Eastwood47

For myself, I can accept the parameters of any universe you want to put me in, as long as you abide by the rules you establish to operate within that world. The Flash acutely fails to follow those rules throughout the entire film, while offering some incredibly daff notions of reasoning that fail the motivations offered to drive the plot. For starters, no one who can go back in time to reverse the murder of their mother is going to first examine whether having their father stay at home alters that outcome, when he too could be killed in the event. I think nearly every human being, (except for the writers and director of this film) would first seek out the ACTUAL person who murdered their mom. So for the Flash to be focused on the secondary problem of his dad makes ZERO sense, when he could seek out the core reason for the murder happening, which fixes BOTH the murder and his dad's subsequent wrongful imprisonment. Additionally, if the Flash can jump in and out of the timeline, why does he feel inclined to speak to himself in the timeline where his mother lives? If he's so obsessed with not messing up history that he focuses on a can of beans in a grocery store, then why would he go completely off the rails by talking to a different version of himself which creates the problems he gets into? He could have just as easily left that timeline and gone back to his own. So none of the reasoning or rules of engagement are ever followed, even up to and including the end of the film where Barry goes back to the can of beans for his dad's sake (even though he already sees what changing one can of beans does to the multiverse). And if I'm to accept the notion that merely moving one can of beans can set off a chain of events that alters history, how could that impact Superman since he is older than Barry and would have already resided on earth for many years before the future Barry arrives to change the direction of that timeline? Thats a big plot hole that makes no sense. The same would apply to Bruce Wayne as well because he's older too, so none of that really makes any sense. The weaknesses in the script ( or excuses to bring in cameos) are poorly explained away by this ill conceived plot device that was never thought through properly by the writers or director. And how exactly does George Clooney coming into the picture reset the DCU for James Gunn? And Jason Mamoa is still Aquaman? Its one hell of a mess that ultimately doesn't service the stated goals by the director or James Gunn who pushed for that change with Clooney. So while there were some strong performances in the acting realm by most of the cast, the failings of the writing team to offer a coherent story is what fails this picture for me. If the premise can not stay afloat to tell the story, then its characters are pretty much adrift with no safe landing to save it. I give it a D for failing to follow its own premise with sloppy reasoning and heavily flawed motivations that do not pass the sniff test even with a low bar to meet.

I'm not overly invested in box office tracking. Look at Spider-verse. They were off $40 million from their high-end predictions. In this post pandemic world, I don't think most people feel any great urgency to buy tickets early for much of anything because theaters just don't fill up like they use to for most movies. Sure there are exceptions, but the Flash has been in the public for literally years. It was originally supposed to come out last year and then all of this nonsense happened with its lead. Its not going to be an event film the way they wanted it to be. But it has allot of people curious. I have zero doubt it will pull in descent money and most likely make over $100 million just on Michael Keaton alone. He is the real draw here. The second weekend will tell us what the public thought about it. I will be happy to go see it and decide for myself. Keaton in the cowl again is very cool.

In the grand scheme of things, I think history will look back on this film and ask the question why it's director/creator chose to make so much press over a dollar amount the film needed to break even. That's a very odd position to make public prior to a film's release, especially in today's social media environment where the direction of the wind can be a polarizing topic. I don't know if its simple arrogance, or perhaps a public position he's taking now to make more expensive films later. One can only assume he feels incredibly confident his film will easily overcome this "high risk" narrative he's established . Whatever the reason, that singular statement certainly inflated expectations and changed how the industry is reporting on it's progress. When the final chapter is written on this film, I've got to think Cameron would like to take back that statement, so this film could have garnered it's own narrative without being hampered or overshadowed by grand proclamations from its creator. Great films often speak for themselves. I'm not sure this movie will ever get that opportunity and that's unfortunate.

Don't hold your breath on Christmas weekend. There's a massive winter storm sweeping the north and midwest Wednesday through Saturday. Travel in many places will be hard if not impossible just for Christmas gatherings let alone going to see a movie. The weekend to watch may be New Years to see if that picks up the crowds that weren't able to attend the previous weekend.

Lets not forget A2's next obstacle... Huge winter storms tracking to hit the midwest and east cost Christmas weekend.

Thats how I see it from reading reviews and eliminating the extreme highs and lows. "Masterpiece" and "its terrible" are not counted here because most people never agree on those opinions. If the suggestion is seeing it in 2D is not all that different to the essential experience of the film, then its bit odd that Deadline is making excuses for its box office receipts by stating there are not enough Imax and 3D screens to accommodate this film. Usually when Deadline starts laying the groundwork for why something is not bigger than they want it to be personally, this is how it reads.

So I have a question... The consensus seems to be the visuals save what the story does not deliver and most of what it saves is in the last 35 or 40 minutes visually. If this thing has to be seen in 3D or Imax to be appreciated and is a dud to see in 2D, then how long can the 3D and IMAX showings makeup for what no one wants to see in 2D? Theaters would have to drop it in 2D theaters which then raises another problem... What if other films coming in have 3D or Imax slots? Doesn't that hurt the bottom line since the story is not the selling point here?

Box Office Pro already predicting a 65% drop for WF this coming weekend. That seems a bit... early.

It will be interesting to see its Monday drop and overall weekday performance. But yes, I think 80% is at bare minimum a possibility. Likely? Maybe not with it being the last weekend before Halloween. Enough people may go in just for the celebration of it. But I DO expect it to beat the record drop set by Kills last year. So eclipsing 71% is absolutely on the table.

It always fascinates me how Deadline Hollywood quits following box office stats once a film they personally like shows an underperformance based on earlier expectations. Usually movies they like will have morning, afternoon and evening updates on Saturday. Halloween Ends certainly seem to be tracking that way with all the talk on Friday, but then... silence. One mention (on Saturday) of the film falling short of the $50 million expectation, (which I believe started out at $55 at one point), is met with a story about WHY and a whole range of excuses, none of which have to do with the fact audiences are hating it with a Cinema Score of C+. That's even lower than Resurrection which got a B+. Hell its the lowest the franchise has gotten since Cinema Score started tracking them. I would like to know if this is even tracking now to make $43 million. The Friday tally of $20 million is pulling in the Thursday/midnight shows so its actual take is more like $15 million for Friday. With such bad WOM and even the audience score pummeling the movie on RT, its going to be interesting whether this film gets the full benefit of a front loaded weekend with the bad news spreading so fast. I mean, who wants to see a film that only shows its star for ten minutes? I would be curious to know what impact that is having on turn out. And Baumer I am with you on your take. Whatever they were smoking in that writers meeting, I'm shocked they got Akkad on board to approve that. I'm also glad they have moved on to the Exorcist series instead of looking at Friday the 13th. Can you IMAGINE what they would have done to that franchise? Wowzers... Speaking of which, its time to get that series rolling again. Myers can be put on the back burner for six years until his 50th anniversary hits. I suspect they will reboot at H4 to celebrate those legacy characters, but we shall see. Jason needs to start swinging the axe again while this franchise takes a breather.

The real question is whether it beats the 70% drop in its sophomore weekend that Kills got. I've seen Ends and I bet it does.

I think there are allot of rules to story telling that were not only violated, but backed over repeatedly. First, when you say you're building a trilogy, there's supposed to be story arc with a narrative structure that provides a pathway for character development followed by a logical conclusion that ties up the loose ends in the final chapter. This has none of that. All three of these movies have little to no connective tissue. Their characters have motivations that come from nowhere. And plot points in these movies are just things that happen because... well they just happen. And all the characters flow in that direction even if it makes no sense for them to. Halloween Ends seems to revel in taking all the flaws in the first two films and slamming the writing gears into overdrive to show they can make even more mistakes. Instead of explaining what has happened for four years or why the town never even made a search for Michael Myers after he murdered half the town, including a town mob who beat, shot, and stabbed him, the writers decide to go back and create a new story arc for a completely different character that was not in the last two films. They not only give you a back story, they then spend more than three quarters of the film letting that character drive the narrative while the rest of the legacy characters let you know they have moved on. Thats great... Laurie Strode spends 40 years hiding in fear of Myers and building a fortress in preparation for him, KNOWING he is shackled to a concrete block in prison. But once he escapes and kills her family, including her only daughter (and is still free), she's moved on after four years. YEAH... makes total sense. If you decide to invest in this new character and new story, have no fear. The writer and director make sure you get no satisfaction there either , because at the end, they realize, "Hey we should bring Michael Myers into this right?" So they eliminate that new character and go back to Myers who is a beaten down and nearly crippled old man wearing a mask, but possessing none of the strength he has exhibited in all the other films. So you spend all your time following a dead end storyline regarding a character that has nothing to do with the franchise, only to get maybe five minutes screen time with Michael Myers, two minutes of which he fights Laurie Strode. This is a ludicrous film. If you're a fan and looking for a pay off, its not here. Its as if they meant to flip the finger at every fan of the series. The only thing I can say for the movie is the acting was actually pretty good. That saves it from getting a F. But the writing found a new low. D-

The only reason I place an asterisk next to those numbers is because theaters like AMC and Regal decided to stiff the ticket buying public and raise prices. One would expect to see an elevated return on that spike, yet the current projection is still hitting the low end of the estimates. Its definitely a consideration.

I have two college degrees, but my best teacher has always been time on the field and the experience that brings to my perspective. If you're objective is to persuade, its best not to insult the intended audience by suggesting they are stupid. That requires minimal education and perhaps a bit more humility, context to the topic, and a better understanding that movies will always be subjective at best. You brought as much emotional baggage and targeted attacks to your argument as those you chose to label with similar issues. At the end of the day, this is product and we are consumers. Buy what you like and understand the reasons why others choose differently will not always be available to you. College professors and a structured course on most disciplines are ultimately just another opinion that serves as a starting point, but absolutely not the final say on any given subject.

Yes. It won't even get close. $14 million might even be off, if thats the optimistic number for the weekend. Thats closing in on a 75% drop. I think the public have spoken on this film. Frontloaded and as dead as one of Michael's army of victims. I think Peacock will likely pick up the extra viewings for the Halloween celebration, so the box office may not get that bump as it might have traditionally received.

You called it.

Is it a safe assumption that the Peacock streaming service has siphoned off any traditional repeat business theaters would see for Halloween Kills in favor of a home experience which is far cheaper? I have to wonder if that too will factor in a bit more on the sophomore weekend where you might also see the repeat business. Bad WOM will likely send new viewers to the streaming service just to save money if they remain curious.

Halloween films enjoy such a low bar for entertainment. I can't tell you how much I've heard from the super fans about the mask, the mask, the mask. And of course the Dean Cundey style lighting. Throw in Carpenter taking another crack at the soundtrack and I think the story becomes an after thought (as it was here). I guess if the expectations of the mask, the lighting, and the music are met, it doesn't matter if Michael is in Haddonfield or Hogsmeade. Halloween is essentially a costume franchise. If you get the costume right, then all else is forgiven. If the costume is wrong, then we look at the story for complaints. Its the same thought process I hear from the Batman movies. " Look! They gave him nipples! God that was an awful story!" Like the one before it didn't have all the same issues of cringe-worthy dialogue and cartoon treatment characters? LOL! I guess I'm a bit harder on these films if the creative team coming in is wiping away forty years of sequels to say they have a "better idea", then proceed to fall back on auto-pilot like the rest. At some point you need to call them out and just say there is no truth in marketing (not a new thing) and that this product will always be one note, barely B-rated, copy cats to the original. There's nothing wrong to follow the formula if its makes you bank. But listening to the director give exposition like actual thought was put into these stories written on the back of a napkin, is ridiculous.

If a Halloween movie could just be rated on its ability to be nothing but derivative then this film would win hands down for borrowing from every component of the franchises long 40 plus years of existence. Hell it even has to go back and create exposition from the '78 classic and dig up all its old characters to remind you it has nothing to offer for its own legacy. David Gordon Green might think he's being slick by retconning all the sequels, then using all of their signature plot points to rearrange and offer fan service moments to exploit the fact he actually has nothing to add to the mythology. But I think after Kills, he might have alerted the public that he is just a poor man's version of JJ Abrams playing hack director to sell old memories to fans wrapped up in the façade of a "new movie". There's nothing here. Everything is to feed nostalgia, but there is not a lick of common sense or rationale to any of the character motivations in this film. It feels like a fan made film. All the characters (even secondary ones) have hilarious and cringe worthy proclamations that come from nothing. In the last movie the murders of '78 were viewed as a generations removed crime that no one thinks about or even rates as a high crime. In this film, its as if Myers has always been there for all 40 years and the town is fed up. I haven't seen such an utter disregard for a coherent plot since Halloween 5. Not that any of the others have been much better since. But this has that same feeling that if the director wants to bank left and take you to whatever he dreams up, there's no explanation needed. You just go there. The only thing missing from this film is that mask used in Halloween 5. If they had used that, you would think the same director was brought back. The only thing I'm thankful about is I did not sit in a theater to watch it.

The formula is pretty simple. They market the film one way and then make the movie they always intended to make, which is nothing like what they said. Green just recently stated Myers is not literally supernatural so much as viewed to be supernatural by the town out of fear. Sorry. That's pure horsesh*t. In the last installment, the murders of '78 were treated as an event generations removed that people today did not even relate with. One character even goes as far as to say, " Okay so this guy escapes an asylum, kills three people, and is caught again. By today's standards that's really not so bad." So there's a concerted effort to show the town is completely unaware and unprepared for Myers to come back to their town. Loud, clear, and specific to those events. So it's a complete error in continuity to change the dynamic of a town not knowing or understanding what Myers is to suddenly having the same scope of understanding Laurie Strode has in a few short hours that creates a panic-turned mob? Utterly ridiculous and unbelievable. Hell even the TV news spot in KILLS says nothing about Myers specifically. But one guy is going to rally the town based on something even news reports can not contextualize? The truth is nobody does anything based on any rationale that makes sense. The whole film are just moments strung together with next to no connective tissue that reasonably explains why. Characters just suddenly become aware of things and do things without the slightest path of logic to justify them. Allot of times things are overstated to try and cram that reason in. Why does Tommy Doyle call Michael super-human based on the events of 1978? Where does he drudge that up from? They hid in a closet and then ran away. They have zero context. They were never even touched but tells the attendees in a bar they were brutally attacked. Even the bar owner thinks they're looney. So the movie tries to change the rules of engagement from the last film and thinks it can cover itself by simply having characters say things to sell those new rules, without any fundamental explanation as to why they would say them. And then you have Green doing the same thing by essentially telling everyone, " Well, this is actually what that means." I'm sorry. Do we need footnotes from the director or can't the movie stand on it's own? Its just a mess and the director trying to stand up like Tommy Doyle in a bar to "rally the troops" is just not going to work in real life. LOL

Paul Stanley once said, "People listen with their eyes" when describing a period when the band found their sound again, but no one gave them a chance because they no longer liked their image. When the image became popular again, those records found new acclaim amongst fans. The Halloween franchise seems to run on that philosophy from its own fanbase. These movies run on the esthetics and less about story. And this movie will likely be divided right down those lines because the diehards will love the treatment with the mask and lighting, while the casual fans will be more about the story, or lack thereof. If you look at the history of this franchise, the movies that reboot (usually during an anniversary year) like H20 and H40 revisit the same framework of the original. The only difference is their starting point to pick up the narrative. What makes this particular movie such an eye brow raising moment is director David Gordon Green and his team of writers went back to the '78 original and supposedly eliminated everything after that, with the reasoning that they wanted to "ground" the character of Michael as he was in the first film and return him to just a human being. So much for truth in advertising... While Halloween 2018 might have garnered interest from the general public when Green suggested he would forge his own path, he's actually been more like JJ Abrams. He's just taking all the plot points from the other films in the franchise and calling them his own. Hell KILLS even takes a scene from H2 in a flashback! Hows that for hypocrisy? But the one thing that just sounds the alarm bell in KILLS is that everything this creative team promised not to do like the others, they ARE doing... IN SPADES. Michael is EXACTLY as he was in H4, H5, and H6. He actually kills more people than all those films combined and displays the same immunity to gun shot blasts (at point blank range) and all the other bodily damage that would kill a "normal" person. So much for grounding the character. Even some of the esthetics fail, such as the flashback scenes. Myers house CLEARLY reads like a set piece (very much in the same vein as Resurrection). But of course they got his mask right, especially in the flashback scenes. So I imagine this will ultimately be what allot of fans grade this film on to forgive the rest. But from the directors chair, this reads like a fan made film with a Hollywood budget. Self aware, unoriginal, and full of winks to other entries to cover up the fact it can't move the needle on the story. This is a trilogy made as a cash grab, not because there were three films worth of story to tell. If the third film moves the needle at all, you can just skip right over this one and watch the last entry.

This is the last weekend before Christmas which means you have shopping, parties, and everything that allot of people can't do in the middle of the week where the holiday falls this year. Hard to take time out for three hours in a theater.

That is not reporting the numbers. That is industry spin. I just want the numbers.

That and Deadline Hollywood is apparently in a back room trying to write a narrative to gloss over whatever these early numbers are or write an obituary. The industry silence at this hour is deafening. 11 o'clock and not even a peep.

When should we start getting estimates for last night?