168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Across the Spider-Verse is a terrific movie. It looks incredible, constantly one-upping the genre-defining work Sony Pictures Animation did on Into the Spider-Verse. Across the Spider-Verse is a fantastic example of what blockbuster entertainment can be. Like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avatar: The Way of Water, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Top Gun: Maverick, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick: Chapter 4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Creed 3 before it, Acro💫ss the Spider-Verse shows that franc🐻hise films can also be top-notch entertainment.
Of those films, Across the Spider-Verse is by far the most experimental, and the only one that’s really boundary pushing. I've seen some critics say that it isn't really a movie as we know it, more a hybridization of comics and filmmaking. I think that may be overstating the case a little, but it points to the extent to which Spider-Verse is butting up against the confines of the superhero blockbuster as it has existed for the last 20 years. It's new wine in old wineskins, straining, but not bursting the theatrical film structure it has been poured into.
It’s exciting to see a movie that feels so ne༒w playing in wide release, and making money hand over fist. But, I still can’t help but feel that it’s a shame that most of the movies with the potential to make money in the current climate arඣe IP-driven, even ones as audacious as Spider-Verse. Original ideas can still be successful at the box office, like A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once, which grossed $141 million on a budget estimated between $14.3 and $25 million. But, in a post-COVID world, the scope for what can be a blockbuster feels narrower than ever before.
In 2019, Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood, Little Women, Hustlers, Ford Vs. Ferrari, 1917, Knives Out, Yesterday, Us, and The Upside all grossed over $100 million dollars. In the time since, very few movies that aren't based on existing properties have been able to clear that hurdle. Of the original Hollywood movies released since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, only 18 movies — Tenet, Soul, Encanto, Free Guy (which is dubiously "original" given the amount of references to existing IP it contains), House of Gucci, Raya and the Last Dragon, Wrath of Man, Elvis, EEAAO, Nope, Smile, The Lost City, Bullet Train, The Bad Guys, Ticket to Paradise, The Black Phone, M3GAN, and A Man Called Otto — have grossed over $100 million worldwide. The rest of the movies to clear the "blockbuster" threshold have been based on existing IP. The movies for grown-ups that still had the potential to reach massive commercial success before COVID have, increasingly, been shunted to streaming.
More and more, we have to look for the artistic successes that are still possible within a system that has been almost entirely subsumed by franchises. Rising star auteur directors like Greta Gerwig (Barbie), Chloé Zhao (Eternals), and Barry Jenkins (Mufasa: The Lion King) have been drafted to direct IP. And though the success of the Franchise-in-Chief, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the MCU, has been waning, video game ad🏅aptations are waitin🐼g in the wings to become the IP du jour.
I'm hopeful that, eventually, as studios reinvest (or, in the case of streamers like Amazon and Apple, invest for the first time) in giving their movies theatrical releases, we'll see more non-IP movies finding major success at the box office. But, until that happens, I’m happy we at least have something like Spider-Verse, a true original in spite of its IP origins.