The summer box office haul is officially down 20% from a year ago. Why do you think that is?

Not sure if I've seen an advert for a film that was worth seeing this year. Except for X-Men: Days of Future Past, that was brilliant.

 

Mostly crappy movies and the good ones got overlooked. Too much dependence on Hugh blockbusters with outrageous budgets and not enough on good drama.

 

These are all very good points. VFX used to be a tool to enhance the story instead of becoming the central purpose of a film. Strip out the special effects and Star Wars is still a great film. Most blockbusters today are constructed around their special effects, instead of the other way around. I understand why it has come to this, it is much easier to quantify the cost of CGI than it is writing an incredible story. Our movies are now designed by accountants and MBAs.

 

For awhile now I have used the comparison to the ultimate summer movie lineup from 1989. Now that was and is the standard. This summer was really a let down as far as I'm concerned. I went to see nothing so far.

 

No Roger Ebert.

 

World Cup

 

Ironic statement given this summer has a movie ABOUT Roger Ebert on screens:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2382298/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_2

 

I stand by my belief this is just a down year. That happens - some years just come with a bunch of relative clunkers...

 

I don't like the experience of going to the big megaplexes at all anymore--overpriced snacks, obnoxious people with their cell phones, dumb previews and endless commercials. I remember being pretty offended at first when they started forcing the ads down our throats--I'm paying $10 to watch commercials? Sometimes I'll go to the local arthouse theater, which is a much less obnoxious experience, but I rarely feel the urge to go to regular commercial theaters anymore. I'd much rather just watch something at home.

I agree that audiences are likely getting burnt out on the endless sequels, remakes and reboots. There's a real dearth of creativity and originality these days. We've seen so many mind bending CGI extravaganzas that after a while, we start to grow desensitized to all of the spectacle. Would it kill them to focus a bit more on little things like intelligent character and plot development? I don't know if this will be the beginning of an ongoing trend but I can only hope that it serves as a wake up call to Hollywood.

 

While I'm no expert on this topic I was wondering about the wisdom of having similar movies following on the heels of recent successful movies. For example, doing another Transformers movie this summer when the successful and popular Transformer movies weren't that long ago and are still rerun on TV. Likewise, there have been many comic super hero movies in recent years such as Avengers, Iron Man and Spider Man that people have already seen. I can see where a new version of Transformers and comic heroes might seem too "been there, done that" for potential movie goers.

Scott

 

Yeah, all these things began in the last year.

 

I can only speak to my personal "20% down" reasons, all of which have already been mentioned:

1) Ticket prices - $9.50 adult matinee price
2) Food prices - $6.00 large soda
3) Lack of customer service - The line at the snack bar is ALWAYS long, because they rarely have more than one register open at any given time
4) Advertising - 40+ minutes of advertising prior to PREVIEWS
5) Discourteous patrons - Talking, cell phones - the usual complaints

Add these 5 key ingredients together, and that is why we rarely visit the theater anymore. So far in 2014 we've seen X-Men, Edge Of Tomorrow, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. That's 3 movies in approximately 7 months, which is down about 40% from this time last year. As for summer viewing, the only movie left on our radar is Guardians of the Galaxy, so that will put us at 3 total movies this summer (Edge, Apes, Guradians). We usually see 5 or 6 summer flicks, so that puts us down 40 to 50 percent for Summer 2014.

 

It was busy when I went Sunday to see Lucy.

Guardians should bring in a good chunk....