The reason most of the biggest box office earners are more popular with men ages 18-34 is precisely because most pop culture as a whole is made for men ages 18-34.
There's a certain chicken-and-egg aspect to this, but this particular blockbuster format owes quite a lot to changes in cinemagoing over the last several decades caused by new technologies. In ye olden days, middle class people went to the movies every week (or more than that), before TV and home video; since the latter invention, in particular, regular cinemagoing by many groups (older people, especially, and parents, unless they're going with their kids to a family film) has dropped off dramatically. Blockbusters have refocused on younger people, the people most likely to show up at the cinema in the first place. This refocusing has undoubtedly also exacerbated the existing trend.
In an era where it's not normal to go to the cinema every week as a matter of course, advertising has to construct an audience for a movie each time (which also explains the preference for preexisting brands); young men seem to be the easiest audience to motivate to go the movies. Even the really successful adult-oriented dramas don't do comparable numbers to the big blockbusters (The King's Speech, for instance, which was a huge success within its genre, but only made about $100 million domestic; if it or The Social Network had done $300 million, that would have really shaken things up).
Hence, blockbusters aimed at young men (and also young women, because they'll see movies that men will see, but the reverse is not necessarily true; the demographic skew for the Twilight films is not one that you'd see replicated the other way for a major male-targeted blockbuster). Targeting at young women (theoretically an equally good demographic, as proved by Twilight hitting mega-blockbuster numbers) has been a lot more sporadic, though that aforesaid franchise is prompting the expected attempts to duplicate its success.
But DC's main product is a super-genre (action/adventure) that has always, in any era, been primarily marketed to men. That hardly precludes it from having a female fanbase as well, of course.
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Date: 2011-06-22 02:48 am (UTC)There's a certain chicken-and-egg aspect to this, but this particular blockbuster format owes quite a lot to changes in cinemagoing over the last several decades caused by new technologies. In ye olden days, middle class people went to the movies every week (or more than that), before TV and home video; since the latter invention, in particular, regular cinemagoing by many groups (older people, especially, and parents, unless they're going with their kids to a family film) has dropped off dramatically. Blockbusters have refocused on younger people, the people most likely to show up at the cinema in the first place. This refocusing has undoubtedly also exacerbated the existing trend.
In an era where it's not normal to go to the cinema every week as a matter of course, advertising has to construct an audience for a movie each time (which also explains the preference for preexisting brands); young men seem to be the easiest audience to motivate to go the movies. Even the really successful adult-oriented dramas don't do comparable numbers to the big blockbusters (The King's Speech, for instance, which was a huge success within its genre, but only made about $100 million domestic; if it or The Social Network had done $300 million, that would have really shaken things up).
Hence, blockbusters aimed at young men (and also young women, because they'll see movies that men will see, but the reverse is not necessarily true; the demographic skew for the Twilight films is not one that you'd see replicated the other way for a major male-targeted blockbuster). Targeting at young women (theoretically an equally good demographic, as proved by Twilight hitting mega-blockbuster numbers) has been a lot more sporadic, though that aforesaid franchise is prompting the expected attempts to duplicate its success.
But DC's main product is a super-genre (action/adventure) that has always, in any era, been primarily marketed to men. That hardly precludes it from having a female fanbase as well, of course.