In the modern age, movie studios only care about two things: The domestic opening weekend box office and the international market.

The quality of the actual product is an afterthought.

The international performance of a film matters more than ever, especially as budgets and marketing expenses continue to balloon at astronomical rates. After all, a box office disappointment in North America can be salvaged overseas. It's how a movie like last year's "Battleship" ($65 million domestic vs. $237 million foreign) doesn't bankrupt an entire movie studio.

In America, the only thing that matters is the opening weekend. No matter the quality of the movie, if the studio doesn't match or exceed a specific set of expectations, then the movie is immediately regarded as a "bomb." I'd revise the term as "Day One Bomb," or a movie that's deemed a failure before it even has a chance to be a success.

The b-word has been tossed around quite a bit this summer, with movies like "White House Down," "The Lone Ranger," "Pacific Rim" and last weekend's "R.I.P.D." all failing to hit a magic number in the first three days of release. Even a movie like "Star Trek Into Darkness," which has grossed more than $220 million domestically, is considered a "disappointment" because it couldn't match the performance of its predecessor.

The entertainment media loves to report on weekend box office grosses, and many individual writers love to trash the films that underperform. The bigger the stars, the better the story. Run a search and see how many articles you can find about Johnny Depp's fledgling career after "The Lone Ranger."

For a movie like "R.I.P.D.," which, admittedly, looked terrible from its very first previews, the public has the right to shrug and ignore the millions of dollars lost. Some "bombs," however, are hatchet jobs from the start. "The Lone Ranger," being a high profile Disney property starring Depp, rode a full two years of negative publicity in which writers constantly reminded moviegoers of the film's high budget and behind-the-scenes struggles. Entertaining as it might be, none of that really matters to the actual product on the screen.

It's particularly sad for a movie like "Pacific Rim," which is an original property made by a visionary director in Guillermo del Toro, to be labeled a bomb after it mustered only $37 million on opening weekend against a $190 million budget. Even with good reviews and positive feedback from audience exit polls, the national story was that "Pacific Rim" didn't perform. With such negative attention, it's no surprise the movie took a sharp dip in its second weekend. People were told it was a bomb, so why bother?

I'm not saying we should feel bad for studios and their underperforming titles. Hollywood definitely needs to cool it on their budgets and focus on making the movies a little better.

Unfortunately, studios are learning the wrong lessons from this summer's box office misfits. With sequels, superheroes and animation properties the only steady performers these days, we're likely to get more of the same movies each and every year. Last year's "Amazing Spider-man" was already a thinly-veiled remake of the first "Spider-man" movie from a decade earlier, and Depp and Disney have retreated to make a fifth "Pirates of the Caribbean." These studios are even setting release dates for sequels five years from now.

Luckily, the future of movies lies with the audience, and the scales are already beginning to tip. It all starts with ignoring the hype, the box office reports and criticism that suspiciously takes an extreme viewpoint in either direction.

You get to choose what is successful, not them.

Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.