Another year, another live-action Disney film that tried to do something a little different has possibly failed at the box office…
Walt Disney Pictures’ adaptation of Madeleine D’Engle’s arguably-unfilmmable A Wrinkle in Time hit screens this weekend. Backed by vague and unconvincing trailers, the film seemed to get by on its director’s pedigree and its refreshingly diverse cast. I haven’t seen it, but the reviews have been pretty mixed for the most part, and the press is already having a field day with it. All the stories were about how Black Panther was going to edge it out, rather than the fact that two movies directed by African-Americans were in the Top 2. Now that the weekend numbers are in for the $104 million-costing movie, it’s FLOP FLOP FLOP FLOP FLOP FLOP!
The press barks this like hyperactive dogs on crack, almost every single time a movie like this comes out. A Wrinkle in Time does indeed have a mediocre audience score (CinemaScore says it’s a middling “B”) and the reviews certainly can’t help it, but… I have a wild theory.
What *if* all the press article writers didn’t get all gleeful the minute these movies came out? Heck, sometimes the press declares films to be massive flops before they’re even finished! Some of them ended up becoming successes, too, much to their dismay! (Remember how World War Z, for example, was going to be the biggest failure of 2013? They were SO SURE that the movie was toast.) What if the press just let the movie come out? Would audiences actually go and see these kinds of movies more often? I ask this because some audiences out there sadly equate “box office flop” with “bad movie.” But who knows, that movie may be a movie that they end up liking!
I don’t care if A Wrinkle in Time got mixed critical reception and a not-so-hot CinemaScore grade, and neither should you. It’s very possible that you might actually like it, despite the bad reviews. You know, not letting critics do your thinking for you. Hey, I admire and respect film critics and film writers, but your voice matters too. It’s very possible you’ll see something in a “rotten” movie that no one else sees. You know, I quite liked a lot of Disney’s recent “rotten” live-action movies that weren’t animated classic re-skins. TRON: Legacy is a fine follow-up to the original that actually had something to say, John Carter of Mars was pulpy fun with some heart, The Lone Ranger was a batshit-bonkers Western, and the adventurous Tomorrowland wore its heart on its sleeve like few others. I’m not supposed to like these films? I don’t care. I might just end up liking Ava DuVernay’s new film!
Some people avoid movies all because of their box office results, and this happens to a lot of high-rated films, too. I touched on this earlier, but this is kind of what made The Cloverfield Paradox a rather rewarding watch a month ago. It’s a flawed movie, yes, and it’s very uneven in parts, but I quite liked this picture that got an abysmal 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Going into it without knowing anything was great, as the movie debuted on Netflix out of nowhere. No critic review reports, no box office reports, no nothing… I just sat down and watched. The day after it opened, one person remarked that the surprise appearance of the film reminded him of how he just took a trip down to the local cinema and just simply saw something without knowing anything about it.
People also tend to consider Rotten Tomatoes and critics’ reviews to be the be-all end-all… Did people do this with reviews years ago? Several movies that are now revered as classics were not well-received back when they first came out. A number of critics thought Walt Disney’s Fantasia was middlebrow trash, one critic went as far as comparing it to Nazism (!!!), and they also felt Bambi and Sleeping Beauty weren’t good. Citizen Kane apparently polarized critics, you know… The Greatest Film of All Time? The Empire Strikes Back got mixed reception on its initial release, but it’s now considered the greatest Star Wars film. I have no idea whether audiences in – say – 2048 will warm up to A Wrinkle in Time or not. I can’t say the same about other currently rotten films… But times change, and so do views.
It would suck to see A Wrinkle in Time actually lose money, and it would certainly suck to see Disney’s live-action unit give up on trying again… Because they have a tendency to do that these days. It would be nice to see audiences make a decision, and then from there on out, word-of-mouth does the job. Not the squabbling press who are seemingly all-too eager to euthanize the horse before it even dashes out of the gate. If I listened to the press and the 150-or-so Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics so sheepishly, I would’ve missed out on a number of movies that I actually liked. Also… If a movie has like a 40-50%, that means a good chunk of critics actually gave the movie in question their approval… Are they all wrong? Or what?
Whatever I think of A Wrinkle in Time is moot, but I do want to see it because I’m interested. If it blows, it blows, I’ll live. There are worse things to waste your money on. I’m not into telling people what not to watch, because I’d rather see people make their own decisions. Sure, I’ll tell them how I felt about the movie in question, but ultimately it’s up to them. Not me. Maybe the press ought to learn that, too.