After Tomorrowland’s box-office flop, some lamented that its commercial failure is a sign of America’s waning appetite for the new and original. Instead perhaps “the old and the familiar” are what the public is hungry for, both in entertainment and politics.
“There was good news out of Hollywood this week for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Han Solo. The latest box office receipts suggest that the public appetite for the old and the familiar is surprisingly robust,” Gary Silverman recently wrote in a piece for the Financial Times.
‘Jurassic World’, the long-awaited sequel to Speilberg’s ‘Jurassic Park,’ is anticipated to be a box-office success. The film’s sequel status isn’t the only thing going for it though, as the world can’t seem to get enough of Chris Pratt right now, the leading lad who probably saves everyone in the end. He is granting a plethora of interviews and isn’t afraid to laugh at himself, like he did during this interview from earlier this week when he was embarrassed by his first headshots. People adore Pratt for being candid and a little deprecating. Bryce Dallas Howard declared: “As far as I’m concerned, Pratt for President,” when gushing about her ‘Jurassic World’ costar earlier this week.
The point is that relying on “sequel status” alone won’t secure the Oval Office for dynasty repeats like Clinton or Bush. The 2016 hopefuls would benefit by emulating ‘Jurassic World’s’ strategy, adding a fresh twist to an established brand.
Clinton could start by actually taking questions at a press conference, instead of insisting that her speech is her interview, like she did Wednesday. Maybe she could even share a laugh at some of the pantsuit mistakes she’s made. After all, she was First Lady throughout the 90s, during which the shoulder pad industry probably did better than Enron in its heyday. Clinton should also note that people are excited about Jurassic World because they want to see Pratt fight off dinosaurs and save the day. They’re not going in hopes that the wrinkly, scary, and hungry beasts get to eat everyone. Seriously, a word to Clinton’s social media team: don’t tweet creepy photos of your candidate hungrily eyeing a cake, but that’s an aside.
Clinton can learn how to step out of her spouse’s shadow from Pratt. When Pratt married Anna Faris in 2009, she was the better known of the two. In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Pratt revealed the people would hit on his wife in front of him, and that it was difficult to be the less-famous one in the relationship.
They should learn from the mistakes of other recent flops that sequels are often dismal failures. To give an over-the-top example, ‘Human Centipede 3: The Final Sequence,’ is the third movie in a series about people having their mouths being sutured to the anuses of others, and forcibly re-digesting excrement. A week after it’s release last month, it got the worst Metacritic score of all time.
But perhaps since the aforementioned Human Centipede film was a three-peat rather than a sequel, it’s more of a lesson for the third Bush to seek the White House than it is for the second Clinton.
