Is the blockbuster back? Not exactly. But one movie, somewhat unexpectedly, has lots of people roaring back into theaters: "Cocaine Bear" is having a surprisingly strong box office showing, even beating out the latest Marvel movie. GBH arts and culture reporter James Bennett II joined Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel to talk about what that can tell us about the state of the movies. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Jeremy Siegel: So, “Cocaine Bear.” this movie claims to be based off of a true story, right? Quick rundown: what exactly is this?
James Bennett II: Yeah, things can be based off of something true without actually veering towards the truth. And that's, like, totally cool. That's what artistic license is for. But I guess all you have to know is that back in 1985, there were some drug smugglers. And they were flying over Tennessee, and they dropped their load, which was a lot of cocaine, in the wilderness. It ended up in the Chattahoochee River and forest, into these areas, and in Georgia. The drug smugglers themselves were dead. They died, I think it was a launch accident.
The point is, all this cocaine winds up in the wild, a black bear gets into it, consumes I think about three or four grams is found in its bloodstream. And then it dies of an overdose. That would make for an awful movie. So instead, what director Elizabeth Banks has done is taken this screenplay and transformed it into a kind of horror film about a murderous, mauling bear that's coked out for 95 minutes.
Siegel: So I remember when the trailer for this dropped, everybody was like freaking out. Like, "Cocaine Bear"? What is this? This looks freaky. This looks hilarious. Clearly, people want to see it. It's done really well at the box office. Is it good?
Bennett: I mean, it's good for what it is, I guess. I saw it the other night in a theater. It's not really something that I'm used to seeing. I kind of shy away from body horror and gore and all of that. But I think the fact that it's a bear that's once again, coked out, kind of braces you for that over-the-top violence. There's also some very satisfying scenes of what you might want to call, you know, villainous comeuppance. So that kind of tempers a little bit, too.
Siegel: I guess you can also assume someone walking into the theater for a movie called "Cocaine Bear" is probably prepared for any extremeness that a movie like that will be tossing their way. We should note for people too: this is rated R. So not something, probably, that you want to see with your kids, right?
Bennett: Yeah. There's two sides to this rated R thing. One is that it's very reminiscent, I think, of '80s adventure kid flicks.
Siegel: Yeah. Sort of the high-concept, like, it all comes from the plot setup.
Bennett: Yeah, there's a lot of different plots that come together around this one murderous bear. One of them are these two kids that skipped school to go play in the woods. Christian Convery plays a 12, 13 year old boy who just has like this kind of gumption-horror repository of jokes and comic relief, in that way that I guess some child actors did that we don't really have anymore.
I'll also say, though, that I like how the movie reminds us about how we discussed drugs in the national consciousness for a while. I think towards the beginning of the movie, you see these cuts of Nancy Reagan and other celebrities doing these "Just Say No" campaigns, "This is your brain on drugs," all these PSAs about how drugs are generally bad. And last thing I'll say about that, too, is that there's a great scene where the kids find the cocaine in the woods, but they don't actually know anything about how cocaine works. And so when they're daring each other to do it, there's kind of like this, do you do a little bit? Do you do a lot? A tablespoon? A little bit? A bump off a knife? I remember DARE. I wasn't a kid of the '80s, but I do remember DARE.
Siegel: It's interesting that you bring up the comparison of this movie to some of the, at the end of the day, really high-grossing kids-oriented movies of the '80s or action movies of the '80s, because we're in this weird period for the movie industry where we've had this huge decline in moviegoing during the pandemic. It entirely screwed up the industry, how things make money, how they're released, lots more stuff going to streaming. But then you do have a movie like this which is not available for streaming. A lot of people are going to the movies for it. You had the "Avatar" sequel getting seen by a lot of people a couple of months ago. Both of these are virtually original stories, at least not like the 20th comic movie sequel in a row. Then you also have "Top Gun: Maverick," which is a sequel, just nominated for Best Picture. That's like a traditional action movie.
Bennett: So was "Avatar II."
Siegel: Yeah. What do you make of this moment? Are we witnessing a return of the blockbuster, or a reevaluation, culturally, of where the blockbuster stands?
Bennett: Maybe we're rethinking prestige. Like, why are we taking all of our art so seriously all the time? Not to say that art can't be taken seriously, not saying that you can't have that prestige-level, artistic, cinematic preeminence. I like a good film-film, too. Let's have a private Polish film festival, you and I, and let's kind of get into the philosophy of some Cold War themes. But I do think it's interesting that the some of the highest-grossing films that I can think of recently are things that you would kind of see as a family unit, or might not skip school to go see if you were in school, but maybe wait until the weekend or, you know, see over summer break or something like that. And again, these are films that are being nominated for Best Picture, these two. This isn't a rated R film, but the other week I went to go see "Women Talking" at Coolidge Corner and it was sold out. And I was like, I didn't know movies still sold out. I didn't know that was possible. That theater was packed. Even when I saw "Cocaine Bear," still a pretty full audience for a Wednesday night in Watertown.
Siegel: Really, a Wednesday night. That's interesting. So maybe we are seeing moviegoing come back. So, James, before we say goodbye this morning, the music community this week is saying goodbye to a legend: Wayne Shorter, a jazz saxophonist who played alongside Miles Davis and loads of other people, including Joni Mitchell, has died at the age of 89. What did Shorter mean for American jazz?
Bennett: He was 89 when he died. In 1959, he had his first album as a leader, and I think he made his debut as a sideman with Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers as a composer and saxophonist. And he's one of those characters in a music scene that is able to evolve alongside with that music continuously. I mean, the dude didn't retire or anything like that. Back in '21, Cutler Majestic premiered Iphigenia, an opera that he did in collaboration with Esperanza Spalding. It's one of those weird moments where it's like you talk about a living legend and you actually mean it. And it's sad that he's dead, but it's also kind of weird, because for someone like me, he's always been there, you know?
