USA vs. the World
June 3, 2006 Posted by Amy Hall
I noticed an interesting cultural indicator when I compared domestic and foreign box office totals last week, and I see today that it's still holding true.
I think people will have different reactions to the results for these two movies, but nobody can deny that they do say a few things:
X-Men 3 Box Office Totals (as of June 2)
Domestic – $151,731,000
Foreign – $84,673,662
The DaVinci Code Box Office Totals (as of June 2)
Domestic – $158,471,000
Foreign – $317,479,155
Believe it or not, I think the two are related.
Related posts:
- Valuing Apologetics in a Postmodern World
- Maitreya and the Coming World Order
- Could a Non-Physical Being Possibly Affect the Physical World?
- John Saw the Light of the World
- Oh, Good Grief
- The Supremacy of Christ in the Postmodern World
Posted in Amy's Posts, Culture, Main Page, The Da Vinci Code
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June 4th, 2006 at 11:34 am
I'm curious as to what you think the relationship is between these numbers. I can't think of anything except for the idea that the US box office is still dominated by teenage males who are more interested in superheroes than Catholic conspiracy theories.
I actually saw both films recently and though my expectations were low for both of them, I have to admit they weren't all that bad. Well, we didn't pay for The Da Vinci Code, so that probably helps my opinion. X3 was entertaining, but by no means as good as the first two installments of the trilogy. I guess we'll just have to wait for Superman Returns to get our comic book Bryan Singer fix.
June 5th, 2006 at 1:15 am
I was vague with my closing comment because I’m very interested in hearing other people’s explanations…your teenage males theory, for example, sounds viable!
I definitely don’t think it’s a coincidence that the domestic/foreign percentages are 68/32 and 30/70 (as of today)–almost exactly opposite.
I may write a more detailed theory of my own if I get time later this week, but in a nutshell, my answer has to do with secularism and relativism/pluralism.
The main idea promoted by The DaVinci Code is this: No religion is based on actual fact. Instead, the purpose of religion is to use metaphors to create wonder in our hearts–a religious feeling, and it’s very dangerous when people start to believe that their metaphors are true. This obviously would appeal to the secular mindset of Europeans.
But something else follows from that…relativism. Without any truth about God, right/wrong, or good/evil, everything is just preference. In fact, there is no real evil, but only things we don’t understand–things we’re biased against because of our own culture’s preferences. Therefore, people who call things evil are at the very least unsophisticated, and quite possibly dangerous, because they’re arrogantly claiming to have actual knowledge about such things. And people who fight what they call evil are the most dangerous people of all because they’re acting on their own delusion/bigotry/arrogance.
So to bring it all together, cultures that strongly resonate with The DaVinci Code are not likely to find the provincial, crude ideas of good vs. evil in X-Men 3 very appealing.
Whether or not this is really the case depends on which countries the box office receipts are coming from. I’d have to look into that. I’m basing this theory on my knowledge of Europe, but there could be something else entirely that’s going on in some other part of the world.
June 5th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Interesting theory, Amy. I hadn't thought of that one. X-Men 3 is an interesting discussion of good and evil. Both good and evil inhabit the same character. Along with the other two films, there is actually a triangle of enemies rather than a simple light and dark dichotomy: it is the X-Men vs. the Brotherhood of Mutants vs. the rest of humanity. Yet it is clear, as in all three films, that the X-Men and their peaceful call for tolerance are right: the xenophobia of “normal” humans is wrong and the strong, violent reaction of the Brotherhood against the xenophobia is also wrong. (In the early days of the comic book, the struggle of the mutants was paralleled with the Civil Rights Movement in which Charles Xavier and Magneto embodied the roles of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, respectively.)
At the same time, I'm not so sure how traditional the values are in the X-Men films, with regard to the current debate in our society. The films haven't been very subtle in how they draw parallels between mutants and homosexuals — the second film has a “coming-out” scene in which a mutant reveals to his parents the truth of who he is and his mother asks, “Have you ever tried not being a mutant?” and much of the third film occurs “back where it all began” in San Francisco.
The other thought I had about the question you asked in your original post regarding the connection between the audiences of the films is that perhaps the rest of the world likes poorly written novels, whereas we Americans like pictures in our books.
In all honesty, I'd be curious to see how the other two X-Men films fared overseas as well as the superhero genre in general. Some argue that the comic book is one of the truly American inventions along with jazz and baseball (a specious argument, if you ask me). Jazz has a better international audience than baseball does. I wonder where comic books fall in that contiuum.
June 5th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Yeah, I was wondering about the superhero movies in general. I finally had a chance to look all that information up just now (you can look at boxofficemojo.com), and Spider-Man was fairly evenly divided between foreign and domestic. X-Men had a spread of about 10%, but nothing like what's happening with the third installment. All of that seems to shoot my theory down (unless this reflects a trend occurring over time).
So the answer may be as simple as this: the people in the rest of the world are too busy seeing The Da Vinci Code to see X-Men 3.
Any other theories?
June 5th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Please continue. My only interruption is to protest that basketball, not baseball, belongs in the short list of American innovations.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:26 am
I would agree that basketball is more of an American invention than baseball as baseball is a strange cousin of the British games rounders and crickett.