TServo2049

I never finished season 1 of SHIELD. Just been too busy. The good thing about the TV stuff is that you don't have to watch them for the movies to make sense.

No greedier than the comic book fans who want to see everything adapted to the screen. And you do realize they were setting up future phases from the mid-credit scene of TA1, right? They were already going to lead up to the Infinity Gauntlet as long as the film was a big hit. If they focused on the same characters over and over, that would defeat the whole promise of Marvel Studios, that they would tap the huge cast of characters, that the possibilities were endless. (And they almost had to do Black Panther and Captain Marvel, or the "not enough diversity" stuff would have just gotten louder and louder.) But you do have great points - after Avengers, it may well have been better to make everything stand-alone, have the new character outings like GOTG be truly separate, and just bring the core team together for an Avengers movie every three years. Though would the Infinity Gauntlet stuff even be possible without interconnectivity? Maybe they could have just done all this stuff as Easter-eggs, and not actually revealed any of it was connected until the Infinity War movie proper? And I still wonder how many of these other eclectic characters would have actually gotten their own movies if the goal wasn't to establish a universe and build up to a huge cosmic crossover. Without expanding further, would we have just gotten Iron Man, Cap, and Thor sequels in between the Avengers films instead? I think that Internet geekdom has fed this beast all along, for good or for ill. I also think we may be seeing some of the problems of the modern comic book industry bleeding into these movies.

What would YOU have done? And this is not a rhetorical "let's see YOU do better" in their defense, I'm legitimately curious.

The Purge 2 was last year's MMXXL in terms of opening/legs. (Though MMXXL won't end up outgrossing MM.)

I forgot to mention that while audience reaction was decent for my Ant-Man screening, the one thing which got the most applause was the Force Awakens trailer. I wish my theater would have put that in front of Jurassic World, I'd have loved to have heard the reactions to it from my sellout opening-night crowd. (Hacienda Crossings is weird, this was the first time I saw the BvS trailer also - it wasn't put in front of AOU or JW, even though the trailer was out.)

Giants/Diamondbacks had a night game that went into extra innings, that could have taken Northern California and Arizona out of commission. (Business seemed pretty good at my theater though?)

Yes, I know. Should have pointed out the snark in my post. Internet opinion towards Marvel swings as wildly as Marvel comics universe opinions toward superheroes.

It's weird - last year, it was "Marvel can propel anything to success, they're the new Pixar", and in 2015 they seem to be going into a "Pixar c. 2011-13" phase (at least in terms of Internet perception). So I guess they ARE the new Pixar. Anybody wanna take bets on what will be their Inside Out "Marvel is back" film?

Scott Mendelson's avatar looks like he could play the next Joker. He also looks like more of a young Hannibal Lecter in that one picture than Gaspard Ulliel did in Hannibal Rising. I like Mendelson's historical stuff, and his participation in commentaries on Out Now with Aaron & Abe, but his male-feminist SJW speechifying is getting more and more on my nerves. I had the misfortune of accidentally reading his comments on how and I couldn't stop thinking about it during the movie. If I hadn't read that, I would never have even thought of it.

Minions is gonna do fine, much as we dislike the movie. $75 million production budget (I assume this is after the French tax credits?), same as DM2. (Though interesting thought: With the exchange rate drop, I wonder if it cost more in Euros than DM2 did? Or would that difference be inconsequential?)

And once again, Hacienda Crossings seems to be an outlier on the cinema-turnout bell curve. My Ant-Man 7:30pm showing was ~75% full (300 people). Though it's not as much of an outlier as with Interstellar, Pacific Rim and Tomorrowland. Or do I just pick the day/time combo that is usually the most attended showing of a movie in its entire run? Opening night, prime-evening showing in the biggest auditorium? (Though I still wonder - my opening-night showing for How to Train Your Dragon 2 was at AMC Concord Mills 24 in Concord, NC - I was visiting relatives - and it was only about half full, more accurately reflecting the weaksauce opening than my other opening-night experiences - I think it was about as full as my second-Saturday matinee at Hacienda, which was in a bigger auditorium. So not all theaters have bang-up opening nights for every would-be tentpole.)

I enjoy its silliness. It's a comedy, after all. I consider it the best John Landis movie that wasn't actually directed by John Landis. (And when I saw I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I understood exactly where Zemeckis and Gale were going with the writing of 1941.) Yeah, I know it's a mess, but I've always had a soft spot for it.

Hey, I ENJOY 1941.

I remember an article when DM2 came out: So then why doesn't Minions seem to have any potential to break out in Japan? Is it just the mindset that Japanese audiences seem to have that there is no worthwhile non-Japanese animation outside of Disney?

I repeat: Someone must keep slipping and hitting 1,169 instead of 1,160. UPI's numbers have been saying 1,160 this whole time.

Not too surprising, Disney didn't have faith in Frozen merchandise either. Remember how the supply could not meet the demand at Christmas? I do suppose there will be an upswing in IO merchandise due to its popularity (though not on Frozen's scale, of course). Wasn't there a similar "demand > supply" situation with the original Toy Story, that was actually referenced in-universe in Toy Story 2?

Certainly. But less money > no money. And it's not like it's playing on the biggest screens. They take a smaller slice of a shrinking gross just to cross that milestone.

I second Rocky IV.

Yogi Bear limped to $100m DOM and $200m WW, on an $80m budget. No, it is not getting a sequel.

Yeah, we must remember that the majority of films announced to be in development, never happen.

I'd agree there. I saw Down Under first, then the original Rescuers (the sequel came out on video about a year before the original), and I always preferred Down Under.

A TV series is fine, we have more freedom to ignore it - sort of like the DreamWorks series which function as an "expanded universe continuity" that branches off the movies, but is not explicitly acknowledged by subsequent movie sequels. And as long as it's not terrible, it can be lived with. But again, Disney is not rushing this stuff out (even Cars stuff is coming relatively slowly). This is not the Eisner era, where TV series development seemed to start before the film was even released. (The Atlantis direct-to-video "sequel" was actually three episodes of a TV series that was canned in mid-production because of the movie's failure. We forget how much worse things were before Lasseter came in and restored at least SOME level of integrity.) And again, I reiterate, Wreck-It Ralph sequel demand started from some people as soon as it released. Nobody has explicit principles on sequels, if they really liked a movie, there seems to be world-expansion potential, and it doesn't cross over into "sacred and untouchable" (Monsters, Nemo, TS3, maybe IO - again, if a movie made you cry uncontrollably, it seems to be sacrilege to make a sequel?) they're suddenly in support of it. Once again, "Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed."

Again, as long as they don't stop making originals (which doesn't look likely), what does it matter? We're still getting at least one original from WDAS and/or Pixar every year, like we used to. And again, Ralph had the quickest "SEQUEL PLEASE" reaction from Internet geeks this side of The Incredibles, just as Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2 had the quickest "NAKED CASH GRAB, KILL IT WITH FIRE" reactions this side of Cars 2/3. I wouldn't have a problem with a Ralph sequel as long as it's good and brings something new. And Disney/Pixar actually have the longest time gaps between sequels of any studio, they are not rushing into this stuff. Even Frozen 2 will take longer to make than something like Shrek 2. There seems to be a worry that franchises will completely crowd out originals in animation the way they did in live action, but I think it's overblown. Disney is developing plenty of originals, and so is Pixar.

Yeah, Cars sequels = "bad" because adult fans don't like Cars, think it's beneath Pixar, and hate Mater/Larry the Cable Guy/down-home humor. (Remember, the original Cars pissed some people off coming off of The Incredibles, they saw The Incredibles as Pixar "growing up" and were hoping that every future Pixar film would be just as mature and intelligent. When the teaser dropped, they went "WHAT THE FUCK, A GOOFY KIDS' MOVIE?! PIXAR IS SELLING OUT!" Some things never change.) For the others, it tends to be not wanting sequels to originals you didn't like (particularly juvenile comedies), not wanting sequels to films which broke your heart and made you cry, not wanting sequels to any Pixar IP after The Incredibles, not wanting sequels to fairy-tale movies, and wanting sequels to imaginative geek-friendly originals like Incredibles/Ralph? Again, I point to that Austin Powers quote...

I was going to try to break down the possible logic behind why sequels to certain films are welcomed, and others are decried as "mercenary cash grabs", but I ended up like this: