When we look at many of our favorite movies over the years, it’s natural to think that any of them were always viewed as beloved classics from the day they premiered.  Some of them have no doubt, but there are many others that didn’t find their way into our hearts until many years later.  Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of timing, and that some movies were either overlooked upon their first release, or they fell victim to poor marketing that didn’t effectively allow the movies to find their target audience.  For whatever reason, Hollywood often has a hard time predicting how movies will perform, both in the short run and the long run.  No doubt, the business of the industry is centered around profitability and the more a film is able to make a return on their grosses in their immediate release the better.  That’s why there’s such a reliance on franchise building and sequel bating in the film industry, especially if your film costs are in the $100 million range.  But, there are the films that are stuck in the middle, those that are ambitious but hard to market that unfortunately are held to the same standard of the blockbusters.  It may seem unfair, but Hollywood is a commercial business, and the only way money gets spent is if those providing the funding can see the potential for big returns.  Thankfully, many filmmakers have become good at pitching projects that do push the boundaries and try something different while at the same time appealing to a large audience.  And these ambitious experiments often turn into some of the greatest cinematic wonders that we love today.  Unfortunately, they are also films that make Hollywood weary of failure.

This is common around Awards season, and this year in particular is a strong example of many ambitious projects under-performing according to the high standards of Hollywood.  The last month, we saw a strong collection of releases from some of Hollywood’s most acclaimed talent, which included Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs and the Sandra Bullock starrer Our Brand is Crisis.  All were heavily marketed as potential Awards season champions and quality entertainment that was sure to give the season a more sophisticated identity over the bombastic dumb fun of the summer.  Unfortunately, apart from Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, every other ambitious film from the last month failed at the box office.  Entertainment Weekly recently ran an article discussing this very thing in their November 13 issue (read it here) in which they dubbed the string recent disappointments “SHOCKTOBER.”  While Hollywood should fret about a pattern of underwhelming returns at the box office, at the same time I don’t think that it’s also fair to say that it was the movies themselves that were to blame.  Really, even though the recent box office has been sluggish, it’s not a reflection of the quality of the films, and many of them are actually still worth seeing.  I already reviewed The Walk and Crimson Peak favorably, and I actually believe that Steve Jobs is one of the best films of the year so far.  But because none of these movies made a profit, it unfortunately leads to a desire on Hollywood’s part to not invest in projects like them in the future, and that’s the sad reality about the business.  Though immediate box office can help boost a movie’s esteem, sometimes other films take their time, and develop their audiences over a long period.  And in some cases, this is actually better for the lifespan of a movie.

It’s the staying power of a movie that ultimately belies it’s greatness.  When we look at the best movies of all time, they all share a popularity with audiences that transcends their time and place.  But, when you dig deeper into a handful of them, you will notice that many lists of the greatest movies ever made will include a mix of both successes and failures from box offices of years past.  For every Star Wars (1977), Some like it Hot (1959), and Casablanca (1943) there’s a Blade Runner (1982), a Groundhog’s Day  (1992), and a Touch of Evil (1958).  All are considered masterpieces now, but the latter category didn’t achieve success immediately and in fact weren’t fully appreciated until many years later.  In some cases, a spectacular failure can even turn into a beloved classic completely out of nowhere.  I’m sure nobody thought that director Frank Capra’s biggest box office failure would turn into his most beloved feature decades later; the Christmas perennial It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  That movie performed so badly that it shut down the company that made it, and yet today it is almost a sin for it not to air on network television during the holidays.  These are clear signs that great movies always find their audiences eventually; it’s just that not all of them do it in the same way.  Though the stigma of failure can plague a movie for a while, we’ve been shown that quality does get appreciated in the end and that time can help refresh a film’s perception in interesting ways.  Why, we’re even seeing that now with notorious flops like Heaven’s Gate (1980), which was deemed worthy of a Criterion release recently despite it’s reputation.

But, for these movies to exist at all there has to be credibility in their value, and Hollywood, as much as they try, can’t always predict how movies will perform in the long run.  This ultimately effects what films end up getting made, and the need for immediate satisfaction is the prevailing desire on the part of those financing the projects.  When a movie fails to make money, the studios become less likely to invest more into something different, and that’s when we see fewer chances being taken.  I would only ask Hollywood to consider the fact that movies, if they are good enough, can be more profitable in the long run and that immediate box office won’t always be the last word on a film’s success.  Take the case of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner; this was a box office failure in it’s time and people viewed it as a sign of Scott’s decline in stature in the industry.  But, with subsequent home video releases and airings on cable, the movie found an audience and  became a cult hit.  That cult status later hit the mainstream and now Blade Runner is not only considered one of Scott’s most beloved films, but also considered to some as his masterpiece over successes like Alien (1978) and Gladiator (2000).  Also, most importantly, it has become a moneymaker for it’s studio Warner Brothers; maybe not to a Star Wars level, but still you’ll see a fair share of memorabilia and special edition releases devoted to the film to this day, all of which generate plenty of money.  This is a perfect example of a movie that has aged beautifully, like fine wine.  It shows that you can’t just dismiss a movie right away because it didn’t give you what you wanted up front.  That being said, no body can predict how audiences tastes will change over time.

A large part of how a movie does perform at the box office has to do with how well it answers the hype that surrounds it.  Marketing of course does the work of generating attention for movies, and in many cases hype can be helpful and deserved.  But, there’s also the risk of putting too much hype on a film , because it can generate the wrong kind of attention.  This was the case with many of the recent releases that failed at the box office this October.  A lot of attention was drawn to the quality filmmakers and star power that these movies had, and also the fact that they were about something important and/or artistically daring.  In most cases they were, but the marketing failed to make that case to audiences.  What I saw in the advertisements for these films was a desperate desire to make these movies appear important, but at the same time, it ended up also making them appear indistinct.  That’s the danger of Awards season marketing; studios want to make these movies look like contenders, such as those that have succeeded before them, but at the same time, it diminishes what could have made them different from the rest.  The Steve Jobs movie, for example is one of the most interesting cinematic experiments I’ve seen this year; telling the story of a historical figure in our culture in only 3 scenes, helped out by the masterful direction from Danny Boyle and a killer screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.  Unfortunately, that daring artistic choice is not highlighted in the marketing, and it made the movie look just like any other biopic we’ve seen, which it is not.  The same can be said about the downplaying of the artistic achievements in Crimson Peak and The Walk.  Like the Entertainment Weekly article states, this is a case where Hollywood fell victim to making “too many films for a similar audience.”  But when you look at the films themselves, there’s nothing similar about them at all.  It’s only the marketing that made it look like they were of the similar vein.  That’s the danger of Award season marketing, because it puts all movies into a similar category when really they should belong in their own spotlight.

And being the big winner of award season doesn’t always give a movie a long life span either.  Anybody else remember Ordinary People, the Best Picture Oscar winner of 1980?  Didn’t think so.  There are other years where you can find many of the greatest classics ever made by Hollywood that all lost to a movie that few today even remotely remember.  One of the more recent examples of this was 1999.  That year, American Beauty walked away with the big awards, beating out movies like The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense.  It probably made sense at the time, but sixteen years later, the movies that stand out from 1999 that have aged the best are ones that weren’t even nominated; American Beauty not being one of them.  This includes my own favorite film from that year, David Fincher’s Fight Club.  The movie reached theaters amid mixed reviews from critics and a disappointing box office run, especially given that A-lister Brad Pitt was the star of it.  But, despite not clicking with the Hollywood elite initially, Fight Club did find success in the underground market, especially among college aged youth at the time, and like Blade Runner it developed a cult following that eventually hit the mainstream.  Now Fight Club is rightfully considered a classic years later, even to the point where awarded thesis papers are written today on college campuses across America discussing the philosophical questions raised by the film and it’s significance to cinematic art.  Other 1999 films have also likewise developed devoted followings like The Matrix and The Iron Giant, and have since left a remarkable impact in the decade following their release.  Iron Giant in fact recently received a special anniversary re-release, which is pretty remarkable for a movie that bombed when it first came out.  All the while, American Beauty isn’t even mentioned much today, much less seen worthy of an anniversary re-release.  Director Sam Mendes is in fact much more heralded today for his James Bond movies and less for the film that earned him an Oscar.  It just shows that vying for the end of the year gold doesn’t always guarantee a long life span for your film, and that sometimes it’s much better to make a movie that builds an audience over time.

The other thing that determines a movie’s ability to find it’s audience is how it deals with the circumstances of it’s release. Like I stated earlier, failure in the beginning doesn’t always mean failure for eternity in the whole of cinematic history.  If a movie is worthy of it, it will eventually find an audience.  Sometimes this is helped by viewing the film through the prism of nostalgia.  This often happens with movies that are emblematic of the time they were made and feel unique when contrasted with the movies of today.  Just look at any of the movies mocked on Mystery Science Theater.  What seemed bland and sub-par in it’s own time can come off as charmingly ridiculous when taken out of their original contextual time period.  The same goes with some of Hollywood’s more undiscovered classics.  People attracted to different genres can often find a hidden gem deep in the studio vaults, if Hollywood gives them a  chance to be seen.  That’s why Film Noir, Western and Sci-fi genres benefit from the passage of time, because audiences that seek out unseen classics will almost always find what they are looking for, just due to the sheer probability taken out of diverse tastes.  Time makes us ultimately forget how a movie performed and instead makes us see the movie on it’s own merits, as a great story worth telling and that’s what ultimately makes them a classic in the end.  Sometimes a great film was overlooked at the time just because the studio didn’t see any value in it and decided to bury it for years.  Thankfully, with the resources we have now, nothing is buried anymore, and even the forgotten are given a chance to shine.  Blade Runner and Fight Club managed to do it on home video, and It’s a Wonderful Life did it on television.  The more avenues a movie has given to it, the better chance it has to find it’s audience in the end, and all the great ones do eventually.

So, despite Entertainment Weekly’s worries that one bad month is an omen of ill tidings for the industry, it should not be a reflection on the movies themselves.  A great film eventually finds a way to make money in the long run.  Sadly, Hollywood is an impatient beast, and waiting for returns a decade later is not a good way to run a business.  So, movies like Steve Jobs, Crimson Peak and The Walk are going to carry the stigma of being disappointments for a while, and it will probably hurt their chances during Awards season, which is a little unfair.  But, Hollywood should understand that box office numbers are not always a sign of a film’s actual overall value.  Sometimes a failure at the box office may be discovered by an aspiring filmmaker who is then inspired by it and eventually one day they make a game-changing film that does produce an immediate box office success.  Overall, I’m saying that Hollywood execs shouldn’t be discouraged from taking chances once in a while.  Yeah, it will be good for business if you travel down the safe route with predictable, name brand fair that’s guaranteed to give you a big opening weekend.  But, if you have the opportunity to reach for greatness by making something that’s different and challenging, it may give you decades worth of positive returns.  Basically, you’re left with the choice between producing an opera or a fireworks show.  Both have the potential to entertain, but one will stick with people for far longer despite costing you more initially.  Hopefully the October releases this year can stick it out; and the awards season has been known to pull movies out of the abyss of disappointment by giving them the spotlight through a deserved nomination.  In that regard, it shows that playing the long game can be tricky, but at the same time, oh so rewarding.