BadAtGender

Well, that was a bad week for me. Ugh.

Welp.

1) Will Pitch Perfect make at least 20 mill more than Mad Max? NO 2) Will Pitch Perfect make more than 49 mill OW? YES 3) Will PP have previews of more than 4 mill? YES 4) Will PP have an OD of more than 17.5 mill? YES 5) Will PP be number one this weekend? YES 6) Will Mad Max open to more than 30 mill? YES 7) Will MM have previews of more than 2 mill? YES 8) Will MM drop more than 25% on Sunday? YES 9) Will Avengers drop more than 45%? YES 10) Will Avengers increase more than 58% on Saturday? YES 11) Will Age of Adeline fall more than 25%? YES 12) Will the top three films combine to make more than 115 mill? YES Question 13: This is an all or nothing question. If you go for it, you must get all four questions right. If you do not go for it, you get 0 points. However, if you do not get perfect on this question, you will lose 20,000 points. Getting it correct means you get 20,000 points. All or nothing. If you are not going to attempt this question, just say #13: Abstain. ABSTAIN Bonus 1: What finishes is spots: 4 Hot Pursuit 7 Furious 7 8 Ex Machina 11 Cinderella 12 The Longest Ride 2000 each correct, 5000 bonus for all 5 correct. Bonus 2: What will PP and MM combine to make this weekend? 4000 103,458,286 Bonus 3: What will Avengers make on Sunday? 4000 11,238,979

Sophie Campbell, the artist for the new comic, commented about some of the response she's gotten compared to her older TMNT work. The people who are negative about Jem tend to be VERY strongly so. She thinks it might be because for fans of Jem, the original show is IT. There has been literally nothing else for the property since the 80s. TMNT and Transformers and GI Joe all had new versions of cartoons and comics and toys to keep generating interest and keep the fans of the old series interested. They also mitigated disappointment, because it got spread out over time. Also invariably they could go back and watch those original shows and see that, yeah, they don't really hold up. But it's okay, because there are cool things to take from there and from the more recent adaptations. With Jem, if you've only got that one childhood connection, it's difficult to see any changes positively. Also, unlike the others, Jem actually was pretty great within the context of an 80s toy commercial cartoon, so there's a higher bar to meet for any adaptation.

Yeah, but don't expect it to come close to the 45m or so that TA1 got there. The yen is a lot weaker, sequels to films tend to decrease there, and outside of Spidey superheros aren't really that popular. It may also have a worse release date; too early to really take advantage of the summer holidays. Whether it gets to 1b OS is really going to depend on China.

I enjoyed it. It didn't really push boundaries story-wise, but it was cute and fun.

Home will pass Spongebob today. Amazing.

So now China has three of the biggest single-market day records? F7 got Sunday and Monday. AoU got Tuesday. How long before the rest fall?

Final update for my little AoU comparison tracker. It's neat to see how it compared to the drops of IM3, TA1, and SM3 based off of last Sunday's number, but probably isn't going to provide any significantly useful information from now on. It was incredibly close to the IM3 pace going into the weekend, but didn't hold nearly so well, especially on Saturday. IM3 Avengers SM3 Average Actual Sunday $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 Monday $13,183,824.80 $16,655,900.80 $12,982,545.04 $14,274,090.21 $13,228,555.00 Tuesday $13,210,192.45 $15,573,267.25 $10,152,350.22 $12,978,603.31 $13,132,812.00 Wednesday $9,498,128.37 $11,991,415.78 $8,477,212.43 $9,988,918.86 $9,409,838.00 Thursday $8,909,244.41 $10,912,188.36 $7,459,946.94 $9,093,793.24 $8,613,154.00 Friday $23,083,852.28 $25,730,940.16 $21,671,145.86 $23,495,312.77 $21,232,362.00 Saturday $37,534,343.81 $37,773,020.15 $31,791,570.98 $35,699,644.98 $33,835,656.00 Sunday $24,322,254.79 $27,234,347.53 $19,996,898.15 $23,851,166.82 $22,678,911.00 Week $129,741,840.92 $145,871,080.03 $112,531,669.61 $129,381,530.19 $122,131,288.00 Ten-Day $321,012,949.92 $337,142,189.03 $303,802,778.61 $320,652,639.19 $313,402,397.00

I think at some point I'd like to run a countdown for the top film musical themes. Would anyone be interested in that?

Y'know what? That's actually not the problem. Everyone likes watching attractive people on screen. What I'd like, though, is to have rough parity between the attractive men and the attractive women in lead roles and in speaking roles. That doesn't exist right now. I'd like the attractive women to have dynamic, complex, and deep characters as much as the attractive men do. I'd like to have a reason to be on screen for reasons OTHER than their attractiveness. I'd like to see attractive women of all ages and ethnicities getting these roles instead of the current way that all of Hollywood apparently fixates on the same three white women aged 25-35 for every single possible role. I'd like to see attractive women appear in films together, and have conversations with each other. About things besides men. I'm good with attractive women on screen. But they can still get all the opportunities of attractive men. (And also, there are considerable opportunities for unattractive men. I'd like to see those same opportunities extend to unattractive women.)

How's Seattle doing? It doesn't feel like a movie that plays super well here, but I'm curious how it actually fits with general trends.

I deliberately didn't vote for any Williams scores, although I'm perfectly happy acknowledging that he's the best. I also don't think I voted for any by Shore, even though he's great, too. SW and LotR are pretty much the two best series scores ever. (Personal amusement: I actually wrote down one of my votes wrong. I don't think it would have affected standings, though.)

It's probably both. Maleficent also did very well, as did Alice. These Disney live actions are pretty solid in Japan.

There's nothing more natural about a character being male. Frodo would work just fine as a girl. There's nothing inherently weaker or more vulnerable about being female. Aragorn could be female. It would be perfectly credible. It is sexism. You are not being logical. If you think that it's genre specific, you'd be wrong. Studies have been made across wide swaths of films and have found that, as a whole, women make up about 30% of all speaking roles and 15% of protagonists. This has been pretty much flat for years.

Huh. From a high of 28 earlier in the day to possibly 21, now. Last week we went from possibly as high as 100 to under 85. What we can take from this is: the West Coast does not go see AoU at night.

A lot of the themes and motifs that Shore wrote are reused, but that's by design since they're often character based. And he's incredibly skilled about making them work in multiple ways for different moods. Concerning Hobbits shows up a lot in all three films, but it's very different when played over scenes of the Shire vs. scenes in Mordor. And really, any good series is going to have music that provides connections like that. It's not recycling. The soundtrack is one of the most enduring emotional aspects of the film experience, so even if the viewer doesn't now for certain that the music they're hearing played in a previous movie, it provides a subconscious link. The series where it doesn't happen (*coughmcucough*) tend to stand out because of that lack.

I look forward to throwing Hot Pursuit on as background noise when it shows up on HBO in six months.

Base off of Sunday's number, AoU is about 450k short of where it'd be at had it followed IM3's drops. IM3 Avengers SM3 Average Actual Sunday $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 Monday $13,183,824.80 $16,655,900.80 $12,982,545.04 $14,274,090.21 $13,228,555.00 Tuesday $13,210,192.45 $15,573,267.25 $10,152,350.22 $12,978,603.31 $13,132,812.00 Wednesday $9,498,128.37 $11,991,415.78 $8,477,212.43 $9,988,918.86 $9,409,838.00 Thursday $8,909,244.41 $10,912,188.36 $7,459,946.94 $9,093,793.24 $8,613,154.00 Friday $23,083,852.28 $25,730,940.16 $21,671,145.86 $23,495,312.77 Saturday $37,534,343.81 $37,773,020.15 $31,791,570.98 $35,699,644.98 Sunday $24,322,254.79 $27,234,347.53 $19,996,898.15 $23,851,166.82 Week $129,741,840.92 $145,871,080.03 $112,531,669.61 $129,381,530.19 Ten-Day $321,012,949.92 $337,142,189.03 $303,802,778.61 $320,652,639.19 On the same pace, it would hit just shy of 85m for weekend 2. We'll probably know for certain if that's happening tomorrow.

Shrek 2 (for now)

Do you have the presale data for TF4?

Even if it wasn't ending on Monday, the opening of AoU would probably take away pretty much all its screens so it'd be unlikely to get there regardless.

Y'know? I'm not going to say that you don't. Power and privilege vectors apply. If someone who's a minority says something like "all white people can go to hell" it doesn't have any systemic weight behind it. It's not going to apply the same as someone saying "black people are thugs". (Or apply whatever rhetorical means you'd like to either statement.) It's part of the reason that something like #NotAllMen was so misguided when it came out last year. It conflates two things that may seem similar on the surface but are really very different because where something is coming from and where it's directed matter. These things do not exist in a vacuum. Racism and sexism have a system that provides force behind them, which means that the anger of one black person against all white people is vastly different from the anger of one white person against all black people. Of course, there's the further factor that many acts of racism and sexism aren't overt, but rather just playing along with the power structures and behaviors that the system encourages. Something like http://shitpeoplesaytowomendirectors.tumblr.com/ may document terrible acts within the movie industry that are overt, but it also shows us that there's a wider underlying problem that says to these people (men) that such behavior is okay. If you're a minority, you don't have that power structure behind you. Your acts against the people who are privileged by the system aren't at all the same as their acts against you, even if the might seem similar at first glance. So, sure. Belittle white people, if you like. Part of me understanding my privilege is that 1) if someone says a broad complaint about my race or gender, it does not necessarily apply to my own behavior (although I may self-examine due to it... we do many things unconsciously) and 2) Even if they hate everyone like me, that doesn't make their behavior wrong, nor does it suddenly make me oppressed.

Criticism does get applied elsewhere. But Marvel is the biggest thing on the block, and Avengers is their prime property. It gets a critical response in relation to its size. It doesn't help when the CEO is down on female characters in the franchise (http://comicsalliance.com/ike-perlmutter-thinks-female-led-films-bomb/) & apparently part of the lack of BW merchandise is the emphasis of Marvel as Disney's Boy Brand (can't find a link to the story at the moment. There's a lot of print spread about AoU right now.) Besides that, you're going to get the critique of the things you're most interested in. If you have heightened interest in Marvel and CBMs, then the discussion surrounding those is what's most likely to filter down to you. But every property, big and small, is going to have this debate. And it is a debate. Alyssa Rosenberg is a pretty outspoken feminist and writes for WaPo. She has a long defense of BW's portrayal in AoU: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/05/black-widows-feminist-heroism/ Like anything, critique is opinion, and there will be divergent views on how problematic something is or is not. This definitely isn't a case of "you must agree with X to be feminist" or "if you think Y you're sexist". It's just that people need to look at the issues at hand, weigh them, and come to a personal conclusion. But it's profoundly unhelpful to pick at an extremist few and say "because they're loud and angry, I'm against anything they're associated with." Additionally, F7 did get a lot of critique for the butt shots, but it also gets a lot of praise because as a franchise F&F tends to treat the main female characters very well: they tend to have their own personalities and arcs, aren't sexualized, and are never (I think?) threatened with sexual violence. It's not perfect, but it's pretty great. I perhaps worded that poorly. It's not about being thin or thick skinned, it's about recognizing the inherent privilege in the position. Whedon is extremely privileged, which provides structural defenses against attacks that other people don't have. Also, Whedon has an outsized audience compared to most people. If it's a question of why so many people attacked him, it's likely just a reflection of that audience size.

It's tracking very close to IM3's path from Sunday's number. IM3 Avengers SM3 Average Actual Sunday $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 $50,319,942.00 Monday $13,183,824.80 $16,655,900.80 $12,982,545.04 $14,274,090.21 $13,228,555.00 Tuesday $13,210,192.45 $15,573,267.25 $10,152,350.22 $12,978,603.31 $13,132,812.00 Wednesday $9,498,128.37 $11,991,415.78 $8,477,212.43 $9,988,918.86 $9,409,838.00 Thursday $8,909,244.41 $10,912,188.36 $7,459,946.94 $9,093,793.24 Friday $23,083,852.28 $25,730,940.16 $21,671,145.86 $23,495,312.77 Saturday $37,534,343.81 $37,773,020.15 $31,791,570.98 $35,699,644.98 Sunday $24,322,254.79 $27,234,347.53 $19,996,898.15 $23,851,166.82 Week $129,741,840.92 $145,871,080.03 $112,531,669.61 $129,381,530.19 Ten-Day $321,012,949.92 $337,142,189.03 $303,802,778.61 $320,652,639.19 If it continues like that it'll be looking at an 85m second weekend.