Andrew posted recently about Hollywood’s record box-office year, and how rumors of the end of the Blockbuster Model are premature, at best. His comment about the success of female-centered stories Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen got me wondering what else we can learn from looking over the year end results at the box-office.
Turns out despite some successful trends, there’s still work to be done.
The Mary Sue has the numbers on female directors: Of the top 100 grossing films in 2013, a mere 2 were made by women: Carrie, directed by Kimberly Pierce, and Frozen, co-directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee. That’s pretty dismal.
We also discussed the Bechdel Test early this fall. The Bechdel Test determines the level of characterization for females in a film. To pass, a film must meet three criteria. 1) It must contain least two named female characters who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. The test offers no assessment of a film’s quality (great movies can fail, terrible movies can pass), but is helpful for gauging the state of the industry as it pertains to stories about half of the entire world.
The Escapist breaks down the top 50 grossing films by their Bechdel Test results. This year, films that failed the test grossed $2.66 Billlion while films that passed the test grossed $4.22 Billion. That’s a positive movement for those of us interested in equity of roles, stories, and representation.
(Worth noting is that Escapist gave a “special exception” to Gravity, since it only featured 2 characters, 1 of whom is female. Not sure why that merits an exception, since the test is simply mechanical and not a judge of character or quality. Gravity fails the test.)
The general queasiness about a lack interest in African-American stories from “general audiences” continues to prove unfounded. 2013 saw a handful of box-office successes that centered on various African-American stories, including 42, The Best Man Holiday, The Butler, and 12 Years a Slave. Even the tiny Sundance success Fruitvale Station was able to find an audience.
The lesson here is obvious: audiences enjoy engaging stories, regardless of whether the main characters are black or white, or hobbits or monsters (inc). Why that remains hard to grasp is beyond me.
The past year also offered encouragement for new stories in this year’s cinematic returns (though Andrew’s caution on this is warranted). While re-boots and sequels dominate the top 10 grossing films of the year (only Frozen and Gravity are screen originals), six of the next 10 films are new stories to the movies (World War Z, The Croods, The Heat, We’re the Millers, The Conjuring, Identity Thief). While that list may not include the year’s best, they still indicate an interest in new material.
Even those sci-fi originals that underwhelmed (I always worry about those), Pacific Rim, Elysium, Oblivion, made their way into the top 50. Which leads us to one final lesson: the US Box-Office is not the only, or even most, important Hollywood market these days. Pacific Rim, the gorgeous but stilted Guillermo del Toro epic, only brought home $100,000,000 in the US, falling $90,000,000 short of recouping its budget. But overseas, the rock’em-sock’em robot fest grossed an additional $300,000,000,. Making it an unqualified success for the studio.
