MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Box office performance ≠ Quality

Box office performance ≠ Quality


Stop equating box office performance with the quality of a film. They are mutually exclusive. Case in point:

Films like Shawshank Redemption and Children of Men bombed at the box office. Films like Transformers and Minions were box office hits.

I miss the days when no one either knew nor cared about box office and budgets. It's all too often the go to for supposedly proving a movie is good or bad.

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Agreed, Children of Men is one of my favourite films; I had no idea that it didn’t do well at the box office and neither do I care, however, my 4 year old daughter says leave her Minions out of this.

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Ha!
Leave Minions ALONE!!

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I actually hesitated on putting Minions on the list cause I think it's sometimes unfair to judge children's movies by the same standard as, for lack of a better word, "adult" films.

I would even go as far as to say stop paying attention to film ratings and make up your own mind. Sphere (1998) is one of my favorite movies and it has an IMDb score of 6.1 and Rotten Tomatoes score of 12%. But, who cares? I enjoy it immensely.

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That's what it's all about Shiny👍

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I had no idea Children of Men flopped. I never pay attention to box office nor would I ever imply a correlation between BO and quality. If there's any correlation, it's a negative correlation, meaning the better a movie does, the worse it is. I don't think that's necessarily true either, but I believe you could far more easily make a case for it.

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Just watching the movie doesn't even mean you liked it.

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I know what you mean. I'm getting tired of people bragging how much money a crappy film is earning, claiming that the ticket sales is what makes it great. That doesn't account at all for a movie's quality. All it means is that there are a lot of people out there that are stupid, have poor or no taste in good films, or really have a lot of time on their hands to waste.

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“Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the taste of the American public.” - H.L. Mencken

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Sad, but true.

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Yes, sad, in a way. Parenthetically, I think it’s much more true today than it was when Mencken, a renowned essayist and social critic and literary critic, published it in the 1930s. The truer a joke is, the funnier it is; but it can also be liberating for smart people who want to live the lives that we want and deserve. There is an old saying: “Sell to the masses, live with the classes. Sell to the classes, live with the masses.” George Lucas et al. ain’t livin’ with the masses, Darlin’. Why should you and I?

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Good marketing. Once a film gains buzz with a lot of butts in seats, more and more people are going to want in. Eventually all those predictable folks are done with the fad, and then we can all evaluate whether it was worth it.

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I'm with you. I'm sick of the "money is everything" mantra.

The Wizard of Oz bombed when it first came out. Now it's considered a classic.
It's a Wonderful Life - same
I'm sure other posters can come up with a slew of examples.

If box office performance is anyone's guide for what to watch, they're going to miss out on a lot of good movies!

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2001: A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner
Fight Club
Idiocracy

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Not sure how i feel about Idiocracy. Or Fight Club, for that matter.

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I don't pay attention to the money part for the most part. It seems to be important to superhero movies for some reason.

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I mostly agree with you. However, great box officer performance doesn't mean bad quality either. This is where I don't agree with you: Minions.

Minions is a great movie... for little kids. We may not understand it's appeal, but my 5 yo son enjoyed it a lot. I didn't understand either, at first, but after watching it many many kiddie animation movies with him, and all the Minion movies many many times, I appreciate more these silly Despicable Me movies, especially the first one.

There are a lot more kiddie animation movies that are truly bad, like Emoji Movie for example. It's not as bad as the Internet wanted to, but it's pretty bad nonetheless. Cars 3 also comes to mind. Even if it's Pixar, it's still bad.

I don't care if Minions is a box office success or a flop, highly rated or an internet meme. It's a good movie. Megamind is also very very good, even if it was less successful.

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you mean are are people that equate box office performance with the quality of a film???
amazing.
I'd say the same , to a slightly lesser degree , for the oscars too.

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These are are people... are they pirates? Arrrr!

Joking aside, yes, those oscars-bragging people too. I mean, it's an award all right, doesn't mean the movie is always the best quality.

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Don't tell that to Michael Bay. But, in all seriousness, I agree with you.

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