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

This past Monday was the 25th anniversary of Anaconda, which means today is the 25th anniversary of the day we found out (in the pre-daily box office reporting era) that the $45 million snake thriller had topped the domestic box office with $16.6 million. In retrospect, Anaconda, along with Rush Hour in late 1998, invented the so-called R-13. Both films were R-rated in spirit but constructed just so to sneak by with a PG-13, which in the late 1990’s made them unique and made kids feel like they were snacking on forbidden fruit. Both films also represent the kind of small-scale, original and inclusive (the former starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube with the latter starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker) studio programmers that might well have come to dominate the industry had Hollywood not been sucked into the post-9/11 global blockbuster mentality.

Debuting just before the summer season with mixed reviews, although most folks only remember Roger Ebert’s 3.5-star rave, director Luis Llosa’s Anaconda was, on the surface, just another “now we can make big-budget monster movies” flick that followed on the heels of the first Jurassic Park. Think, offhand, Species, The Relic, Deep Rising and Deep Blue Sea. What set Anaconda apart from the competition, aside from the PG-13 rating, was its cast. The film’s unmistakable protagonist was Jennifer Lopez, with this pure genre film opening less than a month after her Selina biopic. Lopez had thus far distinguished herself as the best thing of bad movies like Jack and Money Train. This one-two punch arguably primed her for, uh, mainstream stardom (IE – white people noticed her) in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight in summer 1998.

Not only was the lead hero of this “documentary filmmakers sail into the jungle and fend off a giant snake” actioner a young Hispanic woman, but her partner in crime would also turn out to be Ice Cube. This was the rapper’s eighth movie since his debut in Boyz in the Hood in summer 1991, and he was well-known enough to be considered a minor-league “butts in seats” star back when that meant something. Eric Stoltz, introduced as the heroic anthropologist, spends 75% of the movie in a coma. Owen Wilson also absolutely fails to save the day. His girlfriend is murdered by the film’s human antagonist. Said antagonist is a ruthless, mercenary snake hunter played with infamous “Even Nicolas Cage could never!” relish by Jon Voight. No spoilers, but boy, does he go out on a high note.

Like several late-1990s hits, Anaconda was inclusive for the heck of it.

While Anaconda never yellow-highlighted its onscreen inclusivity, that element helped the film leg out to $65 million domestic. Even in 1997, a 3.96x multiplier was pretty damn impressive, especially for what was essentially a schlocky monster movie. And, yeah, the film opened right alongside the late-1990’s likes of The Matrix ($465 million), The Birdcage ($185 million worldwide), Blade ($131 million worldwide), In and Out ($65 million domestic) and Rush Hour ($244 million worldwide). They were moderately-budgeted theatrical releases that also happened to rebut conventional wisdom in terms of what audiences would appreciate onscreen, in terms of gender race and sexual orientation. Heck, the second-biggest global grosser at that moment was Will Smith’s Independence Day, while Smith’s Men in Black would outgross The Lost World domestically in the summer of 1997. But then 9/11 happened.

Part of America’s reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in September of 2001 was an attempted reversion to conventional gender roles and an alleged desire for conventional forms of escapism. Concurrently, 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 generational nostalgia for the pre-Vietnam American military righteousness which was exploited by those wishing to wage war after the terrorist attacks. By coincidence, design or maybe a little of both, the 9/11 attacks (and the outcry over the Columbine school shooting in April of 1999) would be followed by a slew of big-budget, franchise-friendly, globally-targeted “white guy discovers he’s the special” action fantasies. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins and Spider-Man were coming to save us.

Quite obviously, those three franchise-starters were in production well before the 9/11 attacks, and all three would have been successes even in comparative peacetime. However, their global reception as “the good-versus-evil epic adventure movies we need right now” were viewed under the prism of righteous heroism struggling against absolute evil and traumatized victims doing their best in terrifying times. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone earned $975 million worldwide in late 2001, behind only Titanic ($1.8 billion) while The Fellowship of the Ring earned $897 million a month later. Spider-Man opened in May of 2002 and grossed $821 million worldwide. Never mind that Rush Hour 2 had earned $344 million worldwide and The Fast & The Furious had earned $207 million (on a $40 million budget) in the summer of 2001, both partially because of their comparative inclusivity.

Hollywood’s pursuit of the next global blockbuster franchise swallowed up everything else.

Also, Spider-Man affirmed the comic book superhero movie as a potential A-level tentpole, after 13 years of post-Batman false starts. It also, sadly, marked the near-total end of “not a white guy” flicks like Mask of Zorro, Spawn or Black Mask. Black Panther may have been heralded as an overdue example of a big-budget comic book superhero movie in early 2018, but that was partially because the sub-genre essentially got gentrified by heroic white dudes (Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider, Thomas Jane’s Punisher, Christian Bale’s Batman, Eric Bana’s Hulk, etc.) right when Hollywood started taking it seriously. In 1998, Antonio Banderas could be Zorro and Wesley Snipes could be Blade. By 2003, Michael Clarke Duncan was considered lucky to play a race-swapped Kingpin in Ben Affleck’s Daredevil. That became a metaphor for the industry.

As Hollywood’s global aspirations got bigger and the budgets got larger, the conventional wisdom about women and minorities harming overseas box office potential became an overwhelming consideration. The pursuit of the next Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean or Lord of the Rings, along with the mid-2000s decline in DVD sales, meant less money available for the kind of $35-$55 million studio programmer that could afford to be explicitly inclusive and/or LGBTQIA-friendly. By 2005, Tyler Perry’s melodramas were (for example) overperforming in theaters and getting stacked casts (Angela Bassett, Michael Ealy, Anika Noni Rose, Idris Elba, etc.) partially because they were the only game in town. Hollywood eventually came to its sense in terms of white young men discovering their superheroic destiny as the only game in town, but it was a few years too late.

What we started seeing in the late 2010’s was an attempt to essentially pick up where Hollywood left off in the late 1990’s. In a non-tentpole world, Love Simon would have been the next step after In & Out. Black Panther would have been the logical reaction to Blade, and the likes of Waiting to Exhale and Rush Hour wouldn’t be as unique/special/important today as they were in the 1990’s. In 2001, Hollywood showed that a female action hero could power a video game hit with Tomb Raider. In 2018, Hollywood showed that a female lead could power a video game hit with… Tomb Raider. In 1996, it was a big deal that Will Smith was cast as the crowd-pleasing protagonist in Independence Day. In 2018, it was still unique/unusual that John Boyega was fronting Pacific Rim: Uprising.

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

I’ve long argued that Disney started ruling the roast when they stopped trying to copy the success of Pirates of the Caribbean (RIP – John Carter, Prince of Persia, Tron: Legacy and The Lone Ranger) and started emulating Alice in Wonderland (via, offhand, Maleficent, Frozen, The Force Awakens and Beauty and the Beast). Hollywood finally noticed as Fast Five soared to $620 million worldwide in the summer of 2011, that inclusive casting could be a huge added value element to an already appealing commercial package. However, if the reemergence of small-scale “not a white guy” performers like Obsessed, Think Like A Man or The Butler picked up where Hollywood left off in the late 1990’s (following the likes of Waiting to Exhale), the awakening would be short-lived. Hollywood’s attempts at theatrical inclusivity slammed into the streaming era.

With the “go to the movies just to go to the movies” crowd staying at home for their “non-event movie” entertainment, smaller-scale, star-driven, non-franchise fare became a commercially perilous species. In 2015, The Perfect Guy could open with $25 million. In 2014, Neighbors could nab a $50 million debut. By 2019, The Intruder and Long Shot opened just over/under $10 million. In 2005, Jennifer Lopez’s Monster In Law opened with $24 million. In 2022, Lopez’s Marry Me couldn’t crack $9 million. Before Covid, the overall box office was up (partially due to rising ticket prices and luxury theaters/premium auditoriums), ticket prices were down (but not catastrophically so). However, from 2015 to 2018, the top six annual releases made up over/under 26% of the overall domestic box office revenue. Audiences have become laser-focused on IP-centric tentpoles.

Adults started treating franchise flicks, ones rooted in IP (The Force Awakens), generational nostalgia (It) and/or marquee characters (Deadpool) as “grown-up date movie” picks. Actual “movies for adults” morphed into 6-10 episode cable/streaming miniseries (The Unknowing, The Dropout, Bridgerton, etc.). 20 years ago, Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful and Chris Nolan’s Insomnia were solid over/under $115 million global grossers alongside Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones. Lyne’s Deep Water just went straight to Hulu. Meanwhile, audiences only show up in theaters for something they already want to see. That usually amounts to a Marvel/DC film (Venom: Let There Be Carnage), a buzzy video game adaptation (Sonic the Hedgehog), a high-concept horror flick (A Quiet Place), a musical biopic (Rocketman) or an installment in one of the few remaining “big-deal” franchises (Despicable Me, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic World, the MonsterVerse, etc.).

Epilogue

It’s hard to make a new movie star, be they the “next Tom Cruise” or the “next Will Smith,” if audiences only care about what marquee character they are playing. 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 1990’s. By the time Hollywood remembered what it had, the theatrical potential of “just a movie” was lost to the convenience of streaming. The tragedy is Anaconda would be in 20022 as novel a theatrical release as it was in 1997. The unassuming, pulpy B-movie snake flick is a preview of a Hollywood not spending 20 years chasing the next Spider-Man or Harry Potter.