The Era of the “Blockbuster Filmmaker” is Dead
Years ago, the prowess of a director meant something to the casual moviegoing audience. Names such as Spielberg, Carpenter, Romero, and many more would drive butts into seats, with or without extensive marketing or attempting to adapt popular source material. You didn’t need to really know what the plot of the newest Kubrick film was, only that it had the name of a well-trusted director behind it, so you knew at the very least, it would be interesting to watch. Nowadays, the title of the director doesn’t seem to hold the same merits as it did before. Within the modern era, there are still many fantastic filmmakers making new and original films all the time, yet these more original films don’t drive the audiences into theaters like they used to; why is that?
I’m nowhere near educated enough to say definitively what drove audiences away from recognizing the directors of some of their favorite movies, but I can tell you how this has severely stifled creativity within the modern, popular filmmaking landscape. As I stated before, there are still many fantastic directors making original works to this day: Barry Jenkins, Claire Denis, Yorgos Lanthimos, Lynne Ramsay, and Denis Villeneuve are a few fantastic ones that come to mind. Unfortunately, if you mention any of these directors to your average moviegoer, chances are, they’d have to Google their names to see what they’ve done, and I’d bet there’d be an even bigger chance that they haven’t seen most of, if not any of their work. This isn’t a slight against the average moviegoer; it’s not the direct fault of your normal “Joe Schmoe” that they’re not exposed to independent filmmaking; it’s the fault of the modern movie industry.
We currently live in an era populated primarily by remakes, adaptations, and sequels. None of these types of films are anything new, they’ve been a staple of the movie business for decades. The problem is, is that they’ve become oversaturated, so much so, that they’ve consumed the indie industry whole, leaving very little room for new ideas to break through. As we all know, the current zeitgeist of the film industry is the “cinematic universe.” Marvel/Disney forwarded the trend with 2008’s Iron Man, by having a post-credits scene detailing that Iron Man was just a small piece in what was to become a gigantic overall picture. That little tease at the end of Iron Man eventually led on to (currently) twenty-three films (and a few TV shows) in the vast ocean of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since Disney saw major success with Marvel adaptations, the race has gone on to see who could try and ape their formula the best, leading to imitators from all over the place: Warner Bros. with the DCEU, Universal with their Dark Universe, and even Disney, themselves on trying to branch Star Wars out from its original six-movie run. Those listed film franchises have had their varying success and failures (except that the Dark Universe flat out failed on its first attempt), but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to pump out sequel after sequel, either directly connected to each other or not, to try and milk some of that profit for themselves. Disney proved with their major financial successes that people want something to keep driving them back to the theater; something to hold onto like an identity, and continually grasp for the next tidbit of this ever-expanding universe of characters.
Of course, it wasn’t just the cinematic universe concept that raked in all the money. Remakes and sequels have become the diet cinematic universe now with loads of studios trying to recapture whatever magic they had before. Once again, I’m bringing up Disney, but although their circuit of live-action remakes are creatively bankrupt at best, they’ve driven in serious box office numbers. People want something that’s familiar and comforting, something that isn’t a high risk; paying to go see the newest version of Beauty and the Beast likely guarantees a good time to those who adored the original; adding on top of that is a whole new generation of moviegoers who weren’t able to experience these classics on the big screen, meaning that their parents are taking them to see these new versions, driving box office success further. If your kids liked the minions from the Despicable Me movies, they’ll more than likely love to go see the Minions movie, or any other sequel within this universe involving them. Do you absolutely love the Halloween series of films? Well, there’s another one with the same formula as before back for your viewing pleasure.
The constant driving for remakes, sequels, and so forth have flooded theaters for around a decade at this point, meaning that it’s slowly becoming harder to find anything that isn’t a sequel or remake in theaters. Last year, when Parasite was heading to theaters, I had to drive nearly thirty miles to the closest theater that was showing it, when I had two theaters not even three miles away. Why was it so hard to find a screen showing Parasite? Because the theaters were packed with a boring Terminator sequel/reboot, the second part to IT, a belated Zombieland sequel, Frozen 2, a Maleficent sequel nobody asked for, and even Avengers: Endgame was still taking up at least one screen at the multiplex. The sad thing is, moreover, the only directors I could name from any of those movies off the top of my head were the Russo Brothers because their branding is so closely tied to The Avengers movies.
Even a few years ago, this issue wasn’t as prevailing as before since there was a dedicated blockbuster season. Summertime was the open invitation for the big-hit movies to go hog wild. As expected, though, blockbuster films began creeping into theaters at times where they normally wouldn’t premier. The first major blockbuster releasing in an otherwise unexpected window that I noticed, was Deadpool back in 2016. Releasing in February of that year, Deadpool went on to pull major financial success in theaters, at a point in the year where we were still dealing with the January dumping ground runoff, as well as your expected romance films. There wasn’t a whole lot of competition for Deadpool to fight, because it was releasing at a point in the year where this stuff wasn’t expected, yet that financial home run for 20th Century Fox meant that other companies would soon follow suit in spacing out their “summer movies” to other points in the year. Not to keep picking on Disney (although I love doing it), but when theaters were open, there was at least a ninety-percent chance that something involving the Disney branding was in theaters no matter the season; be that a Marvel movie, something from their animated studios, or any given remake. This “open season” for the blockbuster competition meant that we started seeing far more big-budget studio releases pump out throughout the year, instead of just staying within the late April to September periods.
Movie theater screens have become plagued by waves of unoriginal ideas, slowly but surely killing the indie market to make way for the newest comic book movie made by one of a list of interchangeable directors (let’s be real here, the actual directors of these movies are the producers). I inherently have no issues with the cavalcade of sequels and remakes, but their oversaturation has choked out the smallest of competition. Nowadays, there’s only a tiny handful of modern directors that can drive in the crowds like a comic book movie can (there’s a bit more than this but for the sake of brevity): Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, and Quintin Tarantino (who’s apparently retiring soon). Those three men (coincidentally straight and White) are the last bastion of a bygone era; they make (mostly) original films that can add a level of narrative complexity into their scripts, and still drive in blockbuster crowds. I was hit with surprise as when I was trying to reserve my tickets for One Upon a Time… in Hollywood last year, that almost all the seats were gone for opening weekend; you don’t ever see this with most other indie filmmakers. But when I reserved my tickets for Parasite, around five seats were taken in an auditorium that seats around forty to fifty.
What does this mean for indie filmmaking?
Thankfully, indie filmmaking is still here to stay. Although the likes of Disney have gobbled up independent filmmakers by the dozen to direct comic book movies, smaller creators are still surviving in the current film landscape. If it wasn’t for streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and so forth, we’d probably be singing a different tune. Streaming services have become the newest place to find more experimental filmmaking, since the multiplex has been overrun by mega-corporations battling it out for the highest box office numbers. Smaller films still see release in theaters, but they’re not as common as before, and they’re usually within your average multiplex for two weeks maximum to make way for the newest blockbuster. Streaming services don’t have this issue, since they can compile together as large of a library as they can afford, which means that smaller films that may not ask for high contractual payouts from streaming can make it to these major services, and draw more eyeballs. Parasite is a fantastic example of this, since after it struck gold within last year’s Academy Awards, an exclusivity deal was struck with Hulu to solely stream on that platform, which in turn drove a much larger audience than it otherwise would have.
As COVID-19 continually ravages our world, we’ve seen how much damage it’s done to the movie industry: smaller theaters have had to close, larger chains have filed for bankruptcy, and many blockbuster films like Tenet have either been delayed, or have headed straight to streaming/VOD. Independent films were put into this position far before big-budget films, but with the theaters all closed, and more people (supposedly) staying home than not, streaming has become the most viable and cheap way to watch movies. Every streaming service on the planet has a large back catalog of films to cycle through, many of which are these smaller releases, meaning that those people who would otherwise just go see a few movies a year — usually the big ones — have given smaller films a try. I’ve seen this for myself with my family, who usually don’t see any of the “artsy-fartsy” movies I rave about unless: a) I drag them to see it in the theater, or b) I won’t shut up about it to a point they get so frustrated that they finally watch it on Blu Ray or streaming.
More and more, it looks like theaters are just going to be glorified amusement parks, and I can take that or leave it. While I’m sad that there will be a point in time where a large majority of the films I’m interested in won’t be playing in theaters (we’re arguably already there), I’m still glad they’re being made. While the industry titans will constantly duke it out to see who makes the more millions than the other, I can at least take comfort in knowing I can stay home from the craziness of the theater, and just watch a good movie.
If you’re one of those people who don’t feel they have anything to watch, who’re usually those people who go out to see only a few movies a year, here’s a list of newer, diverse, “smaller” (taking a few liberties with the definition of smaller but bear with me here) films you can catch right now on major streaming services if you missed them the first go-around:
Burning (2018) — Netflix
Uncut Gems (2019) — Netflix
A Silent Voice (2016) — Netflix
Train to Busan (2016) — Netflix
Climax (2019) — Prime Video
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) — Prime Video
Hereditary (2018) — Prime Video
Detective Pikachu (2019) — HBO Max
Stuber (2019) — HBO Max
The Hate U Give (2018) — HBO Max
Abominable (2019) — Hulu
Instant Family (2018) — Hulu
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) — Hulu
