Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pm
I saw this in a theater, but have either Fassbender or Blanchett ever been real box-office stars? Calling this a "star-driven film" seems like a bit of an overbid outside of an arthouse context - these two actors are arthouse darlings, and naturally the movie performed basically like an arthouse film. I'm not sure there was ever a time when this movie would have been a huge box-office performer in a larger general-audience sense. Furthermore, it seems to me, given the box-office totals, that the dedicated Fassbender/Blanchett fans probably showed up in pretty strong numbers. The question of "what could anyone have reasonably expected?" looms large over these comments of his.
Maybe more to the point, I think Soderbergh's constant whining about the box office performance of his films is disingenuous, if not downright hypocritical. For one thing, the guy's spent most of his career intentionally undercutting the audience-pleasing aspects of his movies. And while I sorta enjoyed this one, it's not exactly something that I'd expect to generate strong word-of-mouth outside of people already predisposed to like his films - it doesn't exactly scream "people will love this!" to me. But that's the kind of movies he sets out to make - he's always, for better or worse, had a strong experimental streak and cold detachment to the material (and this movie's central character is coldly detached himself). By and large, he doesn't make audience-pleasing movies! On purpose! As time goes on, even less and less so! And even when he tries to, he can't help but be condescending about it, like when he fretted that he made a movie specifically for all the rural folk and yet the ingrates still didn't show up despite his pandering.
Secondly, Soderbergh himself spent a pretty decent chunk of his career exploring alternative distribution channels and working to shorten theatrical windows. Adult-themed movies being rushed to home exhibition - this is the world he helped to pioneer! He was telling us 20 years ago that theatrical was dead and it was time to get on board with VOD, and now here he is whining that too many people want to watch movies at home.
It's strange to me that the perspective of a filmmaker who has spent his career feverishly attempting to find ways both within and around a stagnating and hostile studio system to carve out space for personal filmmaking pitched firmly to the mainstream, who is constantly looking to open doors for future filmmakers to make movies that aren't properties of Disney or Marvel without being relegated to an arthouse ghetto, would be met with such dismissiveness (peppered with language that almost suggests a certain glee in knocking him down a peg) here of all places. The portrait of Soderbergh as a disingenuous, hypocritical, condescending whiner who scorns and antagonizes (but also panders to) his audiences is not a filmmaker I recognize.
Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pm…he's always, for better or worse, had a strong experimental streak and cold detachment to the material (and this movie's central character is coldly detached himself). By and large, he doesn't make audience-pleasing movies! On purpose! As time goes on, even less and less so!
Even if one accepts the premise that Soderbergh's films uniformly evince a "cold detachment to the material" (I don't), one must still explain how a filmmaker who supposedly deprives audiences of entertainment used to have hits and win Oscars. That would seem proof enough that it wasn't Soderbergh who changed so much as the ground beneath his feet, and he has spent the better part of a decade trying to figure out why and meet the audience where they are (streaming platforms and all).
Almost nothing he's made post-
The Girlfriend Experience (2009) has been anywhere near as experimental or "alienating" as the some of the work he made early in his career. A pivot away from audiences toward deliberately obscure or off-putting films just isn't borne out by the work. He makes sub-two hour genre films with recognizable stars that are easy to grasp narratively and emotionally, and are more accessible than something like
Tenet, or even
Oppenheimer. If "even less and less so" merely refers to declining box office figures, it would seem to me you're admitting that audience culture has simply changed and that this has nothing to do with his filmmaking style specifically.
Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pmI'm not sure there was ever a time when this movie would have been a huge box-office performer in a larger general-audience sense. […] The question of "what could anyone have reasonably expected?" looms large over these comments of his.
He does not appear to be saying that they expected
Black Bag to be a "huge" box-office performer on the level of, say, a Marvel or Christopher Nolan movie. Only that it did not meet what were presumably proportional expectations based on the genre, talent, marketing, and whatever other market research informed the projections. The reasonable expectation is to make a reasonable amount of money (at least break even at the BO, I'd wager) that would make films with a similar scale and ambition viable for studios to want to consistently make, as was the case once upon a time in Hollywood. It's clear from the article that others in the industry involved in producing had reason to expect more and were surprised by the film's underperformance, so to chalk this up merely to selfish whining willfully ignores the bigger picture.
Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pmAnd even when he tries to, he can't help but be condescending about it, like when he fretted that he made a movie specifically for all the rural folk and yet the ingrates still didn't show up despite his pandering.
This is a flagrantly uncharitable characterization of his assessment of
Logan Lucky's performance. As far as I can recall, my impression of his reaction was more simply one of analytical bewilderment and plain disappointment that his experimental funding/marketing strategy (which, if successful, would've gone a long way in rejuvenating mid-budget filmmaking by reshaping studios' approaches to marketing budgets) failed, and failed again with
Unsane. Far from accusing audiences of being "ingrates," he's repeatedly accepted the blame himself and continued looking for ways around the problem.
Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pmSoderbergh himself spent a pretty decent chunk of his career exploring alternative distribution channels and working to shorten theatrical windows. Adult-themed movies being rushed to home exhibition - this is the world he helped to pioneer!
Alternative distribution channels for the smaller budgeted films more experimental in nature or conceived with a more specialized audience in mind, that otherwise likely wouldn't even have a shot at getting made under current studio economic structures, yes. Not for a film like
Black Bag, which, no matter how you slice it, is not an arthouse film and would never have been considered one at any earlier point in Hollywood. And it's not like Blanchett is Isabelle Huppert, or something; the idea that the star of
Thor: Ragnarok is not a "big enough" star to help what amounts to a stylish and sexy whodunnit—
Knives Out with a drier sense of humor—make back its budget after a month in theaters seems like yet another illustration of precisely Soderbergh's point about the alarming/awkward state of the business, given that Hollywood churned out mid-budget thrillers with actors nowhere near as big as her or Fassbender for decades.
I don't think characterizing Soderbergh as a "pioneer" of VOD becoming a dumping ground for adult-oriented movies is accurate, unless I missed that
Bubble was a massive, industry-shifting hit for HDNet Movies. In fact, I think laying blame on any filmmaker—let alone one with as little clout as Soderbergh—for being somehow instrumental in the current state of affairs, rather than on the people and corporations that actually make and control the platforms and the decisions about funding, marketing, and distribution, is pretty nonsensical and frankly laughable. Seems to me the accelerated shift to VOD was a direct consequence of COVID's impact on an industry that was already sidelining mid-budget adult-oriented films in single-minded pursuit of astronomical profits in a global market. It's rather obvious this situation would have inevitably come about even if Soderbergh hadn't been there early attempting to find ways to make it work for artists, and not just executives and shareholders.
Brian C wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:01 pmHe was telling us 20 years ago that theatrical was dead and it was time to get on board with VOD
When and in what context did he said this?
