But it’s becoming his Independence Day – part 2.
For 23 years, Independence Day stood as the biggest box office hit of Will Smith’s career. A magic lamp just brought an end to that.
This past week, Disney’s remake of Aladdin, which stars Smith as the iconic Genie, passed the $817 million worldwide box office total that Independence Day earned in 1996. After six weekends in theaters, Aladdin now has a worldwide total of $874 million, standing only behind Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel on the 2019 charts.
(The Wrap, June 30, 2019)
Unfortunately, Hollywood is producing so many movies about cartoon characters these days, it is becoming indistinguishable from Disney World. This might be the surest way to guarantee blockbusters, but it’s nothing to marvel at.
That said, I hope you get the Ishtar reference. Because, if you don’t, you’re like a baseball fan who did not get the “Curse of the Bambino” reference, which attended news of Bill Buckner’s death five weeks ago. In other words, you’re among the lobotomized fans who are ruining the movie industry.
To get a sense of how ruined it is already, you should tune into the CNN original series The Movies: The Stories Behind the Movies We Love. It premiers on Sunday night.
Movies from the cartoonish Marvel, Transformers, and Fast and Furious franchises have dominated the box office in recent years. But I doubt any of them will make the cut. And neither will fairy-tale movies like Warner Bros’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (et al) and Disney’s Aladdin – with all due respect to Mr. Smith.
That’s because there has been a steady regression over time – from movies that dramatize the myriad aspects of human nature to those that merely exploit our Neanderthal instincts. And nobody with any emotional intelligence would include the latter (i.e., cartoonish movies) among those we love.