It hasn’t been this bad in 24 years.

“It” is referring to the summer movie season, which sold fewer tickets this year than any other year since 1992. All over the world, movies have been bombing at the box office, and box office bombs outnumber box office hits. This is largely due to poor reviews, but some movies received excellent reviews and still flopped. Several sequels and reboots have also done significantly worse than the originals. This could lead to blockbuster movies becoming more of a rarity than Blockbuster stores.

1992 seems like a whole different world than today. Netflix wasn’t invented (and wouldn’t be for five years), and movie tickets only cost an average of $4.15. But that was the last time the summer movie season made this little money. Aladdin and Home Alone 2 were the highest grossing movies that year, but that isn’t why the gross was so low. Only 80 movies were released during the summer of 1992 and 240 movies were released in 2016 according to Box Office Mojo.

The big problem was the enormous gap between the big successes and the other movies. Four movies made over $300 million dollars at the box office domestically in the summer of 2016 (Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, The Secret Life of Pets, and Suicide Squad). But zero movies made between $160 and $306 million dollars (Box Office Mojo). This means that there were a few big budget successes, a lot of bombs, but nothing in between. This is mainly what created the problem.

A good rule of thumb for how to tell if a film is successful is if it doubles its production budget in its worldwide gross. This is because the advertising budget can equal the production budget. Several movies couldn’t make, or barely made this mark. Alice Through the Looking Glass cost $170 million dollars to make, but only made $296 million worldwide.

Another example is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of The

Shadows, which costed $135 million dollars to make but only made $245 million dollars (Box Office Mojo).. That’s $69 million dollars lost already after just 2 films. This happened several times with movies. The BFG bombing this summer and Ben-Hur lost an estimated $120 million according to Screen Rant.

When a big budget movie is made, the film should be making near a billion dollars world wide to be a big time success. For example, Deadpool made nearly $800 million dollars worldwide this year with a miniscule budget of just $58 million. Meanwhile, Allegiant had a budget of $110 million and only grossed $179 million dollars according to Box Office Mojo.

The most successful movies of the summer were Finding Dory, Captain America Civil War, and Secret Life of Pets. One thing they all have in common other than the fact that they were successful is that they all have been deemed “Certified Fresh” (75% rating or higher) by Rotten Tomatoes (A popular movie review organization).

Most summer bombs received incredibly bad reviews, several even below 20%. These include Mechanic: Resurrection (21%), Allegiant (13%), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (38%). This can obviously strongly affect the box office performance of a movie, but some movies can withstand poor reviews and still put up strong box office numbers.

The most significant example of this was Suicide Squad. The film was the second DC comics film to be released this year (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), but it was also the second to get less than 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film still grossed over $300 million this year. It would’ve made more money if the reviews were better, but it still was popular. The main reason is likely that the fans gave the film a 67% rating as opposed to the 26% the critics gave it.

This can also work the other way around. For example, Ghostbusters also had a disappointing gross this year. But the critics gave it an impressive 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the fans gave it a 57%. Since fans are the ones actually paying to see the movie, they made more of an influence on the rating of movies.

However, there is another disadvantage that can affect box office performance, but it doesn’t affect every film. If a movie is a sequel or reboot, it will almost automatically be compared to the original(s). Several sequels and reboots were made this summer and they rarely lived up to the originals. The original Matt Damon Bourne movies averaged a 86% critics rating and a 91% fan rating. Jason Bourne received 57% from critics and 60% from fans. This resulted in nearly three million less tickets sold for this movie than the least successful of the previous Damon Bourne films.

Another victim of these comparisons is Star Trek Beyond, which received 83% ratings from both the fans and the critics, but the film is estimated to break even at the box office. The sequels kept coming this summer and they also kept bombing, with sequels for X-Men, Neighbors, and Now You See Me all performing well below expectations, sequels had a tough time this year. However two of most successful movies of the year are sequels (Finding Dory and Captain America: Civil War).  

Maybe next summer’s movie season is better than this year’s. Blockbuster films such as Spiderman: Homecoming, Wonder Woman, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and Despicable Me 3 will be released next summer. But before then, the other seasons will get a chance to redeem themselves from the summer’s poor performance.