Do Audiences Expect Too Much Out of Modern Blockbusters?
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve gotten two major blockbusters with Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu and Masters of the Universe and both of which aren’t doing the box office numbers the studio was hoping for. Because of this, there’s been a lot of talk about why the films are failing at the box office. Collider has joined in on this debate and shared their thoughts as to why the movies bombed. Are they right? Let’s talk about it!
My Thoughts
So, the article of the article is “The Backlash to He-Man and Mandalorian This Summer Says More About Us Than the Movies”. Basically, the article is making the argument that the criticisms towards Masters of the Universe and The Mandalorian & Grogu, are that it’s all their fault the movie didn’t work because we expected more from them, even though those movies weren’t trying to be anything more than just fun.
“A new Star Wars movie isn’t allowed to simply be a Star Wars movie. It must fix the franchise, or settle years of online debate, or at least prove Lucasfilm has a plan. Likewise, a movie like Masters of the Universe isn’t judged solely on whether it’s an entertaining fantasy adventure. Instead, it’s forced to answer questions about intellectual property, franchise fatigue, and whether Hollywood should be revisiting the property at all.”
This was a quote from the article, that’s summarizing a lot of what it’s trying to say. Simply put, I disagree with the points they’re making. The quote is implying that The Mandalorian & Grogu was disappointing to audiences because it delivered less than what fans wanted, even though it wasn’t trying to be more than what fans wanted. I think the part that they’re missing with discourse surrounding The Mandalorian & Grogu is that it’s disappointing because it’s the first Star Wars movie in seven years and they delivered something mediocre. You go onto the internet a lot of people are just in the middle of the film. There’re not a lot of people that are loving the movie but there’s also not a lot of people hating the movie. It’s a film that people watched and went “that was a fun adventure.” But the first Star Wars movie being just a “fun adventure” is disappointing and not at all the things that Star Wars fans wanted it to be. For better or for worse, the film feels like three episodes of the tv show strung together to make a 2-hour long film. There’s nothing in the film that makes it feel more cinematic and epic compared to the tv show. If they made this movie as a crossover with Ahsoka and had Grand Admiral Thrawn and make it feel bigger then the tv show, then it would feel more like an event and would’ve done better critically and financially. I don’t think it’s unreasonable whatsoever to have fans be disappointed that the first Star Wars movie in seven years is a bland movie that feels like three episodes of the tv show. For better or for worse, the film delivered exactly what a lot of us were expecting and met our expectations. Unfortunately, most people’s expectations for the film weren’t particularly high so they met our low expectations.
It’s tough for me to comment too much on Masters of the Universe because I’m not familiar with the original source material. I haven’t seen a single episode of the animated show. But what I can say is that Masters of the Universe delivered the film that audiences were promised by the trailers, but I just don’t think it was a movie that very many people wanted. My dad was born in 1973; he was the prime age to love Masters of the Universe when the cartoon aired in the ‘80s. And he had no interest in seeing this movie. If my dad, who grew up loving He-Man, didn't want to see this movie, there’s a lot of people his age like him that just weren’t interested in the movie. Beyond that, I’ve said this before but people under the age of 30 don’t care about Masters of the Universe but it wasn’t a relevant part of our childhoods. The trailers didn’t do enough to win the skeptics over or to get the younger audiences to show up. Even beyond that, the film just feels like a movie that we’ve seen before. It has bright colors and pop music and we’ve done that before. We’ve been doing that since 2014 when Guardians of the Galaxy came out and was this smash hit that everybody loved. It’s been this trope that studios and franchises have been trying to copy or use ever since that movie came out, for better or for worse.
I think there’s a piece that the article is missing. Within the last year, we’ve had two movies that were just trying to be fun, and they made $1 billion or close to $1 billion. Those movies being A Minecraft Movie and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The whole conversation surrounding The Super Mario Galaxy Movie after its release was “critics just hate fun” and “this movie was for the fans, not the critics.” That was the whole exhausting narrative surrounding The Super Mario Galaxy Movie when it came out just a few months ago. It was a movie that wasn’t trying to be anything more than it promised from the trailers, and it made $1 billion. That was a movie that promised to be a fun experience, and it delivered that. It might not have been a great movie, but it delivered the exact experience that fans wanted. A Minecraft Movie didn’t make $1 billion, but it was within $100 million of doing so. Even then, it was this big event film that promised to be a fun movie that lived up to the fans and the lore of Minecraft, and the fans got exactly what they wanted. It’s a movie that’s fun and enjoyable, without trying to be anything more than it was promised.
Some of my concluding thoughts here, I just reject the premise of the article. If you’re making the first Star Wars movie in seven years and it’s just three episodes of The Mandalorian strung together to make a 2-hour long movie. It’s completely reasonable for fans to leave the theater being disappointed by the movie or just skipping the movie entirely because it feels like a Disney+ project that was brought to the big screen. When Star Wars use to be events that even the “bad” Star Wars movies like Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and Mandalorian & Grogu isn’t that there is going to be this sense of disappointment because what made Star Wars special in the past isn’t present in the current era of Star Wars. If audiences didn’t show up to Masters of the Universe because they didn’t like the trailers or didn’t care, that’s completely fair as well.
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