Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
June 16, 2015
Michael Lynderey: Who said it was possible? I don't think it is possible, though clearly it's what Jurassic World has gone and done. The film has somehow positioned itself as almost certainly the biggest movie of the summer, and possibly even the year. Is there really any chance that Jurassic World doesn't make $500 million domestic or close to it? It'll almost certainly pass Avengers 2 (which itself will finish at around $455 million), and it could even make $600 million and squeeze its way into the top four movies of all time. Now, if you asked anyone at any point during the last three years, they all would have predicted Avengers 2 would easily win the summer and (obviously) have the season's highest opening weekend, to boot. Jurassic World has just proven every prediction wrong on at least one of those questions.
I think the box office has been playing this game of bait-and-switch on us since roughly last summer. Witness how Guardians of the Galaxy somehow won summer 2014 after every plausible candidate collapsed before its release, while American Sniper won the year right after Hunger Games 3 just barely edged out Guardians. Jurassic World is more of the same trickery. It is a film that single-handedly turns box office forecasting and analysis into a failed and unneeded trade.
The Phantom Menace comparison is probably the best one, although the Jurassic Park films never inspired the kind of devoted fandom that the Star Wars movies did. The characters, universe, and mythology of Star Wars are so entrenched into the culture of this planet that they have inspired countless spin-offs on every platform possible, and even their own religion! Jurassic Park, while an adventure beloved by many, doesn't have anywhere near the level of hold on our popular culture (and its two sequels probably haven't been re-watched all that often, the way all of the original Star Wars trilogy has been).
So there's nothing that can be said about this opening that will ever quite do it justice. Saying it's shocking, amazing, unbelievable, impossibly unpredictable, and out-of-this-world, is redundant. Saying all of those things over and over again until you're out of breath is even more redundant, but also entirely accurate and necessary. Jurassic World is the movie of the summer.
Ryan Kyle: This is a phenomenal result that needs some distance to analyze. It was a perfect storm of everything gone right. Much like the previous Star Wars references before, this is a franchise that while dormant, still proved to be a monster, with viewings constantly on TV and a theme park ride that has been a staple at Universal Studios. The franchise has always remained alive even without new content. The marketing team also did a brilliant job and the fact that they titled the film Jurassic World instead of Jurassic Park IV upped the stakes and made the movie stand-alone, having everyone feel welcome to see it no matter how green to the franchise. This is one of those rare, yet true, four quadrant films that appeals to everyone, making this a real outing.
Kim Hollis: In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined this was going to claim the opening weekend record. I felt like the audience had expanded and figured that tracking had it low, but I could never have predicted just how low. Edwin is on to something when he talks about Jurassic World being a multigenerational option. It makes sense that parents who loved Jurassic Park might be taking their kids to a dinosaur movie for the first time. I also agree that Chris Pratt elevated the box office by many millions. His part in the promotion of the film was definitely a driving factor, because he entertained people even as he did so.
David Mumpower: There's a cyclical aspect to what transpired. Even though it was a terrible, horrible, awful, Uwe Boll-ish kind of movie, The Lost World broke the opening weekend record by a whopping $20 million in 1997. That was 37 percent more than any film had ever managed in a weekend previously. It was also the second film in the franchise to break the record. Jurassic Park upended Batman Returns but then was surpassed by Batman Forever, which was in turn destroyed by The Lost World. While nobody thinks about it that way now, the dinosaur franchise was right there with Batman right up until people realized the movies were lousy.
Fast forward 18 years, and there's enough distance from the disastrous second film and just okay third film to perform a clean reboot. Jurassic World managed exactly this by selling the promise of the fruition of Steven Spielberg's vision: an actual theme park with live dinosaurs. We know from our box office history that people find that prospect tantalizing. The shock is exactly how well they responded, and as much as I'd like to mock the tracking here, it's not like BOP was any better with our estimate. Like American Sniper, this is one that everybody missed horribly, and that means we should all try to figure out exactly why that's happening more in an age where more information than ever is available. In the interim, let's celebrate that rarest of rare moments in box office coverage. The greatest record in the game just got broken after The Avengers stood as champion for over three years.
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