Hollywood worships the almighty dollar, probably because it’s run by the Jews. It’s hard to get an original film made these days, probably because the studios don’t want to pony up the dough for anything but a blockbuster. I made fun of Disney’s tentpole strategy after The Lone Ranger lost a bunch of money, but it’s not hard to see why the strategy exists, especially when eight of the top 10 grossing films of 2013 were sequels or reboots.
1. Iron Man 3 – $1,215m
2. Despicable Me 2 – $918m
3. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – $795m
4. Fast & Furious 6 – $788m
5. Monsters University – $743m
6. Man of Steel – $662m
7. Gravity – $653m
8. Thor: The Dark World – $629m
9. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – $614m
10. The Croods – $587m [BoxOfficeMojo]
Meanwhile, 2013’s total box office gross was up .7% from 2012 (not a huge increase, but 2012 set the all-time record and had four billion-dollar grossing films), and Summer, even judged by attendance, was up seven percent. Much as I’d like to see more original films, like Gravity, a lot of the sequels and reboots on this list weren’t that bad. Iron Man 3 had all the requisite, mostly-pointless-to-the-story trailer moments and obnoxious Gwyneth subplots, but it was so Shane Black-y that I couldn’t help but love it. The second Hunger Games was also much better than the first, and Thor 2 was every bit as idiotic and fun as you’d hope for a space-Viking movie. My take away from this is that Hollywood is getting better at executing their shit concepts, and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing.
Here’s 2012’s top 10, for comparison:
1. The Avengers
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. The Hunger Games
4. Skyfall
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
7. The Amazing Spider-Man
8. Brave
9. Ted
10. Madagascar 3 [source]
Last year also only had two that weren’t sequels or reboots, and one of them was Ted. I’d call that a modest improvement.