Santikos Cine-opsis

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to see two movies about American armed troops and their exploits around the globe; “The Hurt Locker” and “G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra.”   While both are movies about war and both have plenty of action, I consider the latter  to be a “war movie” and the former to be an “action movie”.  And while the war movie was clearly superior, the action movie is by far the more popular film.  Here’s my question, and I’d appreciate comments on this: Could movies like “The Hurt Locker” ever have the same success as films like “G.I. Joe”?

Now, one way of looking at this is that high-quality movies about war have already been successful.  One could point to films like “Saving Private Ryan” (which both won five oscars and made $216M, the highest grossing film of 1998).  Now, “Ryan” was made by Spielberg and had a star like Tom Hanks.  But even without a big name star, “G.I. Joe” managed to pull down close to $100M in its first two weeks.

Others could say that the director is the key.  “Inglourious Basterds” wouldn’t have nearly the excitement around it if Quentin Tarantino wasn’t behind the wheel.  In fact, if we didn’t know it was by Tarantino, the previews for “Basterds” would look almost silly.  But Tarantino can get away with things like that, and while Kathryn Bigelow may be known by some as the director of “Point Break”, she hardly has the clout to get people in the seats on name recognition alone.   However, how many casual movie-goers know the name “Stephen Sommers” without hearing it attached to “the director of ‘The Mummy’”?  My guess is not many.  So “G.I. Joe” has proven once again that you don’t need a big name actor or director (or even premise) to bring in viewers.

Maybe it’s demand?  The “G.I. Joe” toys have been around almost as long as Barbie, and families know that they can take their kids to a “G.I. Joe” movie and everybody will have fun.  But a movie doesn’t need to be a crowd pleaser to bring in the crowds.  “Sin City” thrived on the nerd crowd and won the box office its opening week, despite being geared towards a relatively niche audience.

Which leaves me with one thing: studio backing.  “Saving Private Ryan” had dreamworks on its side.  Big companies like Paramount and The Weinstein Company promoted the heck out of “G.I. Joe” and “Inglourious Basterds”.  Summit Entertainment chose to take a different approach with “The Hurt Locker,” opening it in select cities in art house theaters.  Now,  Summit is smaller than Paramount, obviously, so maybe they couldn’t take such a risk.  But there is no reward without risk, and I have to believe that people are smart enough to choose to see an interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking film like “The Hurt Locker” if they are properly informed about it beforehand.  But if a big studio backed “The Hurt Locker”, then it would have those things, and it wouldn’t be the little gem of an indie war movie that’s wowing critics and garnering awards acclaim. It would be a big-budget behemoth like “Saving Private Ryan” and I wouldn’t have to sing its praises in my blog to get people to go see it.

I guess it’s just the way of the movie world, that silly movies like “G.I. Joe” can coast by on big explosions and name recognition but smaller films like “The Hurt Locker” have to fight for each viewer.  But it would be nice if films like “Hurt Locker” got some love from viewers BEFORE awards season.