All due respect, but Tomorrowland does not look like a film that cost $190 million to produce. It has moments of razzle-dazzle and spectacle. But for much of its running time, it is an unquestionably polished and gorgeous-looking kid-friendly road trip adventure that is squarely set on a recognizable planet Earth and only gets a little sci-fi freaky in its third act. Without discounting production troubles and reshoots and all of the other things that cause a budget to balloon, there is little reason to have expected a film like Tomorrowland to recoup an estimated $190m budget barring variables that were clearly not present in this particular case. While I admire the willingness of Walt Disney DIS -0.8% to allow one of their prized animation directors to spend nearly $200 million on an original personal project, that doesn’t necessarily mean that said project was a box office guarantee, even with George Clooney in a prominent role.
This was an original film whose marketing pretty much hid any real notion of what the film was about. Aside from the idea of a young girl finding a magical pin that hinted at a futuristic utopia and a supporting turn from George Clooney as a curmudgeon tangentially connected to said world, there was no real indication as to what the film was about or what the narrative journey might be. That in itself is not a fatal problem if the movie delivered in terms of spectacle or mind-blowing plot turns, but that was not the case. This is where the reviews hurt. It’s not just that the reviews for Tomorrowland were mixed/negative, but rather that the reviews quickly revealed that there wasn’t anything spectacular being hidden behind the curtain.
Brad Bird and Damon Lindelhof’s Tomorrowland was basically the bare bones movie that was advertised, a film about a young girl who finds a pin, finds an inventor, and eventually goes to Tomorrowland to quickly thwart a world-ending threat. There were no unspoiled surprises or unrevealed plot turns or set pieces that would spur word-of-mouth, no “Let It Go” or “Coma Doof Warrior” that would get audiences talking over the weekend. What glimpses of spectacle and big-budget adventure Disney teased in the marketing was all you got in the finished film. That’s not necessarily a knock on the film, but that is an issue where you’re trying to market a big-budget original spectacle while also attempting to create the impression that you’re hiding something impressive.
And as much as we like George Clooney as a person and as an actor, he is not a by-himself box office draw for much more than around $13 million on opening weekend. The $32m Fri-Sun take was actually his seventh-biggest opening, behind Gravity ($55m), Batman & Robin ($42m), The Perfect Storm ($41m), and the three Ocean’s movies. And as much as we film nerds love Brad Bird, he’s not remotely Chris Nolan or James Cameron in terms of marquee value for the general audience. So you had cryptic marketing campaign based on an original premise that had an added-value element movie star and a trusted brand name in family-friendly entertainment. But the reviews then highlighted that it wasn’t that good, that it wasn’t hiding anything incredible, and that it was questionable how much kids would enjoy the picture. Those were the three trump cards undone a week prior to opening. Of course, hiding the reviews until the last minute would have only increased the perception of turmoil.
Absent expectations regarding its existence as a big-scale live-action original from one of our best filmmakers, Tomorrowland is a somewhat enjoyable B-movie adventure, closer to Race to Witch Mountain than Inception. But Race to Witch Mountain was a $50 million production, not a $190m mega-budget spectacular that was sold under the presumption of mystery. That’s another problem not necessarily specific to Tomorrowland. We live in such a spoiler-happy culture that merely withholding significant second-and-third act story points in the marketing creates the impression of something resembling a so-called “Mystery Box.” Brad Bird simply didn’t want audiences to think they knew everything about the movie before walking into the theater. That shouldn’t necessarily indicate that there are some Lost-level plot twists throughout the picture.
Yet remember the howls of protest (by critics mostly) over Brave not revealing its actual plot or even Hancock daring to withhold major second act character turns from the marketing campaign. Disney and Sony respectively didn’t announce that they were running a secretive marketing campaign; they just kept their mouths shut. The avenue chosen (or at least the impression created) by Tomorrowland was similar to the path chosen by Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s campaigns for Star Trek Into Darkness and Interstellar, where merely not given away somewhat conventional plot beats and character reveals was seen as shrouding the film in mystery. Interstellar and Tomorrowland are similar in that you realize once you rewatch the trailers that you did see most of the would-be pay-offs, albeit out-of-context. But that’s an issue that is bigger than one movie and one marketing campaign.
Yet there have been plenty of relatively successful “original” Hollywood entertainments over the last few years, from Interstellar to Kingsman: The Secret Service (based on a comic book that 99% of the audience had never heard of) to Neighbors to Lucy to Gravity to (relatively speaking) Pacific Rim. The relative disappointment of Tomorrowland isn’t about audiences rejecting an original big-budget spectacular, but rather, like Jupiter Ascending, a case of audiences not quite buying the pitch only for reviews to confirm their suspicions just before the release date. I wish Tomorrowland were a better film, and frankly I wish it were a cheaper film as sometimes (Edge of Tomorrow) the budget is the thing that kills you. The variables that led Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland to a disappointing debut are specific to Tomorrowland.
That Tomorrowland didn’t quite work as a piece of art or as a box office success means little more than Tomorrowland didn’t work as a piece of art or a box office success. Disney can afford to swing-and-miss, so better than they do so on films like this than Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. As far as the so-called death of originality, we’ve got three wholly original star vehicles of varying shapes and sizes (San Andreas, Aloha!, and Spy) just in the next two weeks. The so-called original blockbuster will survive Tomorrowland. After all, you have to roll the dice on The Fast and the Furious before you can make Furious 7.
If you like what you’re reading, follow
@ScottMendelson on Twitter, and “like” The Ticket Booth on Facebook.
Also, check out my archives for older work HERE.
http://www.forbes.com/