The Real Meaning of ‘Barbenheimer’: If You Build Exciting Movies, They Will Come
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic When the history of movies in the age of streaming, COVID and the first double strike since 1960 is written, the day of July 21, 2023, will still go down as the rare date that’s actually remembered as a box-office landmark.
For that was the day that Hollywood dropped two blockbusters — one pink, the other dark — both of which hit their target audiences and went boom.
A downside of our franchise culture is that even when movies become impressive hits, their appeal often boils down to a calculus that’s less inspiring than it is a basic expression of mass taste engineered by market forces.
Look, the “Jurassic Park” concept worked again. Shocking! The “Mission: Impossible” series has a wild card tucked into its gamesmanship (you’re not going to get AI to do what Tom Cruise does on a motorcycle), but once you look past the star’s stunt mojo, even the perfectly decent new “M:I” installment has been greeted by critics as “the best action film of the summer.” That made me think: Aren’t the “Mission: Impossible” movies supposed to be more than action films?
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