Image credit: Elevation Pictures
Welcome to GQ Film Club, a monthly series cutting through the clutter to give you a breakdown of the films of the moment that are actually worth your time.
God bless Barbenheimer and its much-needed injection of life back into the film industry as a whole. As we’ve written extensively at GQ Film Club, in case you didn’t notice, cinema is in a bad way. Not only are quality films struggling at the box office, but the streamers’ relentless pursuit to over-commercialise cinema has led to the first dual strikes between the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in decades. What Barbie and Oppenheimer have done, at the very least, is remind us and hopefully the rest of the industry, that original, intelligent works of film can still create massive cultural moments that have the whole world talking—and turning up to the cinema. These films are definitely outliers—the slate until awards season, even before the strikes, is pretty bare—but they do show that if you treat audiences with respect and invest in truly creative ideas, they. Will. Sell.
One key lesson that the industry hopefully learns comes specifically from Barbie. The biggest players in the industry are relentlessly chasing IP-driven franchises and cinematic universes, but if they let a director cook within that world, the outcomes will almost always be better than if you put up the guard rails on the bowling alley. Anyone who has seen Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of a literal doll figurine that didn’t hesitate to address the worst parts of that product, as well as the best, is the proof of concept. Another example? The brilliant Star Wars television series Andor. Created by Tony Gilroy, the esteemed screenwriter, Andor tells a gripping story that would resonate with audiences if it was set in Soviet Russia or Star Wars. It doesn’t have to carry the weight of setting up spin-offs, heavily referencing established cannon or throwing lightsabers around. It just has to tell its story and with that freedom it has become one of the best products of the streaming era.
There’s no going back to the wildly creative eras of the 20th century, but this is a blueprint that can work. If streamers are going to insist on making movies within established IP, at least let the creators roam free within those worlds. As you’ll see below when we dive into our most anticipated release of August, there are a few projects that look like they could do just that.
