The summer of 2015 was a historic one for the film industry. Currently, the top 10 films of the summer include two superhero films, four action and adventure films, two animated films, a musical comedy and a biopic. Looking at the success and failures, let’s dive into what the big takeaways will be from this summer in film.

Sequel films underperformed

While reboots and spin-offs thrived this summer, including “Jurassic World” and “Minions,” films that were second in a series did not do particularly well. “Pitch Perfect 2” started the summer strong, making $183 million domestically, but after that, second films were extremely unimpressive. “Ted 2” clocked in at around $81 million, a 63 percent drop from “Ted,” while“Magic Mike XXL” grossed $65 million, a less dramatic but also significant 43 percent drop from its predecessor. Usually, sequels are ordered so they can capitalize on the original’s success and grow, but this summer, we saw significant losses.

What separated the sequels of “Magic Mike” and “Ted” from “Pitch Perfect”? While the original “Pitch Perfect” was an underground hit that built a following slowly with stellar home video sales,“Magic Mike” and “Ted” over-performed in their first outings, giving them nowhere to go but down. Similarly, as the fervor for “Pitch Perfect” grew, the idea of a sequel was appealing to its growing fan base, while no one really asked for more “Magic Mike” or “Ted.” The lesson? Studios should not be telling audiences what they want — audiences should be telling studios what to make.

 

We still like superheroes; they just aren’t as super

 

Last summer, “Guardians of the Galaxy” was a surprise hit and won the summer box office crown. This year, it’s a different story. Before the summer began, anyone who follows the film industry was expecting “Avengers: Age of Ultron” to repeat its predecessor’s success and top the summer. But here we are, and it stands in the No. 2 spot of the summer and with $457domestic in the bank, it was down a solid 27 percent from its original in box office receipts. More importantly, no one seemed to really care about the film this time around.

The hype for “Avengers: Age of Ultron” built up so fast that it was like a wave that broke before the film actually came out. The last few years we have had super hero saturation with success after success from Marvel. But based on the results of this year, the model could change.

This summer, Marvel also released “Ant-Man,” which did fine — bringing in around $166 domestic — but it was nothing jaw-dropping. The film was enjoyable but not the most exciting. While these Marvel films did solidly, 20th Century Fox’s “Fantastic Four” was an utter bust, as horrible reviews and toxic online buzz doomed the movie (no pun intended if you follow the comics). The lesson of the summer? If you want to make a superhero movie, you still can, but don’t expect the same startling results of before, especially if it’s low quality.

There is still room for original ideas

 

Every year in Hollywood, there is the criticism that films are not original and that audience’s tastes are so watered down that they just want sequels and adaptations. But this summer showed the strength of originality. We had “Inside Out,” which had audiences exchanging tickets for tissues. We had “Spy” and “Trainwreck,” which despite capitalizing on classic formats, loaded in the cash as audiences laughed. Finally, we had “San Andreas”, which was simply a perfect disaster movie. Sure, these films weren’t the type of movies we expect to see winning Oscars, but summer is not the time for those films. These movies were prime examples of audiences wanting to see new stories on the screen. Hopefully we can start to see more of them.

*Research is from boxofficemojo.com

Erik Benjamin is a sophomore television, radio and film major. You can email him at ebenjami@syr.edu or follow him @embenjamin14 on Twitter.

Published on August 30, 2015 at 10:29 pm