The sad demise of the summer blockbuster
Is this the worst ever summer for blockbuster movies? It feels that way, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. Last week’s critically panned new film, Suicide Squad, is the latest in a series of big-budget turkeys released since May. Other offenders include X-men: Apocalypse, The Legend of Tarzan and Warcraft: The Beginning.
One problem is that, since the massive success of Marvel’s Avengers movies, studios have been desperately striving to create their own “cinematic universes” (when multiple superheroes appear in each other’s films, ramping up profitability). But as Warner Bros has discovered with Suicide Squad (which features a “sluggish” cameo by Batman), this isn’t easy to pull off. Other films such as Independence Day: Resurgence strained credibility by “crowbarring” in Chinese characters to appeal to the burgeoning Chinese market.
Don’t assume that Hollywood has forgotten how to make decent blockbusters, said Lauren Sarner on Inverse.com. The reason it feels that way is because the industry used to release all its big-budget films over the summer, with a few at Christmas. Now, the biggest ones are so big, they scare off the others, which are instead released at other times of year. Hence, major films such as The Revenant and The Jungle Book were released earlier in the year – and there will be more to come this autumn.