The superlative success of Marvelâs Black Panther has inspired pundits to reach for ever-bigger adjectives, but sometimes hyperbole can lead them in the wrong direction. Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson learned that lesson the hard way on Tuesday when he wrote up the filmâs five-weekend hot streak with an article entitled, âBlack Panther Should Terrify Every Hollywood Studio.â Many bristled at the language that framed this black-led film as some sort of cinematic super-predator, while Mendelsonâs specific take â that Black Panther is so successful that it has left a trail of âvictimsâ like Red Sparrow and Tomb Raider â came in for its fair share of online scorn, too.
Then, as Twitter was still taking Mendelson to task yesterday, Indiewire wandered into the fray with its own spin on the story, this one bearing the headline, âIs the Success of Black Panther Actually Hurting Other Films? Nobody Knows, and Thatâs Hollywoodâs Real Problem.â This is the point when I muttered, âShit, this is going to become a whole thing, huh?â I began to imagine the next several weeks of studio shareholder reports and Deadline.com box-office postmortems where executives would blame their underperforming titles on Black Pantherâs dominance, their fire fueled in part by box-office analysts whoâve shrugged and said, âHey, maybe, you never know.â
Well, letâs nip this in the bud. If your movie hasnât lived up to expectations this spring, thatâs the fault of the way your movie was made and marketed. Donât hang your failure on Black Pantherâs success.
Can a pop-cultural event be so massive that it sucks all the air out of the room? Sure, although that was more of an issue in the 1980s and 1990s â when the cinematic demands on our attention were comparatively sparse â than it is in 2018, where weâre bred to multitask and jump from medium to medium so often that some people can get phone withdrawals during a two-hour movie. While Black Panther has been Topic A for the last several weeks, its ability to cause all this conversation hasnât brought down strong competitors. The truth is, the other movies in the multiplex simply werenât all that strong to begin with.
Mendelson notes that last year, March titles Beauty and the Beast, Logan, Power Rangers, and The Boss Baby all thrived, while this year, âthe biggies of March 2018 (Red Sparrow, Wrinkle in Time, Tomb Raider, Pacific Rim: Uprising, and Ready Player One) are getting hurt by the mid-February smash that wonât die.â Leaving aside that the latter two movies havenât even opened yet, this isnât a terribly accurate comparison to draw. Beauty and the Beast was a gigantic, four-quadrant remake of one of the biggest animated tales ever made, featuring characters that Disney has made millions off of every year since the first filmâs release, while Wrinkle in Time was a film aimed mostly at children based on a book released in 1962. Sure, Logan and Red Sparrow are both R-rated movie-star vehicles, but the former is a comic-book crowd-pleaser with Hugh Jackman in his signature role, and it was always going to open bigger than a grim spy film where J.Law goes to blow-job school.
I never expected major returns from Tomb Raider, which couldnât even put out a successful sequel when Angelina Jolie was a megastar, let alone during this go-round with Alicia Vikander, whose Oscar-winning halo has been tarnished after a string of flops. Similarly, Pacific Rim: Uprising is following a first film that failed to impress domestically, so if its sequel doesnât set the world on fire, that is hardly Black Pantherâs fault. None of the films Iâve named have earned the superlative reviews given to Ryan Cooglerâs superhero movie; in fact, on Rotten Tomatoes, all of those would-be âvictimsâ earned a score around 50 percentage points beneath Black Pantherâs 97 percent fresh rating.
Even typing that reminds me that at this time last year, some analysts and executives blamed Rotten Tomatoes for the bad box office when Baywatch and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel both sank. It wasnât the fault of the critic-aggregating website then, and itâs not the fault of the massive superhero movie now. When the studios make truly exceptional tentpole films, people will go to them, as Black Panther has amply proven: Its tenure at the top of the box office for five weeks is a feat last achieved by films like Titanic, Avatar, The Fugitive, and The Sixth Sense, all critically acclaimed hits that exemplify the best traits of studio moviemaking. If Hollywood should be terrified by anything right now, itâs that their current underperformers canât hold a candle to those classic titles.