Deathlife

It's really unfortunate. I'm not sure why THR put out that ridiculous hit piece on DaCosta. The whole discourse around The Marvels has been weird and frankly over the top.

The movie isn't the "train wreck" it was initially made out to be, but it was really, really weird. When Nia DaCosta said the movie was really wacky, she wasn't kidding. It's probably Marvel's weirdest movie. Given what was in the film, I could see why marketing might have struggled with it. That being said, there were some story telling decisions that were made in the movie that didn't work at all. What Carol did to the Supreme Intelligence and the downfall of the Kree Empire was literally the instigating event of the entire film. Teasing that in a flash back scene didn't make sense at all given its massive impact on the universe and how Carol's action devastated Hala. Not showing this would be like starting "Face-Off" without showing Cage kill Travolta's son, it doesn't make sense given the overarching plot of the film. Dar-Benn's actions were driven by this event, and this would have helped flesh out the villain as well. The movie should have definitely been longer. It should have been at least 2hrs (at the very least) to flesh out the characters. Ms. Marvel came out as most fleshed out because her story started off grounded on Earth with her family (not to mention the actress poured herself into the role). Monica's angst towards Carol wasn't fleshed out enough as well as Carol's regret over what happened to Hala (which interestingly mirrors a lot of current real-world events). Monica in particular hasn't really been fleshed out in any of her outings and she's been used mostly as a plot device. The film's saving grace is that it's pretty much action from beginning to end. The much talked about singing planet scene was pretty short and the film just moved from action sequence to action sequence. All in all, I would give it a B-. It's not the worst MCU film but it's certainly not one of the better ones.

Exactly this. I thought it was going to get torn apart by critics but overall, it's been mixed but leaning positive. Anyways, it's too late now. Disney are going to feel the affects of their own decisions.

I never, ever, ever call out reviews but there is a little bit of bullshit in some reviews. There's a particular review that I read (in the Washington Post) that really laid into the film. What really stuck out to me was the review didn't know why Monica Rambeau is a "grown woman" now. His exact words were "Cosmic rays seem to be way better than Clinique for the skin". I can understand if a critic doesn't have any background knowledge about the characters in a sequel but to acknowledge what's come before and completely misrepresent it to criticize a movie is a pretty ridiculous thing to do. That particular reviewer was probably just looking for reasons to lay into the movie regardless because they seem to have forgotten the original movie took place in the 90s. (???).

Looks like this could be the "Batman and Robin" of the MCU. Not necessarily in terms of quality but in terms of impact on the franchise. Quantumania didn't do very well but The Marvels is looking like it will be the MCU's true first unmitigated disaster.

Some critics are going in haaaaaard on this. Dan Murrell called the movie "an unmitigated disaster" and this cut should have been "unreleasable". Ouch.

EDIT: Confirmed Troll. Apologies for engaging with them.

God damn, that's an oooooofff. For a sequel to a billion dollar grosser, that's pretty horrible.

Any news on presales? I know they begun yesterday but I was wondering how they were going.

I'm confused. Everything I've read says that Beyonce's tour will sell more tickets than Taylor Swifts. https://www.thethings.com/beyonce-versus-taylor-tours/ https://www.today.com/popculture/music/beyonce-taylor-swift-renaissance-eras-tour-earnings-rcna118276 Again, I'm old and don't really follow this stuff closely (until I peaked in this thread) and i stand to be corrected. I don't think Beyonce's film will be as big as Taylor's but she's not lagging far behind in concert sales.

Hasn't Taylor Swift released new and re-released multiple versions of her work recently? I was listening to podcast and The Vulture and it was something they mentioned that some artists do these days. It's not just her, a lot of popular musicians especially the K-Pop guys. I'm old and out of the loop but that likely accounts for her massive sales in the calendar year.

I read somewhere that the movie crashed the AMC website because of the demand for tickets. Interesting times to say the least. Edit: OK, it actually says it's putting folks on a queue which is normal.

That's the thing about "late-stage capitalism", if a company's profit declines (note profit, not revenue), people aren't happy. People shouldn't be colored by the endless greed that's somehow become the norm over the last few years, a lot of people these days lose their jobs even when companies are profitable because they "didn't grow profits as expected". This has become the norm in the tech sector (another reason why those guys need to unionize). Disney is clearly have struggles but they are still profitable which suggests they are a long way from "death". Seriously, even if the Florida Disney World closes for a hurricane, Disneyland in California is still open as well as their locations across the globe (I know they don't own all of them but they are still making money from them), these guys are generating tons of cash. Like I mentioned earlier, it looked like Nike was about to collapse due to the "massive boycott" (LOL) of their shoes but Nike is booming today. No one should be surprised if Anheuser-Busch and Target bounce back in a few months' time. Huge companies like these experience ups and downs but do tend to recover eventually. Frankly, due to the rise of digital media there's an uncomfortable mix of news and opinions floating around and it's difficult to understand what's really happening these days. Even with box office, it's only on sites like these that you can get the full picture and even at that, we still don't get an accurate picture because we don't have all the facts (case in point with Pixar saying that Elemental will make a profit despite it's "weak performance"). It's like the whole "go woke, go broke thing", TLDR on YouTube did a pretty detailed financial analysis on this and how it was completely false that wokeness has affected the box office negatively. Again, no one is saying Disney is in great health, just that they are a long way from any collapse or death or anything of that sort.

Because their finances are public, and anyone can read them. For Disney, Streaming Losses and TV’s Decline Are a One-Two Punch - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Make no mistake, Disney is making losses on streaming (no surprises) and their income from cable tv (which has an uncertain future) but the overall company is still profitable and said profit increased year over year. The only issue was that said increase didn't increase as much as expected.

Yeah, you'd think Disney is making losses year after year. They are having challenges for sure but it's still a profitable company with many ways of generating income. Iger might have put his foot in his mouth regarding the strike, but his cost-cutting measures make sense. The company grew too fast and expanded too much.

Disney and Enron are two completely different types of companies. I'm not sure why you're even making the comparison. Enron was involved in illegality which is quite different to what's happening with Disney. Disney isn't even making a loss and are still paying dividend. With their diversified cash flow, that stock will eventually bounce back. I remember people talking about Nike in the same breath some years ago because of the Colin Kapernick controversy and we all saw how that turned out.

If one has the money, now is the time to buy Disney stock. Their stock price won't be this low for this long.

100% agree. Everyone wants to see their own succeed.

This never happened.

BBs performance is unfortunate. Latino representation is a very complicated discussion because Latino as a descriptor is a group of people from disparate cultures and literally different races that are being grouped together. I have Puerto-Rican relatives and they apparently have little in common with people from Mexico beyond the fact they all speak the same language. Seriously, Latino includes people like Charlie Sheen to Ricky Martin to Jennifer Lopez to Cardi B to Laz Alonso, it's a very large and frankly completely different people that are being grouped together. It's basically like attempting to group all French speaking people in the US into one group regardless of race or nationality, it really doesn't work. This is something that Hollywood will have to keep in mind when trying to tap into the Latino demographic. Representation is great and I will always support it but Hollywood needs to pick its battles. Blue Beetle to me looks more like it's focused on Mexican culture (I haven't seen it yet though, so this is a little speculative on my part) which should have been stated more prominently in its marketing (like Coco) IMO.

This kind of puts a lot of numbers coming of the country into question.

Exactly. That plus the fact they said they are comfortably liquid. I pointed it out in a comment in a different thread, a company as large and as diverse as Disney will need to experience a catastrophic drop in their core business to go bankrupt. Not to mention the fact that people repeating 100 times that a movie lost money doesn't actually make it so. Especially when the company producing these movies have so many ancillary sources of revenue.

Thats very unexpected. I guess the memes on social media got them out. Older audiences still aren't coming out in pre-pandemic numbers.

Lol..I don't want to spoil the movie but the major plot points are as woke as they come. Especially where a lot of people feel that men are being "de-masculinised" and hate hearing about the patriarchy and healthy body types are just buzzwords.

I'm just happy to see Barbie blow up. A gloriously woke, transgressive, feminist production dominating the box office. It's telling that the highest grossing movies of the summer domestic don't feature traditional white male leads. Just like Across the Spider-Verse, the producers shoved a lot of "woke stuff" into Barbie (again, everyone is focused on Disney while other studios are even getting MORE transgressive with their movies). To be clear, I don't have anything against white, male leads (Oppenheimer for example is a triumph) but it puts to bed this stupid notion of "wokeness killing cinema". This part of the world is getting increasingly diverse and folks just have to accept this. The numbers simply don't lie and I'm ready for a Hollywood that isn't afraid to present point of views that were hitherto unpopular before.