by Frank Calvillo
It used to be, once upon a time, that the summer movie season was a place to escape during the dog days of summer; a safe haven where imagination and creativity knew no bounds and the magic of movies were allowed to thrive.
My earliest summer movie memory was going to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids when it first came out. I was wowed by the special effects, taken by the comedy, and was officially mindblown that a world full of adventure and fun such as this could exist, if only on a giant screen. Like many kids of my generation, experiences like this enriched the imagination and made summertime all the better.
Now, as an adult, the same magical spark I yearn for whenever I go to the multiplex during this time of year has all but faded thanks to a series of endless summers full of nothing but re-worked versions of recycled ideas which already exist in some other form. As a matter of fact, for the past several years, it’s been hard to find many titles which are big enough in scope and scale to earn the label of blockbuster, yet don’t come from an existing property.
For the last four summers, my favorite movies during those months have been Super 8, Now You See Me and Pacific Rim. Although all three of those titles appealed to my love of cinematic spectacle and captured the summer movie season the way I remember it, I realized that my love for them also partially stemmed from the fact that none came from a comic book, novel, video game, T.V. show or is a remake/sequel to another (probably better) movie. Incidentally, two out of those three films have sequels currently in different stages of development.
Summer 2015 sees two high-profile blockbusters attempt to give new life into the nearly-diminished spirit of the kind of originality that once existed in the movies.
The first, Tomorrowland, has been met with mixed reviews, with many claiming the film’s plot is disjointed while at the same time commending a variety of elements which perfectly capture the kind of magic that used to be a staple of most big-budgeted films, including high-quality action sequences, stunning visuals and overall themes of encouraging invention and creativity.
The marketing team for Tomorrowland hasn’t done the smoothest of jobs with the project, unsure whether to sell the film as a family adventure or a George Clooney vehicle, which may have accounted for its less than stellar box-office performance.
The other large-scale original release scheduled for the summer is the Adam Sandler-starrer Pixels, which sees the actor and a motley group of friends battle an alien life force who has taken the form of classic video game characters and threatens to wreak havoc on earth.
The plot may sound preposterous, yet as soon as I heard of it, it instantly earned points in my book for having the guts to be nothing but ridiculous fun. While Sandler’s choice of material has been VERY hit and miss over the past several years, his attachment to the project and his instrumental hand in getting it made show that not every major player in Hollywood is content to let the original large scale blockbuster slip away.
It has to be acknowledged that the movie industry is indeed a corporate structure and no corporate structure can exist solely for the sake of art. There need to be substantial fruits resulting from the labor put into making films. Therefore, it’s easy to bank on projects which come with built-in audiences and a guaranteed number one opening come Monday morning.
The blockbuster is also coming with a heftier price tag these days in terms of production and marketing costs. That factor, coupled with decreasing audience attendance thanks to outlets such as On-Demand and Netflix, leaves almost no room for gambling on ideas which aren’t more or less foolproof.
So where does the audience rank in all this?
Well, judging by Tomorrowland’s performance, it seems most moviegoers would prefer the comfort and safety provided by remakes, reboots and sequels as evidenced when the film opened up to one of the lowest Memorial Day weekends in recent memory. These days, with so many entertainment options available, it’s difficult to successfully grab hold of an audience’s attention for two hours.
By contrast though, when the trailer for Pixels was released, it managed to break records, being viewed more than 30 million times within 24 hours of hitting the web. The news at least signifies that some audiences still crave innovative and original ideas, or at the very least, aren’t closed off the idea of them.
Predicting the future of the original summer blockbuster is tough to call. Studios don’t seem completely turned off to the idea of such films, yet they aren’t quick to put much faith in them either. Case in point: the shifting of the buzzed-about Goosebumps (which will see Jack Black portray kids horror author R.L. Stine in a fictionalized thriller/comedy romp) from August to October.
And yet, even these lone originals in the Summer of 2015 can point to familiar entities as being partly responsible for their existence. Tomorrowland is an original story inspired by the popular Disneyland attraction, while Pixels incorporates well known classic video game characters into its one-of-a-kind story showing that studios will gamble on original properties, but are also making sure they leave nothing to chance.
For me, it’s impossible to not mourn a period of summer moviemaking which gave us the likes of The Goonies, Poltergeist, Jaws and Ghostbusters. Now we are getting their respective remakes and sequels. I remember the summer that Independence Day (the sequel will be out next year) came out and being totally unimpressed by it. Were it to be released nowadays, it would sadly be my favorite movie of the summer.
The blockbuster summers I enjoyed as a kid may exist only in the past, yet I’ll remain the eternally optimistic movie lover who will be forever searching for that special place of escape during the summertime.
