Bad Movie Choices

So . . . I used to work for a movie theatre company. One of the perks of this job was that I could see as many movies as I wanted - and I did, going to over 100 movies a year in the theatre (plus some more on video). As a result, I saw some really, really bad movies (and a few good ones here and there).

Because I was an "avid" moviegoer (an industry term meaning someone who sees more than 24 movies a year - you know, a film geek), I would typically go see a movie on its opening weekend. And what I found was that there seemed to be some collective knowledge amongst people about which movies were going to be good and which would be bad.

Bear in mind this was in the late 1990's, before the internet exploded and collective knowledge about everything was available constantly. All we had to go on back in my day were movie reviews and trailers, and maybe some buzz in Entertainment Weekly. And yet people seemed to know when a movie was going to suck.

Two examples: Batman & Robin (George Clooney's only foray as the Dark Knight, and a truly awful film) and Speed 2 (which downgraded from Keanu Reeves, if that's possible, to Jason Patric). I saw both on opening weekend (free movies + no girlfriend at the time = bad film choices) and both played to nearly empty theatres.

In hindsight, it makes sense - they are two of the worst films I have ever seen. But there was no reason for audiences to know that in advance. Their predecessors, Batman Forever and Speed, were both very successful films (even if of dubious quality), and that should have generated some buzz and anticipation. How did people know? How was the opening weekend of the First Wives Club (I remind you - free movies) packed full when the film had received virtually no buzz? It went on to become one of the most successful films of the year.

It's not just quality - Twister, Independence Day and more recently Transformers all killed at the box office, but they were popular from the get go. Maybe I'm asking a Tipping Point type question, but the behaviour makes it seem like there was a societal choice for one movie over another. Hindsight being what it is, it's easy to rationlize this behaviour - the movie failed, so it makes sense that the opening weekend was lousy. This can happen, but it can also happen that a movie "opens" (has a large opening-weekend tally) and yet dies out quickly, and a movie can start slowly and build.

But maybe causality flows the other way - a movie happens to catch the attention of the public and has a strong opening, and that increases it's chance of overall success. The movie that doesn't catch that attention has a lower probability of being a hit, and we chalk it up to always having known it would suck. In other words, maybe there's an element of randomness that we then ascribe to a cause.

Yeah, I know, what was I thinking seeing Speed 2. But you would too if you could see all your movies for free.