Cinderella Man In The Ring With The Box Office Slump Of 2005

 

Once in a while, a slump happens at the movie theater box office that is so persistent that even the experts cannot believe it.  Until The Fantastic Four became a surprise hit, the slump this Summer was the longest in box office history, yet there were more good films out than had been in a long time despite a parade of horrible TV-to-big-screen films, remakes and sequels.  The media all but ignored the fact that the Jane Fonda/Jennifer Lopez comedy Monster-In-Law was a hit, while even lesser films were at least interesting.

 

The explanations for the slump included too many bad, tired films (not true in this case), the bad economy (the box office is usually immune), the influx of DVD, iPod, and alternative video game technology (limitedly credible) and more people with home theaters.  If any of those were valid, it was in very limited ways.  The truth of the matter is that the film industry has its cycles like any other and the last time there was a slump, there were also some fine films to choose from no one was seeing, and that was back in 1985.

 

Back To The Future, Rambo II and Cocoon were among the few hits in a Summer which included box office disappointments that are now fan favorites or outright classics like Michael Cimino’s Year Of The Dragon, Martha Coolidge’s Real Genius, and underperformers like Richard Donner’s The Goonies, Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, Mad Max – Beyond Thunderdome, Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, the first Fletch, Joel Schumacher’s yuppie knock off of Barry Levinson’s Diner called St. Elmo’s Fire and even the James Bond film A View To A Kill.  Outright bombs included Joe Dante’s Explorers, Weird Science, the Schwarzenegger bomb Red Sonja starring Brigitte Nielsen, two Tom Hanks comedies: The Man With One Red Shoe and Volunteers and Disney’s The Black Caldron.  That is a rough season and with no DVD, far less alternative technology and far less sequels.  Also, there were no feature film versions of TV series, which people did not tolerate as easily then.

 

So what gives?  Part of it is Hollywood putting out films from the theater too soon on to DVD, with a period of only four months average at this point, that is just too soon.  Part of it is just bad promotion and a lack of energy and enthusiasm on the part of Hollywood itself, not changing to accommodate the needs and wants of its audience.  Without going into all the films that have come out since May, all you have to do is look closely at one film to understand the problem, Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man.

 

Here is a great drama that managed to find its own way to be a boxing film without looking like any other, something impressive considering Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby was just out and became a huge critical and big-enough commercial success.  Both films had controversy, with the Eastwood film becoming a political lightning rod via extreme Right Wing reactionaries.  Cinderella Man had a very small controversy over the portrayal of boxer Max Baer and a larger one around its release of star Russell Crowe flipping out at a hotel and throwing things at employees, hurting one.  That still was not enough to stop it at the box office.

 

Many are now saying that counterprogramming is just not going to work for the would-be blockbuster season, which may have some validity.  However, along with the rest of the films since the season began, it is in the promotion.  Studios somehow expected the audiences to be paying attention to their formulaic promotion year around, which has become more and more just millions of dollars thrown at various media based on demographics.  In other words, it was on automatic pilot like we have not seen in years, which crushed many potential hits, including Cinderella Man, a film that is one of the only serious awards-contenders for the whole year so far.

 

The point is, there are good films out there, and even a mixed picture like Fantastic Four shocked older fans and the entire league of “experts” in the industry by doing about triple the expected opening weekend.  Simply put, its time to shake things up and get some new blood in filmmaking behind the scenes and in front of the camera.  If not, more great films like Cinderella Man will get missed and Hollywood can expect larger slumps to come, none of which can be blamed on that favorite boogieman for people in Hollywood to blame just to keep their jobs and not work hard: downloading.  It is a big problem, but it has been exaggerated and the slump shows how many overpaid people are slacking in Tinseltown.  We’ll come back to this subject soon.

 

 

This was written by Nicholas Sheffo as the Mid-July 2005 home page letter for the site.