The Flash and Indiana Jones prove that nostalgia can’t always be the main draw for movies — but there’s more to the story
If you follow movie news then you’re probably aware of the recent disappointing box office hauls of both The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, two movies which could and probably should have performed better, The Flash especially. It seems especially confusing, with The Flash being a fairly known DC character and with 2 Batmen in the story (Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton). A lot of the marketing for Flash did indeed highlight the fact that Keaton was back and I’m sure that Warner Bros was in part expecting that would get people into cinema and well, it didn’t.
I wouldn’t say the failure of The Flash is purely due to relying on nostalgia however, as controversy over Ezra Miller’s unhinged behaviour overshadowed the movies production for most of 2022. Meanwhile the film was delayed and went through other shooting problems. Perception can often become reality and I definitely feel that well documented production problems on a movie can colour people’s opinions on the final product going into it, which could be part of the explanation for its tepid reception.
On Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I think that box office failure was pretty much on the cards to be honest — in fact I really don’t think the movie should have happened altogether, but Disney took a risk on it- which doesn’t seem to have paid off. They took quite a big risk on it actually, with a reported $350 million budget, this is a big potential problem with trying to continue old franchises as there’s never any guarantee of success, unless a series is just massive internationally like a Star Wars or Star Trek.
Is Nostalgia always bad?
The interesting point on the ‘nostalgia doesn’t work’ argument is that it’s inconsistent, because if every film that was clearly using nostalgia bait to name a new sequel or re-make flopped, it would hold water. Whereas 2019's live action Lion King grossed over a whopping $1.6 billion worldwide and Star Wars: The Force Awakens has grossed over $2 billion to date, breaking a number of records in the process.
The Force Awakens rode a wave of Nostalgia to those records, bringing back Harrison Ford’s as Han Solo and the franchise in general ironically after only a 10 year break from the last movie — Episode III: Revenge of the Sith which came out in 2005. Of course Disney’s troubled trilogy ended on a very sour note and didn’t please all Star Wars fans to say the least, but that’s another story.
Similarly, the Ghostbusters Afterlife didn’t exactly set the Box office or critics enthusiastically on fire, so you could say the argument does hold some water. There will always be older, dedicated fans that want to see callbacks to beloved franchises but studios need to be aware of changing audiences and interests, what was appealing 20 or 30 years ago may not be as appealing now. Younger audiences may resonate more with superhero movies than supernatural ones, kids may not be as familiar with Ghostbusters or Indiana Jones and that’s fine — as contrary to big studio beliefs, older series can’t go on indefinitely, at least not with commercial success as we’ve seen in recent years.
A big problem with Hollywood and the movie industry is the commercialisation of nostalgia, at best it’s pandering to audiences and at worst it’s lazy and telling of a lack of confidence in commissioning new ideas, stories and creators. And with the use of algorithms and studios potentially making movies based on toy brands like Mattel, the industry definitely seems to be in a bit of a creative rut.
The future
Thankfully we still have fantastic writers and auteurs like Christopher Nolan, Edgar Wright, Jordan Peele, Denis Vilenueve, Tarantino (who may be soon to retire) and Martin Scorcese creating high-quality, tentpole movies, these naturally far between. This just means we may have to put up with more nostalgia driven, algorithm driven movies for now — admittedly 2023 may be a bit of a downer for the box office but I’m sure audiences will still resonate with great projects. With the likes of Dune part 2, Killers of the Flower Moon and Napeolon still on the way in the 2nd half of the year, we’ll hopefully see healthy returns to come.
Do recent losses mean that Hollywood will stop its seemingly neverending obsession with nostalgia? Not likely and you can expect more remakes and reboots in future, though hands off Back to the Future, let’s leave that one alone.
