Ipickthiswhiterose
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Posts posted by Ipickthiswhiterose
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7 minutes ago, grey ghost said:
Yeah I kinda feel the Avatar fandom is one of the most hidden cause I still don't see them everywhere like other fandoms but I'm not betting against Cameron either.
Once upon a time people claimed Titanic and Avatar were going to flop.
Spoiler: They didn't.
I think the lack of visible fandom with the Cameron material is part of the effectiveness. Of course theres a dedicated fandom to that Avatar world and to Cameron in general, but as you say they're quiet and aren't prone to specific demands or expectation, it won't be them who make the films massive - it'll be the people who haven't even thought about Avatar since 2008 other than the Disney theme park.
There's no expectation in many quarters for what Avatar 2 is. So when it hits, it'll hit like a freight train.
Probably.
Not definitely. There's a chance in there that it's a historic car crash. And theoretically I'd be tempted to agree...there's always a chance with that much power, his personal preferences might deviate from and override his amazing populist instincts.
But no way am I falling for that again.
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12 minutes ago, filmlover said:
I just realized Naomie Harris has prominent roles in both this week's and next week's #1 movies. Probably one of the few people to benefit from the COVID delays since both of these movies were supposed to come out at different points last year originally heh.
Happens weirdly often with actors where it just works out like that.
Similar things happened when we had Hailee Stenfeld ruling Christmas with Bumblebee and Into the Spiderverse and with The Summer of Brolin with Deadpool 2, Sicario 2 and Infinity War. Hugo Weaving has had some major overlaps too given his tendency towards minor roles in massive franchises.
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Interesting takes on the MCU rankings for next year.
I'd have gone with
MofMadness
Wakanda Forever
Marvels
Thor 4
But that's a prediction for worldwide. I'm not in the US so can't get the flavour there. Though yeah I suppose there's a good chance BP2 tops it.
I agree with the poster above that is predicting Avatar 2 as biggest overall. It will find a way to distinguish itself and be an event. I have no interest in the movie myself but I'm not betting against Cameron.
I get the feeling Batman will do well in absolute terms, but will do surprisingly underwhelmingly in relative terms (Think AS-M). But that may be totally off base.
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17 minutes ago, Blankments said:
I mean most of this qualifies for Downton Abbey and that did pretty well. I think the green light makes sense in a pre pandemic world
I understand your comparison to a degree. But would point out Downton Abbey's last episode was Xmas day, 2015 and the film came out in 2019. Less than 4 years.
TMSON is coming out 14 years after the last Sopranos episode. That's a decade difference.
EDIT: Oh, and The Downton Abbey film had the Downton Abbey cast in. Which is a pretty massive difference.
Considering in 1999 when Sopranos came out and attracting its first audiences we were in recent memory of mob films being mainstream box office juggernauts. Meanwhile in 2017 the most famous mob-film director of all time had to go to Netflix to get a budget for his massive get-the-gang-back-together movie and amid lavished critical praise it landed with such a relative shrug with general audiences that even the Oscars which had very openly been prepping an open top bus parade for it gave up on it.
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8 minutes ago, Blankments said:
People on this forum insisting that venom qualifies as horror adjacent is constantly amusing lol, really good way to show you haven’t seen a single scene from these movies
Horror iconography and aesthetics. Not horror.
Big teeth creepy CGI monstery man who wants to eat people is horror iconography.
The posters featuring the big teeth monster man are horror iconography.
Man hearing growly deep voices that talk to him is horror iconography.
Convict turns into malfeasant monster is horror iconography.
They aren't horror, I was literally part of the conversation arguing against Venom being horror. But it flagrantly uses horror iconography and tropes.
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19 minutes ago, Maggie said:
so, Top 5 of the year are cbm is a done deal, right?
I presume this is domestic, but even then giving Bond no chance at BW's total?
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7 minutes ago, fabiopazzo2 said:
Nextgen year Marvel have 3 BIG movie. All of them potenially over 160M in pre pandemic time
i dont understand Why people underestimate Eternals
Eternals is out this year.
I realise all 4 MCU movies out next year are big ones, but Multiverse of Madness is the one that has been hyped up as a major crossover event and will have Spidey directly feeding into it. I didn't think it wold be controversial to frame DS:MoM as the biggest MCU film of next year.
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Speaking of "Supernatural Marvel just getting started" and returning to odd commissioning choices and zeitgeists.....
A note that right now the biggest TV show in the world is horror Squid Game, the new TV launch this week was horror Midnight Mass, the biggest Marvel movie of next year is coming from a Horror Director, three of the biggest COVID busting movies in terms of profitability were horror, the DCEU's first billion dollar movie came from a horror director, the first $100m movie at the box office post cover was a monster mashup and this week we have the horror aesthetics and tone of Venom romping home.
And yet four years ago the company sitting on the biggest collection of prominent proven horror characters in existence went "I know what we'll do with these. Let's make a celeb-driven, 90s-style action franchise with airplane stunts!!!!"
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3 minutes ago, john2000 said:
highly doubt it, if we are talking about new versions of course , ghost rider and daredevil seem more intresting concepts than shang chi
I don't think the other folks on the threat were talking about new versions. More that their 00s versions were being used as synonym for "any old superhero rubbish".
Ghost Rider done well would perform extremely well right now and I don't know anyone would deny that. Indeed I think many suspect it's coming soon after Blade. Venom's success will make that even more likely. Supernatural Marvel is probably just getting started.
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11 minutes ago, wildphantom said:
It’s still a prequel to the widely regarded greatest television series ever made. There’s a huge audience for it. A theatrical audience without HBO Max and a pandemic? Definitely.
Yet it’ll have a long life by association, and reignite interest from those who have never seen the show, which,…is on HBO Max! It’s a more sensible green light of a movie than some other movies WB have spent a ton of money on imo.
without the pandemic and HBO it would have definitely done $20 million OW and decent legs.
I don't think that first point necessarily follows. You can frame any of Citizen Kane, Casablanca or Gone with the Wind as a 'widely regarded greatest film ever made' but I don't know a 2021 sequel to any would make any money. It isn't perceived as the greatest (etc) outside of the US so would be relying almost entirely on Dom and the status is based on contemporaneous US TV critics, not fandom-size. I have no doubt that it has very many dedicated fans but enough interested in a prequel with a bunch of new actors for a $20m opening? I'd argue a Breaking Bad or GOT movie would struggle to make that and they are much more recent and visible properties with subject matters that haven't specifically fallen out the zeitgeist.
Certainly WB have made bigger risks, but probably those would all be risks with potentially higher ceilings if things hit. Is the ceiling for this big? I suppose it could trigger David Chase series on HBO....but those are happening anyway.
That said, I acknowledge that at least a part of my argument is that it had never appeared that more content, especially after the death of JG, was something Sopranos fans even wanted. But since I'm not a Sopranos fan and seemingly you are and you're telling me they do then, hey, happy to be wrong.
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I don't understand what the business argument for the Many Saints of Newark is. Does it have an ultra-low budget or something?
We're talking a completely fresh faced lead actor with no track record, great supporting actors but not with massive profiles, a TV writer, a property that hasn't been mainstream for 15 years and a genre that couldn't possibly be more out of the zeitgeist right now.
None of which isn't to say it might not be a great film - given the talent involved it could well be - and of course there is a loyal following of sorts which will bring in some business but it does seem a strange project at an odd time (even pre-covid).
Great news seemingly for Venom. Not my thing, but looks like they've judged the 90 minute pure adrenalin popcorn rush just right. Legs will be very interesting - intuition says it will struggle to sustain anything given incoming competition and that it's core demo will have rushed out, but it may be that people are just lining up for a release right now.
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It's also with noting that while Bond generally has positive media coverage, currently it is slavering all over it.
If we were outside of the current situation you could even argue the BBC is bordering on breaching neutrality the extent to which it is providing free publicity and going with the 'saviour of cinema' tag. There is no way anyone in the country is unaware this is coming out and that they are 'supposed' to go to it, even if they are non cinemagoers who never watch film trailers on Youtube or anything.
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9 hours ago, Chicago said:
If SS never existed and the same trailer was released pre pandemic, it wouldn't be a flop
If SS never existed and the same trailer was released pre pandemic it still would have major IP issues. It still wouldn't have had the Joker in it and it still wouldn't have had a star of the level of Will Smith in it. It would still be folly to drop that size of budget on it, given those factors.
The first SS squad trailer was an action film trailer: but it also advertised a dark romance, was supposedly part of a continuing story and most of all...had the most reliable box office character in cinema history in it.
Deadpool 2 was a continuing story to a previously loved film as indicated...therefore not comparable to the Suicide Squad in terms of the job marketing had. The hard marketing job was Deadpool 1, which had the layered, reach-out-to-multiple-demos approach which heavily emphasised romance and a conventional origin story in its marketing alongside the risqué stuff - which was kept out of the first half of even the red band trailer.
Again, in terms of marketing the trailers for GOTG isolated each character, voiceovered who they were and indicated why we should care about them. They were clearly concerned about the familiarity factor and directly addressed that potential weakness in those trailers. Then the film itself carefully curated the story of Quill with an extremely high stakes emotional hook at the start to make us care about the main character, and it received good (by MCU standard) legs.
Thing is I don't think we're far off here: We all agree that following on from SS and bereft of the factors that caused SS to be a BO success despite being terrible, TSS never really had a chance whatever the quality of the movie was going to be and it was a plain bad idea to throw that level of budget at it. Probably not before COVID and certainly not alongside pandemic and co-release.
But I would still argue that with all that, the film needed to take more cues from that first Deadpool and provide the veneer of a wider appeal within the film, and provide more hooks in its marketing and, to a lesser extent, within the film itself. And that what it did instead was close its appeal as little as possible to a large but still niche audience. I find Idris Elba shout-arguing with his daughter more enjoyable than the Peter-Mom scene in Guardians, but in terms of motivating forces the latter is doing a lot more to create a character who stays in the memory for a GA member than the former. Indeed reading back the sentence it says a lot that I automatically wrote the actor name for the former and the character name for the latter.
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1 hour ago, Chicago said:
You also seem to be using what you didn't like about the film as the reason to its failure when in heinsight this was doomed from the start. The complaints you had sound very similar to what people were saying about GOTG and Deadpool before they surprised everyone. This film shares a similar tone and it's actually managed to have solid legs in the markets it was given a chance in so quality clearly wasn't an issue here.
I like the film. And my only major criticism would be the Harley Quinn subplot, not the tone.
I am specifically talking about advertising. The jokes I am referring to were perfectly tonal within the film. They were all amusing within the film. My argument is that they didn't work to be taken outside of the film to market it. The tones of Deadpool and TSS are similar. The trailers are not.
The first two lines of the Deadpool Red Band trailer are: "I love you Wade Wilson, we can fight this." followed by "You're right. The cancer's only in my liver, lungs, prostate and brain."
The first two lines of the Suicide Squad red band trailer are: "You're going to risk the entire mission for a mental defective disguised as a court jester" followed by "this coming from a guy that's wearing a toilet seat on his head".
Chalk and cheese.
The Deadpool trailer started with the emotional hook of a loving husband getting cancer and clearly established the chracter. Then it showed a conventional origin story before only then giving something closer to the actual tone of the movie, and only gave a splurge of the really risqué stuff in the last 30 seconds. It only briefly showed its 'silly' CGI character.
TSS trailer had no emotional hook, made the whole thing seem exclusively like an action movie (as opposed to action movie plus love story plus character piece), had risqué material throughout and flamboyantly showed off its 'silly' CGI characters.
If the Deadpool trailer had been made like TSS one it would have included "Cock shot", "Happy International Women's Day" and Baby legs in the first trailer and shown loads of Colossus. All of which were fun in the movie, but which would have been dumb to use in advertising and would have put general audiences off the same way I claim the lines from TSS put the general audiences off. In isolation what works and is tonal in the film would have seemed childish and "goofy" as well. In the Deadpool trailer - and indeed the actual movie - that style is tampered with a well-established love story, a relatable family tragedy and a strong focus on character.
GOTG had the MCU Brand and was PG. It isn't comparable. However I would note that the both GOTG trailers focused primarily on extensively introducing us one by one to all the characters and indicating why we should care about them. Oh and the film itself starts with the main character's mother tragically dying and us seeing the main character's reaction to that.
The advertising wasn't the single biggest issue with TSS: Covid (although movies in all directions being more successful really does make it difficult to put the RELATIVE failure at the feet of Covid even if the actual total was), the absence of the Joker (who was plastered all over advertising of the first film), the bad first film, the relative indifference towards the IP when the Joker was removed and probably the absence of Will Smith were bigger. But the marketing was horrible and I suspect actively put off the general public and in general the movie didn't make the audience care about it's characters enough outside of those who already wanted to be invested in them: ie the film was more niche than intended.
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Thanks to all for the heads up for Green Knight. I have been looking forward to it for a while, but that it was actually out now had passed me by. I think it's been so long I'd just mentally written it off!
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4 minutes ago, Chicago said:
I mean, he didn't have to kill Luke off the way he did. He didn't have to add that 30 minute casino scene and set up which led to nothing. He didn't have to make us think we were about to get an old school style lightsabre fight only for Luke to be a fucking ghost. We can slate TFA all we want for being a modern copy of the original, but atleast it was somewhat fun
A year after the release of TLJ, the only people still talking about it were the rare few trying to defend it, everyone else had moved on, leaving the Star wars franchise behind them. Solo absolutely bombed and TROS underwhelmed all things considered. Clearly this all started after the release of TLJ
No interest in the critique of the film itself particularly. You can critique anything. Although your complaint of the finale being Luke exposing an angry young man by showing him he was just flailing angrily about at nothing is probably the best summary of the philosophies of the original trilogy you can get. This is a story where the OT was resolved by the protagonist refusing to fight.
We can slate TFA for being a copy of the original creatively sure. Some people loved that and some didn't, and that's all fine. But what's more significant is what that creative choice did for the rest of the trilogy: a binary had been created that couldn't possibly satisfy everyone and was bound to cause a rift. After that first film the trilogy had to either copy the original, which would have satisfied many but been creatively bankrupt and destroyed all casual fandom. Or you could not copy the original, which by the time Abrams had finished with the first meant actively going against some of his threads, which would be the more interesting option but was always going to annoy some.
As for Solo. Putting that at TLJ door is severely questionable. It was just a film that nobody asked for and nobody wanted the moment Harrison Ford wasn't going to be involved and it was a prequel. By it's very conceit it was a stakes-less movie.
Again, Star Wars is alive and well albeit saturated.
Bearing in mind I'm not contesting the overall sense of disappointment with the ST. What I'm contesting is the weird notion of TLJ as some unique franchise killer given the number of franchises that have, actually, been killed. And especially given the unique debacle that was the strategy surrounding the second and third Matrix films alongside their reception.
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16 minutes ago, SchumacherFTW said:
I won't comment upon TLJ's quality, that's been done ad nauseum for the last 4 years. I will say this though, The Matrix wasn't as established as a mega franchise, it had a beloved first film and poorly received follow up. Star Wars on the other hand was a 40+ year old icon with the release of Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. If Last Jedi wasn't poorly received, why does Rise of Skywalker, a film sold as the end of a classic franchise, drop so much over opening weekend?
Original Trilogy:
Film One drops 30% to Film Two. Film Two drops 11% to Film Three.
Prequel Trilogy:
Film One drops 34% to Film Two. Film Three RISES
Sequel Trilogy:
Film One drops 36% to Film Two. Film Two drops 19% to Film Three.
In each case the First Film is an unprecedented major cinematic event.
In the first two cases the films came out sparingly, with the third film representing what we considered the end of the franchise to the degree they were likely to be the final SW movies ever. With Star Wars (at least when the first film came out) unchallenged as the biggest movie franchise in existence.
In the case of the sequels, the films came out among 5 Star Wars films in 5 years, with promises of ongoing further Star Wars content. With at least 3 major franchises as competitors for the Star Wars franchise.
Really don't see the major issue here: the sequel trilogy does the weakest here, but this is clearly explainable by changing contexts, sudden saturation and the lack of a plan. Disappointing? To a degree yeah - the trilogy should have been planned, obviously and this caused growing discontentment. "A franchise killer" - objectively not since Star Wars is still a major brand with a large scale movie and multiple TV series on the way. In a far better state than the Matrix, Predator, Alien, Terminator and even at this stage Harry Potter/Beasts franchises.
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21 minutes ago, Chicago said:
Yeah a whole group of us went to watch TLJ and I was the only one who thought it was passable. Time has only made things worse for it and now it's know as the movie that single handidly killed a promising franchise
I mean if the GA actually liked TLJ, he would have directed the 3rd.
I find this baffling but there we go.
Nobody in the history of movies has been put in the position Rian Johnson was in that film as far as I'm aware (ie. no creative control over the first or the third movie in a pre-determined trilogy, just having to make a second). Add to that he had to follow a first film that had simply remade the first SW movie....hardly a "promising" setup no matter how successful financially it had been. It was somewhat contentious (again, less so in my experience than TROS) but no more so than was inevitable after Abrams did what he did with the first film. It still blows my mind that to those to whom it is important, Johnson is the villain in the story and not Abrams. And that the trilogy was fundamentally unplanned is a huge mark against its producers and a reason for the diminishing returns, but not something to hold specifically against one of the three films.
As you say...the Matrix reception and release strategy was a disaster. Hence a far more tangible tanking of a franchise than anything that's happened with the - still entirely alive and didn't have to take a 20 years hiatus unlike the Matrix - Star Wars franchise.
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29 minutes ago, SchumacherFTW said:
Star Wars in the UK is definitely an interesting case for sure. The sequel trilogy obviously had much higher gross potential then it inevitably did as can be shown by the TFA total and TLJ opening. But I really can't remember another situation where the fortunes of a franchise went so wrong so quickly as it did with Last Jedi. I firmly believe that if Last Jedi were received better it likely would have been bigger than Skyfall by a small margin
I'd pretty fundamentally disagree with this: as stated before the only really toxic word of mouth I ever exerienced was RoS, not TLJ. I just feel TLJ was a return to where the franchise always was in the UK following an anomaly in TFA.
I always saw the backlash to TLJ as a combination of an American thing and TFA having been such a remake of ANH that a certain degree of dissonance in the turns it took afterwards was inevitable. But that's an old debate not worth addressing here.
As for a franchise going wrong so quickly, the Matrix trilogy's trajectory was clearly worse: 2 to 3 shed 42% of the box office in a 6 month gap with the second having been one of the most anticipated films in history. Star Wars Rise of Skywalker lost 19% of the Last Jedi box office with a 2 year gap. That's not even the biggest loss in Star Wars history - Phantom Menace to AOTC was 34%.
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7 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:
I used to think Potter being #1 before TFA did what it did, but the next two SW films didn't go great, TRoS opening under Frozen II and TLK, so not entirely sure about that.
But also with peak 3D boost, Potter DH2 was barely able to do 70M. I guess may be Avengers will be #2.
Though box office could be different than actual popularity, but I guess MCU is growing franchise with kids taking it up. Potter is no longer kids friendly I guess, same for Star Wars, and Bond... well.
I think TFA had a big curiosity and nostalgia factor. The next two films are probably more representative of the general UK appetite for SW: high but not rabid. Then in addition to already mixed response to TLJ, TRoS had absolutely toxic word of mouth in the UK in my experience.
Potter had a set audience of enthusiasts, even if it was a large one. Bond gets mums, dads, grans and Joe Public out. Huge amounts of non-cinemagoers turn out for Bond.
MCU is definitely the biggest in the under 25s. But it was working up from a much lower base. Potter captured Millenials and pretty much the whole of Phase One of the MCU just wasn't a particularly big deal here at all.
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4 minutes ago, Chicago said:
I'd say the UK popularity goes
1. Bond
2. Potter
3. Star Wars
4. Avengers
On opening weekends, Avengers and Star Wars both have 2 bigger openings than any Bond. Potter has one.
For overall returns the 2012 and 2015 Bond films do better than anything other than Force Awakens.
As a broad premise I'd concur with your list. Though it would heavily depend on generation.
It's all totally dissonant with me as I have no personal interest in Bond films and haven't watched any in the cinema since The World is Not Enough. I'd say that in terms of overall cultural exposure *most of the time* the other three franchises are more prominent, BUT when Bond's out in cinemas the country sees it as *our* thing and turns out enthusiastically.
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19 minutes ago, John Marston said:
35 years ago today this Australian movie opened and somehow dominated in the US. Would be around 400m or more adjusted for inflation
One of the greatest Box office performances of all time. Possibly even the greatest.
Outgrossed Platoon, Aliens, Ferris Bueller, Rambo First Blood p2, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Three Men and A Baby and Lethal Weapon in terms of film released a year either side of it. Would have been the highest grossing film of the year if it had been released in either the following 2 years, as it was it was second to Top Gun. In fact after its release in 1986, the only two films that would outgross it during the rest of the 80s in the US would be Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Batman. Crazy.
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9 minutes ago, Valonqar said:
Why is SC OS lagging behind dom? Don't say China. It must be low somewhere, perhaps in Europe?
I think I'm right in saying its release has been late in 4 of the bigger East Asian markets: Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia. Certainly it's only just dropped in Indonesia. Those 4 markets are usually good for 40-50m for MCU films.
Hasn't done particularly well in South Korea. Has done pretty well in HK and Singapore by standards of pandemic (ie. quite a bit better than Widow), but those nations are well below normal still.
It's doing about the same as Black Widow in North Western Europe: UK, Fra, Ger, Scandi but last time I checked was doing quite a bit worse in Meditteranean Europe. Don't think it's doing as well in Central or East Europe either.
Finally, the Australian box office is super depressed right now. It has opened, but it's very location-dependent.
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20 hours ago, grim22 said:
What are other examples of one single casting decision ruining an entire movie? Feels like this has to be very high on that list.
Casting Tom Cruise in The Mummy ruined an entire cinematic universe.
VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE WEEKEND THREAD | 90.1M OW! Biggest pandemic opening!
in Numbers and Data
Posted
I'm really going to hone in on this because this is what betrays the issue here somewhat. Who wanted more of that? LOADS OF PEOPLE. Women (demographically speaking, don't want to stereotype but it's true), edgy teens, young people figuring out the whole romance thing, people who have a strange attraction to toxic relationships, people who are into fashion/style/aesthetics and just love the whole imagery of the thing. Oh and anyone who's into the Joker, if the alternative is Joker being removed from the film.
So not you. Certainly not me. But among cinemas many recent lessons in the last ten years is that edgy toxic relationships make $$, and edgy toxic relationships featuring the single most established box office draw in cinema history (consider the average BO of films featuring him even just against the Batman films that don't) make $$$$$$$$$$$$$.
There's a reasonable thesis statement here about Venom embracing its success, keeping the things people loved and just quietly and without fuss putting the first film's flaws in a draw. They aren't totally comparable, no, because SS did hurt its brand more and despite being of questionable quality Venom was much loved. But there's a lot to fine parallels in.
The Minions movie was almost historic level garbage, but it made a ton of money and if you were in charge of the Minions sequel you wouldn't publicly disown the first one, change the tone, hire a Pixar director and trumpet the fact, and make it clear that there would be fewer Minions in the next movie and they'd be less obsessed with bananas. You'd just make a better Minions movie. And that's what Venom did. Then the people who loved it first up seem to like this one just as much and the people who didn't like the first one are pleasantly surprised.