 Nerine Shatner Friendly House
This non profit organization is one of the nation's first residential
homes for women recovering from alcohol and substance abuse.
Donate
Here>>>
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Hollywood
Charity
Horse Show
For the past several years, William Shatner has spearheaded the HCHS
which features some of the best western reining riders in the country
while simultaneously raising money for charity.
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Here>>>
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William
Shatner also
Supports:
 March
of
Dimes Canada
 The Jewish
National Fund
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| Blockbuster Sequels |
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Posted by: LeopardHead on Friday, May 24, 2002 - 12:43 AM
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As summer approaches, it seems like every big budget movie is vying for the lead as the summer blockbuster hit. It got me thinking - what is a blockbuster, exactly? Is it a movie that opens at forty million and drops off the following weekend? Or is it one that gains momentum slowly, then performs well all summer and then into the fall in the foreign markets? I suppose the most obvious example is the one that opens big and stays there for weeks and weeks - the studio executive's dream movie. |
May 23, 2002
Blockbuster Sequels
As summer approaches, it seems like every big budget movie is vying for the lead as the summer blockbuster hit. It got me thinking - what is a blockbuster, exactly? Is it a movie that opens at forty million and drops off the following weekend? Or is it one that gains momentum slowly, then performs well all summer and then into the fall in the foreign markets? I suppose the most obvious example is the one that opens big and stays there for weeks and weeks - the studio executive's dream movie. I wonder what makes the audience come back to certain movies enough to generate this kind of result.
So far this summer season it seems like Spiderman is the obvious winner. I did manage to see it last week, and I enjoyed the story and the dazzling effects. I especially appreciated the fact that the main character was full of achingly teenage awkwardness and angst. It made him likeable and approachable. The way the movie ended clearly left a large opening for a sequel.
With sequels the challenge seems especially huge - how to get your audience to come back for more, time and time again? I think the Star Trek movies are a good example of how to accomplish this goal. With the original cast, there was a family we knew would perform in predictable ways - McCoy would be emotional, Spock would be logical, and Kirk would be somewhere in between. We would show up to the theater to see what interesting dilemma they would be confronted with and how they would overcome its obstacles. I'm not as familiar with the Next Generation's family, but I'm sure the dynamic is a similar one - the Star Trek family must band together to defeat their threatening universe challenge.
Other successful sequels that come to mind have done a similar feat - Star Wars, Terminator, Aliens, Indiana Jones - and more recently, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Harry Potter, all have been faced with this challenge. The failure would be the movie that disappoints and results in the moviegoer's refusal to come back for another one. So far, the Star Trek movies and the other successful sequels seemed to have avoided this problem by sticking to the formulas that have resulted in their becoming blockbuster sequels.
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