Ipickthiswhiterose
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Posts posted by Ipickthiswhiterose
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8 hours ago, AJG said:
I'm watching Fallen Kingdom and I'm struggling to understand the benefit of a Dino that can kill a man once its owner aims their gun at them, turns on a light attached to the gun, and then presses another button on the gun... why not just shoot the gun?
The longer one considers the "dinosaurs are wanted by the military" angle they've been pushing since the second film, the funnier it gets. This was just the coup de grace.
Its considering the practicalities that's just amazing......your military has to spend salaries on animal handlers, cleaners, vets and trainers for years. Housing, food and electrics for years. Make the incredibly complicated transportation of a highly dangerous animal all the way to a combat zone, feeding it and cleaning it all the way and trusting that keeping it in a minuscule cage for its size won't have an impact on its capacity, wellbeing and aggression (it will). Billions and billions of dollars and logistics into this operation.
And finally there it is in the combat zone, all the handlers, the maintenance crew and trainers are there with you. It's time for your secret sniping operation so you bring them all. Finally it's in sight. You have your gun, you locate the target, you don't shoot the target for whatever reason and instead choose to launch the dinosaur. AND THERE IT GOES. All that money, all that time, all that energy. One kill. One kill that you could have made anyway.
Oh, and now there's a dangerous wild dinosaur in the combat zone. Along, presumably with all the other dangerous wild dinosaurs your friends were using.
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And to join in the rest of the discussion....yeah, the first one and the first half of the second were the scope of the series as a worthwhile entity. I'm not one for the revisionism that say the first JW was good. It wasn't. The realisation of the park was nice, and it had a good relationship to the first movies, but that's the extent of the positives.
There's a difference between "sure, this is just a big dumb fun movie, it has license to be silly" and "This literally might as well have been set in Narnia" and the JW films have been in the second category from the start.
One element that to me just summed up the laziness that hasn't been commented upon is the motivation of the villain in the second film......It is established he controls the finances of the literal richest man in the world, and yet his motivation is MONEY????? And money that's 'just' in the millions as at the auction. Nitpicking perhaps but JEEEEEZ that's just shoddy, lazy writing of the highest order.
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56 minutes ago, Jonwo said:
I'm expecting £8-10m for Jurassic World. Doesn't seem to be as much hype for it compared to the previous two.
The lack of new kids films likely helped Sonic and The Bad Guys, that'll change with Lightyear, Minions 2 and Super Pets during the summer.
I think Minions is still a sleeping giant, unfortunately, they'll all come out of the woodwork - Mrs Brown's Boys audience style. Super Pets I think will do well as the trailer played so well on my views and casually I know a few excited for it.
Lightyear....I dunno, might there be a low key underwhelming film there? Probably not but I wouldn't be *astonished* if it heavily underperforms.
Delighted for Bad Guys both domestically and internationally. Really felt like it was thrown out there with little to no fanfare to fail and has managed to be a nice little earner off the back of warm word of mouth and few options for families.
Maverick doesn't surprise me. It played to all audience it seems and the thing that was really notable in my packed showing was how well it was playing to KIDS. They were more into it than their dads who had dragged them there. Well done to it.
Jurassic World was looking low key late on last time. It's still dinosaurs and 3 bad films in a row didn't harm the last one, so 4 bad films in a row won't harm this one. More critic and bad-film proof than Transformers until proven otherwise.
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Just now, Flamengo81 said:
That online expectation was the sole reason that the movie opened to such huge numbers in the first place. I think is pretty revisionist to say that this was "just a second DS movie".
McAdams, Wong, Olson and Ejiofor were prominently displayed in the trailers.
There was one small cameo hinted at. There was no indication in trailers or marketing to the general audience of the kind of fireworks that the Online Types got excited about.
In contrast NWH had already promised Defoe, Molina and Reptile along with Strange indicating the scale of that story.
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2 hours ago, Napoleon said:
Looking at the unbelievable numbers Top Gun Maverick is pulling and how successfully they also revitalized the Mission: Impossible franchise, I keep wondering how the hell did Cruise and McQuarrie screw the Mummy reboot so badly.
Because the two franchises are incomparable and The Mummy had no business being a pure action film....
....or even a Tom Cruise film for that matter.
Audiences like Mission Impossible films being very Mission Impossible-ey andlike Top Gun films being very Top Gun-ey. They certainly don't want their Mummy films being either Mission Impossible-ey or Top Gun-ey.
"Look, Tom did this awesome practical stunt on a plane" is a great way to sell the first two. It was an outright idiotic way to sell the third.
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24 minutes ago, Xavier said:
I think the MCU has set itself up where everything under a billion is viewed like a disappointment
I think that's only with the double whammy of BP and CM. But I think for that to be expected to be a trend is not reasonable: BP was an unique cultural phenomenon and CM benefited from maybe the most optimum scheduling placement in blockbuster history. I think valuing future films - including the sequels of those films - at an "expected 1bm minimum" level is a tactic that will be employed by the bad-faith youtube merchants but not a fair or reasonable expectation for them.
24 minutes ago, Xavier said:MoM did most definitely NOT set the world on fire, as expected after NWH
I think that was online expectations in certain quarters though. By the standards of "just" a second Doctor Strange film, which is - essentially - what it was, it improved significantly on the first and made a good amount.
24 minutes ago, Xavier said:Black Widow was too little, too late, Eternals was a borefest
I think Black Widow was more of an easing into the new phase and that would have worked in a normal scenario - it was reminiscent of New Doctor Who episodes which have sometimes played into the previous Doctor's era heavily when launching a new Doctor (worked particularly well with Tom Baker).
And I think there has been a bit of a misremembering of where BW started when discussing a film for her. She didn't really have a defined solid character until Cap America 2, and followed a pretty good arc from then on, so not sure where a BW solo film would have best suited in the Thanos era.
25 minutes ago, Xavier said:(and now that the dust has settled, I don’t think NWH will be regarded as a very good film either). Maybe the MCU does not get an easy pass from critics anymore.
NWH will still be regarded as a good film by the general audience even if it doesn't hold up in the cold light of day by most objective measures.
I think the MCU was always intending to take more risks with critic approvals. I think the first Dr Strange and AMATW stretched what the Rotten Tomatoes formula could do with "everyone agrees that its a decent enough movie even if it's following a formula" films. Any more and critics would have started badmouthing those films anyway. Might as well take active risks.
25 minutes ago, Xavier said:I agree though that even with the good will built from previous entries, the introduction of new characters would always make things more challenging.
I think there is, if anything, a reverse risk to previous entries' good will too. Endgame marked a natural jumping off point for some viewers and the MCU is now old enough to have 'good old days' for those who enjoy spectating/thinking of things from that distance. Between the balance of pandering to those fans versus the risk of the MCU seeming passe to late Gen-z-ers the latter is by far the greater risk in the long run: the MCU becoming uncool and "a thing that old-people go on about" is a dynamic that Feige and Disney will be thinking far more about than the average long-run fan.
Turnover is natural and a certain amount of it will be tolerated, indeed, perceived as necessary.
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18 minutes ago, IceFire9yt said:
Though I do find it interesting that you decided to exclude Shang-Chi from the disappointments list, even though it only made 30M more than Eternals worldwide.
I'd argue that Shang-Chi suffered from a much rougher COVID situation internationally. In the US with comparable pandemic scenario SC was a more definitive hit, with Eternals a more definitive meh.
Plus SC has a budget listed as 150-200, Eternals 200. That might be the same but if SC was closer to 150 then thats a significant multiplier difference. And on top of that despite both properties being lesser known you've got the solo lead with a lesser name star, versus an ensemble epic film with at least one A-Lister in Jolie.
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6 hours ago, Xavier said:
So how many middling movies/performances would you say will take for the MCU to have a real problem? Because I think Eternals, Black Widow and the mixed bag MCU D+ shows have paved the way.
Black Widow is not a release that can be reasonably evaluated.
The MCU D+ Shows don't really show anything BoxOffice wise. They have had varied receptions, sure, but none overwhelmingly negative to anywhere near the point of damaging the brand.
Eternals was a known risk but, yes, a disappointment (and as commentated above, I think likely would have been regardless of context)
I would say over the next year if more than two of:
Thor goes under 850m
Black Panther 2 goes under 900m
Quantumania goes under 650m
GOTG3 goes under 800m
and The Marvels goes under 800m
......then the MCU is visibly tailing off. Whereas if one or none of those things happen then it isn't.
If more than two of
Thor goes over 950m
BP2 goes over 1b
Quantumania goes over 800m
GOTG3 goes over 900m
The Marvels goes over 900m
.....Then the MCU is going from strength to strength.
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5 minutes ago, JohnnyGossamer said:
Eh... That's a stretch. They're way too different. Both T2 and Aliens are extremely hard R and extremely sci-fi. Dark Knight is to a Millennial what Batman is to a Gen X. I guess maybe you could say it's the Heat of the last generation but they're not super alike either. But, to me, Dark Knight a lot more like Heat and Dirty Harry than it is T2 or Aliens. But, really, it's best analog is what Burton's Batman was to Gen X. They even both have Batsy and Joker. Both were enormous popular with just about everyone and sold a bazillion tickets DOM too.
I'd disagree with the Heat comparison and Dirty Harry but agree with the Batman one. I think that's buying too much into the veneer. TDK's 'grit' doesn't stand up to any actual scrutiny in the way Heat or DH do. Ultimately the logic of TDK is just as silly as the 60s - or any other - Batman film.
TDK is just...a Batman film....just another outrageously popular Batman film. It just had Nolan cod-realism (paper thin cod realism) sauce on instead of Burton sauce.
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4 minutes ago, Moviedweeb said:
Previously, I’d say the biggest movie star opening belonged to Will Smith and I AM LEGEND.
I think I am Legend is maaaybe a stretch, because of both the status of the original novel and the passive-IP value of Zombies themselves - especially at that time.
I think Hancock ($103 5 Day) would be a pretty fair one though. Yeah, it's superhero so a passive-IP in the same way - but they weren't as dominant at the time and the film was pretty much sold on Smith.
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16 minutes ago, awkwardaardvark said:
to the extent that many old potter heads, myself included
6 minutes ago, awkwardaardvark said:that talentless hack
QED
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1 minute ago, awkwardaardvark said:
Reasonable perspectives? She’s a raging transphobe who is unwilling to listen to reason.
And maybe you just run in uninformed circles; but JKR’s image has cratered in the eyes of millions of fans of Harry Potter, to the extent that many old potter heads, myself included, simply do not give a shit about anything she works on anymore.There's a separate topic dedicated this where I've made it quite clear what utter petulant nonsense this is. I won't dwell on it here, but my points are clearly made on that thread. JKR is a woman who has dedicated enormous amount of time and fortune to others and continues to do so to this day, she happens not to have made good choices about how to go about her prequel series and seemingly isn't a very good script writer. Fortunately, she does very well out of her other writing and series. Thanks.
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12 minutes ago, krla said:
It's been years since I've seen these movies, and I don't even think I've watched them all, but are you saying that Jack Sparrow basically Urkel'd Pirates of the Caribbean?
Ha!
I think Fonzie would be a better point of reference than Urkel. He was rightly the most popular character in the show, but whenever he had the lead story or was the main character it completely imbalanced the appeal.
And sure guys, I get people do like Pirates 2 and 3 (I think 4 and 5 are less controversially bad) but the set pieces in them come across to me as "We need to have a bit where....." movies. And the narratives are so very messy - plus the Bloom/Knightly issue. Either way I'd stand by 2004-12 wasn't a particularly creative era for mainstream movies, and would say 96-02 stands out a lot better on that front.
In additional thoughts - Rango is 100% Gore Verbinsky's best film, an absolute masterwork and the only Depp film post-Pirates 1 that I actually like.
I've never met anyone IRL that gave two hoots about JKR's activism and reasonable perspectives, but I've met plenty who think the Fantastic Beasts series is a bit rubbish and all over the place. I think that's more the issue here.
I don't like the Jurassic World franchise one bit, but they're the only gig in town doing dinosaurs so frankly I'd be astonished if Dominion doesn't go absolute gangbusters.
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10 minutes ago, Firepower said:
Pirates 2 and 3 were really good and more creative than anything Disney does now.
Pirates 3? Creative?
"Jack Sparrow's really popular, lets' have a sequence where there are a million Jack Sparrows"
"Everyone says Jack Sparrow is a Keith Richards impersonation....so let's, like, totally have Keith Richards in it as his dad". C'mon....compared to Encanto or Turning Red?
Pirates 1 got away with pigeonholing two of the worst lead actors in modern Hollywood into roles that suited them, but 2 and 3 were horrendously hamstrung by Knightly and Bloom. And Sparrow was diminishing returns the moment he became the lead and not the supporting character he was in 1.
And the attempt at a 'sombre opening' at the gallows in 3 is crass and ridiculous.
I agree Lone Ranger was a more noble attempt at replicating Pirates 1 than any of the sequels but it seemed to be messed around by producers and editing. There is/was lots of promise in it.
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3 minutes ago, JohnnyGossamer said:
Wading through the slog that is Secrets of Dumbledore right now. Yikes this is dull. What happened to Wizarding World? Was once so fun to visit every year or so on the big screen... Jacob's still great though.
What happened was that the end of the not-perfect-but-promising Fantastic Beasts 1 was ruined by a pointless twist when Colin Farrell turned into Johnny Depp (not a reference to the actors themselves) - destroyed everything in a single moment.
The decision to intermingle the fun adventure series with round-the-world animal hijinks, with the serious straight-faced Harry Potter prequel series was a disaster.
Two different series in the Wizarding World that could have been big bread winners turned into one mess of a series that was tonally all over the place.
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7 minutes ago, Elessar said:
I miss the 1990s and early 2000s...
Yeah 90s and early 2000s I get. It was scattergun, but it was fun scattergun.
Mid to Late 2000s I don't: The Hobbit movie, the Transformers movies and the Pirates movies bar the first were, if anything, less creative than the superhero movie era while being, if anything, less consistently well made. And only 1 of the Potter movies (3) was legit *good* even if the rest were solidly done. Then you had the dirge of the lazy-era Burton/Depp movies, attempts to copy the Pirates lightening and a lot of mediocre animations.
from about 2004-2012 was easily the worst movie era of my life (I'm 40).
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Completely anecdotal but in terms of real world office-discussion at two different workplaces the only comparison to TG:M in my experience in the last few years is Bond films. Obviously media coverage isn't quite as histrionic as for Bond, but informal discussion seems to be close.
Honestly, one of my workplaces I NEVER hear film discussion but heard it twice this week. The other was an education environment where comic book and other movies are discussed often by students but rarely by staff, but staff were talking plenty about TG:M last week, and that was before the reception.
Played amazingly in my theatre with lots of positive responses from kids, which would have been my main worry otherwise.
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Does Superman appeal to the young? I think if anything Superman reads as old fashioned. Even more old fashioned if it starts playing Americana.
As others have pointed out...Superman has already HAD a perfect version done, at the perfect time, with the perfect aesthetic and the perfect casting. And it did immensely well, but not even in the vicinity of 100m tickets.
Superman is evidentally less popular than Spider-Man or Batman. And probably Wolverine. I'd give all those a shot before Superman.
As someone who was around for Titanic...I just don't see it happening again. Culturally we don't work in that pace anymore. Certainly young people don't.
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Mary Scorror, who lives in an attic with foster parents, is told that she is a witch of Hogwarts by Hagrid. On the train over she meets smart kid Harry Ginger, and ethnic minority kid TBD. We soon find out that there's a mystery afoot about who the Dark Arts teacher is to be solved in a later film. Mary faces terrifying challenges with her friends including all-new Hogwarts content like the big draughts game, the magic hitting plant and the wine-cellar cobra! But who is the terrible dark force behind all of these travails?????
All in the all very original and creative film: Harry Potter: The Magic Rejuvinates coming soon from Warner Brothers and JJ Abrams
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1 hour ago, BruiseCruise said:
"Somehow Voldemort returned"
Who said they were going to give HP to JJ Abrams?
Just kidding, OF COURSE they'd give HP to JJ Abrams
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2 minutes ago, excel1 said:
TG:M is lightning in a bottle for sure, but there could other relevant brands that could be resurrected. IDK if anything checks all of boxes as this one did, though.
E.T. 2 ft. original cast
BACK TO THE FUTURE 4 featuring the original cast + Tom Holland as Marty's son?
COBRA KAI movie?
SPLASH 2 featuring Hanks as the Grandfather whose grandson meets a new mermaid?
BIG 2 featuring senior Hanks becoming a child in modern America
Ferris Beuller 2
HONEY I SRHUNK THE GRAND KIDS starring RICK MORANIS
We are getting Keaton back as Batman next year...
I think outside of BTTF these would struggle. Maybe Big 2 at a stretch, but the fact you'd be resting on a whole new gimmick would kind of negate anything.
I think Splash and Bueller are too of their time in some negative ways. They might pull in a nostalgia crowd but I don't see where they're pulling in new audiences. Splash would be closer to viable remake territory than a sequel.
ET would need not just the cast, who are in mixed situations, but the full crew returning and confidence with a story with a purpose. I don't see how that would happen, and I don't think Spielberg is that filmmaker anymore.
Mostly though, I don't think there's the sense of something there that was lost that a new generation wants to re-find in the way of Top Gun. At least of things that never already got sequels.
Breakfast Club isn't suited yet...if there was ever to be a sequel to Breakfast Club it would have to be Supper Club and the characters would be over 75. It's the only way to have a viable sequel IMO. We've 10-15 years on that yet.
If anything I think something like Kindergarten Cop or Demolition Man would do better, since they are more representative of that decade and representative of a kind of movie that hasn't been around in a while.
But if I was going to pitch anything.... we're probably overdue a new-era romcom success. So legacy sequels to Sleepless in Seattle or, I don't know, could one even DO a legacy sequel to Pretty Woman???
I'd love Honey I Shrunk the Grand Kids and, fingers crossed with Moranis' comeback, it's frankly the most likely one of these to actually happen. But it would have Disney+ written all over it, not box office juggernaut.
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4 minutes ago, Krissykins said:
I wouldn’t consider The Lighthouse a horror film though.
Marketed well as in heavily marketed.
I can’t open any social media without adverts for it and I’ve had the trailer dozens of times in cinemas this year.
Different distributor here in the UK though I guess.
Categorisation is tricky sometimes for horror, but I would put the Lighthouse VERY comfortably in the domain of horror films. It is without question designed with the intent to appeal to affect, and that the affect intended is in the negative, discomfort, disgust and shock areas.
But then I'd categorise The Northman as a horror film as well.
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Fair play to The Bad Guys, which I saw here in the UK well before the US release. Not the higher profile of these films that have had great week on week legs, but among them.
It's not doing tiptop Dreamworks numbers by any means, but given that it seemed to be being treated like a bit of an afterthought, had an extremely stunted release schedule, was competing directly with Sonic 2 and Fantastic Beasts, and had modest marketing I think it really has given a respectable showing. Given it has a handful of markets still in the locker it will end up outgrossing Boss Baby Family Business, Captain Underpands and Abominable which seem like the most appropriate equivalents.
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With Horror, I also wonder whether there isn't a splatter effect (no pun intended) from the directions of some of the bigger more mainstream films.
- It: Chapter 2 rode the success of the first but was underwhelmingly received on its own bat.
- Us was one of the biggest, most anticipated original films of the last few years and then was......mixed....in its reception.
- Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was also very well anticipated and then was low key kind of awful. Plus there doesn't seem anything in the pipeline of introductory-horror where the Goosebumps films and House/Clock/Walls were a few years ago.
- Halloween is still doing extremely well, but the second was far weaker and the GA reception made that clear.
- Alien and Predator franchises are on ventilation
- The Conjuring universe outside of the main series has kind of collapsed.
- Even the success of a new Scream film kind of indicates mainstream horror tastes have kind of shifted back into another phase.
Nope is obviously a big opportunity for the genre. Candyman was a success. Halloween is still bringing numbers albeit no prestige. It's not all gloom. I do wonder though that it might be worth a shift back towards the early 00s type films and things more like Fear Street if anyone wants to hit the zeitgeist (PS: I don't personally, I love the A24 films and think horror creativity is in the best state it's been in decades, but I'm writing in terms of BO).
I, like many of us here I suspect, think I'll probably love Men and get frustrated at the GA again - but that is a bit futile. The reality is that Hereditary, particularly since it did get a good opening weekend, did a lot of damage that we're still seeing. It makes me sick to type that, because it's a masterpiece, but I regret that that is how things are.
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27 minutes ago, grey ghost said:
Can someone describe how to include an LBGT person without it feeling "forced"?
Do it in a film that they have pre-designated that they like because it has been set up to compete with a film that they hate.
Or have it be in a film that they utterly would despise if it came out now, but is from the 80s and 90s so they get to believe it's somehow different and was executed with great panache.
NOTE: To give mild favours to them, it seems to not be the content itself some of these folks have a problem with, but the tangential marketing. But the tangential marketing a) isn't the film itself and b) Is annoying because that entire industry is annoying, it isn't specifically annoying in those cases: it's just a pointless industry trying to justify itself with east-to-churn-out content.
Jurassic World: Dominion | June 10 2022 | 6th Most Profitable Movie of 2023
in Box Office Discussion
Posted
I'd proffer that the reason some find it boring might well be that having turned the dinosaurs from actual-animals into just-monsters two films ago they're reaping what they've sown.
Now that it takes place in the real world the fact they're now just monsters is probably far more evident that when it was still in the jungles of Costa Rican islands. And it means that the film doesn't functionally have its USP since it's basically no different from a Godzilla/alien invasion/zombie movie because it's just monsters.