IN an industry that judges you by how many zeros you have in your profits, it does not look good for the new war movie Man Down.
According to new box office figures, the film, which tells the story of a US Marine in Afghanistan and stars Shia LaBeouf, made £7 in its opening weekend. In other words, one person bought a ticket. It may well be a new record for flops.
To be fair to the film, part of the explanation is that Man Down was shown in only one British cinema and its main release will be on digital platforms such as iTunes – in other words, the modern version of that old tag of shame “straight to video”.
However, the news of Man Down’s embarrassment has left me feeling a little sorry for it – after all, no one wants to make a bad movie. There’s also something in me that’s always been drawn to films I’m supposed to hate. The actor Peter Davison told me a few months ago about a film he made with Michael Winner in the 90s, Parting Shots, which one critic called “possibly the worst film ever made”. I had to see it, but can now confirm that the word “possibly” is unnecessary. In other words, sometimes the films you’re supposed to hate actually are as bad as they say.
But it’s not all bad - indeed, I think there is just as much to be learned from the films that do not make money as the films that do. When it was released, Parting Shots, like Man Down, was a terrible flop and there are plenty of other movies like it – in 2012, a film version of the farce Run for Your Wife made £602 in its opening weekend.
But the problem with looking at these box office figures is that we can fixate on the money that films do or do not make and assume that box-office multi-millions is the pinnacle that all films must try to reach. A new Avengers film is being made in Edinburgh right now and it’s also been confirmed this week that a big new film studio will be built in the city. And yes, the Avengers film will make millions and the hope is that the studio will help Scotland make millions more.
But big is not best and we shouldn’t necessarily be embarrassed by a film making £7. Look at the kind of films that were in the top ten last year – Captain America, Batman versus Superman, and all the rest of them – and you can see that a fat profit is no great measure of quality.
A big fat film studio for Scotland can also never be the panacea which some have suggested. When I spoke to the Scotland-based actor and producer Scott Rivers recently about the horror film he’s just made, Mother, he was sceptical about what a big studio could do. “A studio is just a big building,” he said. “But as soon as someone in America goes ‘oh I don’t want to film there anymore’, it’s gone.”
Vickers suggested instead that there should be more investment and encouragement at grassroots level, which strikes me as a simple but sensible idea. And yet we’re still buying into the obsession that all films have to be big and that Scotland should be trying to attract them here.
And why do we have this obsession? It’s because so much of the reporting of a film’s success or failure is about money. Yes, Man Down has made just £7 in the UK. But so what? What really matters is whether it is good or bad.
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