Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic thinks that "Hollywood is in trouble," if the headline to his blog post is to be believed. Why? Well, for starters, "It's been a tough summer for the film industry." This is, surprisingly, not exactly true. I say surprisingly because I also expected grosses to be down a bit: last summer saw The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises gross more than a billion dollars all on their own, after all. I say "not exactly true," because, well:
That's from Box Office Mojo. It shows that grosses are actually up more than 11 percent season-to-date. The reason I'm going to hedge a bit and say "not exactly true" rather than "absolutely and completely false, as well as an utterly ridiculous thing to say" is that budgets may be higher, season-to-date, this year. (Indeed, I'd guess they probably are.)
It is, of course, worth acknowledging that foreign markets are booming, especially in the blockbuster category. World War Z just crossed the half-billion mark, and it has grossed less than $200M domestically. Man of Steel is inching toward $650M despite grossing less than $300M domestically. Pacific Rim will likely gross more in China (where it has earned more than $76M in two short weeks) than it did in the United States (where it has grossed under $97M thus far and will have trouble raking in much more than $100M all told). Even the much-maligned After Earth has grossed almost $250M worldwide.
To say that "It's been a tough summer for the film industry" is to simply ignore, you know, the numbers this summer. Yes, there have been a few megabombs (Lone Ranger and RIPD, I'm looking at you). But there have also been a steady stream of modest to massive low budget hits that have made up the slack (The Conjuring, The Heat and The Purge, I'm looking at you), not to mention the modest success of mega-budgeted flicks like World War Z and Man of Steel. And then there's the mega-success of Iron Man 3, which has grossed enough all on its lonesome to make up for the Lone Ranger's $200M loss four times over.
I was also confused by this line in Chotiner's piece: "Oblivion, After Earth, and Elysium all have a similar plot; White House Down was nearly identical to this spring's hit Olympus Has Fallen." Okay, the second half of that sentence is true.* However, the first half of that sentence doesn't really make a ton of sense. Right? I mean, they don't actually have terribly similar plots. (A few spoilers ahead.)
Oblivion is about a guy discovering that his life has been a lie and that he has been tricked into helping the enemy of his species eliminate everyone on Earth. After Earth is about a son and father learning to love and respect one another, as well as the importance of mastering one's emotions without killing them entirely. And Elysium is about how all the rich people want all the poor people to die and not get healthcare and be exploited by heartless, soul-crushing capitalism.
Oblivion and After Earth are kind of similar, I guess, insofar as they involve a planet Earth largely devoid of human life. But Oblivion's Earth is empty because aliens have decimated the population in order to steal our precious planetary fluids; After Earth's Earth is empty because of the environment, or something.** And Elysium ... Elysium is essentially the exact opposite of either of those films, at least in terms of setting. It's about a super-crowded planet engaging in class warfare.
It turns out the thrust of Chotiner's piece isn't that Hollywood is in trouble so much as audiences who have kind-of-similar taste to Issac Chotiner are in trouble. Complaining about the fact that offerings this year have underwhelmed, Chotiner writes, "A friend said to me over the weekend that there hadn't been a single summer blockbuster he wanted to see. And yet it really could get worse." If you limit yourself to "summer blockbusters" then maybe this is true. (I tend to disagree, having been modestly-to-very entertained by Man of Steel, 6 Fast, and Pacific Rim, myself. To each his own.) But if you expand your horizons beyond the multiplexes just a bit, there really is a ton of good—or, at least, interesting—stuff out there.
You just have to look a little harder.
*I'd argue that the delightfully reactionary Olympus Has Fallen was far superior to the childishly left wing White House Down, but that's neither here nor there.
**Frankly, Oblivion has far more in common with The Matrix than either After Earth or Elysium.