The Lost City was an okay movie. Well actually, it was pretty bad. But that’s not the fun part of reviewing it. The performances were fine, the jokes were fine, the plot was…no, fine would be an exaggeration. The conversation I wanted to have after watching The Lost City was where does this movie belong in The State of Hollywood: 2022? So. That’s what I’m going to do.
Another Monthly Streaming Bill
The most interesting part of this movie for the following conversation was the first thing you see when the movie begins. This is a comedy/romance/adventure across an island volcano, but before we travel to Isla Nublar or whatever they called it, we saw a different mountain peak. The Paramount Mountain. Anyone that’s been watching March Madness for the past week has had Dora the Explorer and Jeff Probst from Survivor and that new Halo show shoved down our throats. It’s 2022 and every media company needs a streaming arm. For CBS/Viacom it’s Paramount Plus. And that’s the real destination for The Lost City.
The movie landscape used to be full of mid-budget adventures with a little romance tossed in. It didn’t have to be based on any existing property and the majority of its sub-100 million dollars would go to the movie stars that drove attention and one cool set piece or location they could travel to. Sure, dudes go to see big action movies in big franchises based on comic books. Or James Bond. Or other cool dudes from the 80’s like Indiana Jones or Jack Ryan. But there was box office reliability in this other kind of action that had a wider demographic pull. Think Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Date Night.
However, since streaming movies at home has started challenging theaters for our entertainment attention (especially in the new world that COVID began) movie studios have been min/maxing the box office game.
Why Do Studios Do This
In Dungeons & Dragons you get a certain number of points to create what your character will be good at. It’s fun and immersive to create someone well balanced, and sure, if you’re a warrior you will want to be a little stronger than most and if you’re playing a rogue you’ll want high dexterity, but generally if you’re role playing you want a nice normal person. But there is also the strategy of min/maxing. This is where you pour all of your available points into a couple traits that will be the best for your character and ignoring the others. It’s an objectively better approach if you are looking to win, but it’s less fun if you’re playing the game for, you know, fun.
This is the analytics-is-ruining-sports argument as well. Run down the basketball court and take turns making or missing threes. Only swing big in baseball, going for either a home run or a strikeout. Pass the ball, don’t run it in football.
Movie studios learned that it is a better business strategy to only fund either huge blockbusters based on existing intellectual property, or micro-budget indies and horrors. If you’re going to bother with a theatrical run, the returns are better either super big or super small.
Even the Oscar bump for being nominated hasn’t helped that middle class of movies stay in theaters. Why bother when AMC could instead devote every screen they have to Tom Holland in Spider-Man or Tom Holland in Uncharted. The teens love this Tom Holland kid! Unfortunately the diverse crowd that would go see fun romantic romps or high class adult awards bait aren’t as reliable butts to get in seats as the 20-something dudes filling theaters for every. Single. Comic book movie.
So movies like The Lost City have recently either been not green-lit in the first place or hid somewhere past the third scroll for What’s New on your favorite streaming platform.
If You Film it, They Will Come (To the Movies)
Okay so I didn’t love The Lost City, but I’m also in the demographic of 18-35 year old straight white males that just about every movie hitting theaters is geared toward. It’s not fair that Marry Me had such a limited release in theaters forcing the 45-year-old mom crowd to figure out what The Peacock is and how to watch it on a screen bigger than their phone. And it’s not like they don’t go to theaters. In 2018 Book Club made over 100 million dollars. It stayed in theaters basically the whole summer and while Avengers 3 and Jurassic Word 2 and Mission Impossible 6 all had huge opening weekends and then petered out, Book Club stayed.
I mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Smith in passing earlier, and even as a semi-professional critic that has seen dozens of movies in my life, I can’t think of another great parallel to what The Lost City is doing. Maybe Oceans 12? There just aren’t a lot of feminine action/adventures out there. Sandy Bullock and Channing Tatum are having a fun time. The villain is weird off the wall, post-Harry Potter Radcliffe. Oh yeah speaking of Oceans and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there is your daily dose of Brad Pitt. It is a solid movie.
Some movie critics get into the game because they love hating movies. That ain’t me. The Lost City wasn’t my bag, but there should still be a place for it at the cinema. And at the very least I will help my aunt, who doesn’t go out much and will LOVE it, get a free trial of Paramount Plus when it ends up there in a month and a half.
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