Hollywood Summer

The summer releases that Hollywood is unleashing this year tell a collective, and somewhat disturbing, tale. When a ‘movie’ industry moves completely away from ‘cinema’, there is reason to worry. Steven Soderbergh, in his keynote address at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival in late April, made the distinction in clear terms: movies are watched, cinema is made. The former is a marketing strategy; the latter is the result of a vision.

 On the evidence available this summer, Hollywood is increasingly shying away from making cinema. “The idea of cinema as I am defining is not on the radar in the studios,” said the 50-year-old filmmaker who has over the years made both blockbusters (Ocean’s Eleven) and fiercely independent films (sex, lies and videotape). 

 Soderbergh warned of the dangers that lie ahead: “…The problem is that cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are more economic than philosophical, but when you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.

 Any reversal is out of the question. Hollywood’s summer has never been this hot. The big studios have lined up a record number of potential blockbusters between May and August. By the time the season draws to a close, nearly 20 such marquee titles would have hit the screens.

 Hollywood, it seems, is going for broke. More than 60 films are slated for release this summer. Sure enough, the line-up is dominated by apocalyptic thrillers, high-octane superhero franchises and animation flicks.

 Over to Soderbergh again: “How does a studio decide what movies get made? One thing they take into consideration is the foreign market, obviously. It’s become very big. So that means… things that travel best are going to be action-adventure, science fiction, fantasy, spectacle, come animation thrown in there. Obviously the bigger the budget, the more people this thing is going to have to appeal to, the more homogenized it’s got to be, the more simplified it’s got to be.” Exactly right.

 While spectacle-loving young audiences in the US and the rest of the world aren’t likely to be complaining, the critics and some movie industry observers are a worried lot. As the studios lean overly on huge box office gambles, the risks inherent in the enterprise are immense. This could either be a summer of plenty or a quarter littered with embarrassing and expensive commercial duds.

 Why, then, is Hollywood banking so heavily on action-packed and special effects-laden fare? The seduction of familiar storylines is undeniable. The upcoming big-budget movies are obviously designed to help the respective studios make up for the dents left behind by less profitable films. The logic currently driving the industry is that making fewer films and diverting resources to blockbusters is less risky than making more films with modest budgets.

 So here we are. A sizeable percentage of the Hollywood releases lined up for the summer are vehicles for deafening explosions and animated mayhem, and for the manic exploits of oft-seen superheroes, runaway zombies and evil villains.

 In any case, summer isn’t typically a season of artsy Oscar contenders aimed at a more demanding audience. It is the time when the Hollywood majors unleash what are variously called tent pole, concept or blockbuster movies for the consumption of those that love the adventures of comic-book crime-busters and the thrills generated by infallible heroes fighting to save the world from doom.

 This year, the compulsion for a crowded release slate is greater than ever before: the studios need to offset the deleterious effect that low audience turnouts had on their bottom lines last year. So they are pulling out the stops.
 This is the End, an apocalyptic comedy scripted and directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, is the weirdest concept film that could have been rustled up in the current scenario. It has several Hollywood stars – Rogen, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel and Craig Robinson – playing themselves and attending a party at James Franco’s house when catastrophe strikes and the end of the world is nigh.

 Hollywood’s approach to the current summer seems to have an element of desperation looming over it. It is as if there is no tomorrow. Happily, in the month of May, the strategy paid off: Iron Man 3, a quintessential franchise film, has collected over $1 billion globally; The Great Gatsby, a glitzy 3-D rendition of a classic novel set in the 1920s, is running strong; and Star Trek Into Darkness, despite generally positive reviews, has performed below expectations but hasn’t exactly been a washout.        

 But expect some major reverses along the way. We have probably seen one already in the form of After Earth (which opened in the US on May 31). The film has Jaden and Will Smith deal with pretty much what the Hollywood stars are up against in This is the End. They play a father and son duo whose spaceship crashes on the long abandoned Earth, forcing them to negotiate a wild terrain and wide array of predatory animals in order to save themselves from extermination.

 The opening response to the M Night Shyamalan-directed film was disappointingly lukewarm and big losses are on the cards for the studio. In contrast, a smaller film, Now You See Me,  a magician thriller starring Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman and Isla Fisher, has performed surprisingly well at the box office. 

 August will see the release of the sci-fi drama Elysium, set in 2154, where the world is divided between the wealthy who live in a space station and the rest of the population that resides on an Earth that has gone to seed. The film stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. 

 In World War Z (June 21), the world is hit by a zombie epidemic that threatens not just governments and armies but also the very survival of humanity. A United Nations official played by Brad Pitt wages a lonely war to stop the zombies. This is another of the big summer films that, according to showbiz observers, might find the going tough.
 It is rare for a film series to go beyond the fourth installment because a quartet of shots is more than enough to squeeze an idea completely dry. But the story with The Fast and the Furious action franchise is different. Fast and Furious 6 arrived in our midst on May 24 and at the end of its second week the film held on to the top spot at the US box office.
 However, Hangover Part III, the last installment in the comedy series that has been a runaway global success, dislodged Fast and Furious 6 from the No.1 position at the international box office. Action and comedy are the two genres that never fail to deliver during the summer months.

 The Wolverine, scheduled for release by end-July, is the sixth installment of the X-Men franchise. With Hugh Jackman reprising the role of the eponymous superhero, the film is being tipped to be one of the biggest summer successes of the year.

 All through this summer and the rest of the year, several other sequels, prequels and reboots will be competing for big bucks. In the pipeline are films like Thor 2: The Dark World, Kick-Ass 2, Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, Smurfs 2 and Grown Ups 2.

 On July 3, the Johnny Depp starrer, The Lone Ranger, will open. He plays a Native American who teams up with a masked hero to fight the forces of evil in the Old American West. The fate of the film will hinge principally on whether Depp can pull off another box office coup.

 Amid Hollywood's summer glut, there will be many ifs and buts. The hectic shootout for box office glory is bound to leave a trail of dashed hopes in its wake.