After two mega bombs in Indiana Jones 5 (June 30, 335; cf) and The Flash (June 16, 267; cf) allowed Discount Spiderman 2 (June 2) and Little Mermaid (May 26) to eek out a bit more box office (675/556 respectively), Mission Impossible: Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise (July 12) cleared the slate despite a weak opening (short of 55 million its opening weekend) and is on target to disappoint vs expectations. What's arrived now is Barbie and another bloated, overrated Christopher Nolan film (Oppenheimer). Both are having genuinely big opening weekends (estimates are 155/80) assisted by excellent marketing (no fan-baiting; somehow I missed the entire campaign), but it remains to be seen if they have legs (are they like Batman v Superman or Black Panther 2, where word-of-mouth killed them after a big opener?). On the plus side, they face no meaningful competition. Putting the openers in perspective, if the estimates are correct Barbie beat Super Mario for the biggest opener of 2023, although it trails 2022's Doctor Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 among recent films (releases that occurred before fans realized the MCU had become utter shit). It's important to remember that because of ticket price inflation there's about half as many people in theaters as there were 20 years ago, so while in comparison to recent films it's a great opener, it's unremarkable historically. What's interesting to me is if it can hold audience interest. I've seen a lot of pushback from conservatives over Barbie's messaging, but whether general audiences care remains to be seen (I don't think The Sound of Freedom is a good comparison for people on the right, as the Neo-Liberal backlash to that film seems to be what boosted it--complaining about a true story about human trafficking created a Streisand effect).
I had no idea there was a live action Snow White film in the works (to be inflicted on the world in 2024), but it looks just as clueless as Little Mermaid and I have no idea why you'd pose Gal Gadot as being jealous of Rachel Zegler--it causes ludonarrative dissonance and no one seeing that believes it. People can wish beauty standards were different, but that can't be meaningfully changed (there's some historical and cultural variation in body shape, but facial beauty is related to symmetry and both are tied to underlying signs of health--that's never going to change). That aside, Snow White is yet another girl boss--oh boy, that's a fresh take! I'm curious to see how much of the target audience (girls/women) will show up (my expectation is it will do better in the US than internationally, but flop regardless). Much like Barbie above, this film wasn't made for me, but I am curious about audience trends and what does (or doesn't) work for the public.
Diversity
My prior surmise that the recent Supreme Court decision about Affirmative Action would impact Hollywood has been confirmed. This doesn't mean efforts to cast diversely will stop (people will certainly continue to push for it, even in historic biopics like Oppenheimer), just like BlackRock moving away from the ESG name won't alter their funding of such efforts. What it does mean is the executives who were hired for such tasks are being jettisoned. As The Wall Street Journal says:
New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer. ... The number of CDO searches is down 75% in the past year, says Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, which works with Fortune 100 companies to recruit HR and DEI executives, among other roles. Demand is the lowest he has seen in his 30 years of recruiting. [my emphasis] ... “They’re telling us, the only way I want to go into another role with DEI is if it includes something else,” he says of the requests for broader titles that offer more responsibilities and resources. He estimates that 60% of diversity roles he is currently filling combine the title with another position, such as chief human resources officer, up from about 10% five years ago. ... Since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, companies are anticipating spillover legal action could have an impact on them [my emphasis]
What people should take away from this is that corporations don't care about causes (something I would have assumed everyone knew, but apparently that's not the case). BlackRock does have an underlying reason for funding this (largely as a distraction from its unethical practices), so as long as they do, others will play that game. However, the people being funded are only interested in the money, so the moment that disappears, so does everything else (for those who think this only applies to Target or Walmart or other giant companies, don't fool yourself--if progressive Critical Role couldn't make money promoting the agenda, they wouldn't promote it--it's a business, not a charity). There's also been a complete failure to spread this approach elsewhere. Russia and China are going in the opposite direction (ultraconservative, with Russia at that point and China following suit) and there are indications many African and Eastern European nations are going the same way, while the Middle East never embraced the agenda. You have to ask yourself: what has this approach achieved? The populations in the West are now heavily divided over something they felt positively about just ten years ago (the 2013 legalization of same-sex marriage in the US serving as a kind of capstone)--the autocratic, preachy, top down approach not only doesn't help but has created a backlash that's becoming increasingly virulent. It's worth asking why corporate entities (and their government drones) continue the confrontational approach when the prior tactic of bottom-up, hey we just want the same rights as everyone else, worked so well (oddly enough, screaming at someone does not turn them into an ally).
This article was written by Peter Levi
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