Major studios falter over long weekend Day

Movies are unique.

Despite an assault from all sides by television, a poor economy, declining ticket sales and an over-reliance on remakes, reboots and sequels, movies still retain a unique ability to create worlds and moments you cannot see anywhere else.

In the last calendar year, we have gotten the subtle mastery of Amour and Before Midnight, the amazing visuals of Pacific Rim and Oblivion, the intensely riveting Zero Dark Thirty and Argo and the adventurous fun of Django Unchained and The World’s End.

 

With the budgets and resources movies have at their disposal, they can still offer a level of magic that television can only hope for. A show can develop characters and plot arcs over several hours in a season, but the art of visually telling a story in two hours and transporting the audience somewhere (or somewhen) they could never go otherwise remains exclusively cinematic. This column will strive to illuminate these things only that film can offer. That being said, this first column focuses on a casualty of the realities of the film industry.

Movie studios are smart, and movie studios want to make money. They want to make that money as quickly and efficiently as possible, so they put a lot of time and effort into how they do things. This is why you see so many sequels and remakes these days, both much safer bets than your average original screenplay. This is why you see them milking vampire and werewolf trends to the last, teenager-flocking, angsty drop. This is also why, if you happen to check which movies are coming out this Labor Day weekend, you will see a collection of formulaic action movies, uninspired comedies and one boy-band driven 3-D-concert movie. Huh?

As much as I love Ethan Hawke (starring in Getaway), Eric Bana (Closed Circuit) and Dwayne Johnson (Empire State), I will absolutely not be seeing any of their movies this weekend — and provided I’m not on the couch in front of the TV at the right time and with the correct level of lethargy, I probably never will. The worst part is the studios know that I, and most other people, will not be watching, so why put out this sorry lineup? Have they decided that money is overrated? Of course not — it’s all strategy.

Movie release dates are carefully studied and sandwiched between the stragglers of the big summer blockbusters and the carefully crafted award-hopefuls there lies an awkward few weeks of transition for which the weeks immediately following Labor Day (along with those immediately following New Year’s, after the cutoff for awards season) are flag bearers. In recent years, Labor Day has gifted us gems such as All About Steve, Disaster Movie, Balls of Fury and The Wicker Man. It’s gotten to the point where it’s not, “Why are the movies so bad this week?” but rather, “Wow, these movies must be really bad to be released this week.” The majority of movies released around this time have been unceremoniously stuffed here because the studios figure you won’t want to watch them (and what better time to do this than when people are holding on to their last bits of summer?). According to Box Office Mojo, in nine of the last 10 years, the worst weekend of the year in terms of box office money has come on Labor Day weekend or the two weeks immediately following it.

So, is all hope lost for going to the movies this weekend? Of course not. The magnificent The World’s End (the last of Edgar Wright’s brilliant so-called Cornetto Trilogy following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) came out last weekend and almost killed me from not letting me breathe between fits of laughter. Beyond that, the shiny Elysium and prematurely Oscar-baiting The Butler are also lingering in major theaters, while Twenty Feet From Stardom, The Way Way Back and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints play in independent ones. There are certainly good things to watch in theaters this weekend (and you could certainly find worse ways to escape the heat). Not to mention the onrushing storm of awesome movies coming our way in a few weeks when the transitionary period is over (Rush [coming Sept. 20], Don John [Sept. 27] and especially Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity [Oct. 4] are just some of the great films coming soon). So despair not, cinephiles, there are great things coming.

Maybe it is just as well that there is this gap between the blockbusters and the ballot-stuffers. Summer is dwindling and before we know it we won’t have beach, swimming or lying in the grass weather anymore. Yes, classes have started, and everyone’s schedule has gotten much busier all of a sudden, but summer technically extends until Sept. 22. (Notice the not-so-coincidental concurrence of the beginning of fall and the debut of better movies?)

The movie studios are essentially telling us that for a couple of weeks, they are taking a break from releasing worthwhile movies. But with summer activities still in play and something as cinematically beautiful as Breaking Bad coming out with an hour of pedal-to-the-metal final-season virtuosity the next five weekends (not to mention the new and extremely engrossing The Bridge every Wednesday), maybe we should just go ahead and oblige them.

 

Daniel Grzywacz is a senior majoring in anthropology and neuroscience.

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