Front(over)loading

For about 20 years now, major Hollywood blockbusters have been following an increasing trend of having big first weekend grosses and then trailing off sharply from the second weekend onwards. The trend was started properly by Tim Burton's Batman, which opened to a then-record-breaking $40m. It went on to gross over $250m, but it only continued making significant grosses for about six weeks. Compare that to the old pattern of a movie like ET (admittedly an abnormally high-grossing example) which hung around the number 1 spot for months.

The frontloading of the audience seems to be reaching an extreme. At this rate, it can only be so long until movies make virtually all their money in the first week. I don't think it's a good trend to be setting; although first-weekend grosses are getting bigger all the time, overall grosses aren't.

Take the three "threequels" that have so far been released this year in the US: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates: AWE. They've all opened big (a record-breaking $151m for Spidey, an animated film record $121m for Shrek, and a Memorial Day weekend record $114m for Pirates, with $140m over the 4-day span). However, none of them are going to get close to matching the previous highs of their respective franchises.

It's also noteworthy that in the case of Spidey and Pirates, their first day gross has been roughly equivalent to the whole second weekend gross. That's one big fall, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue with more of the summer's big hitters to come. Ultimately these will result in the opening weekend representing probably 40% or more of the total gross.

There's not much that can be done about it, admittedly. With the current consumer climate and the now-set-in-stone tradition of opening absolutely everywhere at the same time, everyone goes to see the big films in their first weekend, and DVDs come out barely 3 months later now. I'm not trying to suggest that people should deliberately not see a film on its first weekend, though; obviously I pretty much always do that.

There is one way the trend can be somewhat rectified: make the movies good! Almost every franchise film with a big advertising spend can make masses of money in the first weekend whatever standard they are. But only good films (generally) have the legs to carry them to a great total gross in the long run. I don't think it's a coincidence that 2007's threequels have so far had big falls each weekend, because none of them have been very good (I've not seen Shrek the Third yet, but that's the general consensus).

There's a simple flow chart to this.

A film that is actually good
¦
\/
good word of mouth + repeat viewings
¦
\/
BIG MONEY.

The Obligatory Pirates Rant

So I didn't like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I really wanted to.

When I first heard about the first Pirates film, I was ecstatic. I love pirates. As a kid I used to write pirate stories (I even wrote a four-part series called Battle On Treasure Island. They were each a page long. I was about 6 years old.) and I played the first two Monkey Island games to the point of being able to recite them. Therefore I was dying to see it even before the buzz about it actually possibly being good began to spread.

The reason I'm saying this is because it provides some sort of evidence that a film about pirates would have to be pretty awful for me to not like it. I'm predisposed to liking them. I felt like At World's End actively worked to make me hate it. It failed at that quest, because I don't hate it; I just think it took the franchise completely in the wrong direction. A big fall this weekend at the box office (only $43m second weekend - ouch) suggests that I'm not the only one.

(Spoilers ahead, probably.)

It seemed to me that with At World's End, and to a lesser extent Dead Man's Chest, the writers (Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio) were more concerned with being unpredicable than actually crafting a compelling story. The Pirates sequels can't be accused of adhering to formula like so many blockbusters, but formula exists for a reason: it works.

I'm not saying that the films should have been formulaic. I'm just saying that sometimes the sequels (again, mostly referring to AWE; I like DMC) made it feel like they were just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what stuck. A lot didn't.

For example, nobody thought Jack Sparrow would 'die' at the end of the second movie, so they put that in despite the fact they didn't have a logical and appealing way to bring him back (the Davey Jones' Locker sequence just completely defies all credibility). Audiences didn't expect surrealism, so they shoved in a load of weird hallucinations. Nobody would have thought they'd see a kid being hanged in a Disney movie. Another tick. Etcetera, etcetera.

They forgot to make sure that the story they were telling was actually interesting and enjoyable. AWE is convoluted beyond belief and a lot of the stuff is just pointless; you could chop out half of the betrayals and negotiations and the rest of the film wouldn't have been harmed, given a bit of minor alteration. I found it interesting that in an interview on Box Office Mojo here, Elliot and Rossio say at one point in the script they had one character on two ships. That says a lot - if they can't keep track of the characters, how can we?

Another thing that really grinded my gears (to paraphrase Peter Griffin from Family Guy) was that some of the storylines that had been built up in DMC went nowhere. Davey Jones' story had no real conclusion, and Tia Dalma's transformation into a sea goddess and subsequent disappearance was completely irrelevant. The resurrection Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa was never explained sufficiently either, although his presence in the film was generally a high point. On top of all this, Chow Yun Fat joined in the fun in AWE, and his usefulness to the story added up to precisely nil.

I remember when I first saw DMC. I hadn't read any spoilers about the ending, so Barbossa's return came as a big surprise to me. When I first saw the boots coming down the stairs, I was expecting it to be Chow Yun Fat, because I'd heard he was in part 3. If that had been the case it could have been great, if Chow had been let loose to have a bit of fun.

But of course, Barbossa had to be brought back because he was one of the Pirate Lords needed to release Calypso from her human form (Tia Dalma - keeping up?). A friend pointed out to me how illogical that was the other day - Jack Sparrow was captain of the Black Pearl before Barbossa, right? Therefore why would they both be pirate lords?

Aaargh, I could go on all day! What a missed opportunity.

On a side note, I'd still like to see a Pirates 4 (although that's looking less likely with AWE's underwhelming US grosses), as the storyline set up at the end of AWE - Jack and Barbossa's competing quest for the Fountain of Youth - sounds like an opportunity for a lot of fun, and a return to the sheer breezy entertainment of the first film. I can see it now: Pirates vs. Indians in Florida... The potential for Orlando in-jokes alone makes it a no-brainer.