The best of times, the worst of times: blockbusters presage the end of movies

News flash—after one weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is already the 136^th highest grossing film of all time, based on worldwide revenues.  I guess the force is with them.

The Force Awakens will no doubt become one of the top ten highest grossing films of all time.  When it does, it will join Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Jurassic World, and Minions as the five releases from 2015 to make the top 11 (it would be top ten but Minions is about $100 million behind Iron Man and unlikely to catch up).  So, obviously, 2015 will go down as the greatest year in box office revenue.

Except that outside those five films, the picture ain’t that rosy.  With a week to go, total grosses for the year ($10.316 billion) are about even with last year, which was 5.5% below 2013.  Total grosses for 2015 could possibly come in below the total gross for 2009 ($10.595 billion), although The Force Awakens might single handedly prevent that.  However, some of that is due to higher prices; more tickets were sold in 1993 (the year of the original Jurassic Park) when tickets cost half as much.

So it is the best of times, and the worst of times.  How to explain this conundrum, with a handful of films succeeding wildly and other not?  It is feast or famine.  Either a film is a blockbuster, or it sinks to ignominious defeat.  The window for making money has narrowed; after opening weekend there isn’t much reason to stay in theaters, better to get the DVDs out and start counting revenues from sales.

An article in Hollywood Reporter recently quoted a movie executive as saying “You can’t cheat opening weekend” anymore.  If a studio served up a turkey, in the past anticipation might draw people to the theaters even if there was some unsettling buzz.  Now with “social media” (as the kids are calling it), once a flop sees the light of day, the word spreads to twitter accounts, via Instagram, on blogs and whatever the latest thing is.  Then the media reports, not on the failure, but on the social network reports of failure.  The next thing you know, before you can say “Sue Storm” the Fantastic Four is looking at a third week gross of $3.7 million. 

The concept is similar to the idea of flash crowds as coined by science fiction writer Larry Niven in 1973.  Niven posited that in a world where teleportation is available and inexpensive, whenever something interesting would happen anywhere in the world, a large group of people would decide to go there.  The more people that were there, the more people wanted to go there.  Films that generate buzz on social media are swarmed with movie goers, while those films not so lucky play to empty houses. The media reports on the swarms, and more people go.

Such a wide variation in box office grosses can only make studio executives more risk averse.  If the difference between a film making $500 million and $50 million is subtle and unknowable, then best to take no chances.  Test screen everything and let market research drive the decisions.  One shudders to think how Raiders of the Lost Ark would have done with test audiences (“One person didn’t like the melting heads; better take them out.  And put in more of the cute monkey!”). 

Maybe we are on a course where fewer and fewer films will go to the expense of opening in theaters.  If studios think they have a clunker, either trash it and take the tax write-off, or sell it to Netflix and let them stream it.  There will be far fewer screens, and only three or four mega releases will be shown at any one time (plus some arty theaters for the crowd who like subtitles). Anything unlikely to gross $20 million on opening weekend will be relegated to TV in one form or another.

The thing is this—I’m not sure this is bad.  Well, it is bad, but not for the obvious reason.  I am still convinced, as I said in a previous blog, that films seen with a traditional projection system at 24 frames per second create a special rapport with the viewer.  Studies indicate that watching celluloid projected films is more interactive and engrossing than watching a digitally projected image.

But digital project is ascendant.  Watching a film with digital projection system is psychologically indistinguishable from watching a big TV set.  So you might as well watch these films on your big TV set at home, instead of in a theater with sticky floors and people who talk. 

Documentaries don’t usually gross a lot, and they have adapted to the new distribution mode like small mammals after a meter strike.  Documentaries are far more available now than ever, and better documentaries are being made as a result.  If your target isn’t a $200 million opening weekend, there is something to be said for DVD distribution.

Maybe films will be like dinosaurs, getting bigger and bigger until the system collapses under its own weight.  Films will become so expensive that an opening weekend of $150 million is a disaster, and each studio goes bankrupt after one Fantastic Four sized failure.  A few theaters will still exist, reducing distribution costs; meanwhile revenues will come primarily from streaming, DVD sales and merchandising. 

Don’t say it can’t happen; nickelodeons used to be the primary method of distrusting films.  When was the last time you paid a nickel to see a movie?

Rajon Rondo's slip of the lip

Lest anyone think that sports are not capable of creating subtle philosophical conundrums, let’s look at the penalties involved for the use of the F word in basketball.

Not “the” F word, but the other F word, the one that is a slang derogatory reference to being a homosexual.  Sacramento Kings player Rajon Rondo was recently suspended for one game for using the F word in referring to a referee.  This has been done before, but the difference here was that the referee was, in fact, gay.

In previous instances of players using the F word, a fine was deemed sufficient penalty.  Rondo was suspended for one game.  Does this reflect the fact that the league is becoming more sensitive to players using homophobic slurs, or is it due to the fact that the application of the insult in this case was literal and not just a schoolyard taunt?

I’ve always been amused when, in the past, a player who used the F word as an insult would always apologize by saying he didn’t mean it literally.  Right, because actually calling someone gay is so odious you would only do it as a joke. 

But now that more people have come out of the closet, there is the increased possibility that a player throwing around the F word will direct it at someone to whom it is, literally, applicable.  Should this result in a greater penalty?  Or should all usages of the word reap the same whirlwind?

One can’t draw a parallel to the N word, as that rarely gets used as an insult to white players.  But you do have circumstances where the race of the person uttering the word changes the context; an African-American using the word may not have the same connotation as a Caucasian player using it.  However, I believe the NFL policy is that any use of the word is forbidden.

I mentioned that I love how players apologize for using the F word; I basically love all apologies drafted by teams of lawyers and management.  Rondo apologized, saying that he did not mean any disrespect to the LGBT community.  Really?  You used a slur describing one member of the LGBT community as an insult against someone who was a member of that group.  How can you respect the community if you use a term to describe someone in the community as an insult?

All Rondo’s apology lacked was heartfelt remorse “if anyone was offended” and apologizing for “what happened” (as opposed to “What I did”).

Rondo further said that his use of the term was the result of frustration.  News flash, Mr. Rondo: you play for the Sacramento Kings; get used to being frustrated.  You play for one of the most dysfunctional franchises in the NBA, one that looks relatively decent only compared to fire sales like Philadelphia and the LA Lakers.  The Kings have their first decent (i.e. experienced) coach in over ten years, and the team’s star player, Demarcus Cousins, hates him.  The owner has said he wants to consider playing 4 on 5 on defense to keep an offensive player in the backcourt.  With the expansive playoff roster in the NBA you can’t rule out a run for the #8 seed in the West (FiveThirtyEight gives them a 24% chance of making the playoffs) but anything past the first round is out of the question.

Hopefully we will all live in a word where the F word is no longer used as an insult (except as South Park said, to refer to people who ride excessively loud motorcycles).  Until then the NBA should consider increasing the penalties for using the word, as a single game seems a small price to play for insulting a large group of people.

TV Review: Childhood's End and The Expanse

You have to give Syfy credit for swinging for the fences.  Several years after their breakout hit Battlestar Galactica (who saw a reboot of a cheesy 1970’s TV show as a critical and commercial success?) Syfy is now looking for the next Big Thing.  They have been biding their time, putting out pleasant science fiction that appeals to their fanbase, but nothing that grabs a wider audience.  First they produced the ambitious Ascension, which starred Battlestar alum Tricia Helfer (and showed off her butt on at least three occasions).  Now they waited for the Holiday programming doldrums to put out two more ambitious shows; the series The Expanse and the mini-series Childhood’s End.  The results are mixed, which is probably not what Syfy was hoping for.

Childhood’s End is based on the seminal science fiction novel by SF megastar Arthur C. Clarke (whose science was so solid that he actually invented the idea of geosynchronous satellites).  The novel, about how aliens come to Earth and prepare mankind for the next phase of their evolution, is a standard bearer of science fiction over 60 years after its release (I read the novel back in the 1970’s; I meant to re-read it before seeing the mini-series but didn’t get around to it).  Syfy’s production is impressive, but the results are less than satisfactory.

Part of that is because the novel is SO influential, some of its concepts have become part of standard SF argot.  Seemingly benevolent aliens come to Earth, but there must be some agenda; mankind’s push for material things is counter-productive.  There are familiar tropes to anyone who has dipped into science fiction in the past 30 years.

After watching all six hours, another thing is that the ending is unremittingly bleak.  What few characters we’ve come to know don’t end up well.  We are told the fate of the human race is for the best, but it looks a lot like extinction.  During the course of the mini-series, almost nothing good happens to anyone we care about, which may be realistic but it is hardly uplifting.  The main character, Ricky Stormgren, is offered interaction with his dead first wife in exchange for cooperating with the aliens, which may seem like a reward but is hardly fair to his new fiancee.

And then there is the Colm Meany character.  Called Wainwright, he is supposed to be some media mogul in the vein of Rupert Murdoch.  He reminded me of what Roger Ebert said about a character in the film Die Hard: he exists solely to be wrong every time he says something.  He asks why the aliens chose a Missouri farmer as their liaison, then says he’s “from a flyover state, he won’t ask the right questions.”  So everyone living more than 50 miles from an ocean is an idiot?  The character might think that way, but he’d be more careful expressing himself.  He then develops a plan to drive the aliens away which involves polluting the planet to the point of uninhabitable-ness.  Does he even listen to the words coming out of his mouth?

The show makes some interesting points about religion, essentially taking the position of Vique’s Law that a man needs religion like a fish needs a bicycle.  It’s a daring position to take with the religious right flexing their political power more than ever, but there could have been some debate without every religious person being portrayed as a nutcase.

The Expanse is based on a series of books that are set in the solar system in the 23^rd century.  Earth is a paradise for the elite; Mars is a warlike (get it?  Mars, God of War?) independent colony, and the asteroid belt is populated by rabble who toil for the resources that make Earth enjoyable.  There are three separate stories that I am sure will interlock eventually.  On Ceres, a detective (Thomas Jane) is tasked with finding a runaway daughter of some elites; on Earth, a UN interrogator (silky-voiced Shohreh Aghdashloo) tries to uncover evidence about a terrorist plot; and near Saturn, a ship that captures ice chunks from the ring system is inexplicably attacked.  Syfy broadcast the first two episodes this week, with the next two episodes available On Demand or at their website.

The Expanse takes the “dump the audience in the middle of everything” approach (after an opening crawl setting up the basics), which some people like but I find lazy.  Establishing characters is hard, and to expect the audience to catch up after starting at full tilt puts the burden on them, not the writers.  I also dislike the whole notion that there are three plots at once and we have to trust the creators that they’ll tie together eventually.  But some progress was made in episode two, so maybe the wait won’t be a long one.

There seems to be an effort to inject some verisimilitude into the segments set on the spacecraft, with g-forces and lack of oxygen treated as realistically as possible.  The special effects are good, although the shot of two people having sex in zero-g looked a little too computer-simulation-y (Syfy’s The Magicians preview did it much better).  The first two episodes establish a broad tableau, so there is definitely room to grow.

Given that they are working from a series of books, the show as the potential to create a realistic fictional universe much as Game of Thrones has.  If they can balance the broad strokes of the plotlines (Earth vs. Mars, poor vs. Elites) and do a slightly better job of developing the characters (ok, we get it, the detective is morally ambiguous but good at heart) The Expanse definitely has a chance to run for a while, although I don’t think it has the breakout potential Battlestar had.  It is better than Syfy’s Killjoys or Dark Matter, which are entertaining in a B-movie sort of way but not as good compared to some more ambitious.  

The Best TV of 2015

It used to be when I had an opinion about the best comedy or best drama of a given TV season, it meant something.  Of course I didn’t watch EVERY television program, because even in a three network universe that was impossible, but I watched most of the major shows, the ones who might get Emmy nominations.  Then it became more and more difficult to keep up.  New networks and weblets arose, pay cable stations made some shows inaccessible, and then the cable landscape exploded.  Now, not only are there shows I haven’t heard of, there are cable channels I have no idea how to find on my system, if they are even there.  There’s even more stuff not to be found on my favorite channels list, as you must subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or God help us even Yahoo in order to watch.

Also, with the Balkanization of channels, everyone is now a niche provider.  There used to be some common ground where everyone could come together and pronounce LA Law or Picket Fences as the finest example of television available.  But the need to reach a mass audience is over.  You can tailor your show to reach a core audience of around a million, and your fans will find it.  A show like The Sopranos could not have existed on network TV as advertisers would have been too afraid of offending someone, somewhere.  But on cable it could reach a smaller cadre of fans eager to see Italian stereotypes whack each other incessantly.

Technically the last broadcast show to win the Emmy for Best Drama was 24 in 2006, but I think the 2005 winner Lost was the last show that was designed to appeal to a mass audience.  Since then the Best Drama Emmy winners have been cable shows that could not have succeeded in a mass marketplace like network television.

So when I pick a show as the best drama or the best comedy of the year, it means nothing.  I am going by my own ascetic tastes, which now can be catered to by small niche TV shows of no interest to 98% of the viewing population.  But still, it must be done.  Mustn't it?

My pick for the best drama on television in 2015 is USA’s surprise breakout hit, Mr. Robot.  How good was Mr. Robot?  Everyone who ever watched Fight Club, or knew of Fight Club, or who had been told a synopsis of Fight Club by a friend, could see the big twist reveal in the final episode coming, and yet it STILL pack a punch.  I haven’t felt such urgency watching a show since the early days of Lost, when all of America demanded answers to questions like who was in the Hatch, and where did The Others come from?  After each episode of Mr. Robot it was intolerable to wait a week to see what would happen next.

Maybe one reason for Mr. Robot’s success (USA announced its renewal for season two before the first episode of season one had aired) was shock at the prospect that a TV series starring Christian Slater could, you know, not suck.  Yes, Slater did his best work in years, suppressing his “Christian Slater” persona most of the time then letting it out for maximum effect.  But the show was much more than rising above diminished expectations.

What distinguishes Mr. Robot from the (literally) hundreds of other TV shows out there?  Chutzpah.  Like another great show this year, Fargo season 2, Mr. Robot is not afraid to take on outrageous, mind-bending plot twists while still presenting human beings dealing with relatable issues.  Mr. Robot was not timid, announcing the title of the series in HUGE red letters and distinctive font at the start of every episode.  Because they weren’t playing it safe, the audience had no idea what was off limits (spoiler: when dealing with a show about a conspiracy to destroy the world’s economy, the one thing you know won’t happen is the destruction of the world’s economy; except, that’s what happened).

Of course the show benefited greatly from a star making performance by its lead, Rami Malek.  The show’s poster, with Malek’s face, hollow-eyed, staring out from beneath a black hoodie behind the words “Our democracy has been hacked” was a brilliant announcement of everything you needed to know about the series; this was not your usual protagonist but a character on the fringes, controlling the center despite not wanting to engage with society.

My pick for best comedy shares Mr. Robot’s flair for the unconventional.  To coin a phrase, You’re The Worst is the best.  The series’ first season, about two narcissistic, hedonistic jerks who somehow form a “relationship,” (they would roll their eyes at the term) defied everything we’ve come to know about romantic comedies.  It became even more daring in its second season, presenting one of the most accurate depictions of chronic depression ever done on a screen, big or small.  As Gretchen (Aya Cash) increasingly withdrew into herself, her befuddled “boyfriend” Jimmy (Chris Geere) assumed that if she was depressed then the answer was to force her to have fun.  This spectacularly didn’t work, with Gretchen yelling at him that she was broken and he couldn’t fix her.  The show, by making a dysfunctional relationship even more dysfunctional, somehow humanized both its lead characters, creating a “gift of the Magi” like resolution where she pushed him away to spare him having to deal with her mental illness, and he chose to stay with her even though she made it clear his presence wasn’t helping.  But it did help (Gretchen’s plaintive wail, “You stayed!” and the end of the last episode is one of the sweetest things ever filmed).

Oh, did I mention this is one of the funniest comedies on TV?  Aside from Gretchen and Jimmy’s issues, both have a dysfunctional best friend (his has PTSD, hers is just a pampered idiot) and a circle of messed up acquaintances who can always be counted on to do something astonishingly stupid, which will then be mocked by Gretchen and Jimmy.

I have to mention my runner up here, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.  You wouldn’t think that a comedy about the survivor of an underground apocalypse cult would work, but with Ellie Kemper’s infectious performance (how was this woman not even nominated for an Emmy?), an excellent supporting cast (including Emmy-nominated turns by Jane Krakowski  and Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm), and clever writing make the show as sunny as You’re the Worst is dark.  Both are excellent.