r/CharacterRant • u/matt0055 • 5d ago
Films & TV Are we too hyperfixated on box office numbers?
Inspired by this video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Bgj1-0qO8
Do Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Scores even matter anymore for film analysis? Like does a general score or low return on money indicate low quality?
After Streaming and CO-VID, I’d surprise that films performing below expectations don’t have an asterisk beside the reports with a “Not accounting of the still ongoing PLAGUE affecting theaters turn outs.”
Plus, we all know that the whole “failed to meet expectations” stuff is a buuuuuuullshit statement made by cowardly executives who worship shareholders at the altar.
Like I wanna know: what film do you love to bits despite how it underperformance financially?
Do view the video I linked above for a fuller picture of what I'm getting at.
13
u/1KNinetyNine 5d ago
Yes. Paranormal Activity has one of the biggest proportionate ROI of all time. It was shot for $15K, acquired and modified by Paramount for $200K, and made $194 million in the box office. It'd be disingenious to call it the best horror movie ever just because its one of the most profitable ever. Hereditary made $87 million on a $10 million budget. Saying Paranormal Activity is better than Hereditary because it made more money and is more profitable would be intellectually dishonest.
11
u/Toadsley2020 5d ago edited 5d ago
Does it matter in terms of film (or in general, other media) analysis? Not really. Unless you’re willing to concede that EVERY movie/game/show/book/whatever that underperforms is a worse product because of it, and that EVERY whatever is a better product because they hit a certain bench mark, profits made are poor indicators of any quality in discussion. You can discuss a lot about them (trends in what people like, if it resonated with audiences, how it was marketed, etc.), but that doesn’t tend to inherently reflect quality or analysis of the actual film.
But there is a certain mentality towards things like “winning” or “losing” when it comes to these, and they’re pretty often cherry picked a lot of the time to. Like saying “This movie sucked, it underperformed!”, and then when pointing out a popular or generally well-received movie that also underperformed, arguing that it doesn’t count for one reason or another. Edit: Of course, that’s usually because there’s some agenda or some point they’re trying to make in that the film or whatever failed, and arguing it did poorly financially becomes the best way to argue that.
3
u/TrainerWeekly5641 4d ago
Transformers One was a great movie screwed out of the millions it deserved and because of it's failure it won't get a sequel.
9
u/GiantEnemaCrab 5d ago
Rotten Tomatoes only matters if you think it does. The Michael Bay Transformers films got terrible RT reviews, but made billions in the box office. They were, for their audiences, a masterpiece. For most people who care about RT / movie critic thoughts, they were trash. And yet they were still mega blockbusters.
Box office numbers aren't very important in a world of streaming. Box office numbers were NEVER important because of dvd / vhs sales / rentals and sometimes merchandise. Now instead of dvd / vhs greater emphasis is put on streaming rights. The reason people care about box office numbers is because it's a simple to understand publicly available number. It isn't a useless metric but it's far from the only one.
5
u/_Slipperino 4d ago edited 4d ago
People watch movies to have fun. People can enjoy a movie without deeming it a masterpiece. People watched Transformers for the spectacle, not because it moved them deeply. And if we really want to get specific, the Transformers trilogy does have artistic value from a visual standpoint due to the directing and CGI. The OST is also noteworthy
1
u/warforcewarrior 3d ago
People can enjoy a movie without deeming it a masterpiece.
Not only this but most don't actively analyze a show or movie. They just sit back and watch, and if they enjoy it, that's great. If not then some time was wasted but not a big deal.
5
2
u/Frozenstep 5d ago
I always thought it was pretty obvious box office numbers are more a measure of advertising budget and brand recognition. Like, quality is a factor, but how many people really go in to watch a movie multiple times just because it's that good? Word of mouth is very good, but what do you think the conversion rate is on every impressed moviegoer actually getting someone else to go? Even if every person managed to get one or two others to go, if your initial audience was small, you're not reaching critical success.
2
u/MessiahHL 5d ago
I remember the time when big box offices meant a film was bad, idk if it was better but it's funny to see the change
2
u/AllMightyImagination 5d ago edited 5d ago
Repeat of blockbusters that don't sell well or do so averagely eventually make the studio go out of business, thus they start cutting. Also theaters always first take half of the cut. Then cast need to be paid and marketing agencies and so on. The rule of thumb is you double those million of dollars to account for all of that. Whatever is left for the studio if it's not enough to call they made profit then they are in finical trouble. It's even worse for the biggest most popular of their IPs.
As proven by Disney and WB, studios also don't learn their lessons.
1
1
u/andresfgp13 4d ago
box office success of course that it matters because of that depends that certain type of movies will continue to be made, if you like certain type of movies and all of those fail to even make the investment back movie studios arent going to keep making them, movies like almost every type of art its also a product.
of course that monetary success doesnt necesarily correlate to quality but in online discussions they go with the hipster mentality and actually think that monetary success negatively correlates with quality, they go with the "mc donalds must be the best restaurant in the world" logic when thats also incorrect, because under that logic stuff like The Beatles or Elden Ring are shit because both are financially succesful.
box office its more about target market than anything else, certain stuff just have a bigger target market than others so you will most likely never see an artsy film make more money than Avatar or Lilo and Stitch but that doesnt mean that one is necesarily better than the other, it just means that Avatar and Lilo and Stitch have a bigger target market.
1
u/Spektra54 4d ago
Look as much as we like to talk about movies and quality and critiques it's all purely subjective. The closest thing we have to objectivity (and it's still super far) is do people generally like this thing and do they want to see it. And the box office/rotten tomatoes/imdb etc. are the best way we have to measure this.
Now there are other things that factor in here like marketing and accesibility. But most broadly speaking the thing that matters most is how much people like said thing.
Yes it is deeply imperfect. There is no perfect metric. But the closest we have is a binary did you like said thing? So as much as I hate it and think that it's a bad system it is the best way we can "objectively" measure the sucess of something.
1
u/BardicLasher 4d ago
So here's the thing about box office...
A good box office means we get MORE of them, or at least more LIKE them.
While I don't really care for personal enjoyment how well a film did at the box office, let's take a real life example of an AMAZING movie that underperformed: Treasure Planet. I love this movie. It's great, it was nominated for Best Animated Feature (Lost to Spirited Away, which is fair), but was a literal box office bomb. So, combined with the also great but underperforming Atlantis, what did Disney decide? Traditional Animation is over, time to move to CG. Despite the fact that Brother Bear and Lilo and Stitch both did fine. Maybe Brother Bear vanished as soon as it appeared, but Lilo and Stitch became franchise gold... Buuut there were enough animated flops that a decision was made.
After 2004's bomb that was Home on the Range, Disney didn't release another traditionally animated movie until 2009's The Princess and the Frog, which did... fine. Good, even, but not Disney Great, and that was that. Disney does CG movies now, and Rapunzel and Wreck it Ralph both made twice the Frog's box office, an then Frozen made literally all the money, so... CG is here to stay.
So, does it matter at all for quality levels that Treasure Planet bombed? No, it's still FANTASTIC. But is its bombing one of a number of factors that led to them no longer making movies that look as good as they did in the past? Absolutely. So it's important movies you like perform well, so you can keep getting movies you like.
And that's why the Snyderverse fans are so salty. They liked their movies, and they just want more of them, but they can't have them because that's how industry works.
1
u/CalamityPriest 4d ago
Depends on the community.
In general, I don't think films/movie discussions are as obsessed with numbers as sports discussions or even pro wrestling discussions. The latter is obsessed with it to a debilitating degree.
1
u/Chetan_fun 20h ago
It's not indicative of the quality of the movie, at least for the majority of the time. But I think people are also just too dismissive of it. It matters and the budget matters.
1
u/DyingSunFromParadise 5d ago
Imagine giving a shit about if a movie makes 2 dollars or 2 million dollars, couldnt be me.
14
u/Flat_Box8734 5d ago
I mean it does matter. Especially if it determines whether or not a second movie is made or if the series is continued. It should not have anything to due with movie analysis though.
-5
u/DyingSunFromParadise 5d ago
"I mean it does matter. Especially if it determines whether or not a second movie is made or if the series is continued"
Doesnt matter. I have never finished a genuinely good movie and thought "this needs to be a series!" If it feels like that, it wasnt a good movie.
8
u/Flat_Box8734 5d ago
You mean to tell me you’ve never watched the first installment of a planned trilogy, one that deliberately leaves unanswered questions, unfinished character arcs, dangling plot threads, and even teases future villains, only to never think, ‘I can’t wait to see where the sequel takes this’? I find that rather difficult to believe.
-5
u/DyingSunFromParadise 5d ago
No. I just leave the theater thinking "wow, that was shit. Not wasting my money on the second one"
5
u/Flat_Box8734 5d ago
So you felt this way about Star Wars (the original) and The Lord of the Rings, I’m assuming?
-1
u/DyingSunFromParadise 5d ago
I havent watched them and likely won't. I hate fantasy as a genre.
9
u/Flat_Box8734 5d ago edited 5d ago
So how can you claim that only ‘good movies’ should tell a self-contained story, when you haven’t even seen two of the greatest and most iconic trilogies of recent memory?
And have you even watched the new Dune? That film hardly functions as a standalone story.
1
u/SimonBelmont420 4d ago
I mean it matters if you want the director to film another movie in the future lol
1
u/alanjinqq 5d ago
A lot of great movies are box office bombs, Shawshank Redemption and the original Blade Runner are the ones that come out of my head.
0
19
u/Maskguydude 5d ago
Box office numbers don’t matter to film analysis itself, but it does matter to the studios that produce them. It’s basically the only way the general population can make sure big Studios understand that they don’t like their product and for it to matter to them. You can make 1 million film essays about how most of illuminations output is slop barely suitable for children. but they’re still printing money so that shit is basically meaningless to them.