MovieChat Forums > The Lighthouse (2019) Discussion > Is this movie being a flop a consequence...

Is this movie being a flop a consequence of the decline of film journalism?

posted 5 years ago by kuku (3510)
17 replies | jump to latest

Until a couple of decades ago, this was the kind of movie that general audiences avoided, but critics used to love and praise. They weren't hits, but they paid the bills.

Right now, The Lighthouse looks like a sure flop.

Before the decline of modern journalism, you knew that critics used to love artistic movies and (often) despise pop-corn ones. A good rule of thumb was to trust them with the first ones, and check word of mouth with the second ones. And that worked quite well.

Fast-forward to modern day. You check RT right now, and while critics praise 'The Lighthouse'... they place it about the same level than 'Brittany runs a Marathon' and 'Hustlers'. WTF? Then you go down the list (critics' score) and you find Joker and Fast & Furious Hobbs & Shawn sharing a similar score. WTF? (again). Then you go top of the list, and you have 'One Piece the Movie' as the best movie in movie theaters. And don't get me wrong, I love Anime, and One Piece is good fun, like Fairy Tail with pirates, but, top critic score?? WTF? (again).

Years ago, you knew that critics used to despise pop-corn movies and love auteur films... so you had to make adjustments based on that. Once you adjusted, though, critiques were quite trustworthy. Right now, critiques feel like a joke.

Traditionally, The Lighthouse was the kind of movie that should have been pushed forward by critics. Not to the point of being a hit, but having the bills paid. Sadly, when critics are not trustworthy anymore, movies like this one are the ones that have the most to lose.

[–] modica (4169) 5 years ago

When award season comes, the movie will get some nominations and that may boost box office. I saw the movie last night and just because it is such a weird and difficult movie, people won't flock to it. Sometimes box office isn't as important as getting noticed by critics and film geeks.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

i think there are a few things a bit off with your analysis.

while it's true if you look at the pure rotten tomato percentages, hustlers & brittany... are in the same ballpark as the lighthouse, if you drill down into the actual average rating the films received, the lighthouse has better ratings than both, and much higher ratings than the joker & hobbes & shaw.

& i'm not sure why you're so sniffy about brittany runs a marathon. i didn't get a chance to see it when it was in the theatres here, but everything i heard about it was extremely positive, that it was a fun, quirky, thoughtful film.

for the record, here are the actual ratings for the films you mentioned

brittany:
89% rt avg
7.38 avg critic rating on rt
73 rating on metacritic

hustlers 88% rt avg
7.38 critic rating'
79 metacritic

joker
69%
7.26 critic rating
59 metacritic

hobbes & shaw
67%
6.09 avg rt critic rating
60 metacritic

the lighthouse
92%
8.2 avg critic rating
83 metacritic

so you can see the lighthouse has a fairly significantly higher rating than all of those films, though hustlers' metacritic rating is fairly close to it.

and i don't think it's correct at all to call it a flop. it's made what i would consider, for a stark, austere, weird, dark & black and fucking white film, quite a healthy gross of $4.4 million after a week of relatively wide release. that is quite a strong result for a film of this type, i'd say. we'll see how well it holds up over the coming weeks, but i'd say the strong audience & critical response bodes well, & it's likely it will make $20m+ in north america alone, which again i'll say is quite a good result for such a stark, offbeat film.

[–] modica (4169) 5 years ago

It is only playing in about 550 theaters, so of course it is not getting big crowds. My theater was almost packed when I saw it last night, so at least it is getting some audience.

[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

It's a flop.

With a $20 million budget, + let's say $5-10 million marketing, you'd need $50 million to break even. Box office $4-5 million in a week means about $10 million final. Make it $20 million worldwide. Not even close.

---

Yeap, when you check score in RT (though I don't know how you got them!) and metacritic it doesn't look that bad. But still... in metacritic, for example, the joker is in the middle yellow zone (not even the green one!). The Lighthouse... well, it's at the top, but you have almost 30 movies scoring 80+ in theaters right now. I understand that critics always had a soft spot for non-western movies, they were usually very popular in Cannes. That's nothing new... but this is too much.

Most of movies at the top, I didn't even heard of them. I've watched 'One Cut of the Dead', which was a really smart movie I enjoyed, but 85 at metacritic, WTF?. Out of curiosity, I check 2-3 critiques about Argentinian 'Fin de Siglo' (End of Century) in their own country. In Argentina, it was not very appreciated, labeling it as interesting but not very god. In metacritic it scores 84. WTF?. 'Ad Astra', scoring 80. WTF?

Traditionally, you knew that some types of movies (auteur ones) were pushed forward and other type (pop-corns) pushed back. Knowing that, and adjusting based on it, critiques were (relatively) quite trustworthy. Now... they feel random.

[–] dmac8 (5050) 5 years ago

The scores on RT are right there when you click more info under the percentages, and you can see the subset of the Top Critics score as well.

And regarding The Lighthouse, you're ignoring the theater count. It expanded from 8 theaters to 586 theaters and adding more starting tonight. It's a specialty movie. These films don't start with 3-4k screens. You can't look at the gross while ignoring the number of theaters.

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/the-lighthouse-parasite-jojo-rabbit-thrive-kanye-west-jesus-is-king-box-office-1202185321/

https://www.facebook.com/LighthouseMovie/posts/?ref=page_internal

Contrast that with what happened with Lucy in the Sky. Despite Natalie Portman's draw, but due to poor critical reviews, it never got out of the box. It never ran in more than 231 theaters before dropping to fewer. That's a flop. Jury is still out The Lighthouse. It's closer to the beginning of its run than some false end you're already finalizing.

[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

I don't care how many theater it had provided that the average per screen lies inside some average range. Unless there's some political boycott or some movie is forcing itself in each and every screen (not happening now), the number of theaters depends on the expected box office. Since the income per screen was kind of average (even lower than Zombieland, for example), the width of the release was correctly calculated.

If they're gonna add more screen, as you say, and they're gonna do it even when the income per screen was average, that's because of the favorable word of mouth could increase the expected audience. But that would support my point, since this is the kind of movie that should have been pushed forward by critics, not by word of mouth.

World is upside down when professional critics push forward Black Panther or Hustlers while audience's word of mouth push forward The Lighthouse.

[–] dmac8 (5050) 5 years ago

You're making my point -- which you already saw in my other reply below from yesterday. "Pushing" is giving it good reviews -- which like everyone has spelled out to you in detail, has occurred -- and better reviewed than the movies you chose to bring up as examples of the opposite. It received those good reviews from its first screening at festivals to the present. What "pushing" didn't they do? The rollout is a referendum on the film going public. They start small and expand based on support. It's about what most prefer rather than what's most well-reviewed by critics -- and those are clearly not the same. Wherever this ends up, no one is going to blame a lack of critical support. It's a different b & w specialty film in an old format that would never have wide appeal to a general audience. Blame them for not being more interested in a critical darling that'll probably receive even props during awards season.

People have options today. This kinda film won't get them off their phone or their couch. Big, cgi, 4-box tentpole movies do that. This is a classic case of the critically acclaimed, prestige film that the masses won't bother to see in a theater if it all. That's why Oscar ratings continue to fall.

The Lighthouse has a 92% (8.21/10) on RT from critics -- but a 71% (3.76/5) from audiences.
#1 box office film, Avengers: Endgame has a 94% (8.3/10) on RT from critics -- but a 91% (4.51/5) from audiences.
# 2 box office film, The Lion King has a 54% (6/10) on RT from critics -- but an 88% (4.42/5) from audiences.

Look at the above and skewer the film going public instead of pretending that it's about critics and whatever mysterious pushing they're supposed to be doing besides praising a film in a review.

Positive reviews help any film but they are hardly the singular factor. If there had been no reviews at all for both Hustlers and The Lighthouse, Hustlers would outdraw The Lighthouse on premise alone. There's no expectation to rake with a story about two guys in a lighthouse in the 1890s. It's about prestige from beginning to end. And it's a minor miracle it was made at all. It's probably the result of Pattinson's participation alone. J-Lo and strippers in a modern setting? Much easier to sell tix to that.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

It's a flop.

With a $20 million budget, + let's say $5-10 million marketing, you'd need $50 million to break even. Box office $4-5 million in a week means about $10 million final. Make it $20 million worldwide. Not even close.

just a few comments on this...

- do you know the budget is $20m? i just looked on the wiki, & it shows the budget as '>$4m.' i can't find any budget numbers listed anywhere else. i don't know what the right number is, but $20m seems pretty high for production like this.

- smaller releases like the lighthouse often have longer revenue 'tails' ... they open in fewer theatres, expand a little perhaps if word of mouth & critical praise creates more demand. the daily domestic grosses show it holding quite nicely at $300k-$400k/day during the week, & we'll see how it does on the weekend. the proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course, but i think there's good reason to think this will have a long run & come in closer to $20m than $10m domestic.

- and regardless of that gross, it's a great movie & i absolutely loved it myself. it's been a while since i read about this, but if i remember correctly, only about 40% of films released become profitable, and most of those just barely make money. the industry strongly relies on a relatively few strongly performing films to maintain their economic model. if the lighthouse loses money, i think that would be a bit of a shame because i really hope people find this movie & love it as much as i do, but it would not be odd or weird. it would be very normal, because that is the state of most films.

i really liked one cut of the dead too, btw. one of my own favourites of the year.

[–] dmac8 (5050) 5 years ago

yeah, I couldn't find the budget either. I think the '>4m' comes from a comment that it cost more than The Witch -- which is most likely due to Pattinson and Dafoe.

And it looks like it expands to 978 theaters today.

[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

You're right. I was sure I read somewhere that the budget was $20m, but I've checked and it seems that it's about $4m or a bit more.

That changes the game. With that budget, it's not a flop.

My bad.

[–] dmac8 (5050) 5 years ago

Who knows? I still can't find anything except that one comment.

I can't see the production itself costing that much. And I think both Dafoe and Pattinson approached Eggers about getting involved in whatever project he might wanna do -- so I doubt they received too much.

But regarding performance and expansion, from Deadline...

"A24’s mad capped black and white fever dream The Lighthouse starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe sailed from 586 screens to a whopping 978 and it continued to deliver strong numbers. The film earned an estimated $2,021,410 for the weekend, bringing its cume to $7,000,545."

[–] dmac8 (5050) 5 years ago

It has a higher theater average than Maleficent after the same number of days in release. But wherever it ends up, it'll be due to the audience and their word-of-mouth rather than critics (who clearly praised the film). And it's obviously not made to be a 4-quadrant box office success. Not that kinda movie. It's a challenging, artsy, prestige film in an atypical format -- in 586 theaters so far.

[–] snepts (11123) 5 years ago

I'm glad some have come along to examine your premise a little more closely. I don't read many film reviews anymore, with the demise of our local print daily newspaper. It's easy to imagine film critics are swayed to being more forgiving of all the blockbuster type films when some try very hard not to be dumbed down and poorly executed, and may not be thoughtful enough to be comfortable with more cerebral fare. So I understand what you are getting at, but I hold out hope good directors and screenwriters can persuade producers to take a chance on serious cinema.
PS: And who doesn't love Willem Dafoe? (Ans: Probably all the people who love Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt, haha.)

[–] illnagas (457) 5 years ago

I think this film tried to appear like a sophisticated art film but I don’t think esteemed film critics of any era would praise it.

[–] DaveBowman2001 (474) 4 years ago

Journalism died years ago. Now we have over-estrogenated SJW interns asking why we don't have an all-female Star Wars or Die Hard movie for clicks.

[–] MovieElephant (332) 4 years ago

Maybe because the idea of a person going mad because of being isolated and the corresponding uncertainty as to what is real and what is not isn't so original.

This is a psychological horror movie, same as Shutter Island, I don't know why people call it an art film.

[–] PF4Eva (290) 4 years ago

It's an arthouse film. It was never going to draw Marvel-sized crowds. Simple as that. That's why arthouse films rarely get wide releases... cost aside.