Audiences are funny things. I can't speak for other regions of the world, merely North American audiences--a good portion of it is in my own country and they're strange enough to attempt to fathom. How exactly do their minds work? Or their collective uni-mind, the one we all subscribe to when we get into the semi-uncomfy seats and sip our overpriced Mountain Dews. How does this work?

Why do some movies play well and others don’t? Some of them are no brainers. Harry Potter did not completely bulldoze the end of the year because, despite its warm reception by all, it is a two-and-a-half hour movie--and two-and-a-half hour movies don't normally do repeat business except for the hardcore. (Granted, if you had tried to make Harry Potter into a repeat-friendly hour-and-forty-minute job, millions of children would have gleefully fed your kidneys to a gaggle of slobbering dingos.)

But others are strange. Shrek, for example. I'm in the middle of reviewing the DVD of Shrek right now. Shrek is a cute movie. It's a cute animated movie, and yes they did some interesting stuff with it. But bottom line, it's cute. It's not even very clever, to be truthful. And yet, for the longest time, it was the box office ogre of 2001. What the hell? It certainly wasn't $250M+ cute. Were we so desperate for a decent movie we would have taken anything? Was the marketing that good that the North American Audience merely mooed their way into cinemas?

Who the hell knows the answers to these questions? Not I. Every single time I try to predict what the American Audience Herd will do, I'm proven wrong. That's why I very quickly quit adding the Box Office Prediction Section to my column each week: I could just feel Ian Malcolm standing over my shoulder and laughing at me.

Audiences are weird too, in that they build up expectations for things. This can't be helped. Hollywood is geared these days toward the big opening weekend blowout. Unless you have a guaranteed monster like Harry Potter or guaranteed monster like Episode 2, you could give a rat's ass about weekend #2. So what Hollywood wants the North American audience to do is turn out in droves that first weekend. Drive up the numbers. Get that flick to number one.

So what? Well that means whether or not the movie is any good or not is incidental. All it needs is the right stars and a decent trailer and hey, make it critic-proof while you're at it. Example of a critic-proof movie: The Mummy franchise. We could swear on the graves of our forefathers that we think it sucks boulders, and you, members of the North American Audience, could give that aforementioned rat's ass. You'll go. And hey, if it's not critic-proof, just don't screen it. Granted, that's usually a bad sign up front, but hey, if it can cause a piece of shit like Godzilla to make a bit of coin--you've got something there.

But I learned a long time ago to ignore expectation. I talked to a bunch of people back in 1991 when Hook came out. They didn't like the film. Why? Every single person gave back the same answer: "Well, it wasn't what I expected." I figure if you don't have expectations, then the film can stand on its own. Sure, some films you can't help it. Episode I. Alien 4. Practically any franchise or any remake has a certain standard that we feel it has to live up to. We can't help ourselves. Or hey, any film that goes to great lengths to set up the hype--sometimes I let them. Like Godzilla. Reap what you sow. And, as stated above, they managed to reap decent box office--but not leaping and bounding box office like they expected.

What does all of this meandering tell us about the mating and feeding habits of the North American Audience? I'm honestly not sure. Except that maybe they're unpredictable, maybe they've got very strange taste in blockbusters, and they'll turn on you and gore your ass with nary a moment's notice.

Be good.

=Widge