2004 A Bad Year For Movies?
By Ryan Parsons, Sat Dec 10th

Here is a case in point- 2004 was a strange, if not bad, yearfor movies. Now, I'm not talking about the quality of films,they were probably right on par. But, Hollywood has been growingscared. Scared to create films that fall away from standardconventions and afraid to try films that may tilt a couple headsor raise a few brows. If it wasn't for a few HUGE films in 2004,including some that distributors were afraid of, everybody mayhave felt that Hollywood was losing us. However, it seems thatHollywood is willing to turn a cheek and come stronger than itever has this century [never mind Lord of the Rings] with thebringing in of 2005.

2004 Poor for Movies I can understand how it may be hard tofathom that Hollywood did not have one of its best years during2004. Sure, the film companies were still able to pull in filmrevenues with a little over nine billion, but ticket sales wereactually DOWN by a startling two percent. Now, I know thisdoesn't sound like much, but it is! For the year of 2004,distributors were planning on conquering the box offices withfilms such as Troy, Alexander, The Whole Ten Yards, The Villageand Van Helsing. However, all of these films flopped [VanHelsing is doing great with DVD though]. No matter howimpressive the battles or sequences, audiences left the theatresfeeling unsatisfied. So what was wrong with the films? And whosaved 2004?

Four of the biggest hitters of 2004 came out of either CGanimation or children's tales. Shrek 2 began with a bang and wasable to gross somewhere just under $450 million in ticket sales.Then we had Pixar's The Incredibles, which proved that animatedfilms with adult-style action and subject matter can still besuccessful [~$275 million gross]. Last of the animations wasSpider-Man 2 [the fights were almost entirely animated]. I cancall this an animation as the fight scenes were well animatedand the film seemed to run like a perfect animated comic [~$370million gross]. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, basedof the 'childrens' book [I beg to differ], couldn't lose with adarker atmosphere set up by Alfonso Cuaron [pulled in $250million]. Obviously, the four listed films were expected to dowell in the theatres and all three performed gracefully. Butwhat about the films that nobody wanted or were afraid to touch?

The two films that were handled like boiling water were MelGibson's Passion of the Christ and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit9/11. Even though these films caused a lot of tension amidsttheir distributors [Einstein was pissed!], the two films managedto pull just under a combined $500 million in ticket sales. Sothat would make five big blockbusters for the year; not nearlyenough. While Passion and Fahrenheit were more than plesentsurprises, what about the other films?

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best thing to come out of 2004 is the amount of surprisehits that were able to maintain some theatre presence longerthan just opening weekend. The only thing that hurt most thesurprise hits for 2004 was the invisible barrier that would notallow a lot of films to break the $100 million mark. Here aresome of the films that were able to break that mark [with abrief thought on how they were]:

Shark Tale- I would hope this out of a high cast CGI animationI, Robot- I still don't know if I liked this film or not. Seemeda little rushed. National Treasure- One of the best surprisefilms all year. The Village- Only got passed $100 million thanksto hype.

Luckily, Hollywood did not have to rely on only these films.Even though the industry hoped to have at least double thenumber of films to get passed the $100 million mark, there weresome other sleeper films that helped maintain high 2004 numbers.Some of these films include Mean Girls [a teenie bopper thatanybody could like], Man on Fire, and The Notebook, Friday NightLights and Napoleon Dynamite.

What's Wrong with Movies in 2004? Eternal Sunshine takes you ona journey through love and the mind.The best example to give forwhat happened to movies in 2004 is the upcoming Academy Awards.Take a close look at the nominated films, what we have aredramas and bio-pics. People are losing interest; our top ratedfilms are the ones that few people saw. We don't have a Lord ofthe Rings this year, or any other film that people want to sitdown and root for. Want further proof? Why do you think ChrisRock is stepping in as host in order to atract a younger crowd?

Also, where the hell is Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind?I know it has a few nominations, but it deserves a few more. Thefilm, starring Jim Carrey, only grossed $34 million in ticketsales [domestically] and was probably one of the most unique andplain out cool films of the year. Forget the biographies and thestraight forward dramas, Spotless offers up an extremely uniqueoutlook on love and the new ways to handle it. And, mind you, itfalls entirely away from the simple conventions overly used infilms during 2004.

In conclusion-- Hollywood needs to get people back in thetheatres and buying tickets for films that deserve hypedattention. The best way to do this is by creating blockbustersthat can actually remain in theatres longer than an openingweekend or two. Viewers are tired of films that just go throughthe motions and are now seeking something extremely polished orunique. Films of 2004 had lost the ability of 'word of mouth',but I expect that 2005 should regain all of this-- as Hollywoodnow seems ready to take some chances.

About the author:Ryan Parsons Owner of CanMag.Com Check out MovieTrailers for more articles Article use by permission withbacklink to CanMag.Com