financial disappointment despite making over half a billion dollars. With the money those six titles brought in you could probably buy Switzerland. The only other genre that comes close to matching that kind of box office success is animation (which also had an incredible year), but you never hear people complaining how tired they are of Pixar or Dreamworks or Disney.
Get Over Your Sequelitis
Another complaint you often hear (especially during summer blockbuster season) is that Hollywood is saturated with sequels. There’s no originality anymore. Hollywood has become creatively bankrupt. So on and so forth. Well, if that is the case, you can find the reason for that phenomenon staring at you in the mirror because sequels sell tickets.
When Rogue One becomes the highest grossing 2016 release, the top three movies from last year (billion dollar movies all) will be sequels. Rogue One will be the eighth live action movie in a 39 year-old movie property. Civil War was the third (and final) Captain America solo film, the fifth starring the Star Spangled Avenger and the thirteenth release in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And Finding Dory was a sequel to a movie that captivated audiences thirteen years ago.
Need more proof? 16 of 2016’s top 30 box office performers were sequels or franchise pictures. Most of 2017’s hotly anticipated movies are sequels and it’s almost guaranteed that a franchise film will be next year’s top earner as well. At the end of the day, Hollywood is a business that needs to pay the bills and it will follow the money. And love them or hate them, sequels make money.
Get Used to Star Wars
Did you know there were actually people boycotting Star Wars: Rogue One? Did you know there were people boycotting last year’s Force Awakens as well? And did you also know that the political imbeciles who did the boycotting (I kid you not, the Force Awakens haters claimed it was because the movie was guilty of “genocide against white men”) claimed victory? I guess whatever school they went to didn’t teach math. Or common sense. Or how to use your eyes.
Rogue One is on its way to earning around 500 million domestically, it will almost assuredly hit the billion mark and will probably top Civil War as the top film released in 2016. Despite the fact that it’s joining all kinds of elite clubs every day (it hit the 200 million mark in something absurd like fifteen minutes and is the third fastest film to hit 400 million), Lucasfilm and parent company Disney consider it a humble success by Star Wars standards (it was never expected to approach Force Awakens two billion plus haul). Humble? When you consider half a billion dollars for a film that dominates the year of its release humble, you know you have the golden goose of franchises. So make peace with Star Wars haters, it’s here for a while.
Image: Marvel Studios
