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Lea Thompson shares a secret with her feathery
leading man in Howard the Duck.
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The duds just keep coming. Average Joe Multiplex knows that summer is the season for $100 million-plus grossers. Packing overflow crowds into 3,000-seat theaters is basically what being a movie blockbuster is all about: Studio suits pray that their releases stay atop the weekly box-office chart until Labor Day.
The most evident benefit: mountains of cash. There are also unexpected perks. Imagine the pride when your movie creates some kitschy catch-phrase that becomes a social phenomenon, like "I see dead people."
But summer is also the season for catastrophic duds. It's what happens when the budgets for special-effect-driven epics equal the gross national product of a small country. New blockbusters battle each other on a week-to-week basis from early May through Labor Day weekend.
Bloodletting is inevitable. The irony is that backlot humility is made public by a society obsessed with being showbiz insiders. Go ahead and ask him: Joe Multiplex will quote the weekly box-office chart like it was front-page news.
Those lucky out-of-summer bombs crawl back to their holes quietly. Expensive misses such as Garry Shandling's comedy What Planet Are You From? and the period epic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc seldom end up as jokes on some late-night talk show monologue. This is the type of mass humiliation reserved for a disaster like John Travolta's sci-fi homage to Scientology, Battlefield Earth.
Warner Bros. offered some impressive spin-doctoring of weekend box-office when itrecently trumpeted Battlefield Earth's No. 2 chart position with $12.3 million in ticket sales. That's the real joy about statistics.
But as reported by inside.com, the hard facts about Travolta's role as a dreadlocked alien is that Battlefield Earth was released in 3,307 theaters. Basic math shows each theater earning a paltry $3,725. Despite an impressive ad campaign and a $73 million budget rich in special effects, the film had the third worst opening in history for a film on 3,000-plus screens.
Now, Battlefield Earth will take its place alongside other famous summertime misses like Ishtar, Howard the Duck and Speed 2. The film is destined to become a cult classic, with future crowds waiting for opportunity to laugh at Travolta's campy excess at some midnight showing. Under those carnival-like circumstances, Battlefield Earth sounds like fun.
I have fond memories of watching an opening day matinee performance of Howard the Duck. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the cavernous cinema on Chicago's Oak Street. Howard the Duck was a popular comic book at the time, and George Lucas produced the movie. I remember seeing the teaser poster in the cinema's lobby: A large egg burst open by a duck bill clenching a cigar. Its tag line read, "More adventure than humanly possible."
Howard the Duck was awful. It didn't help that Howard himself looked like some guy walking around in a duck suit. The film was an intentional homage to Japanese monster movies. Lucas has disavowed himself from it.
A dazed and confused audience crept back into Chicago's summer heat. One stranger broke the silence.
"This was the worst piece of shit I ever saw," he screamed.
Everyone agreed. Particular scenes were ridiculed. Performances were savaged. This crowd of complete strangers now shared a common bond -- we'd wasted our time and money watching Howard the Duck.
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Sandra Bullock and Jason Patric received a critical
soaking in Speed 2.
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I've seen plenty of other summer bombs. It's not like there is some easy rule book to prevent them from happening. Most of these failures are considered commercial upon their initial release. They enjoy publicity and advertising campaigns worthy of their summertime schedules.
And it's not just a matter of quality. Summer audiences have also stayed away from great films such as Bowfinger and The Iron Giant.
Few films enjoy the Teflon status that saves them from disaster. I remember an audience literally moaning with discomfort while watching The Avengers. Then again, maybe I'll save that story for another summer. ©
