First ‘Babylon’ Trailer Is Filled With Sex, Drugs And Oscar Hopes

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dropped the first trailer for Damien Chazelle’s Babylon this morning. It’s a rare red-band trailer, with actual nudity and hard profanity although minimal violence amid the tale of Hollywood’s perilous 1920s transition from silent movies to talkies. It’s well-worn territory, as fans of Singing in the Rain and The Artist can attest. Many pre-Hays Code flicks were racier and more progressive than much of what passes for adult cinema today, but that’s a more extended conversation. The picture looks like a coke-fueled party movie. It’s full of glamorous people (Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva alongside Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Jean Smart and Tobey Maguire) making movies, trying to make history and otherwise indulging in all manner of vice. It looks very much to be on par with Chazelle’s previous films.

Whiplash, La La Land and First Man all dealt with the sacrifices of doing great things, the occasionally mundane and less-than-glamourous side of making great art or history, and how success in your field can feel like regular work. Many of the 2014 Oscar season flicks, think Whiplash, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Birdman and Selma, dealt with (to paraphrase Malcolm McDowell in a late-season one episode of Heroes) the push-pull between having an important life versus having a happy life. Whether Babylon will be any good I cannot say. That it’s opening in limited release on Christmas Day and then going wide on January 6 signals that it may be a Covid-era return to new year Oscar-season breakout hit. 1917 will have been three long years ago.

One big reason why Spider-Man: No Way Home legged out from $260 million in mid-December to an $804 million ($812 million counting the recent reissue) domestic is because it was almost entirely unopposed in early 2022. It wasn’t just that the studios held back on their bigger movies, moving Morbius to early April and thus making Scream the only biggie in January. It was also that we didn’t have any late-2021 Oscar season hits, certainly none that would continue to rack up grosses in early 2022. House of Gucci was the closest, earning $52 million domestic from a $22 million Thanksgiving opening weekend, but it was mostly done by Christmas. The Last Duel, Last Night in Soho, West Side Story, King Richard and Licorice Pizza were either box office misses or, at best, small-scale successes. All of them were in wide release by mid-December 2021.

What we didn’t get in early 2022 were the late-December platform releases that rode a wave of good reviews, awards attention and consumer buzz to a successful wide release in January. Think, just the last decade, Zero Dark Thirty in 2013, American Sniper in 2015, both La La Land and Hidden Figures in 2017 and 1917 in 2020. But of course, that’s just the biggies. Okay, so it’s not 2010/2011 anymore. So, we shouldn’t expect films like Black Swan, The Fighter, True Grit and The King’s Speech to all concurrently rack up big bucks right alongside Little Fockers and Tron: Legacy. But Sam Mendes’ World War I action-drama opened with $37 million on the way to $159 million domestic just two months before Covid became a global problem. That launch was on par with The Revenant, Gran Torino and Lone Survivor in 2016, 2009 and 2014.

One possible sign of a theatrical recovery is if at least a few of the year’s big Oscar contenders break out commercially. No, I don’t think Darren Aronofsky’s passion play The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser as an obese man in what could be an Oscar-winning performance, will be a blockbuster. Nor The Son, Empire of Light or Armageddon Time, presumed quality notwithstanding. But more ‘fun’ entertainments could bring folks into theaters. Think, offhand, films like Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans (Thanksgiving), David O. Russell’s Christian Bale/Margot Robbie/Chris Rock/Anya Taylor Joy/John David Washington caper Amsterdam (October 7), Maria Schrader’s ‘reporters who took down Harvey Weinstein’ drama She Said (November 18) and Babylon. Since Babylon is the going the ‘platform in December, go wide in January’ route, it could follow in the footsteps of (whether it wins anything or not) A Beautiful Mind, Chicago and Million-Dollar Baby.

Or, conversely, it could prove too much, a three-hour, R-rated raunch fest, for the sorts of older moviegoers who prefer not to see R-rated movies with actual R-rated content (beyond an F-bomb or two). That’s why Harvey Weinstein fought to get a PG-13 for Judi Dench’s Philomena in late 2013, and that’s why Lionsgate eventually released a PG-13 cut of Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai on DVD. But if it delivers the taboo goods amid a high-quality or crowdpleasing package, it’s not like Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was a short and wholesome adult-skewing entertainment. I don’t know and probably won’t know until we see if anyone shows up for The Woman King, Amsterdam and The Fabelmans over the next three months. At least in terms of general moviegoers, the Oscar race begins this Friday. Let’s first hope anyone shows up to Sony’s terrific Viola Davis actioner.