Why didn't Audiences Show Up?: Rush (2013)

I was looking at this years slate of Oscar contenders, and saw many people predicting Rush from director Ron Howard getting nominations in Editing, Cinematography, Sound Editing and Mixing.  Howard's films have done well in the past, three of his films have been nominated for Best Picture: Apollo 13 (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and Frost/Nixon (2008).  Howard won two Oscars (Directing/Producing) A Beautiful Mind.

Howard films have also always fared well at the box office: Splash (1984)-68 million, Cocoon (1985)-76 million, Parenthood (1989)-100 million, Backdraft (1991)-77 million, Apollo 13 (1995)-173 million, Ransom (1996)-136 million, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)-260 million, A Beautiful Mind (2001)-173 million, Cinderella Man (2005)-61 million, The Da Vinci Code (2006)-217 million, and Angels & Demons (2009)-133 million.  These are all domestic, and  not adjusted for inflation.

Howard has of course had some smaller box office numbers including: EdTV (1999)-22 million, The Missing (2003)-27 million, Frost/Nixon (2008)-18 million, and The Dilemma (2011)-48 million dollars.

At the moment Rush is number ranks number 18 out of his directorial achievements.  The problem is that if you compare Rush to his other lower box office films, it does not fit the mold.  Two of those films are comedic bombs, and the other two are period driven drama, which never tends to have a high box office.  Rush was marketed as an adrenaline fueled racing film, with hot box office star Chris Hemsworth, and should have matched at least Cinderella Man with his sporting films.

What went wrong with Rush?

Bad Reviews/Poor Audience Feedback? No the critics enjoyed this film, and the reviews were pretty fantastic.  It has an 88 percent on rottentomatoes.com, and only three rotten reviews from top critics.  The metacritic score is 75, but average movie goers use rottentomatoes as opposed to this.  Flixter says that 93 percent of audiences enjoyed the film, so audiences gave this the thumbs up.

Marketing: The film's commercials were all over the place with Regal Theatres, there were a lot of previews, commercials on television.  I would argue that this could have been the weakest element, where the studio could have used edgier techniques to reach out to younger, and older demos.

Boring premise? The LA Times is quoted as saying the following:"there would be nothing remotely risky about making a film about rivals who enjoy taunting each other." "Rush's crack production team "make the lure and excitement of fast machines palpable on screen,"  This is one of the greatest racing rivalries of all times, sure it's not about NASCAR, but racing enthusiasts should still get behind this film.

No Hero:  Both of the main characters are hard to root for, but does that matter anymore?  The antihero has become the mainstream, and has not prevented numerous films with no clear hero as still box office successes.

At the end of the day netting only 25 million, Rush is one of the biggest box office bombs of Ron Howard's career, but there appears to be no real reason this movie failed.  The film cost 38 million, and even with foreign markets this film will not be viewed as a success.  As I analyze this myself there appears to be no solid rationale as to why this film failed.

Oscar Roundup 2012: The DGA Goes to Affleck, So Who Wins Oscar?

On January 10, 2013 the Academy Award nominations were announced.  The two biggest snubs were in the Best Director category, and the snubees were Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck.  That same night the Broadcast Film Critics Awards (BFCA) hosted their awards, and wouldn't you know, Affleck won Best Director, and Argo took home Best Picture.  After that win Argo won Best Picture (Drama) at the Golden Globes, Affleck took home director there too.  Argo took home the Producer's Guild Award, and the following day Argo won Best Ensemble at the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) Awards.  Both guilds equivalent honors of the Best Picture.  Last night Affleck did something only few others have done, won the Director's Guild of America (DGA) prize without an Oscar nomination.

With all of this support from almost every guild (namely the larger guilds) Argo is unstoppable in the Best Picture category.  Affleck's snub at the Oscars is being shoved in the Academy's face.  While Affleck does not have a director nomination, he is nominated as a Producer.  When Argo wins Best Picture at the Oscars Affleck will stand at the podium along with George Clooney and Grant Heslov.

Yet without a director nomination, Argo will make history on several levels.  As I stated above Affleck has won DGA, and is in a small company of director's who won DGA and were not nominated for Oscar.  One of the of those men is his director competitor Steven Spielberg.  Spielberg won the DGA for The Color Purple, but was not nominated for an Oscar.  Out of Africa won Best Picture that year, and The Color Purple was the only film to win 0 out of 11 nominations.  Affleck's Argo is being compared to another actor turned director's first quest towards Oscar, Ron Howard.  Howard's Apollo 13 won most of the awards Argo has won, but no Howard in the Best Director category.  Apollo 13 did not go on to win Best Picture, it was beat surprisingly by another actor turned director's film Braveheart.  Apollo 13 did win 2 Oscars, Best Editing, and Best Sound.

Argo would be the second film in Oscar history to win without a Best Director nomination.  The first was 1989's Driving Miss Daisy.  Daisy had 9 nominations winning four, Picture, Lead Actress-Jessica Tandy, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Makeup.  While Driving Miss Daisy had numerous acting nominations (three), Argo only has one for Alan Arkin.  Argo has seven nominations at the Oscars.

What are the next awards to pay attention to?  The American Cinema Editors (ACE) Awards, support from this guild would seal the win even further for me, and prove that there is hope for Argo to win this prize on Oscar night.  The Writer's Guild Awards (WGA) are going to be more important than ever.  While most have predicted Tony Kushner's Lincoln will win, many are switching teams with the barrage of Argo support.  If Argo wins hear it has a shot to win this at the Oscars as well.  The last, and probably most important precursor is the British Academy of Television and Film Awards (BAFTA). BAFTA have nominated Argo for seven awards as well.  these winners may be more of a wild card, but have a lot of cross over voters between here and the Oscars.  Affleck is even nominated for Best Actor here, so he has a lot of support look for him to win Director as well.

With Affleck winning all of these director prizes this makes Best Director one of the toughest categories to predict.  Who will could be anyone's guess.  Here is my best guess.  Spielberg was snubbed by BAFTA, which was shocking to me because Lincoln still scored the most nominations.

Life of Pi appears to have a lot of support from all the technical branches, and Ang Lee is a well respected director, after all this talk of Argo, and moving forward to Director and Oscar my prediction at this moment is Ang Lee.  Yet as many have cited how something can be nominated for Best Picture without a Best Director nomination makes sense, and Affleck should have been a nominee, along with the snubbed but forgotten Kathryn Bigelow.