Brainbug

So a not-Wingard and a Wingard-Tier 😅 but given the trailers and given, well ... Wingard ... i already expected this movie to double down on the tone of GvK. And honestly, from a box office perspective, that might just work out really well.

This is a better start so far for GxK than i hoped for. I want to believe it can keep this early momentum but i still think it will slow down in the coming days.

Im sad that Starship Troopers didnt win, but Wall-E is a perfectly acceptable champion!

And if you want to dig deeper, the actual VFX budget was probably around 4-5M: All 610 of the film's visual effect shots were handled by a crew of 35 artists at Shirogumi's Chōfu studio,[28][74] under the supervision of Yamazaki and direction of Kiyoko Shibuya.[23][24] According to the Los Angeles Times, between a quarter and a third of the film's budget was spent on visual effects. Generally speaking yes, Japans labour laws can be critized heavily for creating poor working conditions for VFX artists, but if you want to believe the director and the crew of Minus One, this doesnt apply here: Yamazaki remarked that Japanese studios are either dubbed "white" or "black", with a "white" studio being one that "doesn’t exploit its employees" while a "black" studio "makes you work overnight at all hours and really doesn’t pay you well". Shirogumi, the studio responsible for the film's visual effects, is literally named "white team" in Japanese, which Yamazaki suggested means that "we want to believe we are setting up standards and an environment that is very workable for all the artists and everyone who is with us here today". Moreover, he emphasized that the visual effects team had not been mistreated and the team avoided working long hours (mentioning that it is a "very welcoming environment" anyway even if they work overtime) and cited how they assembled a kitchen in the studio to make it "more comfortable and cozy". Yamazaki also spoke of his hopes their visual effect budgets would increase in the future and that this could drive further improvements

Nah, thats pretty much the range given by the directors comments as well, so its accurate.

I cant stand them either, but out of curiosity what would be your rankings of the Monsterverse movies?

My expectations for GodzillaxKongs presales are a strong start (fan rush), a kind of mediocre/slow lead-up to its final days of presales, a late surge and finally big walk-ups to save its Opening Weekend after the slow period of presales made many of us here very pessimistic about it.

Maybe the Oscar win gave it some juice back?

Ive been calling a 200M+ OW for that one for years. It just has to be good, not even amazing like Puss in Boots 2, just really solid movie. And then it will blast off and theaters will become swamps across the world. Anyone above the age of 20 is crazy nostalgic about Shrek, im just certain of that. It is the biggest nostalgia goldmine that Hollywood hasnt used so far (Puss doesnt really count, thats its own spin off series).

Completely deserved win for Oppenheimer. Just such a stunning achievement in filmmaking.

YEEEEEEEEES MYYYYYYYYYY BOYYYYYY GODZILLA Im so happy 😭

All i want is for Godzilla Minus One to win Best Visual Effects. I really REALLY want that

Yes but i dont think the vast majority here is falling for or following that narrative. I would think nearly all of us are just happy how Dune 2 has performed so far. And im also on the 300M DOM is still possible train. A lot of it depends on Dune's drops as soon as it looses its PLF screens.

Great numbers for Dune and KFP4. Let us not forget that Dune 2 is hard-Sci-Fi, 3 Hours long and it has a dark story at its core. Its run so far can only be "disappointing" if your expectations were delusionally high.

The Sat jump for Dune will be massive. We saw with Avatar 2 that the long runtime led to a bit muted Friday increases (because on Friday, most people still have to work, its only logical) while the Sat jumps and Sun holds were amazing. I expect a similar pattern for Dune going forward. The numbers so far for Panda 4 are amazing. I guess i underestimated the nostalgic appeal of the series, but like others have said, the family movie market was so barren in recent months that the next family movie was bound to profit from that. On the Ghostbusters/Godzilla discussion, i too think that Ghostbusters might be the one to suffer a bit this March, simply because i have the feeling that Ghostbusters as a series just isnt that big of a draw anymore and is a bit outplayed. Godzilla x Kong though i still have quite a good feeling. Godzilla vs Kong only grossed 100M DOM because of the pandemic and HBO Max situation, so it underperformed its theatralic potential by quite a margin i would think. The new one might also profit from beeing the first truly "popcorn" blockbuster of the year, since Dune 2 is certainly a more dark, heavier movie. But for people who just want to have some brainless fun at the theaters, i think GxK will be a more popular choice than Ghostbusters.

Thats way better than i expected for Panda 4, but the tracking team certainly was right on the money again! Seems to me that familys truly crave a family movie right now. Migration is really old news by now and Dune 2 for all its greatness is hardly a family movie.

Theaters 🙂

With both Shin and Minus One beeing such highly acclaimed movies in Japan, do people generally see the Godzilla series (atleast the current Reiwa one) on an elevated level now compared to prior series like Showa, Heisei and Millenium? Or are these new movies more seen as outliers?

RIP to a legend. There are few manga and anime as influential as Dragon Ball, for the shonen Genre its basically the Big Bang of all tropes and cliches that we know (and mostly love). Goku, Vegeta, Freeza are timeless characters.

To add some further positivity: We often complain about the state of cinema right now, both the box office and the quality of most modern blockbusters (im no exception). But just looking at the last 2 years, for me personally theres also been a trend in cinema right now, that if a (big studio) movie is actually good, its great. Like 9/10 or even 10/10 material. Top Gun: Maverick Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Oppenheimer Godzilla Minus One (bit of an outlier ofc, since its Japanese, but still) Dune: Part Two And those are for me just the loftiest tip of the Iceberg. Movies like The Batman, Barbie or EEAAO follow closely. All of which is to say that im just gratefull for these movies because as long as this kind of blockbuster is still beeing made among the sea of mediocrity, theres hope.

Season them with some spice

Are you the messiah?

Is French even a real language though? Ive heard its just the abridged version of Latin. And in this case, his name should be: Den-ius Vil-nuhvus

God this is a mess. Poor Ana doesnt deserve this.