10 Things I Like (and Don’t Like) About the Summer Movies Came Back
And some other stray thoughts before I disappear for vacation
Welcome back to Projections, your friendly neighborhood movie newsletter, and face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.
It’s Spider-Man week at the movies, with Brand New Day, the fourth film starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker, hitting theaters imminently. We’re breaking down the movie and Spidey’s history on the big screen on The Big Picture this week. Needless to say, the movie is going to be a massive sensation.
I’m just a few days from a much needed vacation, and I wanted to put a pin in this moment in movies. So, inspired by my pal and fellow Mets Corner-sitter Zach Lowe, I’m borrowing his famed “10 Things I Like and Don’t Like” column structure to talk through some lingering thoughts.
1. It’ll Never Be 2002 Again, But Movies Are Backish.
In 2002, 1.57 billion movie tickets were sold. That was the year, coincidentally, of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film, which kicked off two decades of superhero storytelling, and was retrofitted in a post-9/11 world to represent something more meaningful about America’s ability to endure in the face of tragedy. Tobey Maguire’s Spidey, racing across New York City with the American flag billowing behind him, became emblematic of a new phase of propagandistic, emotionally persuasive storytelling and served as the dam-burster of the IP era.
That same year, we got a quartet of mega Part Twos: Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; Men in Black II; and Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. But that wasn’t all it was. Steven Spielberg had not one but two movies cross $350 million in Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can. Best Picture winner Chicago grossed $300 million. There was a Bond movie, a Bond parody (Austin Powers in Goldmember), and an attempt at a nu-metal Bond update (xXx). And smaller movies were exploding almost every week: 8 Mile, The Ring, Signs, the first Ice Age film, Lilo & Stitch, My Big Fat Greek Wedding ($368 million!!!), Panic Room, and many, many, many more that crossed $100 million. You think Obsession-mania was crazy? If I were doing The Big Picture in 2002, I’d show up to every recording like this.
