Are 1930's style movies bad for the box office?

A

Aspiring Mogul

I've been thinking about this. Consider my hypothesis.

1) John Carter is an old tale, and most people know it's a novel from way back when, before electric typewriters. And it burned.

2) Sky Captain is a failed movie set in the tone of the 1930's, and, despite Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, it also burned.

So retro themes going back to the 1930's will not work. What do you think?
 
Yeah, The Artist totally blew, too. :bag:

Note: The Artist did not blow.

How's The Great Gatsby going to fare? :hmm:

Fwiw, John Carter was just a terribly made film. Really terrible. It takes a lot to impress me with terrinleness like that... but they did it.

Sky Captain was pretty bad as well, but looked pretty cool. The story behind it getting made is even more incredible, starting with that one dude alone on his Apple II.

A large chunk of Evita was set in the thirties. That was a great flick adaptation. :cool:

I think your hypothesis needs some work.

Edit: Oh dear. Just remembered that Gatsby was in the 20's, not 30's. Oh well. Close enough.
 
I think it was because those movies didn't appeal to the general populace. Though saying that I liked John Carter, it took me back to when I first watched Star Wars. (John Carter isn't really retro 30's though.)

Sky Captain was just a poor film. I do remember when Angelina Jolie was on the poster for it, but she was on screen for like 10 minutes.

I think it's possible to do a retro 30's sci-fi film, just you need a good story and execution. Is there any others apart from Sky Captain?
 
I enjoyed the hell out of Sky Captain. Still re-watch it on occasion! Not a great movie by a long stretch, but it's fun. But, yeah, it did tank.

My armchair analyst thoughts? It was too different. It was the first fully greenscreen film in the US if I recall. It was telling a story in a style that hadn't been popular for 70 years (Indiana Jones being an exception, but that was done in a way that if you weren't familiar with the serial roots, you would still enjoy it).

Compare that to, as mentioned in another thread, Avatar. They did something different (look at our new 3D!) and offset that with something familiar (a more familiar story). They also had modern relatable characters, rather than characters that were more charictures, which was the style Sky Captain grew out of. Faithful to the roots, and great for those who are fans of that style. But they're a small minority.

As I'm babbling, I wonder if Sky Captain would have done better had they spent some time updating the characters. It would also probably do better now rather than 8 years ago, given the upswing in steampunk popularity.

I think I need to re-watch Castle In The Sky this evening.
 
JoshL said:
Compare that to, as mentioned in another thread, Avatar. They did something different (look at our new 3D!) and offset that with something familiar (a more familiar story). They also had modern relatable characters, rather than characters that were more charictures, which was the style Sky Captain grew out of. Faithful to the roots, and great for those who are fans of that style. But they're a small minority.
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Avatar's technology was top of class and whilst I felt like I was in a video game, it was impressive. With Sky Captain, I felt like I was watching a green screen movie. The backgrounds felt too fake, the greenscreen work felt too fake, it was all just, to me, very fake. Coupled with an average storyline and characters without depth, I can see why it didn't work too well..
Plus there wasn't the same hype as Avatar. There was a little hype within the filmmaking community about the green screening, somewhat similar to the hype about Act of Valour and it's use of DSLRs. Most of the audience doesn't know about the technicality of it, so whereas Act of Valour is a Navy film with a big marketing budget, I feel Sky Captain was really a niche film that didn't market itself too well.
 
Aspiring Mogul said:
John Carter was not 1930's, you're right, but I'm wondering why Sky Captain failed - I saw it when it came out, and it was pretty good.
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So you ask a question about 1930’s stye films but you really mean
SciFi films set in the 1930’s but then it turns out you are asking why
“Sky Captain” (a movie you liked) failed. Crazy way to get to your point.

I hope you get the answer you’re looking for. I don’t know why “Sky
Captain” failed other than to state the obvious: not enough people paid
to see it in the theater. If you want to draw the conclusion that the
reason was the “1930’s style” then you have drawn a conclusion that
most moguls have drawn. That’s why we have seen so few 1930’s style
SciFi films since 2004.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could know for sure why audiences don’t go
see a specific film? The producer who can look at past films and then
know for certain what films will fail and what films will succeed will only
make films that succeed. But we keep coming back to “nobody knows
anything.”

I wonder if it comes down to the same old thing? A story and characters
the general audience relates to. Despite all the tech available then and
now and in the future I have this belief that what an audience really wants
to see is a great story with characters they can relate to. Set that in any
era or any style and people will pay to see it. A 10 year old who has grown
up with video games and sophisticated CG efx can still watch and enjoy
the original "Star Wars" - which by the way was a "1930's style" movie
updated to a 1970's perspective that plays well with a 2010's audience.
 
directorik said:
So you ask a question about 1930’s stye films but you really mean
SciFi films set in the 1930’s but then it turns out you are asking why
“Sky Captain” (a movie you liked) failed. Crazy way to get to your point.
Click to expand...

It was late, and I just came out of a big trial.


I don’t know why “Sky
Captain” failed other than to state the obvious: not enough people paid
to see it in the theater.
Click to expand...

That's a tautalogy - as in it's true because it's true.


I wonder if it comes down to the same old thing? A story and characters
the general audience relates to. Despite all the tech available then and
now and in the future I have this belief that what an audience really wants
to see is a great story with characters they can relate to. Set that in any
era or any style and people will pay to see it. A 10 year old who has grown
up with video games and sophisticated CG efx can still watch and enjoy
the original "Star Wars" - which by the way was a "1930's style" movie
updated to a 1970's perspective that plays well with a 2010's audience.
Click to expand...

SW was not a 1930's style movie, because the sets were not retro - at least that's how I would define it.

Yes, nobody knows anything, but I have read the biography of some producers, thanks to you, and they say you can often make a good guess based on past experience. It's sort of like real estate, actually.
 
It wasn't 1930's but Captain America was 1940's sci-fi and it did pretty well. But I see your point.

It seems that ever since Raiders of the Lost Ark ( the greatest movie in the wordl, BTW) came out, studios have been trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle that film was. So, movies set anywhere from the 20's through the 40's and featuring either supernatural or sci-fi elements have been the target.

So you end up with movies like Sky Captain, The Mummy, The Pantom, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, parts of Sucker Punch, etc...

But what a lot of studios don't seem to get is that movies like Raiders are great because they're just well made films, and just by setting the story in a certain time with certain types of plot elements is not going to guarantee a well made film, much less a good box office return.
 
Rik, you said that the audience wants good movies and good characters they can relate to. I agree with that, and I want to agree with that.

But "The Secret of Nimh" was a great animated movie, and it didn't do so well; Sky Captain was also a good movie, or at least a fun one, and it also did poorly. So, as you said, there may be no correlation.

Oh, yes, there's no accounting for taste - lots of people actually like Episode 1.
 
Whether a movie is "good" or not is completely subjective. But even if a movie is generally thought of that way, there are a lot of things that need to happen at once (a kind of perfect storm of things) to make a movie successful. The current thread on here discussing the success of Avatar gives a lot of clues to that...
 
Zensteve said:
What makes retro different from a period piece, btw?
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Counting your examples (all of which I enjoyed, as an aside!) I think the distinction is a period piece tries to replicate the era, whereas a retro (I'm sure there's a better genre term) replicates the fictional style of the era. Dick Tracey is a great example, since the live action film was very much done in the style of the original comics. Whereas Sky Captain isn't based on anything from the 30's, but looks like it COULD have been.

It's all blurry and indistinct, but there does seem to be a distinction that COULD be made.
 
Aspiring Mogul said:
SW was not a 1930's style movie, because the sets were not retro - at least that's how I would define it.
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You were very unclear in your original post.

Lucas has said many time that his inspiration for "Star Wars" was
the Buck Rogers serials which started in the late 1930's. It had that
"style". But since your posts have been unclear and change then I
need to bow out - I don't know what your point is. In my opinion the
"Star Wars" sets were retro (look at sci-fi films of the 1960's and 70's)
and the entire film had a very 1930's style.

Aspiring Mogul said:
Rik, you said that the audience wants good movies and good characters they can relate to. I agree with that, and I want to agree with that.

But "The Secret of Nimh" was a great animated movie, and it didn't do so well; Sky Captain was also a good movie, or at least a fun one, and it also did poorly. So, as you said, there may be no correlation.
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I didn't say or suggest that every movie that YOU feel has good
characters they can relate to will succeed. Many film YOU love will
not succeed. But all films that have succeeded have touched an
audience in a very real way. And that doesn't mean every film that
has succeeded will be one YOU love or even like. There have been
some terrible movies with poor plots and terrible, unrelatable
characters that have made a lot of money. I am unconvinced that
"1930's style" has much to do with why a film does not succeed.

I still believe that a movie with a 1930's style (at least they way
I understand it if not the way you mean it) can succeed if the story
is good and the characters people can relate to. No matter how fun
"Sky Captain" is, I don't think it had either. And the general audience
sure didn't.
 
I'll have to watch Sky Captain again, Rik, but I do think the characters were fun.

As for SW, I don't see it as a 1930's type retro - the sets were pretty modern, and, unlike the older Flash Gordon/Captain Video episodes I remember, SW had a look of the used-future, where not everything was pristine clean. And George Lucas said his inspiration was the "Hidden Fortress" by Akiro Kurosawa and, above all, "Hero of a Thousand Faces" by the late Professor Joe Campbell.
 
Zensteve said:
What makes retro different from a period piece, btw?
Click to expand...




I think the biggest difference is that it is done in the STYLE of the period, rather than actually taking place in that period..... however, it is of course possible for it to be both.



But I can make a period piece about medieval times, but I certainly can't do it in the style of film they had back then.
 
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