2014 in Review: The Death of the Middle-Class Movie

Ben Affleck in Gone Girl, one of the few hit movies for grownups this year

For film fans, 1994 was the year of Forrest Gump, The Lion King, and Pulp Fiction, but you could also argue that it was the year of The Client. Made for $45 million and aimed at older audiences, The Client was sold principally on stars Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, and it made more than $100 million worldwide for Warner Bros. before going on to become a durable home-video hit.

Twenty years later, you’d think the studios would be happy to have a movie like The Client — or, for that matter, movies like Disclosure, or Wolf, or any of the other modestly budgeted, reliably profitable grown-up movies that were, until a little while ago, a mainstay of Hollywood. Instead, the studios have all but given up on them. In 2014 — a year marked by a seemingly endless stream of superhero movies, reboots, toy-inspired offerings, and animated sequels — there were only three original movies in the top 20 grossing films: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, the Seth Rogen comedy Neighbors, and the Ice Cube/Kevin Hart comedy Ride Along.

More than ever, Hollywood is dominated by tent-pole movies — so much that it seems as if the summer-movie season is now essentially running year-round. The studios still make standalone PG-13 or R-rated films for grownups (think Unbroken, The Gambler, or Selma, all being released this week). But they generally only unleash them at year’s end in hopes of awards consideration. And that means that a lot of the mid-budget ($30 million to $70 million), studio-made middle class of movies that once dominated theaters — thrillers, romances, and more sophisticated comedies — are increasingly getting squeezed out.

Take the much-praised, little-seen Beyond the Lights. Gina Pryce-Bythewood’s tale of the love affair between a Rihanna-style pop star and an ambitious cop was smart, finely wrought, moving, and stunningly acted by leads Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker. In 1992, the similarly themed The Bodyguard made $120 million at the box office.But Beyond the Lights — which took years to make and was released by Relativity, an upstart company that bridges the gap between an indie and a studio ­production company — has made just $14 million since the film opened last month.

Minnie Driver and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights

Admittedly, The Bodyguard had bigger stars, and Beyond the Lights may have been poorly promoted: It was lost in the mix at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and wasn’t screened widely to mainstream critics (who mostly raved about it once word caught on). But its inability to connect with a large audience was dispiriting, especially since the film opened just a few weeks after The Judge, a legal drama very much in the mold of The Client — and yet another grown-up movie that stumbled at the box office. Certainly, so-so reviews for the Robert Downey Jr. legal thriller didn’t help. But when a studio-backed drama starring one of the biggest actors in the world can’t get people to the theaters, it’s enough to make you wonder if mature moviegoers have all but abandoned the big screen in favor of cable video on demand.

Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall in The Judge

There was, however, a dark-hearted, blood-soaked silver lining to this year’s blockbuster-crazed year: Gone Girl. David Fincher’s thriller might be darker and more subversive than the likes of The Client or Disclosure, but it has all the hallmarks of the once-standard studio drama: Based on a best-selling novel, mid-budget ($60 million, reportedly), R-rated, and racy. It’s not the kind of movie most studios seem interested in making anymore. And yet Gone Girl bucked the trend, becoming arguably the most talked-about film of the year while earning four Golden Globe nominations, staying in the box office top five for eight weeks, and taking in a huge $165 million in the U.S. alone.

The success of Gone Girl (and films like last year’s American Hustle, Lone Survivor, and many others) are proof that there’s still an undernourished audience out there, one that’s vitally important to maintain: These middle-class movies are the ones that steer the culture, enable and empower mature filmmaking, and keep older, discerning audiences returning to theaters. And, more importantly for the studios, they can be profitable, as Gone Girl has demonstrated. Which means that, thanks to Hollywood’s ever-emulating production line — in which the latest hit is ripped off and ransacked as quickly as possible — audiences may very likely be getting a few more grown-up, Gone Girl-style dramas in the coming years. The question remains, though, whether any actual grownups will be willing to show up for them.

Image credits: AP Photo/Relativity Media, Suzanne Tenner, File, Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Claire Folger