I posted this on Re:zine (a news analysis blog I sometimes contribute to) tonight, but since they don't pay me and I'm quite proud of the piece (well, it took a lot of research, anyway), I'm posting here, too.

THE BLAME GAME:
Summer hasn't been kind to Hollywood. The reality TV cash cow is showing signs of burnout, the music biz continues to sink, and for their part summer movie receipts aren't yielding any better news:

Through the middle of last week, revenue was down 3.23 percent from 2002, and attendance was down 7 percent. The summer movie season, which traditionally runs from May 2 through Labor Day weekend, is down about 1 percent in revenue, but 5 percent in attendance.

Naturally, the movie industry is putting the blame anywhere but on itself. Never mind that the average ticket price jumped 43 cents from last year, the biggest jump in twenty years (1980 being the furthest back I could find data), it must be those pesky pirates! But have no fear: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched a series of public service advertisements (PSAs) detailing the effect that piracy can, theoretically, have on the regular working folk who make their money from the movie biz. (Naturally, no mention is made of losses that may be incurred by stars making millions for each film.)

I myself have never downloaded a film off the Internet, but I have been shown such discs by friends (who, I swear, found them lying in the street). For starters, the quality can be dodgy, but you can at least get some idea of what's going on. (Unless the movie is "The Matrix Reloaded," which doesn't make sense even if you see it in the theater.) Now, if I were going to download a movie, it wouldn't be a movie I was actually planning on seeing in the theater, but rather something that I probably wasn't going to see anyway, to check if it was worth the bother. With movies in my area costing around ten bucks a ticket, I just can't see the point in wasting time and money on a film that I'm going to wish I hadn't seen.

But that's just me.

Anyway, from the looks of it, this summer's box office atrophy really can't be ascribed to piracy, but simply that the current crop of films sucks eggs. Perhaps most tellingly, 24 films released so far this year have been sequels, 15 of them released during the summer. And you all know what they say about sequels: They're never as good as the original. Certain exceptions apply, of course, but the rule seems to have held in 2003. Just ask the critics: According to Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gives each movie a breakdown of the number of good reviews versus bad, the only sequels that have gotten passing grades are "X2: X-Men United" (the highest-rated sequel, with 86% "fresh," i.e., positive, reviews), "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (75% fresh) and "The Matrix Reloaded" (73% fresh). That's three for fifteen, folks. (Unsurprisingly, those three also happen to be the only sequels in the top ten grossers this year.)

In fact, only 37 of 70 films out this season got "fresh" scores, which sounds like a decent average, except that the vast majority (27) of those films are low-budget "indie" releases, shown on mere fractions of the wide release standard of about 3,000 screens on opening weekend. (It's worth noting that the highest-rated film of the summer (99% fresh!) is the delightful "Finding Nemo," a non-sequel made by the always wonderful Pixar. Nemo's the only film to crack the $300 million mark, which is by no means a small chunk of change, but still far short of last summer's top grosser, "Spider-Man," which made $400 million and some change. However, the summer's not over yet...)

It seems a week can't go by without some new sequel opening at less than was expected. "Charlie's Angels 2" failed to come close to the predecessor's numbers, in spite of the promise of even more of Cameron Diaz's booty this time around. "Terminator 3" opened with $8 million less than "T2," in spite of opening on a holiday weekend, and an average ticket price more than two dollars higher than in 1991. (And any Democrats out there might want to reconsider seeing this movie if they don't want Arnold to run for governor of California. If T3's a big hit and demands another sequel, he would likely have to stay out of that state's recall race.) With an estimated production budget of around $200 million and an advertising budget of about $50 million more, a gross of $140 million could be disastrous.

But if the scuttlebutt around Hollywood is any indication, the biggest disappointment would seem to be "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." (And, seriously, what were they expecting when they make an action film with "cradle" in the title? What's next, "Indiana Jones and the Wet Nurse of Doom"?) With a total (marketing and production) budget of about $120 million, the film has so far only managed to snag about 1/6th of that. And who's to blame? Paramount for investing tens of millions in effects and stunts, but apparently jack squat for the script? Jan de Bont for directing the turkey? Angelina Jolie's costumers, for decreasing the size of the character's bust from the previous film's DD to her natural C? None of the above, actually, according to Paramount anyway. They say it's the guys who made the latest "Lara Croft" video game.

Disappointed movie bosses are pointing the finger of blame at video game "Tomb Raider: Cradle Of Life" after the Angelina Jolie-starring sequel of the same name bombed at the box office. Executives at Paramount were left stunned when the much-hyped action movie took only $21.8 million on its first weekend at the American box office, less than half of what the original installment bagged in the same time frame. And they cite the critical mauling given to the latest computer game as the reason cinemagoers are deserting the archeological franchise. Paramount's Wayne Lewellen says, "The only thing we can attribute to is that gamers were not happy with the latest version of the video game."

(I can't link to the story, because the IMDB replaces their news content each day, and it's already gone, but trust me, this is what they wrote.) Sure, it's the video game that kept people away, Wayne. It had nothing to do with the movie getting reviews like, "At least now we have a clue about what's in Pandora's Box: It's movies like this." And, "How could something so expensive, so loud and so frenetic simultaneously be so mindnumbingly boring?"

Yep, must've been the video game, Wayne...