If this summer has proven anything, it’s that no one is ever allowed to preemptively criticize Marvel Studios ever again.
The wags laughed and laughed when they heard about Guardians of the Galaxy. Here Marvel was, investing more than a quarter-billion dollars (after advertising costs) into a movie about a talking raccoon and a ragtag band of intergalactic losers with virtually no connection to their massively successful Avengers-related films. Producer Kevin Feige must be drunk with power!
And yet, here we are, summer 2014 over, and Guardians of the Galaxy reigning as the king of the box office thus far. Last weekend it streaked past another Marvel film (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a much more certain prospect than Guardians ever was) to claim the top spot. It will, sometime in the next two weeks, become the only film released this year to pass $300 million at the domestic box office.
A space opera and a paranoid thriller as much as a pair of comic book flicks, these two titles helped demonstrate Marvel’s range. In addition to being monsters at the box office, Guardians and Winter Soldier were both solid critical hits, clocking in at 92 percent fresh and 89 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively. Some of our nation’s bravest critics even went so far as to suggest that the raccoon-starring space opera is superior to its most obvious influence, Star Wars.
Critics also salivated over Edge of Tomorrow and Snowpiercer,another pair of comic-book-based properties. And in these two films we can see glimpses of the future of film selling.
Despite Edge of Tomorrow’s enormous budget ($178 million), the presence of a huge name (Tom Cruise), an outpouring of critical praise (90 percent fresh), and an omnipresent advertising campaign (which reportedly cost the studio upwards of $100 million), the flick was a box office dud, barely nudging past the $100 million mark domestically and not grossing nearly enough overseas for the studio to recoup its investment.
Snowpiercer took a different route: a tighter budget ($40 million), even more critical praise (95 percent fresh), no real stars but plenty of character actors, and an aggressive video on demand release that coincided with a rather paltry theatrical release. The box office was minuscule (under $5 million domestically) but the film reportedly did extremely well with audiences at home.
Edge of Tomorrow is a lumbering dinosaur. Snowpiercer is a bit more nimble, a bit more evolved, and far cheaper. As much as I love Christopher Nolan, consider me skeptical of his sunny take on the future of smart cinema on the big screen.
A friend recently complained in an email that there’s nothing for adults to watch at the multiplex. And it’s true: The late-summer doldrums were pretty oppressive. But it wasn’t all big, blustery action movies from May to August.
Summer had its share of smaller pleasures, from John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final major performance in A Most Wanted Man. Tom Hardy’s Locke came and went without too much fanfare, a real shame given his powerhouse performance and the unique nature of the film: just one man, in a SUV, dealing with his collapsing personal and professional life over the phone as he tries to do the right thing. Check them out at home.
The comedy slate was weak, but a few gems emerged. 22 Jump Street was a hit with audiences (if not with me). Neighbors soared (suggesting Rose Byrne needs more work) while Tammy crashed and burned (suggesting our long national Melissa McCarthy nightmare might finally be over).
But summer belongs to big budget bluster—and one can’t help having the idea that American audiences, at least, are tiring of it somewhat. This summer hasn’t seen any of the disastrous uber-bombs that went off in last year’s box office landscape. But it has seen a bunch of films modestly underperform, at least at home. Transformers 4 made more money in China than it did in the United States, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was so underwhelming that Sony’s plans for the webslinger’s upcoming outings are in complete disarray.