It’s no secret that the landscape of Hollywood has changed pretty dramatically over the last few years. Box office attendance was already on the decline thanks to the emergence of streamers like Netflix and Hulu. Now, studios and networks alike each have their own streamers, so viewers now have an unlimited library of shows and movies at the tip of their fingertips. This all comes within the comfort of your own home. Instead of paying for overpriced candy and popcorn, go to your local supermarket or drugstore and find the same candy, in a package twice the size for half the price. The experience of attending movies at an AMC, Cinemark, or mom-and-pop theater in your local downtown was practically dead. This summer reversed the trend ever so slightly, though it’s still hard to believe the theater experience will see a permanent resurgence.
I won’t discuss The Barbie Movie much (go read Hannah Mussatto’s brilliantly written article about it in the first edition if you haven’t already), but this film certainly brought people out of their homes and into the theaters. Tickets were hard to get in the first couple weeks following its release as fans of all ages put on pink and found their seats in the theater. Barbie hit the ground running, generating $258 million in its opening week. As of September, the film has generated over $1.4 billion worldwide. Was it the star power or the in-your-face marketing? It doesn’t really matter. Barbie is a glimmer of hope for studios and executives who continue to invest millions of dollars into content fit for the big screen.
Oppenheimer was the other darling of the summer. The target audience was quite different than Barbie, but also cleaned up at the box office, generating $127 million in its first week of release and $934 million in total. Oppenheimer is directed by legendary film maker Christopher Nolan, who has also directed Dunkirk, Tenet, The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception. Not a bad lineup of movies, if you ask me. Nolan’s 2023 film is an adaptation of the biography of the titular character, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Cillian Murphy, best known for his roles in Nolan’s films and Peaky Blinders, stars as Robert Oppenheimer in a masterful performance that will surely receive attention during awards season. Other strong performances came from Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt. Even Oscar winners Rami Malek and Casey Affleck had minimal roles, which speaks to the gravitas Nolan possesses in Hollywood. Mr. Oppenheimer is both the hero and villain for his scientific innovation in the field of theoretical physics and development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Oppenheimer’s upbringing as a Jewish man motivated him to work on a weapon put an end to the war, and he knew that if he did not undertake such a project, Nazi scientists would (Oppenheimer studied with many brilliant scientists overseas). By the end of the movie, it is Oppenheimer’s past communist affiliations that make him the target of a witch hunt in Congress, and his security clearance is revoked. The film raises larger philosophical questions about using brilliance and engineering in the form of weapons of mass destruction. Viewers feel the weight of this question through the film as Oppenheimer internally struggles knowing how many Japanese lives were lost as a result of dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. I’m not here to tell you to see Oppenheimer. It's a long movie with a lot of characters, quick cuts between scenes, and switches from color to black-and-white frequently. The film is loud at times but keenly applies the science of sound waves in the context of explosions, as evidenced by the most iconic scene in the movie during the Trinity test. Oppenheimer is a masterpiece and has certainly played a part in the 2023 rejuvenation of the box office.
Other darlings of the box office this year include The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Guardians of the galaxy Vol. 3, Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, and Elemental. The films were distributed by Universal Studios, Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Disney (Pixar), respectively.
What’s Ahead?
This week, the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie will come out. It is being distributed by AMC Theatres. If the success of Swift’s tour is any indication of the success of the movie, then tickets will be hard to get (likely easier than her live shows, however).
Killers of the Flower Moon is the next blockbuster to hit theaters later this month. The $200 million movie is an adaptation of journalist David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The story follows the Osage people in Oklahoma, a once poor Native American tribe that amassed incomprehensible sums of wealth from oil deposits under their land. Tensions between members of the Osage and white settlers boil over, leading to the murders of many tribe members, and it isn’t until the FBI gets involved that the murders begin to get uncovered. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Frasier, as well as living members of the real Osage nation. Director Martin Scorsese is a legendary filmmaker and has worked with DiCaprio several times before, most recently on the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street.
I don’t think the in-person theater experience will ever return. Long are the days of meeting at the movies on Friday night, buying a ticket stub at the window, and picking seats on a first come first serve basis (though that statement may more accurately describe our parents’ generation). The convenience of streaming and watching from the comfort of one’s own home is unmatched, but the theater experience can still be a fun one. I encourage all to see the movies listed in this article in the theaters, but if you’d prefer to save your money then wait two months and I’m sure they’ll be on streaming.
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