The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) Baz Luhrmann

Box office

The Great Gatsby Grossed $144.8 million in North America, and $208.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $353.6 million.[3] Calculating in all expenses, Deadline Hollywood estimate that the film made a profit of $58.6 million.[60]

In North America, The Great Gatsby earned US$19.4 million on its opening Friday, including US$3.25 million from Thursday night and midnight shows.[61] It went on to finish in second place, behind Iron Man 3, during its opening weekend, with US$51.1 million.[62] This was the sixth-largest opening weekend for a film that did not debut in first place,[63] the second-largest opening weekend for a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio behind Inception,[64] and Luhrmann's highest-grossing movie.[65]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 48% based on 304 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "While certainly ambitious—and every bit as visually dazzling as one might expect—Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby emphasizes visual splendor at the expense of its source material's vibrant heart."[66] Metacritic gives the film a score of 55 out of 100, based on reviews from 45 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[67] Audiences polled by the market research firm CinemaScore gave an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[61]

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal criticized the film as "a tale told idiotically, full of noise and furor, signifying next to nothing."[68] Morgenstern felt the elaborate production designs were a misfire.[68] He likened the film's flaws to the decadent era which Fitzgerald criticized in his writing and stated that what is "intractably wrong with the film is that there's no reality to heighten; it's a spectacle in search of a soul".[68] The Chicago Reader review felt "Luhrmann is exactly the wrong person to adapt such a delicately rendered story, and his 3D feature plays like a ghastly Roaring 20s blowout at a sorority house".[69] In The Atlantic, Christopher Orr observed that "the problem is that when the movie is entertaining it's not Gatsby, and when it's Gatsby it's not entertaining."[70]

The positive reviews included A. O. Scott of The New York Times, who felt the adaptation was "a lot of fun" and "less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence".[71] Scott advised "the best way to enjoy the film is to put aside whatever literary agenda you are tempted to bring with you".[71] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe reserved special praise for DiCaprio's performance, saying "magnificent is the only word to describe this performance—the best movie Gatsby by far, superhuman in his charm and connections, the host of revels beyond imagining, and at his heart an insecure fraud whose hopes are pinned to a woman".[72]

The Scene Magazine gave the movie a "B−" rating, and praised the actors' performances, in particular saying that "the stand-out actor is Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan doing an excellent job of showing the character's gruffness, despite the one-dimensionality given to him".[73] A granddaughter of Fitzgerald, Eleanor Lanahan, praised the style and music of the film.[74]

Tobey Maguire's role as Nick received mixed reviews from critics, with Philip French of The Guardian calling him "miscast or misdirected".[75] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that "Tobey Maguire is his usual recessive presence, barely registering as either a dynamic part of the events he describes or their watchful witness",[76] and Elizabeth Weitzman of The New York Daily News opined that, despite "the wry-observational skills needed for Nick's Midwestern decency", the character is "directed toward a wide-eyed, one-note performance".[77] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail was more positive of Maguire's character, saying "our narrator, [is] prone to his occasionally purple rhetoric. But that imposed conceit, the image of a talented depressive writing from inside the bauble of his imagination, seems to validate his inflated prose and, better yet, lets us re-appreciate its inherent poetry".[78]

Accolades

Meme

A still image from the film showing Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby lifting his glass in a toast gesture became a popular image macro internet meme.[94][95]