Gazz

I wonder if the $111m figure is inclusive of the tax rebate they received for shooting in Aus. Prometheus' budget is listed at around $130m but that was made for closer to $150m including the money they received from tax incentives in the UK.

Reactions are coming in from the premier and it appears to have gone down very well.

Yeah, it has been showing and a few social media reactions are already out there. There has actually been another press screening in London tonight (2nd).

It is a great script based on solid source material but holy shit does Scott absolutely mine it for every last drop of potential. It's the most emotionally involving Ridley Scott for some time.

Ant-Man perfectly acceptable entertainment. There are plenty of laughs that land well, the cast is solid and the action is inventive. But one can hear all the contrasting voices that are influencing the script as it zips from one style or tone to the next, and the Avengers reference/s though marginally humorous were completely unnecessary. Also, Judy Greer is wasted on a dog shit role once more. She's better than what Hollywood continues to offer her time after time. At times it does come off as an Edgar Wright imitation, which I imagine was unavoidable, but the final result as a whole is still good-enough. In all Ant-Man is far better than it's torturous production history would have one believe though ultimately unmemorable. 3/5

Sure, when you compare it to T2 and completely negate the 20+ years of cinematic failure the series has endured between then and now, this performance isn't something to write home about. If it was a sequel to T2 and came out within spitting distance of that film I'd say you had a point. Otherwise it's par the course, really. It's actually doing okay with overseas taken into consideration (and how awful the film is of course).

I mentioned that shortly after my first viewing. Other than one particular sequence (the attack on the main street), there's very little that draws on the idea that Jurassic World is a woking and very populated park. For a film that is built up around that very notion it's certainly odd they don't put it to better use.

Watched it a second time. I went from thinking it was unremarkably average to plain bad. There are fleeting glimpses of a much better movie but otherwise it's just a dumb mess of a movie.

Literally just said that above. Spot on though. The music is begging us to feel wonder and awe but the sweeping imagery is akin to a dime-a-dozen Disney World ad. So very corporate.

Jurassic World is just a stop gap on the way to this: But honestly weaponised military-owned dinosaurs seem to be next on the agenda considering where World left off.

There's a lot of fun in Jurassic World's individual moments and one very neat twist for the raptors but the film is strung together by filmmakers and writers who seem to be at odds over what type of film they're making. Trevorrow makes the same mistake as Bird did with Tomorrowland in that the final film ends up being the very thing they're criticising. For example, Trevorrow has one of the character's remark how corporate the park is in regards to product placement in a clear nudge-nudge-wink-wink about how corporate modern films have become, yet there are several moments of obvious product placement littered through the film. There are shots that entirely serve to sell a f**king car. I also think Trevorrow utterly misses the tone of Spielberg's classic. Jurassic Park was about mining excitement out of the wonder of seeing something you've never seen before. World seems to be about drawing excitement from seeing those wonderful things either kill everything in sight or be killed. Sure there's the element of danger about Jurassic Park, and there are some gnarly death scenes, but it rarely comes across as cruel (the exception being the opening kill). World felt too cruel at times to me. Also, the placement of the Jurassic Park theme bugged me. In Park it's saved for the new guests witnessing a living dinosaur for the first time. It's literally something they have never seen before (nor the audience seen realised in such a realistic way before). It's a moment of absolute wonder. With World it's used for a view of the parks busy main street, which very much resembles something of an exotic Disney World. It's the type of view seen on multiple adverts for theme parks. There's nothing wondrous about it at all. It's corporate. Fell very flat for me. I liked the stuff with the Raptors, though I can see the execution of them bugging a lot of fans. It's certainly a lot better than JP3 and despite my above issues there is some fun to be had. It just pales in comparison to the original and even The Lost World in my opinion.

Edgar Wright is a good choice. He has directed Star Trek before, after all. Wonder if Joe Cornish would be interested again.

Well it was revealed in a recent interview that Scott plans to shoot the Prometheus sequel towards the end of next year so it's not much of a surprise. Something had to give.

Yeah, it's such an oddity. I love and hate it in pretty equal measures.

Talking only of blockbuster scores, the one soundtrack to make me pin back my ears so far has been Alexandre Despalt's Godzilla. I felt Captain America, X-Men and Edge of Tomorrow were all serviceable but left little impression. It's strange, of that group of films Godzilla is probably the most flawed, but its score shines way above them. I'm expecting good things from Michael Giacchino's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes score though.