Post by jeffan on Jan 6, 2009 16:51:24 GMT -5
Jeff Who? Why I think Jeff Goldblum is the most under-rated actor of the 20th Century.
Adam Dalton-Wyatt
1/6/09 - Marginalia
(The) BrockPress.com - Online Edition
Jeff Goldblum is the biggest drawing event movie star of all time. I know, a statement like that is a hard one to swallow. It either causes you to stare at the page, mouth agape in disbelief or raise an eyebrow in confusion - the name "Jeff Goldblum" having long ago slipped your mind.
And that's the mystery of Mr. Goldblum: all signs point to him having been the biggest star of the 90s, charming millions with his eccentric, staccato method of delivery (if you've truly forgotten him, imagine Shatner as a stereotypical Jewish man) . And yet his time on top clings to people's memories like the sheerest gossamer. All pretension aside, it is no coincidence that the biggest movies of both 1993 and 1996 featured Goldblum in a starring role.
To trace the beginning of his drawing power you need look no further than 1986's The Fly. As with all his popular roles, The Fly saw Goldblum playing a scientist in a world of science gone mad. Making a mere fraction of his future films' gross at $60 million, The Fly might not seem to be a huge success, but when judging it one must keep in mind just where it was made. Unlike his future blockbusters The Fly was not shot in America, land of huge movie attendance, but was instead a humble Canadian film. 'Nuff said.
As alluded to earlier, Jurassic Park and Independence Day were the highest grossing films of their respective years, and both featured Goldblum in prominent roles. The next "event" movie to be released was 1998's Godzilla, a movie with more publicity than God and one that proved to be an impressive flop. Fresh off the success of Independence Day (then known by the incredibly hip acronym "ID4"), Godzilla's producers decided they would one-up themselves. It must have seemed so simple: combine the monument destroying action of Independence Day with the loose dinosaur thrills of Jurassic Park, add a recognizable name brand to taste and you've got cinematic prime rib. Ten years later it is obvious what Jurassic Park and Independence Day had that Godzilla lacked: Goldblum.
An interesting thing to note about Independence Day is that due to the collective amnesia the world suffers in regards to Jeff Goldblum, it is viewed as a Will Smith movie. However, Goldblum's character is introduced first and he is in fact the focus of the movie for a greater amount of screen time. Will Smith was at that point an untested commodity on the big screen. He had recently ended a wildly successful television run as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and co-starred in the buddy-cop movie Bad Boys. The mild success of that movie however can be attributed almost entirely to Smith's co-star, the comedic juggernaut that is Martin Lawrence.
I don't mean to belittle Mr. Smith's appeal as an actor, I happen to enjoy the man and his work. It was Will Smith who made me want to see I am Legend, it was Will Smith who made me want to see I Robot and it was my mistaken belief that he was in it that lead to me seeing I am Sam. The point I am making is simply that he was not the sole draw to Independence Day, and that if it weren't for Goldblum starring alongside him, his career may never have taken off as strongly as it did.
Now let's look at the box office take of Smith and Goldblum's next movies. The classic Will Smith action/comedy Men in Black (1997) made $589,390,539, an impressive amount by any measure. However, that same year The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released and raked in $618,638,999. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is an unobjectively terrible film The moviegoers of 1997 saw it and rushed home to tell their friends not to make the same mistake. Young, old, male, female, white, Asian, there isn't a single demographic that didn't hate The Lost World. And yet it made more money than the superior Men in Black. Why is that? In my opinion, because it had Jeff Goldblum.
Following that, Goldblum never starred in another big event movie. Perhaps he was disillusioned by taking part in such a poor example of the genre, perhaps he was burned out on kicking alien/dinosaur ass, or maybe he thought he had given all that he could, and his exploits would be remembered for all time. If he had only known.
Given his track record, there's no way producers, directors and film studio heads wouldn't have beaten down his door to get him to appear in other, similar films. Unless they, too, suffered from that odd "Goldblum amnesia" that meant one of the quirkiest and biggest box office draws of the 90s never got the credit - or the longevity - he deserved.
Adam Dalton-Wyatt
1/6/09 - Marginalia
(The) BrockPress.com - Online Edition
Jeff Goldblum is the biggest drawing event movie star of all time. I know, a statement like that is a hard one to swallow. It either causes you to stare at the page, mouth agape in disbelief or raise an eyebrow in confusion - the name "Jeff Goldblum" having long ago slipped your mind.
And that's the mystery of Mr. Goldblum: all signs point to him having been the biggest star of the 90s, charming millions with his eccentric, staccato method of delivery (if you've truly forgotten him, imagine Shatner as a stereotypical Jewish man) . And yet his time on top clings to people's memories like the sheerest gossamer. All pretension aside, it is no coincidence that the biggest movies of both 1993 and 1996 featured Goldblum in a starring role.
To trace the beginning of his drawing power you need look no further than 1986's The Fly. As with all his popular roles, The Fly saw Goldblum playing a scientist in a world of science gone mad. Making a mere fraction of his future films' gross at $60 million, The Fly might not seem to be a huge success, but when judging it one must keep in mind just where it was made. Unlike his future blockbusters The Fly was not shot in America, land of huge movie attendance, but was instead a humble Canadian film. 'Nuff said.
As alluded to earlier, Jurassic Park and Independence Day were the highest grossing films of their respective years, and both featured Goldblum in prominent roles. The next "event" movie to be released was 1998's Godzilla, a movie with more publicity than God and one that proved to be an impressive flop. Fresh off the success of Independence Day (then known by the incredibly hip acronym "ID4"), Godzilla's producers decided they would one-up themselves. It must have seemed so simple: combine the monument destroying action of Independence Day with the loose dinosaur thrills of Jurassic Park, add a recognizable name brand to taste and you've got cinematic prime rib. Ten years later it is obvious what Jurassic Park and Independence Day had that Godzilla lacked: Goldblum.
An interesting thing to note about Independence Day is that due to the collective amnesia the world suffers in regards to Jeff Goldblum, it is viewed as a Will Smith movie. However, Goldblum's character is introduced first and he is in fact the focus of the movie for a greater amount of screen time. Will Smith was at that point an untested commodity on the big screen. He had recently ended a wildly successful television run as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and co-starred in the buddy-cop movie Bad Boys. The mild success of that movie however can be attributed almost entirely to Smith's co-star, the comedic juggernaut that is Martin Lawrence.
I don't mean to belittle Mr. Smith's appeal as an actor, I happen to enjoy the man and his work. It was Will Smith who made me want to see I am Legend, it was Will Smith who made me want to see I Robot and it was my mistaken belief that he was in it that lead to me seeing I am Sam. The point I am making is simply that he was not the sole draw to Independence Day, and that if it weren't for Goldblum starring alongside him, his career may never have taken off as strongly as it did.
Now let's look at the box office take of Smith and Goldblum's next movies. The classic Will Smith action/comedy Men in Black (1997) made $589,390,539, an impressive amount by any measure. However, that same year The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released and raked in $618,638,999. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is an unobjectively terrible film The moviegoers of 1997 saw it and rushed home to tell their friends not to make the same mistake. Young, old, male, female, white, Asian, there isn't a single demographic that didn't hate The Lost World. And yet it made more money than the superior Men in Black. Why is that? In my opinion, because it had Jeff Goldblum.
Following that, Goldblum never starred in another big event movie. Perhaps he was disillusioned by taking part in such a poor example of the genre, perhaps he was burned out on kicking alien/dinosaur ass, or maybe he thought he had given all that he could, and his exploits would be remembered for all time. If he had only known.
Given his track record, there's no way producers, directors and film studio heads wouldn't have beaten down his door to get him to appear in other, similar films. Unless they, too, suffered from that odd "Goldblum amnesia" that meant one of the quirkiest and biggest box office draws of the 90s never got the credit - or the longevity - he deserved.