How Ocean’s Eleven Amplified Gambling’s Profile & Redefined Its Portrayal

Action movies have been generating big numbers at the box office for decades because they make slightly believable stories into explosive realities. The better an action movie is, the easier it is for it to remain in the public zeitgeist. James Bond has been the most iconic debonair superspy to the point that he redefined public perception of what it means to work for the Secret Service. Military and task force exploits have become heroic acts of world-saving significance to the point where they inspired career choices around the world.

Ocean’s Eleven is somewhere in between. The heroes are, essentially, criminals with mixed intentions and all kinds of motivations. The film antagonizes theft victims, glamorizes revenge, and throws some personal relationships in the mix to bring some depth to the script.

However, its impact on showcasing the world of Las Vegas and the entrails of its casino operations is the biggest vector. We’ve seen quite a few other Vegas-related showings, most particularly with Scorsese’s Casino. Seeing the day-to-day ops of a mob-owned casino is one thing, but bringing a high-octane atmosphere is a completely different experience.

This article will be our rundown of what made Ocean’s Eleven such an important portrayal of the entertainment industry’s gambling arm. We’ll talk about the movie for a bit, explain the change in ownership structure for much of the Las Vegas casino industry, and explain how things differ in reality.

Ocean’s Eleven – a Cultural Moment in the Era of Pre-Marvel Action Flicks

Following in the footsteps of Frank Sinatra must’ve been difficult, even for a star in his heyday like George Clooney at the turn of the millennia. However, it would appear that using the cinematographic medium while adding an all-star cast is something that Hollywood used to do with almost guaranteed results.

The 2001 rendition of Ocean’s Eleven intellectual property is something that made a certain formula work. All-star casts have been in tune and have proven themselves even with 1960s Ocean’s Eleven. However, the sheer size of such an immensely popular and talented cast created a certain panache that we see to this day.

Franchises like The Expendables and Fast and Furious have gradually adopted the multi-star, action film name in an action-oriented way. Naturally, it’s quite a gamble on the producing side since the billing is very expensive. However, the $450+ million box office hit of 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven proved that the model can be very appealing.

Moreover, setting in Las Vegas is also yet another method of associating celebrity culture with Vegas, where residencies and random encounters with celebs are just as likely spotting them in the much bigger LA.

We wanted to make this point because, in our opinion, Ocean’s Eleven’s success was a very important precursor to the revolution that was 2012’s Avengers. The film, which redefined what superhero movies can be, brought together just as big of a cast with immense names. Its plot, set in a fictional, supernatural world, detached itself from economic realities, which were much harder to cope with following the 2008 crash. Since the all-star cast was shown as a gamble with a very high rate of success for an action film, Ocean’s Eleven was basically proof of concept.

Its intrinsic gamble paid off and, in our opinion, played a significant part in redefining some structural production choices in action blockbuster cinema.

Vegas Transitioning to Corporate Ownership

Growing up with the image of Las Vegas can bring forth a very different perspective from today’s reality. Many of us know Vegas from the popular media that has shown Las Vegas’ gambling industry to revolve around immense enterprises that were built, managed, and popularised by organized crime syndicated coloqually known as The Mob.

However, the constant crackdown on the underworld basically meant opportunity for the corporate world. Nowadays, the field looks MUCH different than it used to in what many consider the golden era of Las Vegas and its cultural significance.

Today, it appears that Vegas amplifies what marked its transition. In the film, we see a Lennox-Klytsckho bout that pinned two of the era’s greatest (literal) heavyweights. In the meantime, Las Vegas adopted an NFL franchise (the Raiders), an expansion NHL team (the Golden Knights), a baseball franchise (the Athletics), and will very likely adopt an NBA team by the end of the 2020s.

The Corporate Capital of the Entertainment World

Such a reality is possible because the gambling world of Las Vegas fully embraced its nature as a total real estate venture. Nowadays, you don’t see Terry Benedict-like figures personally owning multiple casinos through hostile takeovers. In fact, we saw immense enterprises spearheaded by Las Vegas Sands, a corporation headed by Sheldon Adelson, a company later going into the Cotai Peninsula and Singapore for its development ventures. You also have legacy names like Wynn Resorts, whose founder, Steve Wynn, is the closest inspiration to someone like Ocean Eleven’s Terry Benedict.

Modern-day Vegas is, essentially, a two-horse race between MGM Resorts International (and its real-estate wing, MGM Growth Properties) and Caesars Entertainment (together with its own Vici Properties). These two behemoths, along with their spins-off real-estate-owning corporations, basically run Las Vegas.

Their approach is an intrinsically corporate one, with public listings, clearly organized boards, and an emphatic transition to the digital field. Their products and services are just as diversified as you might’ve expected from such corporations. As such, seeing a casino no deposit bonus offer became just as important to their operations as their immense revenue from their land-based properties and gambling services.

Security – Reality vs Film

The aforementioned transition to the online field is more than just a method of diversifying revenue. It’s also a method of avoiding scenarios like those from the movie. Naturally, the film made its efforts to create a feasible heist by bending the realities of casino ownership and development.

One of Ocean’s Eleven’s most interesting deviations from reality is the idea of having a joint vault for three immense resorts. In directly contradicts the idea that, essentially, casinos are real estate. They are specifically created as pieces of property that can vary in their worth of overall brand image. Thus, they are perfectly available for changes in ownership. Since every casino has its own internal revenue from its gambling operations, an individual vault is mandatory for its resale potential.

Another emphatic deviation was the idea of losing money over an incinerated sum. Properties have immense and highly intricate insurance deals that make sure that every issue has its own cover. With a bit of crisis PR, a carefully constructed alternate narrative, and insurance money, the loss of such an immense amount of money would be an amenable sacrifice.

Conclusion

Were you planning to go to Las Vegas and see the iconic casinos depicted in Ocean’s Eleven? Or were you planning to see what it feels like to gamble online from the comfort of your own home? What matters most is that you gamble responsibly. Fantastical scenarios like those in action movies may look extravagant, but reality often teaches us that we need to keep risks in check!