O filme flopou tão forte que levou alguns puxa-sacos da famigerada mídia de acesso a tomarem uma
Red Pill, totalmente à seco e a contragosto.
‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Sadly Shows Diversity Only Matters For Movies Audiences Already Want To See
Natalia Reyes, Mackenzie Davis and Linda Hamilton star in 'Terminator: Dark Fate'
Dark Fate applied the Force Awakens formula to Terminator, and its failure shows the cruel limits of onscreen diversity as a financial boost
Two of the big movies dropping on DVD/Blu-Ray and “priced to rent” VOD today are Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s
The Kitchen and Universal’s
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. The former is, in a nutshell, everything we claim to want as a result of a push for onscreen diversity. It’s a mid-budget ($38 million), R-rated, adult-skewing mob drama starring Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss from a major studio and courtesy of a first-time female director in Andrea Berloff. Yet, partially thanks to mixed-negative reviews, and frankly I thought it was a fine piece of B-movie, three-star Hollywood moviemaking, the film earned just $16 million worldwide. Meanwhile, David Leitch’s
Hobbs & Shaw starred Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby and Idris Elba in a blustery and over-the-top actioner that grossed $758 million worldwide, still the year’s biggest non-Disney/comic book flick of the year.
The extreme success (relatively speaking) of the actioner and the extreme failure of the crime flick highlights a grim point, one that plays into the sadly predictable box office failure of
Terminator: Dark Fate. Audiences may claim to want onscreen and offscreen inclusivity, or perhaps the online conversation disproportionately speaks for the general populace. But, simply put, while onscreen diversity and offscreen inclusivity can be a potent added value element in a film audiences already want to see, it will not persuade moviegoers to show up in theaters for a film in which they otherwise have little interest. It’s a cruel truth that has revealed itself over the last few years, especially as Hollywood has (finally) gotten its head out of its butt and started offering, on the semi-regular, old-school studio programmers that happen to feature diverse casts and slightly more behind-the-scenes inclusivity.
Audiences have little problem with onscreen diversity. They also have little awareness of offscreen inequalities for the same reason I can’t quote stats concerning black coaches in the NFL or NBA. Even the online folks who proclaim to want this stuff only mean that they want progressive casting in the movies they were already going to see. They want diversity in
Star Wars movies, comic book superhero movies and branded mega-bucks action spectaculars because those are the movies they already want to see. The folks championing
Captain Marvel ignore
Alita: Battle Angel, the folks flocking psyched to see Naomi Harris in
No Time to Die or possibly as a baddie in
Venom 2 have no interest in (the very good and of-the-moment political)
Black and Blue. The folks waiting with bated breath for
Birds of Prey might have enjoyed
The Kitchen or
Widows.
Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in 'Rush Hour'
Allow me a historical digression, but Hollywood should have been giving us flicks like
Black and Blue 15 years ago, back when audiences would still show up for an adult-skewing, original or new-to-you star vehicle. They should have noted the lessons of Jennifer Lopez’s
Anaconda and the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker blockbuster
Rush Hour over 20 years ago. Both showed the value of making conventional genre flicks with underrepresented demographics as heroic leads (while also indirectly inventing the “R-13” by making their seemingly R-rated material just safe enough for a PG-13). Ditto the breakout success of LGBTQIA-friendly mainstream entertainment like
The Birdcage and
In and Out. But the early 2000’s success of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Spider-Man, Shrek and
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl sent Hollywood chasing the mega-budget, four-quadrant PG or PG-13 fantasy blockbuster at the expense of almost everything else.
Since conventional wisdom suggested that maximum global box office demanded hero’s journeys starring white dudes and the young/hot white girl who loves him along the way (essentially Tim Burton’s
Planet of the Apes, repeated with different and more popular brand names, movie stars and franchise characters), any potential progress instigated by the successes of
Rush Hour,
Waiting to Exhale,
Anaconda and
The Birdcage went out the window for a generation. Fueled by the success of
X-Men, which turned Hugh Jackman into an overnight star, Hollywood spent a decade trying to make any vaguely talented and handsome white guy into the next Tom Cruise. Those not fitting the blockbuster mold ended up on TV, in horror or staying employed via Tyler Perry’s Lionsgate features. Hollywood all-but ignored Dev Patel, Elijah Kelly and the like so that they could make Channing Tatum a star on the sixth try.
By the time Hollywood realized the error of its ways, they had spent nearly 15 years trying to find the next Tom Cruise instead of the next Will Smith. TV, VOD and streaming had begun to fill in the gaps. Once the mere notion of a movie star was no longer enough to get people into theaters, the financial potential for anything aside from an IP-specific franchise flick based around a popular protagonist (be it Deadpool, Freddie Mercury or Pennywise) plummeted. Hollywood is finally starting to give us old-school star vehicles with actors like Naomi Harris and John Cho, but it’s near-impossible to get audiences to show up. Chadwick Boseman’s record-crushing success in
Black Panther won’t make
21 Bridges a hit any more than Bradley Cooper’s
American Sniper prevented
Aloha from failing. Will MCU nerds show up for Michael B. Jordan and Brie Larson’s upcoming
Just Mercy?
John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Issac on the set of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'
In 2018, the same audiences excited for Chadwick Boseman’s
Black Panther mostly ignored John Boyega’s
Pacific Rim: Uprising. There are plenty of valid reasons for that, but it was still a refreshing case of a big-budget, overseas-friendly franchise flick that just happened to star a black man which was ignored alongside a big movie that, by design, had to feature a minority-centric cast. Bringing this back to
Terminator: Dark Fate, James Cameron and friends thought had their
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but they had
Pacific Rim: Uprising. The former was a much-anticipated sequel to a still-popular franchise featuring young and comparatively diverse heroes as an added value element.
Dark Fate was, like
Pacific Rim 2, an unrequested sequel to an unsuccessful ($411 million worldwide on a $190 million budget, with $113 million of that from China) franchise starter that just happened to feature “not a white guy” leads.
Audiences have no interest in original or new-to-them flicks that happen to star “not a white guy” actors and actresses in conventional heroic (and villainous) leading roles. They also won’t be inspired to show up for a franchise flick that otherwise looks unappealing just because it happens to be more ethnically diverse compared to your stereotypical blockbuster flick. Again, I understand audiences not wanting to see an (allegedly) bad movie despite that film’s inclusivity, but white dudes were allowed to thrive with okay-to-bad starring vehicles and studio programmers for a century. Sadly, the failure of
Pacific Rim: Uprising starring John Boyega means something different in the eyes of Hollywood than the failure of
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword with Charlie Hunnam. White women and minorities don’t get the same second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth chances that that Jai Courtney, Garrett Hedlund, Channing Tatum and Taylor Kitsch do.
Audiences remembered that they either didn’t care about or didn’t enjoy
Terminator: Salvation and
Terminator: Genisys. And the reviews for
Dark Fate, while comparatively positive, weren’t so superlative as to justify a third chance. That the film starred Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna was a nice bonus, but not one that enticed folks to see a movie for which they already had little interest. The onscreen diversity of
Hobbs & Shaw,
Aladdin and
Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a bonus that encouraged folks to show up for a big movie they were already going to see. The point of those successes was that ethnically diverse casts didn’t hurt overseas (and domestic) box office, which ran contrary to 20 years of conventional wisdom. It also didn’t help
Terminator: Dark Fate, Pacific Rim: Uprising and
The Kitchen because audiences didn’t want to see those movies.
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