I often pondered this notion in my teens and twenties. Why no Captain America movie? Sure, there was an abominable TV movie made in the '70's, and the less said about the 1990 straight-to-video atrocity the better. But, why couldn't Hollywood pull off a kickass, big budget Captain America flick? Easy: No one outside of the U.S. of A. would give a shit.
As the cost of making, distributing, and marketing motion pictures has skyrocketed over the last fifteen years, Hollywood has focused more and more on video/DVD sales as well as international success. Let's take last year's Mission Impossible: III. The film cost an estimated $150 million. It was considered a domestic failure, bringing in just over $133 million in its theatrical run. However, when you include international receipts, MI: III comes home with over $395 million. (These figures available here.) And that's not even including DVD sales a couple months later. Much of the overseas success can be safely attributed to the genre - big budget action is popular worldwide - and to the juggernaut that is Tom Cruise.
So? Why doesn't Hollywood make a big-budget-action-Captain-America-starring-Tom-Cruise? Well, that might be a solution, financially speaking. (I'll just turn a blind eye to the notion of a fortysomething Cruise playing the part.) However, the problem is and has always been that Captain America is - by definition - a domestic icon. Kinda like the Western. Why would anyone in England, Germany, or China care about the exploits of gunslingers on the prairie? Don't believe me? Check out the worldwide receipts for 1999's Wild Wild West. At the time, Will Smith was still Mr. Fourth of July. His films were bulletproof. Or so Hollywood believed.
Superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men succeed on the big screen because their appeal is universal. Captain America falls into the same category as former presidents and the Great Depression - things we as U.S. citizens can relate to and with which we feel a certain kinship, but the rest of the world shrugs in disinterest. Again, don't believe me? Then ask yourself, what was the last successful movie about an ex-president or the Depression?
Well, Cap, there's always TV. Perhaps Heroes will pave the way....
As the cost of making, distributing, and marketing motion pictures has skyrocketed over the last fifteen years, Hollywood has focused more and more on video/DVD sales as well as international success. Let's take last year's Mission Impossible: III. The film cost an estimated $150 million. It was considered a domestic failure, bringing in just over $133 million in its theatrical run. However, when you include international receipts, MI: III comes home with over $395 million. (These figures available here.) And that's not even including DVD sales a couple months later. Much of the overseas success can be safely attributed to the genre - big budget action is popular worldwide - and to the juggernaut that is Tom Cruise.
So? Why doesn't Hollywood make a big-budget-action-Captain-America-starring-Tom-Cruise? Well, that might be a solution, financially speaking. (I'll just turn a blind eye to the notion of a fortysomething Cruise playing the part.) However, the problem is and has always been that Captain America is - by definition - a domestic icon. Kinda like the Western. Why would anyone in England, Germany, or China care about the exploits of gunslingers on the prairie? Don't believe me? Check out the worldwide receipts for 1999's Wild Wild West. At the time, Will Smith was still Mr. Fourth of July. His films were bulletproof. Or so Hollywood believed.
Superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men succeed on the big screen because their appeal is universal. Captain America falls into the same category as former presidents and the Great Depression - things we as U.S. citizens can relate to and with which we feel a certain kinship, but the rest of the world shrugs in disinterest. Again, don't believe me? Then ask yourself, what was the last successful movie about an ex-president or the Depression?
Well, Cap, there's always TV. Perhaps Heroes will pave the way....
No comments:
Post a Comment