‘Anaconda’ Showed Us A Future Stolen By Harry Potter And Spider-Man

Today is the 25th anniversary of the day we found out that the $45 million snake thriller had topped the domestic box office with $16.6 million. Rush Hour and Anaconda invented the so-called R-13. The R-rated films were constructed to sneak by with a PG-13, which made them unique and made kids feel like they were snacking on forbidden fruit. The kind of small-scale, original and inclusive films that studio programmers might have come to dominate had Hollywood not been sucked into the post-9-11 global blockbuster mentality are represented in both films.

Although most people only remember Roger Ebert's 3.5-star rave, director Luis Llosa's Anaconda was a mixed review, but now we can make big. Think of species, The Relic, Deep Rising and Deep Blue Sea. The cast was what made Anaconda different from the other competitors. Less than a month after her film, the film's main character was Jen Lopez. Lopez had distinguished herself as the best thing in bad movies like Jack and Money Train. She was primed for mainstream stardom after this one-two punch in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight.

The lead hero of this documentary filmmakers sail into the jungle and fend off a giant snake, but her partner in crime would also turn out to be Ice Cube. This was the rapper's eighth movie since his debut in the summer of 1991, and he was well-known enough to be considered a minor-league star back then. Eric Stoltz, who was introduced as the heroic anthropologist, spent 75% of the movie in a coma. Owen Wilson doesn't save the day. The film has a human antagonist. Even Nicolas Cage could never play the ruthless mercenary snake hunter played by Jon Voight. Does he go out on a high note?

Anaconda was inclusive for the most part.

The film made $65 million in domestic sales, thanks to its inclusivity element. In 1997, a 3.96x multiplier was pretty impressive, especially for what was essentially a schlocky monster movie. The film opened right beside the likes of The Matrix, The Birdcage, Blade, and In and Out. In terms of gender race and sexual orientation, they were moderately-budgeted theatrical releases that rebutted conventional wisdom. Will Smith's Independence Day was the second-biggest global grosser at that time, while Smith's Men in Black was the biggest domestic grosser. Then 9/11 happened.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, America attempted to return to gender roles that were more traditional. The artistic/commercial success of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan in the summer of 1998 and the commercial success of Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor in the summer of 2001 reawakened a nostalgia for the pre-Vietnam American military righteousness which was exploited. By coincidence, design or maybe a little of both, the 9/11 attacks would be followed by a slew of big-budget, franchise-friendly, globally-targeted films. They were going to save us.

The three franchise-starters were in production before the 9/11 attacks, and they would have been successes even in peacetime. The good-versus-evil epic adventure movies we need right now were viewed as righteous heroism struggling against absolute evil and traumatized victims doing their best in terrifying times. The Stone earned $975 million worldwide in late 2001, behind only Titanic and The Fellowship of the Ring. Spider-Man opened in May of 2002 and made $821 million. Rush Hour 2 had earned $344 million worldwide and The Fast and the Furious had earned $207 million in the summer of 2001, both partially because of their comparative inclusivity.

Everything else was subsumed by Hollywood's pursuit of the next global blockbuster franchise.

After 13 years of false starts, the comic book superhero movie was affirmed as a potential A-level tentpole by Spider-Man. It also marked the end of the movie genre, not a white guy, movies like Black Mask or Mask of Zorro. Black Panther was heralded as an example of a big-budget comic book superhero movie in early 2018, but that was partially because the sub-genre got gentrified by heroic white dudes. In 1998, Antonio Banderas could be a villain. By 2003 Michael Clarke Duncan was considered lucky to play a race swapped Kingpin in Daredevil. That was a metaphor for the industry.

Conventional wisdom about women and minorities hurting overseas box office potential became an overwhelming consideration as Hollywood's global ambitions got bigger. With less money available for the kind of $35-$55 million studio programmers that could afford to be explicitly inclusive and/or LGBTQIA-friendly, the pursuit of the next Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean or Shrek meant less money was available. By 2005, TylerPerry's melodramas were overperforming in theaters and getting stacked casts, partly because they were the only game in town. It was a few years too late for white young men to discover their superheroic destiny as the only game in town.

In the late 2010's, we saw an attempt to pick up where Hollywood left off in the late 1990's. Love Simon would have been the next step after In and Out. Waiting to Exhale and Rush Hour were important in the 1990s, but they wouldn't be as important today. Hollywood showed that a female action hero could power a video game. Hollywood showed that a female lead could power a video game. Tomb Raider. In 1996, Will Smith was cast as the main character in Independence Day. John Boyega was fronting Pacific Rim: Uprising.

By the time Hollywood tried to catch up, streaming had overtaken theatrical as the entertainment venue of choice.

When Disney stopped trying to duplicate the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, they started emulating Alice in Wonderland, and that's when Disney started ruling the roast. In the summer of 2011, when Fast Five soared to $620 million worldwide, Hollywood finally noticed that inclusive casting could be a huge added value to an already appealing commercial package. If the reemergence of small-scale performers like Obsessed, Think Like A Man, and the like picked up where Hollywood left off in the late 1990's, it would be a good sign. The streaming era slammed into Hollywood's attempts at theatrical inclusivity.

Smaller-scale, star-driven, non-franchise fare became the norm with the crowd staying at home for their entertainment. The Perfect Guy could open with $25 million. Neighbors could make a $50 million debut. The Intruder and Long Shot opened in under 10 million dollars. In 2005, Monster In Law opened with $24 million. Lopez's Marry Me couldn't make $9 million. The box office was up before Covid, but ticket prices were down, but not catastrophically so. The top six annual releases made up 26% of the domestic box office revenue. Audiences have become more focused on tentpoles.

Adults started treating franchise flicks as grown up date movies. The Unknowing, The Dropout, and Bridgerton are cable/streaming mini-series. 20 years ago, Chris Nolan's Insomnia and Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful were among the top five global grossers. Deep Water went straight to Hulu. Audiences only show up in theaters for what they want to see. That usually includes a film from the comic book company, a video game adaptation, a horror film, or a musical film.

Thelogue.

If audiences only care about what marquee character they are playing, it's hard to make a new movie star. The post-9-11 drive toward global blockbuster franchises, with their conventional wisdom-backed emphasis on white guys discovering that they are superheroes, wizards, pirates or best pals with giant robots, put a stop to the relative progress toward inclusivity during the late 1990s. The theatrical potential of just a movie was lost to the convenience of streaming when Hollywood remembered what it had. In 20022 the novel would be released as a theatrical release. The B-movie snake flick is a preview of a Hollywood not spending 20 years chasing the next Spider-Man or Harry Potter.