The year 2020 predicted to be weaker than the previous year in the U.S. movie industry. It will be much worse due to the coronavirus pandemic with outnumbered coronavirus casualties. The financial ramifications are going to make a great impact on studios, filmmakers, and theater owners in the future for years and years to come. In the year 2018, the box office had an all-time score of more than $11.9 billion in North America, in 2020 coronavirus makes a great big downflow. The consequences of the pandemic were major cinemas shut down, while the openings of major Hollywood productions have been postponed. No current situation can be compared with any past events in the U.S. because it is impossible to say how long the virus will spread. And it is to be expected 2020 box office to reach the lowest point ever, as the release slate is relatively low compared to the previous years’ records. When the outbreak ceases, it will take longer to return people back to the cinema. The coronavirus analysts evaluated and expected ticket sales in 2020 to be seriously lower than in 2019. If the recent study by Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter say that ticket sales this year will fall 2.6% to $11.1 billion, then we have to realize that such an estimation was made when U.S. had only over 100 confirmed COVID-19 cases. This number climbed up to a much higher number now.
The films like Mulan, Black Widow and Wonder Woman 1984 seemed destined for box office success by now. Even though coronavirus is everywhere, there are titles on the calendar like F9 and Minions: Rise of Gru, which are franchises that have seen massive success outside the U.S. As the response to the corona pandemic, studios began postponing release dates, therefore we have Mulan, failed to premier March 27 and F9 is coming out the next year (2021). Also, many other film productions have been postponed. Major studios like Sony, Universal, Disney, and Warner Bros will suffer and will have to hold on to a reserve of cash made in previous years because of the corona pandemic outbreak in the U.S is numbering a serious number of people.
What is interesting is that in the past all serious recessions have actually helped out the movie ticket sales, because the film industry was an affordable escape from hard reality. While the most recent 9/11 terrorist attacks, movie theaters in the U.S. had only a temporary loss in ticket sales to have a major twist in a tail in October and November when movie ticket sales were back to normal. The coronavirus pandemic will cause big blockbusters to have major losses while smaller studios are going to go through a little adaptation. MGM has its James Bond No Time to Die in November instead of April. MGM will release only five films this year, one of which is co-financed with another studio, therefore the 25th James Bond will be the biggest flic this year.
Why Joker
If the film is very well assembled, and the performance of Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic what is Joker really? Joker gets eleven Oscar nominations and this is not a superhero franchise. There is a certain aesthetic pattern here. He is Arthus and Arthur’s behavior may range between iconic to narcissistic behavior but only if you do not go to the movies often. How to diagnose Arthur? He emits paroxysms of inappropriate laughter but if Joker has a bit of Martin Scorsese then apparently Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy are much better films.
Joker may have something in common with Abel Ferrara’s 1979 Driller Killer, in which the cold reality of the living on streets due to lack of money was more disturbing than the-killings itself, which has made this film more acceptable for Oscar nomination.
The film is obviously slightly overloaded with artistry, without being an artwork. Is Todd Phillips really director, or are we having a different arrangement here? If we have outrageous mainstream in the film, then why does this mainstream fall into an Oscar nomination category? Like with The Dark Knight Rises it demonizes the world: here we notice inchoate semi-narrative about a fractured psyche empowered with usual big screen irony. But if people really pick movies for violence that may or may not inspire, what is really inspiring here? If the victims are not important, this is about evil – the Joker himself, twisted mind, not really human and something that sends the wrong message. What happened with a good old Hickcook’s Norman Bates? He is a psycho but also human, Arthur is not a human. Lethally black humor and self-importance of the mad man is central. This is why Joker is the emptiest movie by now that made up to be nominated for Oscar. Ultimately, we all love mid-20th century comic-book heroes and anti-heroes that continue to make money in Hollywood, but this one masquerades anti-hero phenomenon in a cheap, superficial way and it is not to be taken seriously. If we appreciate Arthur’s sense of humor then his performance is to show off. The psycho’s mental frame is killing with some sort of intelligence, not overkill, and becomes a weird equation.
The dramatic or artistic value of the film does not back up here. Phoenix’s excellent body expressions embody delusional and ultimately murderous mind but everything is way too predictable. This is a brutally violent and very well abstracted noir film about a mad man who gets stuck with murders and his portrayal of corrupted morality in a cold urban environment has a far better impact on the viewer than murders itself. This is not a comic-book character’s origin story but a dark character study about the lack of empathy in the modern world. But is it too mainstream and superficial for Oscar nominations? Todd Phillips’ Hangover alone made nearly a half-billion worldwide, Joker may too, but definitely failed in making an original piece of work.