Category Archives: Reviews

Hollywood’s Epic Custody Battle

Will Black Widow Release In Theaters, On Disney+, Or On Digital? - The Direct

Hollywood has always had a lucrative but loveless marriage to the nation’s movie theaters.

For decades, studios and exhibitors have maintained a tense but workable relationship. Sure there have been some knockdown-dragouts, and lamps have been thrown in arguments over things like the cost of a ticket and how long someone should wait before they can see a movie from home.

But things got serious over the weekend. And while mom and dad haven’t filed for divorce yet, it looks like they are getting separated. And the custody battle could change life as you knew it as a moviegoer.

Theater owners on Sunday blasted The Walt Disney Co. for making Marvel’s Black Widow available simultaneously in the home and on the big screen, saying the decision undercut the movie’s box office potential and promoted piracy. It marked rare public in-fighting for an industry that prides itself on private unity.

In a blistering press release from the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the trade organization accused Disney of handcuffing its own film by simultaneous streaming the film and releasing it in theaters, causing the movie to suffer a “stunning collapse in its second weekend in theatrical revenues.” NATO also noted that Widow dropped an unprecedented 41 percent from Friday to Saturday during its opening over the July 9-11 frame.

This is Hollywood eating its own. For years, studios and theater owners had a rough peace accord: a three-month delay between big-screen release and video availability.

But COVID destroyed that treaty. The pandemic forced industries to accomodate a populace sequestered at home, a disaster for companies in the spectating business like movies, theater and sports.

Disney and Warner Bros. have revamped their film slates to accommodate streaming releases, and studios such as Netflix and Amazon Video had already dampened box office revenue, which has remained relatively flat for 25 years.

In a sweeping indictment of all streaming studios, NATO accused Disney of using the virus as a ruse. “Despite assertions that this pandemic-era improvised release strategy was a success for Disney and the simultaneous release model, it demonstrates that an exclusive theatrical release means more revenue for all stakeholders in every cycle of the movie’s life,” NATO said.

This is one parent blaming the other for a child’s fatal disease, when in truth their union had been on the rocks for years.

Since 1995, Americans have bought 1.2 to 1.4 billion movie tickets a year. That’s roughly four movies a year, per American.

Whether that’s a healthy business model is up for debate. Whether it’s a stagnant one is not.

Widow‘s subdued ticket sales, coupled with steep second-weekend declines, suggest that moviegoing is far from returning to normal. And while Disney has not commented on NATO’s accusation, it did note that Widow’s box office has passed $324 million, including revenue from Disney+ Premier Access.

But even that is debatable, NATO claims. It argued that Widow‘s stand-alone box office debut was actually $92-$100 million, a rare swipe at studio veracity.

“One can assume the family-oriented Disney+ household is larger,” the release said. “How much? How much password sharing is there among Disney+ subscribers?”

Ouch.

The way back is unclear. The professional sports world seems to have brokered a rough balance between at-home and in-person spectating, though not without significant casualties (The 2021 Tokyo Olympics, for instance, will be fan-less.) There is money to be made.

So these are not necessarily irreconcilable differences. But, given the stark contrasts over what constitutes a true moviegoing experience, they are irrefutable.

Deja Viewed: True Romance

All of Quentin Tarantino’s films have a confessional element to them. Whether it’s the bawdy interpretation of Like a Virgin lyrics in Reservoir Dogs or a thesis on European fast food in Pulp Fiction, it’s clear the director seasons his films to his own idiosyncratic taste.

So it should come as no surprise that Tarantino calls True Romance, the director’s first script and second produced film, his most autobiographical story.

What is surprising, seeing the movie 28 years later, is just how much Tarantino played out his comic book, fanboy fantasies in the Tony Scott film. And how starkly it stands as a remake of the 1973 Terrence Malick crime classic Badlands.

Sheen and Spacek in Badlands

Released on the heels of Reservoir, Romance had one of the finest casts ever featured in a campy action film. Consider this star power: Brad. Pitt, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer, James Gandolfini, Sam Jackson and Michael Rapaport and Tom Sizemore. And they were supporting stars: Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette anchored the movie.

ReSet in Detroit (for perhaps three street scenes), Romance tells the story of Clarence, a lonely pop culture geek who marries a call girl, steals cocaine from her pimp and sells it in Hollywood. Meanwhile, the owners of the cocaine, the Mob, track them down to reclaim it.

The plot is so entwined with what would become Tarantino’s signature flourishes — operatic violence, rock-infused soundtrack, Mexican standoffs — that it’s easy to miss that the screenplay is an updated retelling, and a harbinger of Tarantino’s emerging filmmaking style.

For the uninitiated, Badlands was the breakout feature film of Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The film’s plot and lead characters were based on Charles Starkweather, 19, and Caril Fugate, 14. In 1958, they embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country, dispatched the National Guard and left seven people dead.

Fulgate and Starkweather, left, and three victims,right.

The film made stars out of director and actors, though the it earned much criticism for its near childlike fascination with the slayings (the movie is told through Fugate’s wide eyes). While Malick did not blanche at the violence (one scene illustrated the slow, agonizing lethality of a gunshot wound to the stomach), some critics excoriated the director for making heroes out of the killers.

Released 20 years later, Tarantino’s story seemed a fuck-you to those critics. Here, Clarence is goaded into violence. He may have ordered a pimp to watch his own execution, but unlike Badlands, the film makes no secret about heralding the killer. Hopper, who plays Clarence’s ex-cop father, praises his son for taking out the trash. Detectives on the hunt admit they can’t help but like the kid. And his wife, a hooker with a heart of gold, keeps cooing in his ear: “You’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”

These tropes would derail a lesser film. Here, they are scaffolding for Tarantino’s ascending narrative tone. In the quarter-century to follow Romance, Tarantino created a distinct directorial strategy: Take an iconic moment or period in American history, and give it the movie ending Americans would have preferred. Consider his most revered successes (spoiler alert):

  • In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Charles Manson’s gang is beaten to death.
  • In Inglorious Bastards, Hitler is burned alive.
  • In Django Unchained, a freed slave avenges Southern injustice.
  • In films like Kill Bill, Grindhouse and Jackie Brown, Tarantino takes B-movie fodder like blaxplooitation, kung fu and even drive-thru commercials and retrofits them with A-list stars, budgets and, most importantly, crowd-pleasing finales.

Although Romance (like Natural Born Killers) was not directed by Tarantino, the movie is a fascinating glimpse into the formative years of one of the nation’s most important filmmakers, as well as a fun glossary of Hollywood A-listers, who were glomming onto Tarantino scripts in the 90’s after Reservoir. Pitt, in particular, is memorable in a stoner role nearly completely ad-libbed. The characters are as deep and complex as a Slip-N-Slide, but just as fun.

All great American artists have a vision of the country. Bruce Springsteen has an America. David Simon has an America. Beyonce has an America. Even Borat has an America, though he calls it Yankeetown.

Quentin Tarantino has an America. An angry, blood-soaked, rock n’ roll America. He may be the Ken Burns of fictional filmmaking: In Tarantino’s hands, America turns ugly fast. But it looks great doing it.