The Summer of Mindless Movies

Evan and I have been going to movies. These are not ordinary movies. These are the movies that require you to turn your brain off, or it will start leaking out your ear after an hour. These are mindless movies. I should probably qualify that a little bit (from here on out, there might be a bit of difference between what I think are facts and what's actually true, so you should probably check this on Wikipedia and other sources after you finish reading. Unless, of course, you don't mind spreading almost-facts at the expense of truth. You know, like Christianity ... oh wait). These are not so much mindless movies as summer blockbusters. Designed to make a lot of money and not win awards (sure, Oscars and Golden Globes look great, and can fit in with a lot of marketing campaigns, but most movie executives are worried about the bottom line, and that's it). So the Summer Blockbuster was invented (probably by accident). It most likely started with Jaws, a scary-at-the-time movie that a lot of people went to. The blockbuster was solidified in the summer of 1977 when Star Wars was released, stuck around a long time, and became the highest grossing movie ever (it was overtaken later, by lesser movies ... *cough* James Cameron *cough*).

So studios found that releasing movies during the summer with good marketing campaigns could really boost sales. Which brings us to this year. By now, the blockbuster is carefully calculated, but very much a gamble. Studios play a game of chicken with their tentpole movies. Release two at the same time, and you could split the moviegoers money instead of taking it all. Release one right after another, and the second movie might not get much revenue from people who've already had their movie experience. Release it the week before, however, and you risk having your second weekend significantly clipped by the following week's movie (a good barometer of movie success is how well the movie does in the second weekend, after critics' reviews and word of mouth get out. A significant drop, and your movie's dead in the water. A good second weekend, and you have a potential Dark Knight or Avatar on your hands. Seriously, check it out. Avatar didn't even break $100 million its first weekend (the new millennium sign of a blockbuster), but stayed so consistent that it's the highest grossing movie of all time).

The upshot of all this is that studios carefully plan when they release movies, and then get down on their knees and pray to the altar of the almighty dollar (they don't really believe in much else) that their plan pays off. Unfortunately for Evan and I, it means that blockbusters don't come along once every week. So we plan to see about one a month, and fill the rest with mindless action movies. These could also be called Mindless Guy Movies, because they've all received a healthy (unhealthy?) injection of testosterone.