August tends to be a place for misfit blockbusters, rolls of the dice rather than sure things. In 2000, three such films debuted at once: Paul Verhoeven’s hard-R take on The Invisible Man, a story of independence and dancing on top of bars, and a Clint Eastwood-directed film about geriatric astronauts.
The Winner: It’s a case of the winner being the loser. Hollow Man came out on top but underperformed relative to its budget, sending Verhoeven back to Holland after a long, unpredictable stint in Hollywood. Coyote Ugly and Space Cowboys found their audiences, however, drawing fans from opposite ends of middle age to become hits.
June 19, 2009: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen vs. The Proposal vs. Year One
Posters: Everett Collection
As we moved into a new decade, franchises came to dominate the summer season and such dust-ups became much more rare. Facing competition from a Transformers film, both Disney and Sony responded with comedies Disney with the rom-com The Proposal and Sony with the prehistory-set Year One, which would become Harold Ramis’s final directorial effort.
The Winner: Revenge of the Fallen easily carried the weekend but The Proposal did extremely well too, drawing audiences with the promise of a contentious romance between Sandra Bullock, by then a summer movie staple, and Ryan Reynolds. Year One, by contrast, pretty much disappeared.
It’s the kind of competition that we rarely see anymore, in part because of some pretty simple, if creatively crushing, studio logic: If you can have a huge hit with a franchise film like Transformers and a medium-big hit with a rom-com, why not just go for the big hit every time?
Hence, the almost complete disappearance of rom-coms and other alternatives to high-concept, IP-driven fare (a description that, to be fair, can also be applied to Barbie). And hence summer movie slates like the one we’re getting in 2023, which contains some instances of counter-programming — The Flash is premiering alongside Pixar’s Elemental and the horror comedy The Blackening — but also plenty of weekends set to be dominated by one big movie. That makes Barbie squaring off against Oppenheimer all the more notable, especially since both movies aren’t typical summer fare (and both look pretty great). The history, dating back to Gremlins and Ghostbusters, suggests it’s possible that both could win. And that would be a victory for everyone hoping for a little more spice and a little less predictability when summertime rolls around.
Keith Phipps
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