Why did Tomorrowland flop?

I recently re-watched the movie Tomorrowland on DVD.  I was glad to revisit the film as my theater experience was less than optimal; the film had left theaters so quickly that I was only able to see it on the big screen at a “$4 anytime” second run theater, with a somewhat anemic light bulb in the projector and parent-free urchins running up and down the aisle.

I enjoyed the movie-going experience none the less, and my impression of the film was only elevated by seeing it under more technologically conducive circumstances.  The film boasts true imagination in writing and directing, a typically insouciant performance by George Clooney, and an uplifting message at the end.  Something for the whole family.

It bombed.  It opened with a ho-hum $40.7 million over Memorial Day weekend, and then took a precipitous 58% nosedive the next weekend.   It finished with an impressive sounding but disappointing $93 million domestic gross, $209 million worldwide.  For something with a $190 million budget, that's called underperforming.

But why?  The film was not an assault on anyone’s intelligence, like John Carter.  The film was not a retread of tired sci-fi ideas, like Jupiter Ascending.  The film did not have amateurish special effects like, oh let’s say 47 Ronin (I actually thought 47 Ronin was okay, but I have no desire to defend it).

I have faced this question with other films.  Mystery Men, a big-budget special effects laden comedy with Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and William H. Macy was also, to my mind, an inexplicable flop.  Sometimes I understand when a film might resonate with me more than the general audience, or have an approach to humor that may be idiosyncratic, but Mystery Men had a smart script and a great cast (Hank Azaria, Greg Kinnear, Wes Studi, Geoffrey Rush, Lena Olin and Claire Forlani).

I don’t have an answer for Mystery Men, but I have one for Tomorrowland.  The film itself explains why it failed (spoilers ahead!).  In the final denouement, the “bad guy” (played with typical bluster by perpetual Emmy loser Hugh Laurie) makes a speech about why the world is about to end.  In that speech, he points out that, as another great wordsmith Yogi Berra might have said, the future ain’t what it used to be.  In the 1950’s and early 60’s people believed the future would be full of gleaming towers, noiseless monorails, and jetpacks. 

So why are we now beset with innumerable films and TV shows featuring a bleak, dystopian future (an episode of the Simpsons actually catalogged all the recent films, TV shows and plays set in dystopian futures)?  As the bad guy in Tomorrowland sums up, “[People] dwell on this terrible future and you resign yourselves to it for one reason, because that future doesn't ask anything of you today.”

My theory as to why Tomorrowland failed?  It hit too close to home.  It was an optimistic message about hope and saving humanity, but all that optimism was based on one thing: people giving a crap.  The analysis is right, people do find dystopian futures enjoyable because it absolves us from getting off our couches, putting down our iPhones, and doing something.  People reject a film about optimism because if we accepted it, then we’d have to do something about it, and in an era of “too much TV” that’s the last thing anyone wants to do.

So, congratulations, Tomorrowland!  You turned out to be too prescient for your own good.  Next time Brad Bird directs a film, it will be about young teenagers in a dystopian future, where they participate in some kind of bizarre competition for survival.

Hey, that sounds like a script idea.  Let me call my agent and see if it’s been done before.