Summer of sequels, part 2
Warner Bros. lifted the embargo for critics' reviews of The Dark Knight Rises on Monday, setting loose an onslaught of rave reviews for the third installment in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. The tastemakers ate up every bit of this nearly three-hour feat of cinematic mastery -- the narrative is said to be as epic as the filmmaking. It's already scored a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and Peter Travers even called it, "the King Daddy of summer movie epics."
But does any of this come as a surprise? After all, Nolan has delivered some of the decade's most mind-blowing blockbusters, two of which were in this very trilogy. The second film, The Dark Knight, was the highest-grossing film of 2008 by a landslide, hitting the box-office billion mark worldwide, due in great part to Heath Ledger's immortal turn as The Joker.
We know what kind of spectacle and grandeur to expect from Nolan. As a matter of fact, we know what to expect from most of this summer's tent-poles.
The season began with The Avengers, to which audiences showed up in droves, repeatedly. It shattered 13 box office records at the North American box office, including biggest opening weekend for any film, highest cumulative gross and quickest ascent to $100 million. Of course, this all-star superhero insta-classic also starred a slew of characters from other major blockbusters.
The summer calendar is chock-full of prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots of stories from other mediums. And by other mediums, readers might be quick to assume comics and books, standard adaptations to role out of Hollywood. But in May, audiences the chance to see a true narrative marvel; Peter Berg managed to helm an entire motion picture from the seed of a pen and pencil game. A board game, if you're feeling fancy.
That movie was Battleship and was panned by critics, but still earned a sizable chunk of change in theaters. Despite its hollow premise that shouldn't carry a film past an opening fight sequence, the audience was there well after opening weekend. That's because they knew what to expect, which can almost justify a $12 movie ticket. Almost.
This isn't the first season of sequelitis, but it's reaching epidemic proportions. In 2011, there were 9 part twos, 5 part threes, 6 fours, 5 fives, 2 sevens and an eight. The average sequel in 2011 was Part 3.7. It makes sense; there's an enormous amount of pressure on summer movies -- the season generates as much as 40% of the annual domestic box office revenue.
This season's familiar flicks like, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Men in Black III and this week's Ice Age: Continental Drift<, are in great part responsible for ticket sales rising 14% this year, not to mention a 17% rise in theater attendance. But are sequels enough?
Sequels are an assurance for the studio and for the audience. Financiers can bank on a solid sum in the neighborhood of the original, and a sequel practically markets itself as a safe bet for the audience.
Despite the encouraging figures, Hollywood is in something of a creative slump. That's not to say that original films aren't hitting theaters; they are, and in several cases with marked success. Moonrise Kingdom was praised as an exquisite see-it-twice masterpiece, as was The Intouchables.
But those successes don't hold a candle to the reboots. Chances are more likely that you saw The Amazing Spider-Man (which director Marc Webb started developing just three years after Spider-Man 3) or Rock of Ages (how that movie managed to be made will remain one of humankind's greatest mysteries).
Come Thursday at midnight, thousands of devoted fans will ooh and aah at the technical marvels and directorial prowess that Nolan surely showcases in The Dark Knight Rises. Just maybe, though, some viewers will walk away wondering what kind of treasure might have been if Nolan had thrown his weight behind a magnum opus that was totally and completely fresh. Will you?
Allegra Tepper is a Summer 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here. Follow her on Twitter at @allegraceline
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.