Cynical Cinema

I have always found the phrase “popcorn movie” to be perplexing.  Why are certain movies referred to as “popcorn movies”?  It seems as though the phrase has come to mean big, massive-budget, mostly brainless summer-blockbuster-type films.  I think the people who came up with the name had this idea:  People who go to these movies shut off their brain for two hours.  And people who shut off their brains eat popcorn.  Ergo, people who go to these movies eat more popcorn.  This must be the path of the logic that goes into the name “popcorn movies”.

But then you have to think - why do people who turn off their brains eat more popcorn?  Does temporary stupidity cause you to want popcorn?  And perhaps it does.  After all, nothing in the world gets a bigger price markup than movie popcorn.  It costs the movie theatre about 10 cents to make a large bag of popcorn, which they sell for seven dollars.  That is a 7,000% markup.  Does anything else get marked up that much?  Other than movie theatre soda and cotton candy?  Yes.  Summer blockbuster movies.  Let’s take, for example, this year’s Iron Man.  The screenplay for this movie might have cost an awful lot - say, $500,000.00?  Maybe.  Who knows, I couldn’t find out how much Jeff Vintar and Stan Lee were paid, or how much Jeffrey Caine was paid for the re-write.  So I guessed high.  And then the budget for the movie is $135,000,000.00.  That is a markup of 27,000%.  Even more than popcorn!  And that is the standard here.  For the most part, summer blockbusters are very thin on script and very large on effects and action and so forth.

And some are even good.  Really, it’s what a director and cast do with a script that makes the movie.  But this markup, I believe, is the real reason these movies are referred to as “popcorn movies”.  Ten cents worth of story and seven dollars worth of flash.  And as the movies move on into sequel after sequel, the markup gets higher and higher.  You might shut your brain off when The Incredible Hulk starts this summer.  You will then go to purchase popcorn, now that your brain is off.  But next year, when you go to the theatre to watch The Incredible Hulk Goes To Anger Management, you may have to shut your brain off before you buy your 15 dollar movie ticket.  And three summers from now when you attend The Incredible Hulk’s Long Slow Painful Stay In Rehab, you may have to shut off the ol’ brain before even watching the trailers.  Of course, by then, movie tickets will be thirty bucks and popcorn will be forty-eight dollars.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:27 am and is filed under Administrative stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.