Disaster Zone – Summer 2010: Iron Man 2 and the First Weekend of Summer

What have I done? What have I done!?

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed – this summer’s film line-up is the worst in ages. Sure things are beginning to improve here in mid-July. Having seen Despicable Me, Predators, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice all range from good to decent. I think after the previous offerings of this summer we would have expected at least two of them to be god awful, but that is not so.

Everyone is of course eagerly awaiting next week’s Inception which I will see Monday and write an early review for the site. But after that, things go back to the way they were in June and May – bad. Very, very bad. Disaster Zone – Summer 2010 is my attempt at chronicling the unbelievable disappointments and debacle’s of this summer, that are so clear and obvious that they are visible in the thick of the summer movie season. Naturally, I will take a trip back to a not so distant time when Iron Man 2 blew up box offices to kick off the summer.

I'm going to blow you up Tony Stark. With my whips and terrible accent.

When Iron Man 2 was released it was the only large release for the opening weekend of summer, May 7th. Because of a strong marketing push with a gazillion advertising partners, good will from part 1, and reviews that were not spectacular, but solid, the movie opened to $128 million over three days.  A full $30 million more than the first’s already massive $98 million dollar three day showing. Paramount was successful, Iron Man 2 could own the summer no problem – as long as people liked it.

Now Iron Man 2 was certainly not a bad film, but it wasn’t a very good one either. Clear attempts were made to expand an already huge audience by making the themes in the story of the film as family friendly as possible. Thus, hints at Stark’s alcoholism are made because he drinks and acts silly, but he never confronts it as an issue in the simple minded story. Basically, it was a typical sequel.

It wasn’t made to continue the story of Tony Stark, the fun play-boy billionaire from the first film. Iron Man 2 was solely made to pull in a ton of dough for Paramount. That wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t so incredibly easy to see by the elementary level story, lack of character development, and a number of action sequences that are extended and serve no purpose.

Tony Stark is my name and money for Paramount execs is my game.

So I hope Parmount is happy to see that even though they spent a whole $60 million extra on Iron Man 2, they have made $10 million less than the original’s $318 million domestic gross. Presumably the marketing/distribution budget was also sky high, something in the realm of $150 million is possible, and the first film probably had something about $50 million less than that.

That means that since the first film a significant amount of the audience was lost, not added. Ticket prices are much higher than they were two years ago, about 11% higher. So if Iron Man 2 kept the same audience from the first film it would have grossed about $353 million. The fact that it posted a $308 million dollar gross, which may go up a couple million before the film is out of theaters, is pretty embarrassing for the studio.

They had everyone ready to jump up and see it, they just couldn’t deliver a great product. My belief is that they didn’t actually allow the creative team to deliver a great product. To me that film felt like it was written by a studio head. What a disappointment.

I'm dissappointed with your behavior... You should go

And so the summer film season began with a relative disappointment. Was it an enormous disaster? No, it wasn’t. The film wasn’t god awful, it just lacked all of the things that made the first special, aside from Downey Jr. It didn’t tank way off of the first like, say Narnia: Prince Caspian, it just missed an opportunity to get Iron Man on track to being another Spider-Man or Batman-like franchise.

I hope that the relative failure of that film, and the recent debacle with The Last Airbender which we will discuss much later, Paramount not only reconsiders their creative strategy when producing films, but also their choice in which films they make. I hope they realize that making a sequel or adapting a big property isn’t a guaranteed ticket to success. The ticket to success is making good films. People will go see good films far more than bad, and whether it’s original, a sequel, or a film version of some TV show or book the good flick of the bunch is always going to be the winner in the long run.

They haven’t killed the Iron Man series, but they certainly stained it a bit, and made people much less excited for part 3, which had the potential to be a hugely anticipated project. Iron Man 2 was not a disaster in and of itself, it was the beginning of one. It was the first crack in the concrete as an earthquake starts. An earthquake that has shaken Hollywood so badly that studios are beginning to rethink their entire film making strategies. Join us next time when we explain what happened in summer’s second weekend that propelled the events even further.

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About the Author

Adam G.