‘Jungle Cruise’ vs. ‘Snake Eyes’ – Battle of the Random Blockbusters

I had a busy weekend at the movies this last weekend.

It started with watching a “midnight release” of Jungle Cruise at 7pm EST on a Thursday. I took a break Friday and then watched Snake Eyes and The Green Knight on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. The movies get ratings of Fine, High Fine, and Low Shiny (respectively), and if you want me to go into more detail then interact with this post and I can write more thorough reviews on them.

What struck me was the box office pulling of these movies, as well as their relative Metacritic scores (that’s right, I don’t care about how many reviewers “liked” or “disliked” a movie – it’s more interesting to see what the aggregate about how much they liked about the movie says about American taste).

Let’s start with Snake Eyes. If you had to make a G. I. Joe movie about anyone, it’s probably best to do it about the Japanese Stealth Stereotype Shinobi Snake Eyes. Directed by action director Robert Schwentke (of RED and RIPD fame), it stars new hot Asian English star Henry Golding and UTW favorite Iko Uwais (who steals the show in his limited screen capacity). It has decent action scenes, solid (if not very inspired) storytelling, a nice visual style, and plenty of people giving it their all (they are so earnest trying to make “The Joes” sound legitimate that I couldn’t help but laugh). It’s a decent action movie, but the target is somewhat strange. Is this for boys, fans of the series, older guys who recognize the ninjas, Henry Golding fans? I don’t know anyone clamoring for another G. I. Joe movie, but someone at the top must have thought it would be a good idea, and the focus on a single character is a good idea to help focus the narrative and create a compelling connection with the audience. Hasbro must have thought it would be a good idea or they never would have green-lit it.

Yet I’m still somewhat baffled at how poorly it is doing in the box office. To date it has a worldwide just shy of $30,000,000 – not too shabby but it’s been out for two weekends now. It’s possible the movie will find legs as more and more people find their way to the theater, but it was a somewhat sign of the times that it has such a low box office after Black Widow (which does have a little bit more going for it in regards to a better brand recognition and stars like ScarJo) really did a number to bring people back.

It’s somewhat more baffling because Jungle Cruise (A.K.A. The Rock vs. The Amazon River) has already more than doubled Snake Eyes’ box office returns in less than half the time. Part of this was by basically making Snake Eyes’ first weekend returns in just one day, then replicating it the next. Currently Jungle Cruise has a Metacritic score of 50 – not significantly better than Snake Eyes’ 46 – though I would guess its targeted demographic is different.

Okay, so what gives? Why is The Jungle Cruise taking off full steam ahead while Snake Eyes seems like it’s coiling itself up for an early death?

I think the easiest one is star power. Dwayne Johnson brings in people by the boatload. He and Melissa McCarthy (for a time, anyway) were genres onto themselves – San Andreas is The Rock vs. The Earth,  Rampage is The Rock vs. Monsters, Skyscraper is The Rock vs. a Skyscraper (it’s very Die Hard) – and people went to see his movies by the dozens, whether they were good or not (Hobbes and Shaw, I’m looking at you). The masses see The Rock, the rest see Emily Blunt, a generally solid addition at the very least to any cast, though most of the time she steals the show (after watching Jungle Cruise I wanted to rewatch Edge of Tomorrow, since she’s significantly better in that). I’m sure people went for the whole “romance” between the two, but it ended up being more awkward than anything, a plotline they should have dropped early on and just left them as two charismatic people who bounce off of each other in a very friendly way.

Contrast this with Snake Eyes, a movie that has a cast I love (Henry Golding is a good, solid leading man who hasn’t quite gotten his footing as a movie star and probably will never be able to master an American accent; Iko Uwais has a swagger about him in the movie that works really well, Peter Mensah is solid yet underutilized, Samara Weaving is good even though she’s not given anything, and Andrew Koji plays his character arc much better than it deserves) but no one would really know. If this was a test to see how well the Asian American market plays, I don’t think they got the result they were looking for. It also doesn’t help that, combined, the actors do not have a lot of star power, which was probably great for the budget but is showing very few dividends now.

Another factor is clearly the brand. The Jungle Cruise is Disney – it’s playing to people who are fans of the ride, fans of the company, fans of the brand, or all three. I don’t know how many ride-or-die G. I. Joe fans out there, but they are probably dwindling (and dwindling even further due to this movie). Unlike the recent Disney brand that focuses on all quadrants (men, women, kids, adults), GI Joe feels like it specifically targets adolescent boys (the script writing in some scenes will validate that).

To that end, I don’t know how well the marketing worked. I saw a lot of ads on Social Media for Snake Eyes, but other than that (and a few movie trailers) it was as if the studio didn’t care. The movie cost almost $100 million to make – you would think they would put the full force of advertising out there. Maybe they advertised more toward Cartoon Network and Saturday Morning Cartoons, but if that’s the case then adolescent and teen boys just really don’t care about going to the movies. In contrast, I couldn’t turn a corner without being bombarded by ads for Jungle Cruise (which, to its credit, hid the twists pretty well, at the expense of the movie not looking very exciting to watch). Granted, the budget was double that of Snake Eyes, and Disney probably has a lot more riding on its success (since it’s not a subsidiary like a Marvel movie or a Star Wars project), whereas MGM still has No Time to Die and probably a pretty healthy home video release/airline screenings to help it break even (and at a much lower rate).

I still wanted to try to extrapolate some meaning out of these two releases. I think if Snake Eyes can find a way to scrounge another $30 million over its run I would consider it a success; if Jungle Cruise only makes it to $120 mil I would say Disney has a flop (though this won’t happen since Disney would just supplement the loss by claiming better Disney+ numbers).

It’ll be interesting to see how these two play out. Black Widow has almost doubled its budget in box office returns – will Jungle Cruise follow that path (I doubt it as Marvel is a better branding and Jungle Cruise just hasn’t hit the high numbers I would think Disney would hope for) or will it sink like many ships before it? Will the studio write off Snake Eyes and start pulling it (the theater I saw it in was a smaller theater, and it had only been out a week)?

Only time, it seems, will tell.

 

Sources:

Snake Eyes Box Office: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2114291201/?ref_=bo_hm_rd

Jungle Cruise Box Office: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3657795073/?ref_=bo_hm_rd

Snake Eyes and the Jungle Cruise Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/