Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
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Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
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Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#2I feel like consumer choice has kinda gone too far with movies, people never cross genres because they never have to go along with something they don’t like.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#3I wonder how valuable this is as a metric, since much of what gets viewed is a function of art as much as it is marketing, production, or other elements. Some years studios make movies that are just bad--I wouldn't necessarily expect the income distribution to remain balanced across years.
Furthermore, these graphs don't appear to take into account the production cost of movies. If a low-budget film garners critical acclaim, it means more than a studio movie that just broke even, although their gross incomes could be pretty similar.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#4I'm not sure 2023 is a good year to compare against, what with the actors' and writers' unions striking for several months? If you look at the list of "2023 movies", you see titles such as Coraline (Remastered), Star Wars Episode VI, Titanic (25 yr Anniversary) and probably some others that I missed which are not really 2023 movies...
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#52023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five Nights at Freddy's, Cocaine Bear and M3GAN all exceeded expectations.
So it's hard to interpret this as the "middle class" of movies disappearing. I'd say it's the opposite, in fact. People have gotten sick of the big-budget crap that follows the same formula (note how most of those bombs are superhero movies). It's really the big-budget films that are falling apart.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#6I miss “smart” mid-budget movies of the kind Miramax used to put out in the 90s. With a few exceptions they don’t seem to be as prevalent. The market has changed.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#72023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster". On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five…
To be more precise, those mid-budget films all did well relative to their budgets. Marvels still made far more money, but the budget was so bloated that Marvel took a loss.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#82023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster". On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five…
> 2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
And rightly so. The so-called special effects in those superhero movies are really getting exhausting. What's the point of having superpower yet battling like a peasant in medieval times? What's the point of having super intelligence yet making so many illogical decisions? What's the point of having the best technologies on earth yet having your tribe living in dirt and fighting with rhinos and using duels to elect your leaders? I can even tolerate such plot holes if the movies have good stories or interesting characters, but do they?
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#92023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster". On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five…
But that's not really what the graph plots; it doesn't try to estimate revenue expectations or even production costs. (Although, that would be interesting to factor in production costs.)
Comparing 2006 to 2023, I see more sequels early in the list, and fewer originals.
Re: Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
#102023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster". On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five…
> 2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster". And rightly so. The so-called special effects in those superhero movies are really getting exhausting. What's the point of having superpower yet battling like a peasant in medie…
>What's the point of having the best technologies on earth yet having your tribe living in dirt and fighting with rhinos and using duet to elect your leaders
Yes, Marvel is shit now, but escapism and fantasy entertainment doesn't work on real world logic. If I want to see realistic battles going on I just turn on the news. I go to the cinema because I want a dose of escapism while I turn off my brain for 2 hours.