Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" (2016)

Scene from Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)

Directed By: Ang Lee

Written By: Ben Fountain (Novel), Jean-Christophe Castelli (Screenplay)

Starring: Joe Alwyn, Garrett Hedlund, Arturo Castro
Genre: Action, Drama, Sport

Running Time: 113 minutes

Summary: 19-year-old Billy Lynn is brought home for a victory tour after a harrowing Iraq battle. Through flashbacks, the film shows what really happened to his squad - contrasting the realities of war with America's perceptions.

The Movie

The easiest way to advertise a war film is to suggest that it's not like anything you've seen before. Countless filmmakers have taken up this mantra, even if the results are far from true. In the case of director Ang Lee, it may have not been true from a narrative perspective, but it was true in the literal see. You haven't SEEN a war movie like Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk because to be totally honest, you haven't had the capabilities to see it before. Lee has gone out of his way to make sure that films aren't only pushing boundaries with stories and special effects, but also in how they're projected onto a screen. In the case of his 2016 film, he brought to life for the first time ever a film playing in 120 frames per second (fps) 4K in 3D. 

This was no easy task. Most theaters aren't equipped with the proper technology to even project that. The best that could be said was that the previous record holder for the highest frame rate (Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy) was a meager 48 fps. Nobody had even challenged that in part because Jackson's films received a negative backlash because of this. Still, Lee isn't only a customer, he's the format's biggest endorser and calls it "the whole shebang." His latest film Gemini Man has only revived any concern about advancing the theatrical experience by suggesting that those who don't see his latest in 120 fps 4K in 3D aren't getting the whole picture (ironically, American audiences can at best get 3/4 of the picture as the highest frame rate is 120 fps 2K in 3D). Still, all of the conversations quietly started around his previous film, which had the added benefit of being his first film after winning an Oscar.

In 2013, Lee became the first Taiwanese (and Asian in general) filmmaker to win the Best Director category twice (previously for Brokeback Mountain, which too lost Best Picture) with Life of Pi. The film remains a technical marvel that got caught up in box office success and unfortunate bankruptcy for special effects house Rhythm & Hues. There was a lot to be excited about, in part because Lee was never a boring filmmaker. His stories ranged from martial arts (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) to gay love stories (Brokeback Mountain) to war (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk). He did it all. How could his next project not solidify his chances of any Oscar conversation?

The simple answer is that he had the conversation for a while, but what followed was a journey into the great unknown. Lee was becoming a filmmaker more obsessed with frame rates and projection than stories that elevated him to a unique storyteller. His journey into being a technical wizard started with Life of Pi but quickly became felt with Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Most of all, it raised questions about how cinema should even be watched. Would advancing the medium really make all that difference? It's a story of great and awful box office numbers. It's one that is so tragic, almost nobody could watch it these days as Lee intended. While the film holds its own place in Lee's personal trajectory, it's doomed to be one of his biggest errors.

The Campaign

In theory, the quest for higher frame rates started with Douglas Trumbull. He is best known as the special effects master on films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. He has helped create some of the most iconic images in cinema. He's even pushed for a higher frame rate since the 1970s, believing that the conventional 24 fps was too low. In the early 2000s, he showed a series of filmmakers, including Lee and James Cameron, a project that was shot in 60 fps. Both became converts to the format, though Lee would beat Cameron by quite a few years (Cameron claims that the Avatar sequels will incorporate the technology, though the release date has long been in the TBD camp). Lee just needed the right project to unleash the format on the world, and he chose to adapt Ben Fountain's eponymous novel. He believed that it would help to show off the war and football footage and have audiences be immersed in every last detail.

What started at lower frame rates eventually resulted in 120 fps in 3D. Nobody at the time had shot a film with that much clarity. Lee believed that it would help to fix motion blurring and bring a more "liquid" picture. The only catch with being a pioneer was that there were a lot of costs to produce a film like this. While the budget was fairly low at $40 million, the amount of effort it took to project the film was going to be a headache. To project a 120 fps film in 4K, one had to deliver a file that was 40 times the average movie file. If that wasn't bad enough, everything would double when including 3D. Theaters had to also be built just to show the movie correctly, which was costly and problematic given that few have since adopted the format to warrant long term use. As it stands, when the film premiered as part of the New York Film Festival, it had to appear not at the ceremonious Lincoln Gala, but at a nearby AMC theater that held far fewer people. While not a bad omen, it already showed the format's limited potential.

Going into the film, there was also anticipation for how Lee's latest would do in the Oscar race. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was considered a front runner in part because of Life of Pi earning critical acclaim and 11 Oscar nominations. Many saw his latest as being able to get technical nominations for its incredible achievements. There was also excitement around Joe Alwyn as the titular Billy Lynn in his cinematic debut and the potential for Steve Martin to turn in an Oscar-worthy role (he had won an Honorary Oscar three years prior but had never been nominated). There was so much anticipation about this film doing repeat business that early reviews were going to make or break the buzz.

In the words of Bilge Ebiri written on Twitter following the premiere: “High Frame Rate is a f***ng crime against cinema.” Daniel Engber of Slate would also write that Alwyn was "looking like a 3-D printout of a human being with a hangover." Critics and audiences did not take kindly to the new technology, claiming that it was somehow worse than The Hobbit movies. Detail was so clear that some stated that you could see every actors' pores on their face. Oscar buzz died slowly from there. In spite of the negativity, there was still some who chose to discuss whether the story was bad, or if the technology only enhanced things to an uncomfortable degree. As it stands, the results haven't fully been understood yet. It was not the type of press that Lee was hoping for, but it only made him double down on his love for such a wild and new style. Slate would go further to compare the high frame rate to New Coke, which had tested positive, but nobody would publicly admit to liking.

After the release of a trailer promising an emotional experience, the conversation about frame rate began. Many wondered if it was even worth all of the conversation, or if this was a new fad on par with Avatar and 3D. As it stood, there were officially four ways to see the film when it was released: 1. 120 fps 4K in 3D (the ideal); 2. 120 fps 2K in Dolby Vision 3D; 3. 120 fps in 3D; 4. 24 fps in 2D. Likely inspired by curiosity, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk would go on to have the third-highest per-screen average debut of 2016 behind Moonlight and Don't Think Twice with $57,065. When it expanded, however, it would suffer a crueler fate. On its 1,176 screens, it $901,026 that weekend despite a $3-5 million prediction. It has since become the 25-worst ever opening for a movie opening on more than 1,000 screens. Considering that TriStar had released the previous year's The Walk (another technical marvel box office bomb), things weren't looking good for the studio. Part of the problem was that in order to see this great new technology, audiences had to not only drive out to special theaters but would pay over $20 for one person. All things considered, that wasn't a bargain for a movie that didn't have much enthusiastic supporters. 

It didn't take long for Lee to disappear from the Oscar conversation entirely. His passion project would result in so much jargon that it isolated audiences who just wanted to see a good movie. To them, it didn't matter that Lee was advancing cinema to something greater and renovating theaters to fit his desire. It's likely why few have taken him on since. The only film to challenge the high frame rate since was a 2017 film called Flamenco, which was shot in 192 fps, but in 2D. It makes sense why Lee is still fighting with Gemini Man, even though it's a matter of telling stories that people actually wanted to see. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk had a long and difficult title on top of being a war film that was nowhere near as accessible as the other 2016 war film Hacksaw Ridge. Would Lee ever get back into the Oscar race? Considering that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has won Honorary Oscars for his work on virtual reality films, there's still an off chance that this isn't the end.

The Payoff

To put it simply, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was forgotten by the end of the year. Nobody loved the film and it failed at the box office. It was the passion project that was more interesting to talk about what it did wrong than whatever technical advancements it made. It would receive some odd nominations from local groups, but nothing that would pave a significant trail for Oscar glory. In some ways, it's the rut that Lee feels doomed to find himself in with Gemini Man, which has middling reviews and similar complaints involving frame rates and quality of the story. 

Still, Lee admits to being sad that nobody was able to respect his vision in 2016. Considering that there's somehow fewer theaters for Gemini Man to play in 120 fps 4K in 3D than before, it only adds uncertainty that his dreams are not catching on. He is saddened that people cannot watch his previous film in the correct format now, believing that something is lost with DVD, Blu-Ray, and on-demand features. Logically, something is always lost when converting to a home video experience, but this one feels painfully more true that most. No HDTV could capture the magic of 120 fps 4K in 3D. Nothing comes close, even if one foolishly thinks it can. Considering that it was a flop, that only makes the film both more special and a lot more sad to have invested so much effort into a brand new and innovative approach to cinema.

There's still a chance that Gemini Man will succeed where Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk failed. It doesn't seem likely, but The Academy of 2019 is vastly different from those of 2016. In that time, Moonlight and The Shape of Water have recontextualized what could win Best Picture. There's a new way of thinking, even if it isn't always clear. Even then, the negative press around the film and limited access to its proper formatting do suggest that this is an uphill battle once again for Lee. Maybe the third time will be the charm, and that society has finally caught up with him. For now, he's released two oddities that are both achievements in cinema, but also signs of why the story matters. Without a good story, who cares how good it looks?