“[Gone with the Wind] is going to be one of the biggest white elephants of all time.” – Victor Fleming As a relative newcomer to the world of cinephiles and film fanatics, I’ve always struggled with the debate over what types of movies are better: big-budget films, better known as “blockbusters,” or the low-budget, independently financed movies called “indies.” In spite of my lack of expertise when it comes to the making of cinema, I find this debate to be generally silly.
I mean can’t great films be made with 200 million or 200 thousand dollars? No-name actors or some of the biggest names that Hollywood can buy? Some of my favorite films of all time vary so widely in terms of production budget and money backing them. Undoubtedly two of my favorite films of all time, Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and the Russo Brothers’s Avengers: Endgame, have more than 350 million dollars separating their budgets. Both are fantastic films not in spite of their production value, but because of that. Still, since nearly the beginning days of commercial filmmaking there seems to be an allure for many theatergoers for the “blockbuster.” What is it about these types of big-budget ventures that keep audiences wanting more? That’s why I’m aiming to find out in today’s first part of a multi-part series wherein I reflect on some of biggest moneymaking films throughout cinematic history. Today, I want to shine a light on what I think are some of the first films that could qualify as “blockbusters” in their respective eras. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! The Birth of a Nation (1915) To preface my examination of this first film, I want to make it clear that the political messaging and racist tones of it were upon release, and continue to be, beyond problematic. In this sense, The Birth of a Nation does not hold up at all. Yet it remains a landmark of cinematic history from both a technical and financial standpoint, so I felt that it had to be included in this discussion. The Birth of a Nation took about four months to film, from July to October of 1914. Initially budgeted at $40,000 (the equivalent of a little over one million dollars today), it spiked during filming to over $100,000 (about 2.5 million dollars today) and the director, D.W. Griffith, ended up shooting approximately 150,000 feet of film (lasting about 36 hours) which he eventually edited down to 13,000 feet (just over three hours). After being released on February 8, 1915, The Birth of a Nation ended up grossing anywhere from 20 to 100 million dollars based on a variety of estimates spanning back to the mid-20th century. In today’s dollars, a conservative estimate would equate that amount to about 1.8 billion dollars. (An incredible feat for any film, let alone one made in the silent era). While the film came out before the inception of the Academy Awards, critics and historians alike tend to agree that The Birth of a Nation was a landmark achievement in cinematography, editing, musical score, visual effects, and the use of kinetic action with hundreds of extras for dramatic effect. Having personally watched this film in its entirety fairly recently, I was rather impressed by how much the technical aspects of The Birth of a Nation held up more than a century later. Much of this comes from the first 90 minutes during the Civil War portion of the film as Griffith captures sophisticated battle sequences with some great cinematography. In that sense, I can see many peoples’ appeal for this film upon its release. To reiterate, I could write a whole other blog addressing the severe problems of this film’s political and social commentary, let alone how it so inaccurately and ineptly romanticizes such a dark period in American history (as someone with a Master’s degree in U.S. History, I have a personal stake in doing that). But, that is not my goal today. Regardless of how much The Birth of a Nation remains a stain on American cultural history, it undoubtedly deserves its place as both a technical pioneer and one of the first “blockbuster” films. Gone with the Wind (1939) Most studio heads, from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to Warner Brothers Pictures, were hesitant to purchase the film rights to Margaret Mitchell’s upcoming Civil War novel. After eventually being convinced by his story editor Kay Brown and business partner John Hay Whitney, David O. Selznick purchased the rights in July of 1936 for $50,000 for his own studio. The entire production process, from the first day of shooting until the end of post-production, lasted from January to November of 1939. The film had gone through three working directors, with George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story, A Star Is Born) being fired after the first eighteen days and Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) coming on from that point on. In May, Fleming stepped away temporary due to exhaustion and was replaced by MGM cohort Sam Wood (Our Town, For Whom the Bell Tolls) for twenty-four days; Fleming shot the remaining ninety-three days of the production schedule. By the time the production was finished, Gone with the Wind cost nearly four million dollars which made it the second-most-expensive film ever made at that point (the 1925 silent epic Ben-Hur outranking it). In addition, with the overture, intermission, entr’acte, and exit music included, the film’s runtime stretched to a whopping three hours and fifty-four minutes. And after being released to the public on December 15, 1939, the film ended up grossing approximately 400 million dollars over the course of several intermittent re-releases from 1942 to 1998. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is the highest-grossing film of all time with a massive box office gross of 3.74 billion dollars. In more ways than one, Gone with the Wind holds up more than The Birth of a Nation. From a technical standpoint, the Technicolor cinematography throughout is breathtaking and staging of the action sequences in the first half are engaging considering they were filmed over 80 years ago. That being said, its upholding of the “Lost Cause” mythology of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods remains just as outdated and misguided as they were back in 1915, and as much as they are now. After my first viewing of Gone with the Wind, what I kept going back to in terms of why I did not enjoy it was the characters and the story. The use of an epic film to tell such an uninteresting romance tale with such unlikeable characters was so disappointing. For a film often thought back on as one of the greatest movies ever made, I found myself bored after the first 90 ninety minutes. By the end, I just wanted it to end. That being said, however, it is clear to me that flicks like The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind (almost in spite of their controversy) set the gold standard for the early “blockbuster.” Audiences throughout time continued coming back for the epics, from Ben-Hur and Doctor Zhivago to Titanic and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. But what are some more modern examples of early “blockbusters” that took this particular kind of move in a whole new direction? Jaws (1975) After purchasing the rights to Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel “Jaws” for $175,000, producers at Universal Pictures Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown sought out a director capable of adapting the story for the silver screen. After considering John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape) and Dick Richards (The Culpepper Cattle Company, Farewell, My Lovely) before approaching an at-the-time up-and-comer: Steven Spielberg. Having just come off of his theatrical debut The Sugarland Express (which Universal Pictures produced and distributed), Spielberg was eager to adapt Benchley’s novel as he was captivated upon reading it. Despite some initial hesitations on Spielberg’s part out of fear of being typecast, Spielberg stuck with the project and principal photography kicked off on May 2, 1974. Notoriously the production on the film was troubled from the start. Struggles with shooting on the ocean, issues with the mechanical prop sharks, and the need to develop techniques for shooting underwater led to several delays and the film’s budget increasing from four to nine million dollars (three million of that increase went to special effects alone). Principal photography was initially set to take 55 days and end in June, but ultimately wrapped up on October 6 after 159 days of shooting. But the stress was worth it when Jaws was released on June 20, 1975 and ended up grossing 472 million dollars, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time at that point. Not only did the film make its mark at the time, but Jaws forever changed the film industry in more ways than one. It popularized saturation booking (when a film opens at the same time in thousands of movie theaters) and thereby forever changed the marketing and distribution approach of big-budget films. Furthermore, Jaws made summer the primetime for releasing big-budget, box-office contenders and sparked the emergence of high studio interest in “high-concept” films that can be easily marketed, made with high budgets, and rake in massive profits. In short, it changed Hollywood and moviemaking forever. But does Jaws deserve such a mantle? Absolutely it does! I’ll be diving more deeply into my thoughts on Spielberg’s decades-spanning career in a future blog to coincide with the release of his adaptation of West Side Story. That being said, I want to pay Jaws the respect it deserves. To state the obvious, it is a significant film in more ways than one. But I’ve already talked about all that. To put it simply, Jaws is just a damn good movie. Upon first watching it over a year ago now, I was not expecting a creature feature from the 1970s to hold up today. Fortunately, I was mistaken. For me, much of the magic of Jaws is its storytelling. Not only is the overall narrative structure and writing of the movie well-executed, but Spielberg’s approach to visual storytelling to build tension and craft human drama is more than impressive considering the time in which the film came out. Without a doubt in my mind, Jaws is more than deserving of its place in cinematic history as the movie that kicked off a new age of filmmaking with the modern “blockbuster” at the helm. But there is one more film of the 1970s that laid the groundwork for the birth of the modern “blockbuster.” Can you guess what it is? Star Wars (1977) After finishing his directorial debut THX 1138, California native George Lucas (American Graffiti) intended on adapting the Flash Gordon comic serials for the silver screen. However, he struggled to buy the rights so instead conducted his own research on the inspiration that Alex Raymond, the original author of Flash Gordon, had for the concept of a space adventure story. After United Artists passed on Lucas’s space adventure concept, he ended up going to Universal Pictures who agreed to distribute Lucas’s next film, American Graffiti, but also passed on the space adventure film. So, Lucas shelved it and spent the next two years working on his Oscar-nominated coming-of-age comedy film. When writing his original 13-page treatment for what would become Star Wars, Lucas had many influences and inspirations ranging from the politics of the Nixon era and the Vietnam War to the 1958 adventure film directed by Akira Kurosawa, The Hidden Fortress. Several studios declined to fund the project based on the treatment, from United Artists to Walt Disney Productions, which made sense at the time considering many studios believed science fiction to lack a commercially viable future at the movies due to the high budgets required to pull off the special effects necessary to make such a film look convincing to audiences. By 1973, Lucas managed to make a deal with 20th Century Fox to write and direct the film. However, after American Graffiti was released to overwhelmingly positive reception, Lucas used it as leverage to renegotiate his deal with the studio which included securing the rights to any sequels as well as the profits from any merchandising. Lucas ended up writing four drafts of the screenplay for Star Wars from 1973 to 1976, during which time many changes to the story occurred. One hilarious example is that in the first draft of the script, Han Solo was conceptualized by Lucas as a green-skinned, gilled creature; it was not until the end of writing the second draft that the character of Han Solo that is familiar to audiences today was conceived. Lucas’s third draft was as much as 300 pages long and included an outline for the original trilogy of films. But he knew it was too long, and thus edited it significantly. Notably, he moved the ending to what would become Return of the Jedi to the end of the first film (explaining the reason behind having two Death Stars in the original trilogy). It was while writing this draft that Lucas hired artist Ralph McQuarrie to paint specific scenes as concept art which Lucas ended up showing to 20th Century Fox upon delivering his final screenplay to them. Shortly after being awarded a budget of 8.25 million dollars, Lucas wrote his fourth and final rough draft and approached it differently than before in order to write scenes “on the cheap.” The final production script was completed in March of 1976, the same month that principal photography on Star Wars began. However, Lucas continued tweaking the script while shooting by changing the protagonist’s surname from Starkiller to Skywalker and adding in the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of the second act. Something I learned in researching this blog that I just have to include is the story behind the opening crawl. Lucas originally wrote six paragraphs of four sentences each, approaching the style and diction like a poem to make it easy for audiences to understand. However, when fellow director Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables) read it, he offered to edit it for Lucas. He received some help in the editing process from film critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence, Strange Days, Silence). As a result of 20th Century Fox disbanding their visual effects department, Lucas created his own company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for production of Star Wars. Headed up by Douglas Trumbull’s at-the-time assistant John Dykstra, the visual effects team assembled for the film pioneered new photography techniques in order to accomplish Lucas’s goal of including visual effects that had never been seen before. I will not bog down my blog today with the many stories of troubles during principal photography and post-production that would take up another several hundred words. In summary, Lucas ended up suffering from hypertension and exhausting over the course of making Star Wars due to production issues, falling behind schedule, an escalating budget, and studio pressure. When Lucas showed a rough cut of the film in February of 1977 to studio executives and some fellow directors, only Lucas’s friend Steven Spielberg reacted positively. All of the blood, sweat and tears that went into making the film paid off when Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977. Initially only showing in 40 theaters nationwide, 20th Century Fox worked quickly to broaden its release due to its immediate success at the box office. Lucas himself disbelieved that Star Wars would be successful, and ended up losing a bet to Steven Spielberg which resulted in the latter being gifted 2.5% percent of the profits of Star Wars. After several re-releases over the next few tears, Star Wars became the highest-grossing film at the time by raking in a whopping 775 million dollars. Today, it remains the fourth-highest-grossing film when adjusted for inflation (behind Gone with the Wind, Avatar, and Titanic). In addition, the film was nominated for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), and took home six for Costume Design, Film Editing, Original Score, Art Direction, Sound, and Visual Effects. The Academy also awarded sound designed Ben Burtt a Special Achievement Award for his pioneering sound design. On top of both its financial and critical success, Star Wars remains one of the most culturally significant films in the history of cinema. I could write several blogs dedicated to just the original Star Wars, so I must restrain myself as much as possible. But today, I want to explain to any doubters or skeptics out there why this film deserves its moniker as arguably the most important “blockbuster” film of all time. It is hard to tackle this argument without comparing Star Wars to Jaws, so I won’t resist such temptation. As I said in the previous section, Jaws forever changed the business of moviemaking. It convinced studios that big-budget films could prove wildly successful with both audiences and critics by making their mark on both the box office and the Academy Awards. It offered an example of a film that utilized special effects, a well-constructed narrative, and compellingly likeable characters in a mesmerizing formula of cinematic genius. Without question, Jaws did it first. But Star Wars did it better. Not only in terms of its greater box office success and critical recognition, but Lucas’s masterpiece took what Jaws did pretty well and showed the world of both moviemakers and moviegoers the potential of “blockbuster” filmmaking. Everything about Star Wars―the characters, the story, the music, the action sequences, the special effects, the sounds―remains iconic and has carried on in many forms, from the two original sequels of the 1980s to animated and live-action shows that dominate the streaming world. While Jaws in and of itself remains great, Star Wars has taken on a life of its own and become a living, breathing cultural force of nature, so to speak, that is arguably only being matched by one other multi-film franchise. (Can you guess which one I’m referring to? 😊) So, there’s my examination of four films that played pivotal roles in early blockbuster history. But there are many more famous, impactful, and magical blockbuster movies that I will be discussing over the next several films. Which ones? You’ll have to wait and find out. Which of these early blockbuster films is your favorite? What other early blockbusters that I did not mention here do you think are important? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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