Once upon a time – not so long ago as it seems – the box office results ended with our American borders. Oh sure, international dollars were counted, but they didn’t really matter. They were icing on a delicious, successful, million dollar cinematic cake. A hit was measured purely by American dollars and the red, white, and blue butts in seats it equaled.
But that’s changed. As of 2004, studios and producers were eying overseas gross, noting with some surprise that summer blockbusters did better internationally. Often, the films flopped stateside, but succeeded beyond wildest projections overseas. At the very least, the international take helped staunch gaping wounds, and balance (and even cancel out) the film’s budget and marketing costs. Hollywood studios began wondering if they should tweak storylines to be more globally oriented, or perhaps devote more of the marketing budget abroad.
2011 would appear to be the summer that the experiment yielded major results. If you want to be really bold, you can follow in Forbes’ footsteps and declare 2011 to be the year America was “an afterthought” to studios, and the international profit was all that really mattered. It’s certainly the first summer that I can remember where every box office report featured “But [x] is a smash hit internationally” as the second paragraph’s topic sentence, instead of cramming in France’s cumulative gross as a casual closing factoid.
It’s also the first summer where studios admit their products were (and continue to be) shaped by international tastes. “If we have storylines that at script-stage feel too U.S.-centric, especially with big action or science-fiction movies, we try to come up with solutions that will make the movie feel more global,” Tomas Jegeus, co-president of Fox, told the AP. Jerry Bruckheimer admitted that a star’s global appeal helped sway casting decisions in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Disney is quite open about Cars 2's storyline being shaped for a wider market. Cars, with its focus on small-town and retro Americana, didn’t connect with worldwide audiences. Japanese toilet jokes, Mater, and Michael Caine do. (We can always wonder why Larry the Cable Guy crosses all cultural divides, but the answer might undo all we know about the universe.)
Release dates are also being dictated by the global market. Thor opened overseas before it did in the U.S, earning $108 million worldwide before coming in to open American wallets, and neatly undoing the persistent belief that Marvel and DC heroes just didn’t translate well outside of America. Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon held its premiere in Moscow, which might be the glittery embodiment of Forbes’ claim that America no longer matters. Transformers is a franchise built on a toy. It may be the epitome of a corporate product. And it had its premiere where the Bolsheviks marched, secure in the knowledge that Russia would generate more revenue than Americans, who are believed to be bored with blockbusters.
The new (not really) bankable behemoth raises some very interesting and perplexing questions about the state of cinema. If Americans are supposed to be the consumers of loud, obnoxious, and thinly scripted movies, why are international audiences (usually believed to be the bastion of sophistication, intelligence, and taste) eating up what we reject? Why did they like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and we did not? Isn’t its produced-for-a-paycheck mentality exactly what the world hates about America and its economic domination? If the international audience flocks to movies because of the star power, why are we believed to be the most celebrity obsessed? There are fascinating paradoxes at play here, and I don’t begin to understand them all.
And what does it mean for that ever weakening script if studios plot their films to an even wider demographic? Cars 2 may be the harbinger of the future, a film stitched around cultural references, jokes, and the character who sold the most toys. Will future blockbusters feature token scenes in Japan, Brazil, and Thailand purely to scoop up buckets of money? Undoubtedly. On the other hand, this may have positive effects for multiracial casting. It’s been noted by numerous critics and columnists that Fast Five’s cast actually looked like the 21s century population. A recognition that the world isn’t just made up of white people can only be a good thing, even if it’s purely mercenary.
It’s a bigger, hungrier world out there, and America is becoming smaller in the spending scheme of things. It’s the worldwide butts that are going to keep the summer seasons going. We may find ourselves the last country to get any major movie release, which is definitely going to make us feel a little put out. We may find ourselves in a world where Captain Britain (he exists!), Alpha Flight, Kamen Rider, Pikachu and Paddington are more profitable than anything tailored to American sensibilities. Perhaps the originality (and the sheer desperation of being last in line to see anything) of that – They’re … different than us! But the same! – will get us hungry to see movies again.
