Predictive Programming: 2004-2024

We predict the results of our worst election yet by looking back at the last 5 (!) winners and their shocking (!!) box office counterparts. Sorry in advance!!!

This is the fifth in a five-part series comparing election results to the #1 films of that year. Read: 1924–1940, 1944–1960, 1964–1980, 1984–2000.

In less than 24 hours, the 2024 Presidential Election will be off to the races, ever deepening our (arguably) once-great nation’s race to the bottom with what experts agree are two of the worst choices we’ve ever had. In the blue pantsuit: a hand-picked (read: undemocratically selected by billionaire donors and party elites) career shill who would rather repopulate her team with neocons than offer the left a single concession. And in the red tie: the ur-con man, avatar of the poison heart that pumps the demon-blood of capitalism. In either case, Wall Street has already signaled that it doesn’t matter to them, so fuck you. And for the poor and marginalized, while one pick is marginally better for the optics of your material conditions, you’re still voting for the party of you’ll own nothing, and be happy :) so fuck you too.

Now, I’m not saying we’re doomed. From a purely economical standpoint, nobody benefits from nuclear annihilation, which is the worst-case scenario. I’m not a proponent of the upstart ‘nothing ever happens’ philosophy either, because things do happen, like 9/11 and the Kennedy Assassination, both of which only further consolidated power in the hands of those who are, coincidentally, the most likely responsible for both. At the same time, I’m neither a historian nor a political commentator: I’m a screenwriter with a vested interest in the health and survival of the American movie business, which, as we have seen, shares a close relationship to our politics. It’s not that our president decides what plays in theaters—yet—it’s that our economic policies at home and abroad have a direct impact on who can enjoy humanity’s greatest art form, and how often.

This interconnectedness is perhaps most apparent in today’s, our final, list: the capstone to a flailing industry dominated by sequels and spinoffs is an election wherein one candidate represents a sequel, and the other a spinoff. Discover the last five winners at the box office and at the voting booth below, chart my prediction for 2024 based on what past results mean to this year’s contestants, call your family and tell ‘em you love ‘em, and may odds save us all.

2004: Shrek 2

Bush II (R): 286

John Kerry (D): 251

What the year of our lord 2004 promised was more of the same: Shrek 2, which was fine if you liked Shrek, and a second term for Dubya, which was not-fine if you don’t like the strengthening of an unchecked security apparatus, untold environmental destruction, and the deaths of four million people from all sides. And in both cases, it was the guarantee of plunder, rather than an emotional connection, that moved the needle. Compare forgone conclusions in Pentagon war rooms (Cheney’s “Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is”) with DreamWorks’s decision to embark on a sequel before Shrek even came out. Meanwhile, on the “left,” John Kerry asked John McCain to marry him and the latter said no. Painful. If at fifty you get the face you deserve, your 70s face is divine retribution—despite numerous attempts at rehabilitating his image, Bush the Younger appears to be increasingly haunted by the specters of a million dead Iraqis while John Kerry’s lied so much on behalf of the same war hawks he purported to be against that it’s restructured the musculature of his face.

Is it Democrat or Republican? Works on paper but there’s nothing really there. Katzenberg Democrat

2008: The Dark Knight

Obama (D): 365

McCain (R): 173

Make no mistake, for all its realistic trappings, Chris Nolan’s follow-up to his elevated reboot of the Batman franchise is just that: a sequel. Now, follow me into the gritty underbelly of Gotham as I make the mistake of calling Obama himself a sequel of sorts—to the Clinton Administration, and others. (Seriously, call me a idiot—just leave a comment already, alright?)

In the wake of two disastrous Bush terms, a fresh-faced senator from Illinois was anointed the standard-bearer of change, a shining symbol of discontinuity from the eight years that left us less safe, less free, and deeper in debt than ever. But was he? No! Not only did he continue the Clinton Administration’s business-first healthcare policies—much to the Jokerification of Primary-loser Hillary—he actually escalated the War on Terror! Herein lies the truest comparison between Obama’s decisive victory over Two-Face (John McCain) and The Dark Knight’s ascension: both presidency and film were predicated on the idea of change, rather than change itself. Am I complaining that an American President acted like an American President, and a superhero movie was, ultimately, a superhero movie? You better goddamn believe it.

(Sandy Hook mention aside, the real predictive programming here is the scene where everyone’s phone is being used to tell private corporations, as represented by Wayne Enterprises, exactly where you are at all times.)

Is it Democrat or Republican? Democrat in the most invasive way.

2012: The Avengers

Obama (D): 332

Mitt Romney (R): 206

Each day I awaken hopeful for our inevitable reckoning with the fact that it’s actually really bad for everyone and their kids that the United States fully replaced mythology with these guys: an ensemble coalition of fantasy übermenschen who stand for nothing but American exceptionalism and the ruthless pursuit of a billion dollars. Look, I don’t eat this kind of junk and I won’t, no matter how hard you try and convince me that The Penguin is different, or Soldier is about MK-Ultra, akshually, but thanks to my research on Wikipedia I did discover that the modern iteration of the whole Marvel enterprise was kickstarted by a $525M loan from Merrill Lynch, which is where we get the strongest point of comparison between 2012’s election and its box office winner: good business. Obama, at the time? Good business. Mitt Romney? Good business too. And the final film in whatever they call Phase One? $1.5 billion dollars worth. According to Wikipedia, Loki (either Democrats or Republicans, depending on which side you’re on) hijacks the Tesseract (Constitution) in order to flood the Earth with Chitauris (immigrants or terrorists) and it’s up to The Avengers (either Democrats or Republicans, depending on which side you’re not on) to stop him before we nuke ourselves (inevitable). I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say the success of this film meant that it didn’t matter who won in 2012—without endless existential threats to American democracy (good business), what the fuck do we need Avengers for?

Is it Democrat or Republican? The kind of Centrist Democrat that’s Republican, but also the kind of moderate Republican that’s still Republican.

2016: Finding Dory

Trump (R): 304

Hillary Clinton (D): 227

To be honest, it took me a minute to remember that there was indeed a sequel to Finding Nemo. Yet, 13 years after the original, a spin-off-cum-sequel to Disney/Pixar’s animated family adventure blockbuster was #1 in America, a fitting companion to the spin-off-cum-sequel campaign that made the former FLOTUS the 2016 election’s #2. And, not only is it hard to believe, it’s also hard to confirm: as I’ve researched box office winners since 1924, I found it rare when the biggest film domestically wasn’t also the biggest film worldwide. At-home plus overseas, Captain America: Civil War was #1 (ironic considering the alleged impact of foreign interference), while the #1 for In-Year Gross—the biggest movie released in the year, whose numbers account for the total time the film was at the box office—was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Finding Dory, the winner of the year’s Calendar Gross (most money at the box office from Jan 1, 2016–Dec 31, 2016), feels a lot smaller by comparison—essentially a reprise of the first film, featuring familiar story beats, new characters, and a superficial expansion of the Nemoverse.

Which brings us to Hillary Clinton: both in policy and campaign, what the former secretary of state offered voters was much of the same, just led by a woman. Despite a hotly-contested primary that witnessed the largest grassroots campaign in American history, many in the party felt that, for her staunch and lifelong commitment to, um, being a politician, Hillary deserved the nom. So, against both betting odds and the will of the people, Hillary got the nom.

But as Her explosive lead slowed, then stalled, putting her neck-and-neck with a cartoonishly storied crook from New York, the election took on the timbre of a Battle of the Sexes of biblical proportions. What began an awful lot like a joke had galvanized a coalition of the disaffected, those who believed 24 years of party-line politicians had made them the butt of theirs. I really don’t know what the mega-success of Finding Dory said about Trump’s astounding win—and I guess he didn’t either.

Is it Democrat or Republican? I found the Finding Dory trailer on Ellen’s YouTube, so I’m going with Deep-Sea Libertarian.

2020: Bad Boys for Life

Biden (D): 306

Trump (R): 232

17 years after Bad Boys II and 16 years after Biden’s first VP win, Hollywood was like, “We’re bringing back something you knew. It’s definitely not as good as the version you remember, but we’ve gamed out every possibility, and this is the one that makes us, not you, win the most.” The difficulty in election predictions here comes from the fact that, after March, box offices all over the globe were shuttered for a year thanks to COVID. Up until then, however, economic indicators like low inflation and sustained economic growth did reflect the box offices of yore, both in Clinton’s ‘95 with the release of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer’s original Bad Boys, and in W’s ‘03, with Bad Boys II. It’s impossible to say what could have been #1, as studios scrambled to adjust their release schedules to accommodate a pandemic with no perceivable end, so Bad Boys for Life is what we had, Bad Boys for Life is what we got, and although Biden wasn’t the only guy who could beat Trump, he was the only guy who could beat Bernie, so Biden’s who we got.

Last night, for research, I decided to watch Bad Boys for Life. While it says little about the 2020 election and its results, it does contain quite a bit that would become relevant later that year:

• Within 5 minutes, Will Smith says, “We’re not just Black, we’re cops too. We’ll pull ourselves over later.”

• Smith then spends a shitload of time hooked up to a ventilator.

• The bad guy goes viral for a body cam-like video of a shooting.

• The good guys use killer drones equipped with facial recognition to root out hyper-criminal migrant gangs crossing the border.

• And for the finale, Smith stops himself from killing the perp via headlock.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the events of 2020. Got it?

Is it Democrat or Republican? Even on mute this movie sucked ass, so both.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

2024: Inside Out 2

My prediction: Trump (R): 300

Kamala Harris (D): 238

I know. I know. I know. But hear me out: This election is basically between the dueling avatars of capitalism, on one hand, and late-stage capitalism on the other. Trump’s approach, representing the former, has been to further identify and amplify his source of “capital”: alienated and disaffected voters, primarily white, though the disaffected are, in fact, the most diverse coalition of all time. Kamala’s, representing the latter, is focused on extracting the last bits of value from existing “manufactured goods” i.e. moderate Republicans. On the most superficial level (bc I haven’t seen either), what Inside Out 2 beating Deadpool & Wolverine tells me, is that the sequel trumps the spin-off. What the content of Inside Out 2 says, however, only confirms this: Pixar’s coming-of-age mega-hit features a young girl’s anthropomorphized feelings deepening with the addition of newer, more complex emotions, including Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Envy. My concern isn’t that yet another kids’ property is pathologising adolescence—we fought a lesser-known drug war against Prozac and Ritalin back in the 90s, and lost. It’s that these particular emotions were about as top-of-mind as it gets back when Hillary lost, and a second Trump term means an exercise in controlling your emotions for just about everyone. What I find sinister about the Inside Out movies is that protagonist Riley’s emotions aren’t just her own, they were carefully designed with the help of neuroscientists to represent the emotions of the largest swath of moviegoers, simultaneously making the films a trip inside the mind of the ideal consumer while reducing the general populace’s capacity to understand their own complex inner worlds as an amorphous whole, rather than a cohort of competing, individualized impulses. Nevertheless, here we are.

Fig. 1: The projection I made on Nov. 4, 2024

I clicked around an election map (above) and above is my best guess at electoral numbers come Wednesday night. I’m not happy about it, in fact I feel the same way I do about the rise of Right-wing Hollywood, since them and A24 are the only remaining teams with a dedicated fanbase. But if it’s all too much to bear, rest assured: there’s at least three major Marvel movies slated for 2028.

Thanks for reading.

Is it Democrat or Republican? Democrat.

This is the final entry in our series “Predictive Programming: 1924–2024.” If you enjoyed reading, consider becoming a Paid subscriber.