Sci-fi movies can be very divisive at the box office, and it's not always a matter of style or their subject matter either. As much as superhero movies and shared universes have become the dominant forms of entertainment in the 21st century, the sci-fi genre isn't far behind. Of the top ten highest grossing films worldwide unadjusted for inflation, three are sci-fi or sci-fi fantasy (which is the same number of superhero tentpoles in the group), and it's only been a year since Avengers: Endgame ended Avatar's decade-long reign as the biggest blockbuster ever.
At the same time, superhero movies tend to be more reliable than sci-fi films these days, commercially speaking. One only needs to look at the 2019 box office for the evidence. X-Men: Dark Phoenix might've been last year's biggest box office bomb, but it was a doomed project long before it hit theaters. By comparison, Terminator: Dark Fate was seen as the Terminator franchise's long-awaited return to form ahead of its release and Gemini Man generated a good deal of chatter thanks to its cutting-edge visual effects. Yet, in the end, both of them lost nearly as much money as Dark Phoenix.
Moreover, if you take Dark Phoenix and Hellboy (another movie reportedly riddled with behind the scenes problems) out of the equation, superhero films consistently reached the $1 billion mark in 2019, even when they were only tangentially connected to superheroes a la Joker. Sci-fi movies, on the other hand, were all over the board last year, with Alita: Battle Angel taking in $400 million while Ad Astra struggled to match its budget (said to be as high as $100 million) around the globe, in spite of strong reviews and an A-lister star in Brad Pitt. This sort of turnout isn't anything unusual for the genre, either.
Sci-Fi Movies Are Hit & Miss At The Box Office
Obviously, in a broad sense, every genre is hit or miss at the box office, and that includes superhero movies (again, see Dark Phoenix and Hellboy). That being said, sci-fi films are arguably as inconsistent, if not more so, as other types of movies. Since 2000, films like Avatar, Inception, Gravity, The Martian, and Interstellar have all done great business at the box office, and even Star Trek scaled new commercial heights thank to J.J. Abrams' reboot. The genre's popularity goes back much further too, with hits like The Matrix, Jurassic Park, E.T., Alien and Aliens, and '60s movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Planet of the Apes. (And that's not including a little sci-fi fantasy property known as Star Wars.)
Conversely, over the last ten years, sci-fi movies like Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Ad Astra, Blade Runner 2049, Annihilation, and Jupiter Ascending have all misfired at the box office. There's no consistency when it comes to their critical reception either; in fact, many of these films earned generally positive reviews and went on to become Oscar contenders. Even having the same director(s) at the helm doesn't guarantee anything. Filmmakers like James Cameron, Alfonso Cuarón, Ridley Scott, and the Wachowskis have each produced iconic sci-fi works, but also had well-received projects disappoint financially at some point in their career (The Abyss, Children of Men, Blade Runner, Cloud Atlas).
Why Sci-Fi Movies Are So Divisive At The Box Office
Sometimes, these films have under-performed for reasons that have nothing to do with their genre. For instance, it's generally agreed Blade Runner 2049 was hurt by its overly secretive marketing and runtime. (Even Scott, who only produced the followup to his original movie, has said it was a half-hour too long.) Its producers were also clearly guilty of over-estimating the demand for a Blade Runner sequel and the size of its predecessor's cult following. Disney did something similar when it made TRON: Legacy in 2010; the film didn't bomb at the box office (in fact, TRON 3 nearly entered production five years later), but it was still a far cry from the Pirates of the Caribbean-sized hit they'd hoped for.
Cost is another factor to take into consideration. Blade Runner 2049 and TRON: Legacy were both budgeted between $150-200 million (not including marketing), so they needed to break the bank just to turn a profit. The same holds true for some of the most expensive sci-fi bombs released in the 2010s - namely, John Carter, Tomorrowland, and Jupiter Ascending. Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, on the other hand, was able to become a box office success thanks to its $47 million price tag, despite actually grossing less than his Blade Runner sequel did. Low to mid-range budgets have similarly allowed Abrams and Annihilation director Alex Garland to make it into the black with their original sci-fi films Super 8 and Ex Machina over the last ten years.
More than anything else, perhaps, expectations can play a big role in how a sci-fi movie goes over. Cinephiles knew to expect something cerebral and slow-burn with Ad Astra based on director James Gray's previous work, but its marketing presented the film as being far more action-packed than it actually is. As a result, general moviegoers didn't necessarily get what they were looking for from it and gave it a lowly 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes (versus 84% from critics). The trailers for Blade Runner 2049 and Annihilation were more honest about their high-brow style by comparison, yet even then it might've put off those who're concerned they'd find them too inaccessible or confusing to enjoy.
How Future Sci-Fi Movies Can Avoid This Problem
As far as the future is concerned, the 2020s are promising when it comes to sci-fi and the box office. Next year's Avatar 2 isn't expected to break Endgame's box office record (not among industry analysts, anyway), but it would still be highly successful even if it only made half of what its predecessor did in theaters. Likewise, Christopher Nolan's Tenet has the potential to be just as big as Inception and Interstellar commercially, assuming it's not undone by an ill-advised theatrical rollout in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Of the biggest releases on the horizon, though, Dune is very much a wild card. It's already attracting criticisms for being too serious and pretentious solely based on the first batch of images.
There are ways for Dune to avoid the missteps of Blade Runner 2049, but it'll be tricky. Frank Herbert's source material is a dense story about geopolitical conflict and warring dynasties in outer space, making it far less accessible than something like Star Wars. (As others have pointed out, comparing the two is a bit like comparing opera with rock 'n roll.) Still, so long as it doesn't go too far and mislead audiences to the point where it backfires, the marketing for Villeneuve's movie adaptation can play up its star-studded cast and tentpole scope as a way of getting newcomers onboard. That goes double for other upcoming sci-fi films like Tom Hanks' Bios, an original project that sounds a bit like a sci-fi Cast Away, only set in a post-apocalyptic future. If its trailers can get that impression across, Bios might just have broader appeal than, say, Cloud Atlas (which also featured Hanks in a prominent role).
In many ways, the upcoming battle between the Dune and Avatar franchises reflects a conflict (prestige versus spectacle) that has long contributed to sci-fi's relative divisiveness at the box office. With a few exceptions, the biggest sci-fi movies from the last twenty years have found a balance between these aspects, allowing them to succeed as both thoughtful storytelling and crowd-pleasing entertainment. That will only continue to be a challenge for the genre moving forward, all the more so as the marketplace changes in the aftermath of the ongoing health crisis. If they can figure that out, this impending wave of sci-fi films may not be quite as hit or miss (commercially) as those before them.