Somewhere in the middle of my diatribe I mentioned a couple of new movies, like TMNT, having literally zero pre-sales. A quick search says that wound up not mattering, the movie's doing good business (by some metrics, and ignoring overall income, BETTER business than Spider-Man) but I still feel like that feeds into my meander.


Anybody willing to waste time thinking about this stuff recognizes B+O thrived on internet irony at least as much as their actual quality. If either movie had sucked, something would've broken there. Though even still, wasn't there some CinemaScore poll that found over 10% of Barbie viewers had never been to a theater before? That's in no way a predictor of how well The Creator will do this month, IMO, it just means a bounty of humorous memes led to a cultural zeitgeist in which a universally recognized brand sold tickets to a universally praised (and good) movie. Meanwhile, the Nolanheads Nolan'd while a significant faction of Barbie's built in crowd either loved or hated being duped into watching a movie that's less exciting than trailers, Nolan's history or the memes could've possibly admitted.

Which, to the Nolanhead point, I do wonder if Oppy would've done just fine released even just a month before or after Barbie, but I can't imagine that movie gave those dudes what they thought they wanted. It's such a normal movie (performed and shot at the highest possible caliber) that the response I've heard from friends and strangers that chose Barbie -> Oppy, even regular theater goers, was that the novelty quickly wore off and then they were just held hostage by $12 theater tickets, $8 beers and $7 popcorn to watch a movie they'd have been happy to wait to see at home.

(It's about time I say, like I think/hope I said in the main Oppy thread, I was devastated by the before, during and after of the Trinity test, and can't imagine any of that being nearly as visceral in any living room.)

But I say all that to try and either reiterate or dilute what I'd said before: it seems to me like if a movie isn't driven by its remarkable ambitions (on the broad-yet-narrow spectrum of "what Tom Cruise is in" to "how many cars wrecked before Dom gets his Corona" with a side of "holy shit Keanu") theaters in this part of the world still feel pretty empty to me. When I saw Beau Is Afraid at a smaller house, but still on a weekend, it felt like either nobody heard this was the Midsommar guy's new movie or nobody'd clued them in to what goes on in that attic as a way of insuring it's still got his specific brand of practiced gonzo ugliness (I'm increasingly thinking Beau is my favorite movie of the year, btw). Most other non-comic movies I've seen have that same feeling, almost like you're a kid trying to sneak in while the pre-screening trivia plays except you've got a pre-paid ticket and nobody's back in the lobby gawking at the marquee and mumbling "uhh...No Hard Feelings, I guess".

So, again, I can't know how it it is in the bigger cities, but no matter how good a handful of exceptional (either by quality or by reputation) films have been doing in theaters this year, they might foot a large portion of a Midwestern multiplex's bill but stuff like Equalizer 3, Gran Turismo or, fuck, Blue Beetle used to be the paddle boards theaters reached for before they went out to monitor the beach and whether you go to these movies or just glance at their pre-sales, you can feel like writing the theater a congratulatory letter when they've got more than 4 seats spoken for.

This two year run of both fantastic and fantastically awesome movies has been stupidly exciting, but nothing convinces me that the average non-coastal theater isn't still struggling to such an apocalyptic degree that an appreciable portion of them stay open for the same reason failing franchisee fast food locations remain open - it's more valuable for the brand that people see the sign than whether two - and only two - people have prime middle-house tickets to Strays.

They might be dumb enough to take a vacation from Wichita to Los Angeles and think "we oughta see a movie while we're here!" after all. And it better be an AMC receipt in their email junk folder.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz