CenterMeOnSam

I'm confused. I've just recently started reading this thread, but doesn't the tracking (so far) look pretty solid for GBFE? Feel like that's evidence against the idea of apathy? Unless I'm completely misreading these tracking posts?

Huh?! As a Professor of Theatre, and as someone whose career has been primarily IN musical theatre, the "Mean Girls" musical sounds NOTHING like traditional (golden age) 50s Broadway shows. That is the WILDEST thing I have ever heard. If you can listen to "Apex Predator" and tell me it sounds like anything from Brigadoon, the King and I, or The Music Man I don't know what to tell you... Mean Girls is a pop/rock musical. It's super contemporary and sounds more like recent Broadway pop shows like "Legally Blonde" and "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Bring It On."

I mean... yeah? Pretty clearly. The entire plot of Afterlife is literally continuing the Gozer story from the original. Without Egon and his continued research into Gozer and the cult that worshipped Gozer... there would be no movie.

Hi! Professor of Musical Theatre here! That's not the definition of a musical. Most musicals have a mixture of plot delivered in dialogue driven scenes AND in songs. Also! You mention Frozen since if you "remove the songs from Frozen, we lose very little of the plot." Don't worry about the plot! Dozens and dozens of famous musicals don't even use their songs to communicate plot, but character! For instance, "Being Alive" in Company doesn't communicate plot, but it absolutely communicates what is happening internally with the character. In the same way in Frozen, "Let It Go" is all about a character evolution. Still a musical!

I mean, I guess I didn't think this was really disputed, but: critics have biases. Of course they do. That's what makes them good at their jobs. I think the biggest concern with film critics as of late is... who is their audience? There is a serious issue with the fact that critics are a bit homogenous. There's not a LOT of diversity of thought with critics because they are primarily looking at films from a different lens. Yeah, sure, there are some that are probably more in line with your average moviegoer in America, but not the majority. To become a film critics, you likely have a much higher bar for the product you see, which is great! But, as that becomes more and more the case... you will continue to see critical/audience divides. The majority of audiences out there want to connect emotionally with what they are watching and while critics can call nostalgia "manipulative" all they want (and may even be correct in doing so), the fact remains that nostalgia works for the average moviegoer and they LIKE how it makes them feel. If critics don't want to address that in a respectful way, that's their choice, but I think it loses the narrative of what's actually happening out there.

Indeed! Definitely a good point. Oddly enough, producers of Shakespeare's days WERE often viewed as I think many are viewing major corporate characters now. Many fellow playwrights of the time felt Shakespeare's attention to the lower class and, often, acquiescence, to what would sell tickets, made him a bit of a sham. Shakespeare had this great ability to take familiar stories and use them to actually bring in audiences and rally them around his language. I think another poster said it really well. Nostalgia is perfectly acceptable if it's used correctly.

I mean, but that's how nostalgia works. Something that isn't "iconic" originally becomes "iconic" after shared experiences and memories grow over time. And, technically, these things DID happen in Shakespeare (sorry, I teach Shakespeare daily ) For instance, the Histories do this quite frequently. Characters reintroduced, callbacks from previous events, even callbacks that happen in verse with similar language. An egregious example is Falstaff (made a crowd favorite in Henry IV) is reintroduced in Merry Wives of Windsor. So, he's not Hamlet, but he definitely pops out in the same way you mention and the audience went crazy. It was like an Elizabethan version of Leo pointing at the television screen. And while the dagger isn't the came in Caesar and Antony... Antony HIMSELF pops out in both plays. Another instance is the use of Verona as a shared location, both referenced and actual. There's a lot there, but I won't bore you with more, but my point remains the same: this is nothing new and its weird that there has been a recent critical attack on films that use nostalgia as a foundation.

I love critics, but generally the main thing driving most negative reviews of this movie are folks who aren't fans of "nostalgia" driven stories. That's perfectly their right, but personally, I don't understand how nostalgia has become a dirty word. I'm a professor of theatre and I can tell you the concept of nostalgia has been a major driver of entertainment going back to the Greeks. I think critics like to use it to claim something is "a retread" or "not original," but the idea of "originality" being integral to successful populist entertainment is a rather new concept. Shakespeare made a career of retreads, remakes, and nostalgia. So, if their major issue is that it's too nostalgic for its own good, that doesn't worry me at all.

I'm pretty sure it was quickly explained that they were broke because everyone sued them after the Stay Puft incident, which... makes sense. A looooot of property was destroyed.

I mean... the Statue of Liberty wasn't really a "joke." The jokes of the movie, the actual jokes, land rather well: "My parents didn't believe in toys." "You never even had a slinky?" "We had part of a slinky, but I straightened it." "You didn't sleep with it, did you?... Oh you dog." "It's always the quiet ones." "I'd like to a gynecological exam on the mother." "Well, who wouldn't?" "Your Honor, ladies and gentleman of the audience, I don't think it's fair to call my clients frauds. Sure, the blackout was a big problem for everybody. I was trapped in an elevator for two hours and I had to make the whole time. But I don't blame them. Because one time, I turned into a dog and they helped me. Thank you." "So your alien had a room at the Holiday Inn, Paramus." "...It might have been a room on the spacecraft made up to look like a room at the Holiday Inn. I can't be sure about that, Peter."

Can anyone explain to me these numbers and how I should be reading them? I feel like I need a PDF of instructions hahaha.

I mean, we definitely see "saturation" affect every now and again. But we've been told that superhero films would start to go that way too, and here is Marvel, still slinging out success after success ten plus years later, with sometimes not one but TWO movies a year. I'm not so sure Star Wars won't do the same.

I agree, but I guess the question is, would you rather have a billion dollar film a year for three years or one 2 billion dollar film every three years. Mathematically, at least SO FAR, it's more profitable for them to do it this way. As long as they continue to hit a billion.

Ohhh to be a director who writes and directs a movie that makes over a billion dollars and critical acclaim and be thought of as a failure. I want to be that type of failure SO. BAD.

I am pretty sure they just announced that Rian Johnson starts shooting his new trilogy in Scotland this June.