I think the combination of Rogen's brand of comedy (especially coming off the well-received This is the End) and the female drawing power that Efron has if you put him in something appealing...together it created a breakout.
Judging from the trailers, A Million Ways is going to be one of those comedies that's very hit and miss. Watching them, it goes back and forth between looking like a brilliant satire and looking juvenile and like it's trying way too hard.
Neighbors:
Fri 9:40pm showing
95% full
Trailers:
22 Jump Street - best reaction
Chef - some laughs here and there
The Purge: Anarchy - silence
A Million Ways to Die - slightly better reaction than Chef
Ruffalo/Knightley rom-com (forgot title) - silence
Movie: A-
Great crowd reaction. Audible breathless whispers from females whenever Efron had his shirt off, guffaws pretty consistent. Everyone seemed into it.
Using my fingers to type out words on a computer is not getting bent out of shape. LMAO. And yes, there is originality still. But it's becoming rarer and rarer. Also, the originality I'm speaking of is relative. Is the movie Lincoln original? No. It's based on history. But due to a number of factors, it's an original in my book.
The same reason people get mad about stupid laws and corrupt politicians. We want to see what we love (in this case movies, Hollywood, take your pick) get better. If you're okay with an industry completely devoid of originality, then by all means keep defending it.
It's not arbitrary. This isn't a franchise that failed (the reason reboots became a thing in the first place) and this isn't some grand mythology that future generations will lap up just as much as the last one. All I'm saying is it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Are teens going to line up for a buddy cop movie that's not an R-rated comedy? Probably not.
That's besides the point. There's no plot-related hook in Lethal Weapon that lends itself toward rebooting. It's completely counter-intuitive. The franchise existed because of Gibson and Glover.
Like Tele said, it's a matter of principle. Also, there's no reason to reboot a damn buddy cop series. None. Zilch. Superheroes, comic-book movies, I get it. Comics are rebooted all the time. Kinda makes sense. Same with long, long-running series like Star Trek or Bond.
But Lethal Weapon? That's just insane. That series was what it was because of the stars, nothing more.
The thing is, it could very well drop less than 60% this weekend, but the weeks after are not going to be kind at all with Godzilla, X-men, Maleficent, etc.
What I meant by "real Mandarin" is he wasn't the villain, not that I wanted an Asian caricature. I wanted the Mandarin that we got in the trailers and during the first hour of the movie.