Will’s Unpopular Opinion – Ben-Who?- 8-17-16
This weekend the Ben-Hur remake is being released to what I’m assuming will be a theater total of eleven people. To say that this movie was under promoted/marketed could be the understatement of the year. When I told my girlfriend I was going to see it, she said “What’s a Ben-who?” If that doesn’t demonstrate this probable disaster of a film, I don’t know what else would. Apart from looking just completely abysmal, it’s being released at the tail end of what initially was once being predicted as an auspicious summer movie season; now turned sour with so many mediocre and fan-hated films released to dour reviews. What’s truly interesting is why this movie was made/released at all. As a rapacious pinstriped hollywood exec, you would imagine your first question before green-lighting any movie would have to be “who is this movie for?” followed by “when do we release it?” Clearly in this case, they skipped both of those steps and moved ahead with what I’m predicting will be not only the biggest flop of 2016 summer season, but possibly the biggest sinkhole of cash funded celluloid since Disney and Depp’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’.
‘Ben Hur’ was released in 1959, and what followed was close to 10 years of Spartan centric cinema that would become it’s own genre in a time where genres were still being discovered. Before were horror and B-movie matinees that usually involved a giant bug eating a small town. You also had thriller and heist films to go along with your red-vines in the theater seats. Then in 1960, ‘Spartacus’ would round things out when it helped solidify ‘peplum’ films as a mainstream staple. Eventually though, they’d start to die out and Westerns became the new genre film of choice by adolescent teenage boys. Riding the bandwagon wasn’t anything new at this time either. If you wanted a successful film, you followed suit and placated to your audiences by copying other studios doing the same thing. When people want something, you give it to them. This is the basic principal of supply and demand. However, in this case, there is no demand. And after a summer of pseudo successes and hero over saturation, ANOTHER action film is hardly what audiences of summer fare are looking for. This is generally the time when genre fatigue sets in.
The straight fact is, is that sword and sandal epics aren’t IN right now. Maybe if Ben-Hur was released with an Easter weekend date in mind or in 2005 when Roman resurgent cinema was still in vogue, it could have road the wave of such favorites like ‘300’ or HBO’s ‘Rome’. Even Gladiator was only 5 years old at that point and saw a huge spike in interest when the DVD hit stores as a director’s cut. But releasing an epic like Ben-Hur in 2016 would be akin to releasing a zombie movie in the 1990’s. No one cares and the box-office take in will reflect that. What’s even more egregious is that it doesn’t even look like a good movie. In fact, I couldn’t even finish watching the trailer. The claustrophobic shots make it look as if it was made for TV (Maybe at one point it was), and the over-the-top CG doesn’t help it either. I’ll post the trailer here. If you can sit through it, congratulations.
Big name catastrophe flops seem to be all the rage right now. (Probably not intentionally.) ‘God’s of Egypt’ was an incredible misstep by LionsGate, and was sentenced to death almost immediately after the first trailer debuted. Although that movie wasn’t released as part of the summer schedule, it’s genetics were the same of almost all of the “straight to Redbox” fodder, that somehow found it’s way into local theaters. I accidentally stumbled across Bruce Willis’ latest abortion, ‘Vice’ and could see immediately why I never heard of it prior to my torturous 2 hour viewing on HBO-Go; only to have it cut short by my waining attention span, and urgent need to cleanse myself with my go-to xmas flick, ‘Die Hard’.
The main reason this movie may flop is due to it’s audience awareness. (or lack thereof.) In fact, if you could tell me what audience this movie is for, I’d love to hear it, because I know my grandfather could give a shit, and cinephiles would be caught dead seeing this high speed train chariot-wreck. I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing a ‘Casablanca 2: Rick’s Revenge’ anytime soon. But instead of giving the go-ahead to other remakes or reboots, this may be a lesson (along with others from this summer’s catalogue de crap) that movies of the same namesake made strictly for branding purposes fail 9 out of 10 times. Ben-Hur is not ‘Jurassic World’ or ‘Star Wars’, even if it does have one kick-ass pod racing scene.
-Will Valle
