Oscar fare, franchises and family fun combine for a winning winter at the movies

Every year, Hollywood releases a slate of movies around Christmas time aiming to satisfy all audiences, end the year on a happy note and start a new one enthusiastically.

This year, Disney released “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” which was plastered in the headlines, but other studios were quietly putting their best foot forward to end 2017. Now, we enter 2018 with some hits that will pave the way for the future of moviegoing, while also having some misses that the industry will have to recover from.

A staple of every December is the first look at Oscar contenders, and this year did not disappoint with films that were diverse yet commercially friendly. While no movie has been a breakout hit that grossed more than $100 million, we have a number of movies that are performing admirably, showing the interest moviegoers have in high-quality fare.

The Oscar contenders this year vary across genres. The historical drama “Darkest Hour,” which will be in play for Gary Oldman’s performance as Winston Churchill, has quietly made a small fortune catering to older audiences.

On the younger side of historical dramas, “I, Tonya” has been packing houses enough to expand nationwide. “The Post” opened small in December, and as it built up by word of mouth, has continue to expand to compete with other studio films.

Niche films such as “The Shape of Water” and “Call Me By Your Name” also performed admirably throughout the season and will continue to have reasonable grosses as the nominations come out. Thus, the lesson of this Oscar season is that no one film has to demand all the attention, and there is room for a wide marketplace of genres and audiences.

While the prestige pictures will be winning the awards, the true winner at the box office this winter was the family picture. It’s an interesting challenge to sell movies to families: You have to sell to children who might be begging their parents to see the movie, to parents who will be OK with taking their children to that film and other audiences who can see the film independent of their family situation.

With students out of school and parents home from work, the holidays are the perfect time to unleash these films. For these films, 2017 was truly a banner year. Sony released “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” which not only beat expectations, but crushed them. This film was far more fun, entertaining and well-made than anyone could have expected.

Combined with a solid marketing campaign, it created what looks to be a family instant classic. “Jumanji” opened strong when it came out but was behind “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Not only has it overtaken the Disney film to be the No. 1 movie in the country, but it has stayed there for three straight weeks. “Jumanji” was not a rip-off of its original film but instead took that central premise and gave it a twist, with actors who could play to their strengths.

I think moving forward, we should expect to see more films in this vein that might start with a loose, pre-existing idea while not being afraid to stand on their own.

The other surprise hit of the winter was Fox’s “The Greatest Showman.” While “Jumanji” impressed in the size of its box office, “The Greatest Showman” has shut down all opposition due to its resilience. This film opened at No. 4 at the box office, with less than $10 million, and looked to have a nice little run and then go away to cable television.

Then, people started listening to the soundtrack, and the word spread. The next weekend, it stayed at No. 4, but its gross increased 75 percent. To put in perspective how rare this is, the average movie usually drops 50 percent. Now in January, the film has ridden its success, and this last weekend still grossed more than its opening weekend, as the movie that just keeps on surprising.

This film is family-friendly, and the easy-to-sell music has people coming back for more. This is one of the first original musicals Hollywood has produced in quite some time, and by playing up the spectacle aspects of the film, Fox made this a must-see event. This continues the trends of creating films that have to be seen in theaters to fully enjoy, but also with a re-watchable nature that can carry on at home.

If there was one loser this season, it was the studio comedy. These movies are what people typically think of when they think of “going to the movies.” But this winter, the only representative was “Father Figures,” which was a total bust.

Why are these movies failing? Ultimately, without a serious reason to get you to go to the theater, people are feeling these movies should be seen at home and are not worth the time. The best antidote to this trend is just creating high-quality comedies with interesting premises. It’s too early to say if 2018 can be the year we get this genre back on track, but there seems to be hope with movies such as “Blockers” and “Game Night” on the horizon.

Though the studio comedy seems to be in a bit of trouble, we should look back on the winter of 2017 as really a golden time of going to the movies. This was a season where anyone could walk up to the theater, buy a ticket and see something enjoyable that was worth leaving the house for. If Hollywood continues to follow the model of mixing franchises and family-friendly appeal, this business might not be in quite as much trouble as everyone thinks.

Erik Benjamin is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at ebenjami@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @cokezeriksugar.