Summer 2012 in Review

So, how was your summer? Hollywood's coming off a very slow weekend, where not a single new release made it into the top five, and numbers were so low that an anti-Obama doc elbowed its way onto the chart. In spite of a bad May and a bad August, the studios did see a decent profit, and the money's still rolling in from overseas, but considering how promising the summer slate looked at the beginning of the season, this has been a pretty disappointing few months.

Oh, the most highly anticipated films did great business, just like people expected. "Avengers" is now the third highest grossing film of all time. Most of the other franchise sequels were also profitable, but mostly did a little worse than their previous installments, including "The Dark Knight Rises," "Expendables 2," "Ice Age: Continental Drift," "MIB 3," and, "The Bourne Legacy." We found out that even though "Amazing Spider-man" was supposed to be a reboot of the Spider-man series, it performed like a sequel instead, proving once and for all that it was too soon for a new Spidey series.

Outright bombs include "Rock of Ages," "Dark Shadows," the "Total Recall" reboot, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," and perhaps most embarrassing, the "Battleship" movie. This summer also saw the outright failure of an Adam Sandler comedy for the first time in recent memory. "That's My Boy," featuring Sandler and Andy Samberg, only made back half of its budget, perhaps signaling a reversal of fortune for the king of idiot comedies. You can also add "The Watch," and Sasha Baron Cohen's "The Dictator" to the pile of comedies that overspent and didn't connect with audiences.

Bright spots were mostly smaller films like "Magic Mike," "The Campaign," and "Ted," that found traction amid all the action spectaculars, plus the usually dependable animated kids' genre, with "Brave" and "Madagascar 3." Others squeaked by, like "Snow White and the Hunstman" and "Prometheus." They only barely covered their budgets with domestic receipts, but they were well received enough that they're both being prepped for sequels. As always, there have been a few sleeper arthouse hits for more mature audiences, including "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," "Hope Springs," and "Moonrise Kingdom."

But let's get down to the real issue here. This summer, for all the hyped up marketing and for all the reappearances of all these familiar box-office champs like Batman and Spider-man and Bourne, was pretty boring. There was really only one must-see film that captured the popular zeitgeist and everybody turned out to see, which was "The Avengers." Maybe the fortunes of "The Dark Knight Rises" were affected by the Aurora shooting, but I don't think it would have matched up to the performance of "The Dark Knight" in any case. And "Spider-man" wasn't really "Spider-man," but a new version that no one was really excited about. And though Jason Bourne gets namechecked quite a bit in "The Bourne Legacy," Jeremy Renner was the leading man instead of Matt Damon.

I've never been so struck by franchise fatigue. It felt like every movie I saw was trying to set things up for sequels, like "Bourne" and "Prometheus," or trying to live up to earlier successes like "Total Recall" and "MIB 3." I think this was also the summer that overmarketing was finally recognized as a widespread problem by the mainstream media. The ridiculous amount of preview footage released for "The Amazing Spider-man" became as big a news item as the film itself. It became an oft repeated story that fans would work themselves up into a frenzy in anticipation of one of these films, and come away disappointed when it failed to reach those impossible expectations.

I haven't had a chance to see nearly as many of the summer films of 2012 as I'd like, but there aren't many that I thought were worth the trip to the theater. "Brave," "Prometheus," and "Magic Mike" were my favorites, simply because they had a different vibe than anything else, and they could stand on their own as singular movies, even if "Prometheus" was clearly referencing the original "Alien" every five minutes. However, I don't think there were any films that could be an awards contender when Oscar season rolls around, and there's usually one or two of these that emerge from the studios every summer, like "The Help" or "Inception," or "District 9."

The summer of 2012 wasn't the disaster that the summer of 2011 was. You'll see no doomsday write-ups about disappearing audiences or the end of the theatrical distribution model. However, it wasn't a very good summer either. Too many of the films were familiar and formulaic, and the audiences weren't very enthusiastic. Hollywood made money, but I don't think it left a very good impression.

Fortunately, there's always next year.
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