| Posted by: Monotreme at April 11, 2008, 10:49 am | | Topic: The Blockbuster Dilemma Forum: JoBlo | | Oh many. I agree with your sentiment that the four-star review movies are for smaller, more independent films that usually don't make a splash at the box office. But I think that this trend exists only from the last 3 or 4 years. Looking back to the early 2000's and 1990's, big praise more often than not also meant big money and big awards. It has only been in the past 3 years that the Oscar nominations for best picture were primarily dominated with small independent films that weren't huge box office success stories. I think that in the past handful of years there has been an increasing reliance on the Studio's part on franchises and sequels unlike ever before. One of the best examples I could think of was Memoirs of a Geisha. It had all the makings of a classic Studio-backed critical and box office success - sweeping romance, epic setting, exquisite production values. But for some reason it sort of fell between the chairs. Critics who became used to the indie films providing the goods while the Studio films providing the bucks, I think, were biased towards the film as a studio product and totally ignored its artistic value. Add that to the fact that today's jaded audiences didn't seem as thrilled to see an epic period romance as they did not a handful of years before (The English Patient, Titanic) and the film is really quite underrated - I actually really liked it. Once, these big, critically acclaimed box office successes were the ones winning all the awards and the acclaim and ending up on all the top 10 lists; now, as you've said, it's primarily indie films. Strange trend, don't you think? So here is a list of Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed films that made over $100 million at the box office. Notice that this trend pretty much stopped at around 2003 or so, for reasons totally unknown to me. Shakespeare in Love - $100 mil Unforgiven - $101 mil Road to Perdition - $104 mil Kramer vs Kramer - $106 mil Driving Miss Daisy - $106 mil Pulp Fiction - $107 mil Terms of Endearment - $108 mil One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - $108 mil On Golden Pond - $119 mil Traffic - $124 mil Erin Brockovich - $125 mil Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - $128 mil American Beauty - $130 mil The Silence of the Lambs - $130 mil The Godfather - $134 mil Platoon - $138 mil The Sting - $156 mil A Beautiful Mind - $170 mil Rain Man - $172 mil Gladiator - $187 mil Saving Private Ryan - $216 mil Now here's the real kicker: How much are you willing to bet that almost ALL of these movies, if released today, would get at most limited arthouse releases and would be lucky to hit $50 mil at the box office? Seriously, do you actually see movies like American Beauty, Kramer vs Kramer, Road to Perdition, or Traffic being huge blockbuster hits if they were released today? I find it hard to believe, and interesting that once, not too long ago, a good movie DID mean box office success...! |
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