Like a heroine tumbling through the rabbit hole, Disney took its own great fallthis past weekend, as prospective tentpole AliceThrough theLooking Glasscoughed up a meager $34 million at the box-office in its opening days of release. A paltry sum in comparison to the $116 million opening weekend thatTim Burtons 2010 original dark fairy tale garnered, this sequels poor showingregistered as a sizable blip in Disneys ledgers. Floppier than the average flop, Disneys new folly provided industry competitors and common filmgoers several valuable lessons about how movies are made and sold. Or at least, it better when executives stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, someone usually demands a few answers as to how the hell this could have happened.
Because by anyones calculations, Alice Through theLooking Glassshouldve worked. Burtons mall-Goth adaptation coined a winning formula that Disney and other studios have followed right to the bank time after time. The House of Mouse scored big with the ready-madeOz the Great and Powerful($493.3 million), Cinderella($543.5 million),andMaleficent($758.5 million), clearing an easily-traveled path to riches for Mia Wasikowskassecond adventure as the latter-day Alice. So where did this well-oiled locomotivejump the tracks?
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A Very Important Date
Its not the sexiest or most satisfying rationale, but scheduling could be partially to blame. Consider the conditions of the first Alices release: It opened on a quiet March 5th, well before the anything-goes fracas of summer blockbuster season got going; its only rival was Antoine Fuquas forgotten cop dramaBrooklyns Finest. The weeks that followed didnt give the film too much competition either, as it spent three weekends at the number-one spot beforeHow to Train Your Dragonunseated it and even then, Aliceremained among the top five earners for two more weeks. Conversely,Looking Glasshad to contend with the encroaching superpowered menace ofX-Men: Apocalypse, which maintained a stranglehold on ticket counters this weekend with a $80 million gross over the four days. Better to be a morbidly obese minnow in a tiny pond than a runty, weak fish in a moderately-sized pond, as they say.
The Depp Scandal
Though as unfortunate timing goes, releases jockeying for cineplex dominance were the least ofLooking Glass troubles. This past week, castingJohnny Depp in the lead role of your major franchise release suddenly became a decidedly unprofitable move. When the stars longtime partner Amber Heard came forward and declaredthat he had physically abused her, the actors stock plummeted in the kangaroo court of public opinion, even as the publicchattered about whether shewas to be believed. The reflexive revulsion at domestic violence could have very well driven audiences away from the latest feature starring cinemas master of disguise; his reputation is now more than a little marred by this shocking accusation. While thesum pales in comparison to the worth of a human life, Heards decision to seek justice could cost Disney millions in collateral damage.
Disney 2.0 Fatigue
In a bigger-picture sense, the James Bobin-directed film may herald the slow pop of the reheated-fantasy bubble. Every trend has hit a point of diminishing returns afterenough similar releasesclog the marketplace, and though Disneys recentJungle Bookreboot earned a princely $881 million, the fact remains that the studio cant keep doing this forever. Theyve already committed to reworks ofPetes Dragon,Beauty and the Beast,Dumbo,Mulan,Pinocchio,The Sword in the Stone, and spin-off properties revolving around Tinkerbell, Cruella De Ville, the Night on Bald Mountain sequence fromFantasia, and the Its a Small World ride in the years to come, among others. At a certain point, audiences will have no choice but to decide that enough is enough and demand something more. Looking Glassprovides an early glimpse of a future where eight-figure investments hemorrhagezeroes instead of generating them.
Aint No Rebooting a Reboot
On an even more granular level,Looking Glass fiscal struggles illustrate the unique challenges of franchising a rebooted property. Across the board, this new wave of remakesploitationhasspawned hit-and-run affairs see Alice Through theLooking Glassand this yearsThe Huntsman: Winters War, a follow-up to the 2012 filmSnow White and the Huntsman. In both instances, the sequel drew a pitiful gross that recouped a fraction of the production cost, and an even smaller fraction of the originals box-office receipts. The main lure of these reboots lies in their novelty; audiences buy tickets out of curiosity to see how the characters they know and love will be updated and revised. But after that quality has worn off and theres no mystery left, something has to remain to sustain a films basic worth. The sequels to these reboots lack that tantalizing and paradoxical familiar-newness, and with no redeeming wit, beauty, or technical competence to hide behind, the jig is up.
Good Ol Badness
Depressing as it might be, the fact that AliceThrough the Looking Glasshappens to be bad ultimately ranks as an incidental detail. Optimists may feel free to interpret the films commercial failure as the free market functioning properly thank you, natural selection, for eliminating an inferior product as unworthy of the publics dollars and attentions. And while its always heartening to see audiences recognize a bad film for what it is and shun it accordingly, in the context ofthis quandary,thats not a satisfying solution. Plenty of subpar projects have surged to a handsome payday in spite of negative notices and disparaging word-of-mouth; for every Pan ($128 million), there is a Mirror Mirror($183 million) and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters($226.3 million). In a perfect world, good movies would make oodles and oodles of money, bad movies would cough themselves to death in relative anonymity, and everyone would get ice cream. But in our flesh-and-blood plane, telling the difference between the good and bad can get contentious, and even when critics reach a consensus, that hardly means peanuts to the people that turn studio contenders intoblockbusters.
In the end, theres no scientific answer to the question of WhyAlice Through the Looking GlassAte It Big Time the best guess still remains a perfect-storm combo of unfortunate circumstance and shifting cultural tastes. But in the unhinged absurdist forbidden-zone of Carrolls original fiction, up was down and big was small. A programmed-for-success studio productfailing with the spectacular-fireball quality of a passion project fits right in.
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