Babylon - Damien Chazelle; Margot Robbie; Brad Pitt | Paramount | December 23, 2022 nationwide

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

 

Agree? Disagree? I feel it was a tough sell regardless, but the marketing wasn't great.

[AJG]

Excited to watch this thing. Got some chicken wings and a Guinness ready.

[dudalb]

3 hours ago, BoxOfficeFangrl said:

 

Agree? Disagree? I feel it was a tough sell regardless, but the marketing wasn't great.

Marketing was not great, but frankly I think the movie would have bombed anyway.

[AJG]

4 hours ago, AJG said:

Excited to watch this thing. Got some chicken wings and a Guinness ready.

This was decent. This was good. I might even say it’s damn good. It’s gonna find new life at home, on the TV, where I can pause the thing and turn on the absolutely necessary subtitles. Sure its ending was kinda up its own ass. Sure there’s a character that could be cut almost entirely. Maybe people may find the different stories too detached from one another, or certain scenes excessive, but I don’t think it’s a movie worthy of the amount of ire it generated.
 

Frankly if this was released in 2021 as a straight-to-streamer I could see the reaction being far more positive (look at that crappy asteroid Netflix movie).
 

[Nikostar]

Marketing wasn't really the problem. The problem was how you going to get audiences to sit through a three-hour-R rated movie with mixed reviews and a star who is deemed box office poison. 

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

17 minutes ago, Nikostar said:

Marketing wasn't really the problem. The problem was how you going to get audiences to sit through a three-hour-R rated movie with mixed reviews and a star who is deemed box office poison. 

....by good marketing...? 

[AJG]

4 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

....by good marketing...? 

The marketing was fine.

 

The truth behind the string of adult bombs is pretty simple: people didn’t want to pay money to go and watch them. The films themselves are not appealing and ‘good marketing’ isn’t going to help.

[Eric the IF]

People love to use marketing as an easy crutch to complain when their faves bomb. And while that's not completely invalid, just about every movie has a lot of advertising and marketing that's designed to be effective and attention-grabbing. They had Babylon ads before every football game this year, and they all pushed the movie as "wacky crazy you're never gonna believe the insanity in here", which was an effective tool for Wolf of Wall Street all those years ago.

 

The problem, simply put, is that audiences today hate the idea of watching a movie that isn't just a toy commercial or sets up a random movie universe. Therefore, any movie that is just a movie is set to fail because of modern audiences' narrow tastes. I know I say that all the time, and I know people think what I'm saying is unfair...but this has been the case for 98% of "normal movies" for a long time. Sad but true.

[interiorgatordecorator]

7 hours ago, Eric Crowe said:

People love to use marketing as an easy crutch to complain when their faves bomb. And while that's not completely invalid, just about every movie has a lot of advertising and marketing that's designed to be effective and attention-grabbing. They had Babylon ads before every football game this year, and they all pushed the movie as "wacky crazy you're never gonna believe the insanity in here", which was an effective tool for Wolf of Wall Street all those years ago.

 

The problem, simply put, is that audiences today hate the idea of watching a movie that isn't just a toy commercial or sets up a random movie universe. Therefore, any movie that is just a movie is set to fail because of modern audiences' narrow tastes. I know I say that all the time, and I know people think what I'm saying is unfair...but this has been the case for 98% of "normal movies" for a long time. Sad but true.

 

the first trailer was spectacularly bad, doesnt matter how many ads you place if theyre not good, the "wacky crazy" stuff was also the worst and most annoying part of the movie, so im not sure if it was the right thing to focus on

the movie was always probably going to fail, but it should have done so with atleast 30 million domestic instead of 15

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by interiorgatordecorator

[CoolioD1]

those tiktoks are even worse than the "Morbius is a Marvel legend!" ones.

[DAJK]

52 minutes ago, Eric Crowe said:

People love to use marketing as an easy crutch to complain when their faves bomb. And while that's not completely invalid, just about every movie has a lot of advertising and marketing that's designed to be effective and attention-grabbing. They had Babylon ads before every football game this year, and they all pushed the movie as "wacky crazy you're never gonna believe the insanity in here", which was an effective tool for Wolf of Wall Street all those years ago.

 

The problem, simply put, is that audiences today hate the idea of watching a movie that isn't just a toy commercial or sets up a random movie universe. Therefore, any movie that is just a movie is set to fail because of modern audiences' narrow tastes. I know I say that all the time, and I know people think what I'm saying is unfair...but this has been the case for 98% of "normal movies" for a long time. Sad but true.

I'm not sure, I disagree with this... I think, although I'm not sure where exactly where I fall on this scale. I think the "it's not a toy commercial" is dangerously close to becoming as much of a crutch to explain why a movie bombed as "marketing". Sure, it's beyond difficult for movies nowadays to reach blockbuster-level grosses (say, 150M+ domestic, 400M+ WW)  without being "toy commercials/movie universe setups". But that's not what even those who were optimistic about a movie like Babylon would have expected. 

 

Take a look at Smile. 100M+ horror hit, 215M WW. And it wasn't sold as a toy commercial or a movie universe. What happened was that it had an easily-marketable hook, and audiences liked it. Even Violent Night was in the same book. M3GAN. And I'm sure many others if you go back over the years. Wolf of Wall Street could be seen as similar to Babylon (crazy, over the top, star-studded, etc.), but the difference there is that the marketing had a clear "hook" for audiences. Plus, I think overall, people liked that movie more than Babylon (granted , I haven't seen Babylon, this is just based off of anecdotal evidence). So it's no wonder that movie grossed 10x what Babylon did.

[Saul Goodman]

Tried watching but couldn't get into it. Too bad because I was initially hyped for this movie. It's just "look 1920s Hollyweird is crazy!", Brad Pitt playing the same character in everything has gotten stale too.

[filmlover]

How is it even a debate as to why this bombed lmao. A 3+ hour period drama sitting on the Rotten side of RT seemed doomed from that moment on, poor marketing was just the cherry on top. I probably liked this movie more than most did but it's not difficult to see why people avoided it in theaters like the plague.

[Eric the IF]

4 minutes ago, DAJK said:

I'm not sure, I disagree with this... I think, although I'm not sure where exactly where I fall on this scale. I think the "it's not a toy commercial" is dangerously close to becoming as much of a crutch to explain why a movie bombed as "marketing". Sure, it's beyond difficult for movies nowadays to reach blockbuster-level grosses (say, 150M+ domestic, 400M+ WW)  without being "toy commercials/movie universe setups". But that's not what even those who were optimistic about a movie like Babylon would have expected. 

 

Take a look at Smile. 100M+ horror hit, 215M WW. And it wasn't sold as a toy commercial or a movie universe. What happened was that it had an easily-marketable hook, and audiences liked it. Even Violent Night was in the same book. M3GAN. And I'm sure many others if you go back over the years. Wolf of Wall Street could be seen as similar to Babylon (crazy, over the top, star-studded, etc.), but the difference there is that the marketing had a clear "hook" for audiences. Plus, I think overall, people liked that movie more than Babylon (granted , I haven't seen Babylon, this is just based off of anecdotal evidence). So it's no wonder that movie grossed 10x what Babylon did.

I've seen these examples before, but almost all the "breakouts" that don't fit in the "toy commercial" brand are horror movies like Smile, M3GAN, Black Phone, Nope, etc. Having only one type of movie be the exception to the rule doesn't really help my argument, especially when Smile and M3GAN will probably have a million sequels over the next few decades and M3GAN Funko Pops will be sold next to Chucky and Ghostface every year at Spirit Halloween.

 

Only other ones from this year that I argue don't fit into this are Lost City, which would have done an easy 150M+ 10 years ago, Bullet Train, Everything Everywhere, and then like...Crawdads? Which would have probably made 100M+ 5-10 years ago too? Even Elvis is flimsy to put in here since these music biopics are the "prestige" version of a nostalgic toy commercial.

[DAJK]

1 hour ago, Eric Crowe said:

I've seen these examples before, but almost all the "breakouts" that don't fit in the "toy commercial" brand are horror movies like Smile, M3GAN, Black Phone, Nope, etc. Having only one type of movie be the exception to the rule doesn't really help my argument, especially when Smile and M3GAN will probably have a million sequels over the next few decades and M3GAN Funko Pops will be sold next to Chucky and Ghostface every year at Spirit Halloween.

 

Only other ones from this year that I argue don't fit into this are Lost City, which would have done an easy 150M+ 10 years ago, Bullet Train, Everything Everywhere, and then like...Crawdads? Which would have probably made 100M+ 5-10 years ago too? Even Elvis is flimsy to put in here since these music biopics are the "prestige" version of a nostalgic toy commercial.

I'm not sure the argument that "these would have also done well 10 years ago" really helps the argument. Because what we know now is that these movies ARE still doing well today. And we have no way of quantifying whether they would have done MUCH better 10 years ago, or if they would have done the same. Using the "well they always would have done well 10 years ago" argument for the exceptions doesn't really work.

[Joel M]

Loved it. The entire cast was pretty great, but my MVP was Robbie. I think it's her best performance. The ending was definately a choice. I'm all for it, at least we know Chazelle's favorite blockbusters are all bangers.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

5 hours ago, Eric Crowe said:

They had Babylon ads before every football game this year, and they all pushed the movie as "wacky crazy you're never gonna believe the insanity in here", which was an effective tool for Wolf of Wall Street all those years ago.

The Wolf of Wall Street featured wild antics/partying in its trailers but also sold it as Leo playing a money-swindling crook with the FBI after him, a story set 15-25 years earlier than its release date. All that's a much easier sell to average moviegoers. Fun fact, the 2013 movie wasn't even the first time Paramount released a film called The Wolf of Wall Street-also about a shady trader. Movies about robberies/financial crimes, and the excesses of those who commit them, have succeeded in many eras.

 

Compare that with trying to sell 1920s Hollywood to a 2020s audience, and without the trailers conveying a clear plot. What the low information moviegoer got from the Babylon ads/trailers: Margot Robbie parties hard, doesn't seem like a 1920s person, and fights snakes? Brad Pitt is drunk and...dances off terraces? Tobey Maguire is in it, and there's another guy around, I guess?

 

I think they were trying to sell "sprawling epic", but for most it just came off as unfocused.

 

 

[CoolioD1]

this is why we need a trailer voiceover guy back. he would've let everyone know what the deal was.

[interiorgatordecorator]

7 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

those tiktoks are even worse than the "Morbius is a Marvel legend!" ones.

 

im not very adept at using tiktok and its search function, but I couldnt find an official account for the movie (if that is indeed what youre talking about), would you mind sharing a link?

[CoolioD1]

Just now, interiorgatordecorator said:

 

im not very adept at using tiktok and its search function, but I couldnt find an official account for the movie (if that is indeed what youre talking about), would you mind sharing a link?

i'm talking about the ones that are in the YT video on the top of the page. looks like they are from the paramount tiktok account. stuff like this