I REMEMBER a conversation I had with my friend John Podhoretz last March about the movie “Pearl Harbor.” I proposed that based on the early evidence, “Pearl Harbor” would have the biggest opening weekend in box office history and might well wind up the fourth or fifth highest-grossing movie ever. “Not if it stinks,” he said. I trotted out all of the circumstantial evidence I could muster on behalf of Michael Bay’s World War II epic: Memorial Day launch, PG-13 rating, romance for the teenage girls, explosions for the teenage boys, historical subject matter for the adults, and an advertising budget big enough to finance a medium-sized ballpark. It didn’t matter whether “Pearl Harbor” was any good, I insisted, because it’s the most perfect focus-group movie ever made.
Not for the first time, Podhoretz was right and I was wrong. “Pearl Harbor” was a stinker, and people knew it. While it had a large opening weekend, it wasn’t mammoth. Instead of making the $400 million or so needed to break the top five list of money-makers, it is still struggling to break $200 million.
Which brings us to Harry Potter. Today “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” opens in half of all the movie theaters in America. It will make more money in its first weekend than “Pearl Harbor” did and when all the final accounting is done next March, “Harry Potter” will be at least the sixth or seventh biggest money-maker ever.
Why? Because Hollywood has finally remembered that story matters most.
The modern history of cinema began in June 1975 with the release of “Jaws.” That movie made $260 million that summer, making it the highest-grossing movie of all time, breaking the 36-year-old record of “Gone with the Wind.” (To understand how much money “Gone with the Wind” made, consider that it’s still number 39 on the all-time list with $192 million. That’s $192 million in 1939 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, “Gone with the Wind” made about as much as “Titanic,” “Star Wars,” and “The Phantom Menace” put together.)
After the success of “Jaws,” movie studios became obsessed with blockbuster movies–big tent-pole pictures whose grosses alone could feed a company for a year. In 1977 another blockbuster, “Star Wars,” hit screens, soaring past “Jaws” with $323 million. It’s been off to the races ever since.
Over the next twenty years Hollywood executives tried everything imaginable to manufacture blockbusters. First, they relied on special effects. For a while this worked, as audiences were lured to the theater by the promise of seeing things they never thought possible. But over time f/x work lost its appeal. Then executives returned to the star system of the 1940s. During the 1990s the salaries for movie stars exploded in a way that made even professional athletes blush. By 1999, top stars such as Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson were being paid $20 – $25 million per picture. And that’s before the back-end. By the time Cruise and Gibson got their money, the studios’ profit margins were thin even when the movie did very well.
But today movie stars and special effects no longer guarantee box office results. The last three years have been littered with high-profile disappointments such as “Tomb Raider,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “The Patriot,” “Wild Wild West,” and “The Lost World.” These movies made money, to be sure, but none of them were able to break out to blockbuster status because, well, they were stinkers.
As a last resort, Hollywood has returned to strong source material for revenue, and it seems to be working. This year’s biggest grossing movie, the delightful “Shrek,” is based on a children’s book. “Harry Potter” is based on J.K. Rowling’s entertaining best-seller. In a few short weeks audiences will be treated to the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” series. None of these films have movie stars or budget-busting special effects. They’re tent-pole pictures built around stories.
You should root for “Harry Potter” to do well this weekend. If good writing is back in Hollywood it means more money for the studios, because writers will never get Cruise dollars. But it also means better movies for the rest of us.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
