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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31891 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Barbie and Oppenheimer release this weekend and in the pre weekend previews they made 22 million and 10.5 million respectively. That preview for barbie is the highest for any movie this year. (Note that this year's highest grossing movie Mario Bros being a children's and family movie chose not to have previews because movies that target those demographics usually don't do well in weekday preview showings)

With such a strong opening and decent reviews there's good chance both will bring in great money despite not being superhero movies or existing famous action franchises. (think F&F or Mission Impossible)

Marketing for Barbie has been ubiquitous on social media and they seemed to have successfully convinced women to make it an event with people dressing up in pink to go see the movie. Despite both of them opening this weekend which might have had both cannibalize ticket sales, it seems like the attempts to synergize and make the two movies a movie going event, "Barbenheimer" has had some level of positive affect.

Post-covid Hollywood has had a hard time getting people to come out to movies, and even superhero movies are no longer the same massive 1 billion dollar draw that Disney had gotten used to. Even reliable studios like Disney's Pixar have had tough times with their previous movie Lightyear only grossing 226 million. Their most recent movie, Elemental, has done slightly better with longer staying power but a box office of a little more than 311 million is a flop and loss for Disney.

To some extent consumers have gotten used to streaming during the pandemic, and when going to the movies is more expensive in a post covid world, it seems like most consumers prefer to simply wait til the movie hits a streaming platform and check it out. Going to the movies is no longer something people do casually, it's become an event to go to the theaters.

Some of the movies in the past few years that have done better have been the ones that have been able to grab the zeitgeist and make their movies into events. Universal lucked into when their Minions movie released last year all the kids who grew up with Despicable Me and the minions made it a tiktok trend to go to the movie in their prom/graduation formal attire. M3gan, a creepy doll horror movie, wrote a scene of the doll dancing creepily and put it into the trailer. They then marketed that and made it into a semi-viral tiktok dance. The only new big time comedy movie of the past few years, No Hard Feelings, tried a funny and provocative marketing strategy and leveraged Jennifer Lawrence's return to cinema (she had a child) and did quite well for a nonfranchise R-rated comedy with only 1 star.

With all that context I have a couple random questions and discussion points.

Directly relevant:

  • Is the mainstream tired of comic book movies at this point? (There will probably always be a market of large comic book nerds, but are regular people done with them for a while?)
  • Super Mario Bros and Barbie are not movie franchises, but they leverage existing IP to grab the attention of people to give the movie a chance. Should we expect the wave of Hollywood movies to be movies that base themselves around known quantities but make them into movies? A Legend of Zelda movie? A heist movie that brands itself as the GTA movie? A hot wheels based fast and furious style movie?
  • Will people continue the post pandemic trend of no longer attending movies as often?
  • Comedies and romcoms died in the 2010's, will the 2020's keep that trend? With superhero movies no longer sucking all the air out of the room, will we see any sort of resurgence for the release of comedies and romantic comedies?
  • The China market that Hollywood grew to depend on for a steady 100-200 million no longer seems as interested in Hollywood products, will that shift anything in how and what movies are made? (Even this year's biggest Hollywood movie, Super Mario Bros bombed in China)

Random Other thoughts:

  • Both the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America are on strike as the entire industry is in a period of transition. There are lots of issues to work out from writers & actors wanting some sort of metrics system that would reward their successes instead of constant fixed fees to exactly how AI will be implemented. Keep in mind that the issues with AI are less reactionary than many might suggest. The split is more who has the rights to things like control of an actor's likeness and how their paid (fixed fee once in a career versus ongoing rate, ect) Lots of interesting random issues in this tumultuous period.
  • All the studios are worse post pandemic, especially as they watch tech companies enter this space with so much more money to burn. On top of that, streaming seems to have made brought less money than expected, while also increasing costs significantly all the while it's possibly been responsible for cannibalizing other parts of their businesses.

Yeah there seems no reason for Barbie and Oppenheimer to be wedded like they are. Somebody put the Barbenheimer idea out there and it took off like wildfire, like some kind of random evolutionary mutation. So here we are.

For a minute there was a focus on their rival soundtracks but as far as I know Barbie has one and Oppenheimer doesn't. I'd seen someone put together a tracklist for Oppenheimer that included Joy Division of The Cure and other gothy groups and thought it was real, I admit.

Ryan Gosling (via characters he has portrayed) is a sigma male zoomer meme, and so is Cillian Murphy in the same sense. This context is at least partly responsible for the unlikely combo popularity.

I wonder if doing a synchronized launch Oppen Barbie Style was an attempt to repeat the Animal Crossing/Doom Eternal launch date crossover stuff, where two extremely different properties had simultaneous and successful launches.

Somebody put the Barbenheimer idea out there and it took off like wildfire, like some kind of random evolutionary mutation.

This also happened with Doom and Animal Crossing a couple years ago. I thought that was funnier, but this is still good.

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