An Autopsy of Bombs: The Fall Guy and Furiosa Edition

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!! THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

This year we’ve had a few notable box office bombs, the most intriguing of which are The Fall Guy and Furiosa.

Like the vast majority of people, I did not see those movies in the theatre, hence their under-performance at the box office. But now both films are available to stream and I recently checked them out to see what, if anything, I missed, and if they deserved to be ignored in the theatre.

Let’s start with The Fall Guy, which is currently available to stream on Peacock.

The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch, was set up to be the big office blockbuster to open the summer movie season when it hit theatres on May 3rd. The film, which stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, had a huge marketing push pre-release, which included a witty bit of banter at the Oscars between the two stars. The film sold itself in a plethora of television ads as an old-fashioned, 1980’s style Hollywood action movie with likeable movie stars (Gosling and Blunt).

But upon release the film fell flat as nobody came out to see it. It was number one at the box office on its opening week, but with a severely subdued haul of $35 million. Not great. It went downhill from there.

It dropped to number two in its second week of release and then fell off a cliff. It ended up making a paltry $180 million in total off of its $120 million budget. In Hollywood accounting, that means it lost a ton of money. (Hollywood accounting means you roughly double the budget to account for marketing and for the theatre’s haul – and the rest goes to the studio – so The Fall Guy is about $240 million underwater)

So why did The Fall Guy fail?

The Fall Guy does have two very charming and beautiful movie stars as its leads, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, who are, you guessed it, very charming and very beautiful. But on the downside, The Fall Guy is a movie no one wanted…and so no one went to see it. Myself included.

The movie is sort of attached to the rather forgettable B-tv series from the 80’s, The Fall Guy, which is second rate Lee Majors material, as Majors is remembered for the Six Million Dollar Man, not The Fall Guy. But The Fall Guy brand doesn’t have a built-in fan base as Gen Xers may remember the show from their childhood but don’t really give a shit about it because it wasn’t beloved, and younger audiences will have absolutely never heard of it.

Another major issue is that The Fall Guy is, frankly, a really bad movie. It features an abysmally incoherent and relentlessly stupid script, as well as stunts that are rather tepid and cinematically mundane.

As charming as Gosling and Blunt are…and they are incredibly charming…they’re not charming enough to tolerate the excruciatingly boring and stupid nonsense going on around them for the duration of this idiotic movie.

In some ways The Fall Guy is meant to be a love letter to stunt men, which I suppose is a nice thought. Stunt men are a different breed (and deserve an Oscar category)…but if you’ve ever met one you know that while their work is often interesting, they often are not.

On the bright side stunt men will always be happy to have you break a chair over their head, which is very cathartic. Truth is I’d rather break a real chair over my head than watch The Fall Guy again.

The Fall Guy’s failure is a stark reminder that wishful thinking from the C Suite of Hollywood studios doesn’t translate into audience interest. The Fall Guy had seemingly everything going for it except for the two things it actually needed, audience interest and good storytelling. Oops.

In conclusion, The Fall Guy most definitely deserved to fail, and it certainly did just that.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on the other hand…

Furiosa is the fifth film in the Mad Max franchise and is a prequel to 2015’s fantastic Fury Road, which received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won six Oscars.

Fury Road didn’t break box office records but it did break more than even making $380 million on a $160 million budget.

In all honesty I am not a Mad Max fanatic. The first movies came out when I was a kid and I didn’t see them in the theatre. I did see them all as a teen on VHS though, and liked most of them (I wasn’t a real fan of Beyond Thunderdome), some a great deal…but it’s not a franchise with which I ever strongly identified despite my respect for it.

When Fury Road came out in 2015 after a thirty-year absence of Mad Max material, I didn’t see in the theatre but caught it on cable…and was absolutely blown away. Fury Road is an astonishing movie and is a monument to director George Miller’s brilliance.

Despite having missed the boat on Fury Road in the theatre, when Furiosa came along I, being the moron that I am, once again didn’t venture out to theatres to see it. In my defense, my time is much more limited now than it was back in 2015 (having kids will do that), so I sort of have an excuse – but not a very good one.

Unfortunately, I was not alone in not seeing Furiosa when it hit theatres on May 24th, as the movie made a measly $172 million during its run against a $168 million budget. The film performed so poorly that it seems likely that the Mad Max franchise may have breathed its last breath. Considering that the franchise’s director, George Miller, is 79, one can assume at the very least that Miller is done making Mad Max movies…which is a shame because he is extraordinarily good at it.

But now Furiosa is streaming on Max and I’ve seen it.

I can report that missing Furiosa in the theatre was a grievous mistake.

Furiosa isn’t perfect by any means. For instance, it isn’t nearly as good as Fury Road. But…it does feature some truly imaginative and original stunt sequences that are breathtakingly spectacular.

The film also features a stoic but solid performance from Anya Taylor-Joy, who lives up to the name of Furiosa with a fire in her eyes that is undeniable.

All of the magic that make George Miller such a dynamic moviemaker are evident in Furiosa, as he shoots his action sequences with a verve and aplomb that are unequalled in our CGI addicted world. (to be fair there is some CGI in Furiosa, but nothing compared to most movies).

As for why a film as good as Furiosa failed, it is difficult to say.

The marketing for Furiosa wasn’t particularly strong, I mean it didn’t move me to go see it, so that could be a reason.

I do recall the marketing being “female driven”, and some have speculated that having a female lead, Anya Taylor-Joy, could have turned off male audiences, so that could be it. People are certainly tired of culture war bullshit in their movies – myself included, and the impression could’ve been given by Furiosa’s marketing that this was a girl power movie…which is kryptonite nowadays for male audiences. But counter to that, that certainly wasn’t the case with Fury Road, which starred Charlize Theron, so it seems to be a thin argument. Although counter to that counter, Tom hardy had a starring role in Fury Road as well, so who knows.

Another reason could be that Furiosa is a prequel and people are tired of prequels and of having to “do the homework” of having to see all the other movies just to understand what is going on in the new movie. I think Marvel definitely suffers from this and maybe Mad Max does now too.

The truth is that Furiosa’s failure is both a mystery and frustrating to me. It’s a mystery because I can’t quite pinpoint what caused it, and it’s frustrating because Mad Max is a perfect action franchise for our times and would be a great franchise for Warner Brothers to mine for film and tv projects going forward. But now with Furiosa’s failure, that won’t happen.

After having seen Furiosa, and having found it to be a very well made, extremely solid piece of action entertainment and a noteworthy bit of Mad Max franchise filmmaking, I really don’t know why people didn’t go see it and why word of mouth wasn’t better and more useful.

To end this discussion, here’s my ranking of Mad Max movies.

5. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome – Not an awful movie but easily the worst of the Mad Max movies.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – This movie is world’s better than Beyond Thunderdome, and is very close in the running with Mad Max and Road Warrior.

3. Mad Max – The original is a down and dirty and disturbing movie that is undeniable.

2. Mad Max: The Road Warrior – The franchise makes the leap into the big time with a gritty and explosive action extravaganza.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road – The best of the best. Truly extraordinary piece of action filmmaking.

And finally…my ratings for The Fall Guy and Furiosa.

THE FALL GUY

Streaming: Peacock

Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT

FURIOSA

Streaming: Max

Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SEE IT!!

Thus concludes today’s autopsy of a bomb…or bombs as the case may be.

 ©2024

Hollywood's Self-Inflicted Box Office Problems

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 57 seconds

There’s been a lot of gnashing of teeth in recent weeks because the box office has been so sluggish, most notably the failures of The Fall Guy and Furiosa, which both painfully underperformed in their opening weekends and beyond.

The Fall Guy had such bad box office numbers it actually went to VOD 17 days after premiering in theatres. Not good for a movie boasting two “movie stars” and a gigantic marketing push.

If one were to look at the dismal box office results this Spring and come away thinking the sky is falling, that would be understandable.

Ever the optimist, let me put your mind at ease though regarding the sky is falling pessimism. The sky isn’t falling regarding the movie business…because it’s already fallen. Many will point to last year’s duel strikes as a reason for this year’s box office gully…but that misses the big picture.

The movie business, like American empire, is a dead man walking. That doesn’t mean it’ll vanish off the face of the earth and never be seen again…no, it just means that it will continue its descent into irrelevancy year after year after year until a giant asteroid comes and wipes us off the earth.

The reasons for this are numerous but here are a few of the major ones. 

The corporatization of Hollywood that began in the Reagan years is now complete. The corporate mindset has destroyed the mid-level budgeted movie in favor of blockbuster hunting, and that has led to bloated budgets, and bad movies. The stark decrease in the quality of cinema is pretty dramatic (with notable exceptions).

Another issue is that movie theatres and the theatre-going experience are both abominable. Theatres throughout the country, thanks again to corporate short-sightedness, are equipped with sub-par projectors which result in a greatly diminished viewing experience. Why go to the theatre and pay all that money when you can have a better visual experience at home on your big screen tv in a darkened living room?

As Sartre once taught us…hell is other people…and that is never more apparent than when you go to the movies. Dipshits and dumbasses talking and looking at their phone throughout a screening makes for a very tense and distracting movie going experience….another issue that is resolved by watching a movie at home.

Add to this that very, very few movies are so culturally compelling that people NEED to see them right away in order to stay in the loop. Barbie and Oppenheimer filled that bill last Summer, but those are definitely outliers. For example, would you be “out of the cultural loop” if you didn’t see Dune II in theatres this winter? It’s now streaming on Max just a few short months after premiering in theatres and you can watch it without all the bullshit of theatres, in the comfort of your own home…and go to the bathroom when you want without missing anything and not have to tell people to shut the fuck up or put their phones away. Will a big budget film like Dune II be diminished at a home theatre? One would expect the answer is ‘yes’ as it was made to be seen on a big screen…but considering when I saw it at a movie theatre I felt like I was watching it under three feet of water because the projector sucked so bad, my answer would be no.

The same is true of Furiosa. I like the Mad Max movies, but I’m not itching to go see Furiosa in the theatre because it isn’t mandatory in order to stay current culturally. So, I’ll see it when it comes to Max in a few months…or sooner.

The same is true for the glut of Marvel movies. For the longest time Marvel movies were must-see because everyone was talking about them….and now they’re not. Marvel movies ran its course but Disney keeps cramming them down our throat expecting the same results. I’m sorry but The Marvels isn’t moving the needle. No one cares.

Speaking of Marvel and Disney, another issue is that the massive success of the Marvel movies pre-2020 totally skewed the expectation IN HOLLYWOOD for what constitutes a successful movie.

Marvel movies routinely hit the billion-dollar mark and that became the standard for success. But that was then and this is now and studios and analysts are delusional about the box office potential for most movies. And that delusion gets baked into the cake regarding the budget for films.

Once again Barbie and Oppenheimer were outliers in this regard, and ironically have done more harm than good in regards to setting expectations for studio executives (and the general public).

For example, spending over $300 million to make a new Indiana Jones movie or Mission Impossible movie, is frankly nuts since neither of those creaky franchises are going to generate the kind of interest that will satiate a billion-dollar box office yearning.

The same is true for the new Marvel movies, as the stars of that franchise and the characters they played, are gone. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is not walking through that door…and I’m sorry but Brie Larson isn’t going to fill that void.

The solution to the Hollywood problem is to change the corporate strategy, and instead of trying to make a billion dollars with a single blockbuster that costs at a minimum $250-300 million to make and another$150-250 million to market, is to make six or seven medium budget films for $50 million or less each with a focus on quality, in the hopes that one of those movies will hit big and fill the coffers.

Examples of what I’m talking about are movies like Parasite, which costs $15 million to make and brought in $262 million at the box office. I understand that Parasite is a remarkable movie from a brilliant filmmaker, but it shows what is possible.

The same is true of movies like Spotlight, which had a $20 million budget and made $98 million. Or even Good Will Hunting, which starred nobodies (Affleck and Damon) and was directed by a non-mainstream guy (Gus Van Sant) on a $10 million budget and raked in $225 million.

The key of course is that the movies have to be good and they have to avoid bloated budgets. The other benefit of making good movies is that more often than not if you make a good movie, it will get Oscar recognition and thus free marketing and a second life at the box office.

It goes without saying that Hollywood will not change its approach if for no other reason than corporations are allergic to actually thinking. And so, the studios will continue to relentlessly bang their heads against the bank vault door in the hopes one of these times it’ll open, even if just for a moment…like it did with Barbie and Oppenheimer, but if Barbie and Oppenheimer type success only comes along every five years or so, that won’t work as a business model.

The bottom line is that Hollywood fucked up their business and fucked up movies in the process…and we are all paying for it and will continue to pay for it for years to come. As a cinephile it gives me no pleasure in saying this but movies, much like popular music, is essentially dying as an artform and is too beholden to corporate interests to be able to save itself.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024