Summer movie recap: ‘Barbenheimer’ and everything else
While “normal” is no longer an easily definable concept, it seems like the right word for this summer’s box office returns.
With COVID largely absent (or ignored), Hollywood returned to a full summer slate of blockbusters and carefully curated counterprogramming plays.
• We had the typical early May bump from a Marvel movie — “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” rode audience goodwill and strong reviews to box office success ($358 million domestic).
• We had the animated juggernaut — “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse” ($380 million domestic). We had “Transformers,” fast and furious cars and Tom Cruise risking his life, again, for our entertainment.
• We had high-profile disappointments too — movies that simply cost more than the interest audiences had for them (“The Flash” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”).
• We had a movie nobody even knew existed three months ago turn around and make $180 million (“Sound of Freedom”).
• We had a “bomb” that rode strong word of mouth all the way to (slight) profitability in Pixar’s “Elemental” ($151 million domestic, $460 million worldwide).
• Then we had “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — two completely different blockbusters opening on the same day and proving that some things truly are worth seeing on the biggest screen available.
Summer of 2023 felt full. Maybe not as full as those glorious days in the 1990s when 3-4 wide release movies opened against each other every weekend, but full enough by modern standards.
Really, almost all the abnormal stuff happened overseas, where Hollywood movies didn’t make as much as is accustomed (outside the absurd international love for the 10th-best “Fast & Furious” movie — $704 million worldwide). Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” played well domestically ($297 million) but didn’t hit anywhere near the mark of other Disney live-action remakes (a $568 million worldwide total, compared to, say, billion-dollar earners like “The Lion King”). The bulk of the woes for “Indiana Jones” came from weak worldwide numbers too, and people in other countries seemed as ambivalent to “The Flash” as America.
“Barbenheimer,” of course, succeeded everywhere, with “Barbie” becoming a billion dollar earner (actually about $1.3 billion to date) and “Oppenheimer” exploding its way to becoming one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time (about $730 million to date).
Their success came at the expense of others — “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1” lost precious IMAX screens to “Oppenheimer” after just 10 days, while movies like “Haunted Mansion” couldn’t stand on their own. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” rode strong word of mouth to profitability (thanks to its modest budget), while “The Meg 2: The Trench” had to rely on international love of giant sharks to recoup its Megalodon-sized budget.
For people who love movies, the box office doesn’t really matter all that much. Sure, the successes and failures of the season will influence future studio decisions, but good movies shouldn’t be measured by profitability. For this movie aficionado, the joys of summer 2023 came in packages big and small, with blockbusters like “Barbie” and “Across the Spider-Verse” competing for slots in my year-end Top 10 list alongside smaller movies like “Past Lives” and “Asteroid City.”
The summer movies of 2023 might also be remembered as the last batch of “normal” releases for a while, as the lingering Actors and Writers strikes are shaping release strategies into the fall. One of the year’s most anticipated movies, “Dune Part 2” has already abandoned its fall release date for 2024. The studio wants its star-studded cast available for the publicity push. More big movies might abandon the final months of 2023 for the same reason, perhaps leaving us moviegoers with fewer options (again) in local cineplexes.
One easy solution: Theaters can re-release great movies, just like what happened at last week’s 30th anniversary screenings of “Jurassic Park.” I chose to see it last weekend instead of new stuff like “Gran Turismo” or the 98th “tough guy Liam Neeson” installment. Fun fact about “Jurassic Park” — it’s still great.
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.