With the Academy Awards this weekend, and the blu-ray release this week, Argo is on everyone’s minds right now. Having swept every major guild award, as well as the Golden Globes and Critics Choice awards, the film looks to be unstoppable on Sunday night, in spite of a curious lack of a Best Director nomination.
This is Ben Affleck’s moment triumphant moment as a filmmaker, and whether or not the film manages to win Best Picture or not, it’s already made history with the long strange trip it has been on. Inevitably, being the frontrunner for these sorts of things has led to a backlash, if only because 2012 was SUCH a good year for film that Argo looks slight by comparison to a few other nominees. But love it or hate it, Ben Affleck’s third film is good for the industry, and we could use more films like it.
In an age of increasingly bloated summers filled with hot-air blockbusters and independent efforts often going to the extreme in the other direction, it’s hard to find that happy medium between art and commerce these days. Major studios continually say no to mid-budget adult dramas that aren’t sweeping, Oscar-winning epics or bloated comic-book blockbusters. They just don’t see where it will be profitable. Sure, these films might make their budget back plus a little extra at the box office, but where’s the market for them? Studios have a bottom line, and based on the box office returns of the last 5 years, it’s not hard to see why.
Audiences vote with their money. But what about the gamble that pays off? If mid-budget adult dramas are a high risk, low reward situation, how do we handle the handful that really do catch the attention of the public, critics, and awards groups? Back in 2010, we saw a handful of these films light up. True Grit managed to make $251 million worldwide, $171 million of that was right here in the states, and garnered a whopping TEN Oscar nominations, all on a medium budget of $38 million, making it the highest-grossing western ever. Not bad for the investment. Not bad at all.
Fast forward to 2012, where Ben Affleck, who already made two successful movies that fit the mid-budget adult drama model, brings out his third film, and turns out a huge success with critics, awards bodies, and the box office. After making $127 million domestically/$204 million worldwide, sweeping every awards show, and emerging as the likely Best Picture winner, Argo really is a huge success story. Robert Zemeckis’ similarly “middle of the road” return to live action (Flight) also made a financial and critical dent, at $93 million and two Oscar nominations. While not as much of a runaway train as Affleck’s film, it’s proof that these kinds of films can thrive in today’s market because people are starved for them.
And there’s the rub for me. In an environment where we complain constantly about the lack of films like this, when it becomes the frontrunner to win the biggest prize of them all, (one awarded by Hollywood, I might add) it suddenly becomes terrible. Look, I get backlashes due to Oscar fatigue. I liked The Artist when I saw it, but no film can hold up that long under such oppressive scrutiny. But I’ll stand up for Argo and everything it represents for the industry. It’s a terrific film, and its success can only mean good things. Would you rather Argo be unsuccessful and not help making these kinds of films more of a mainstay, rather than exceptions to the rule? I certainly don’t want that outcome. That’s why, love it or hate it, I feel that Argo is good for the industry.
What do you think?
One thought on “Argo: Love it or Hate it, it’s Good for the Industry”
I’m not the biggest fan of Argo, but there’s no denying the craft behind it, and I can’t help but appreciate how Affleck managed to turn this true story into a success. It’s weird to me how the “mid-budget adult drama” is seen as this low-reward thing when lately there’s been such a resurgence going all the way back to, as you said, True Grit.
Another good example for me (a movie you also mentioned, and a movie I generally liked more, though I know I’m in the minority here), is Flight, which managed to be a big success with audiences despite being an R-rated character study. Like it or not, that’s a movie that places an emphasis on difficult moral quandaries and character catharsis over effects and explosions (Though there’s still a masterful scene of that in the brilliant Plane Crash) and the fact that audiences responded well to it is a positive thing.
So it is a little sad that Argo is getting all this flak because it’s the BP frontrunner. It always seems like being loved by the Academy comes at the price of being hated by the bloggers (With the exception of No Country for Old Men, because Coen Brothers). Of course, “Oscar Backlash” is a subject for a whole ‘nother article and kind of part of the Oscar pattern. So whatevs.