Jump to content

Ipickthiswhiterose

Free Account+
  • Posts

    1,086
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Ipickthiswhiterose

  1. This is the correct take IMO. There was a long time when one to two movies per year were THE film of that year. There will be no equivalent era any longer to that even when it comes to megahits like Avatar, Top Gun Maverick and Mario. Those films will never define an entire Summer or Winter in the way that Jaws, Star Wars, ET or even something more recent like Jurassic Park or Lion King did. The last film that will likely ever have that feel is Titanic. Yes there are things like HP, the newer Star Wars, Avatar and so on that do those kinds of pure numbers, but they didn't have the cultural domination - the period of cultural monopoly - because the opportunity is simply not there to do that any more. TV has a different place in society to what it did then, and of course computer games and social media even more so. If you wanted to ignore Avatar: War of Water, for instance, you could do so. The average person was not exposed to it relentlessly, in an all-pervading way through culture for months, the way that we were the original Jurassic Park. As someone's pointed out: Minecraft and Stardew Valley or, heck, just the existence of TikTok are closer to "this generation's Star Wars" than any movie. That it not to say films and franchises won't have an indelible impression on people. They will, of course they will. Culture has just become too heterogenous for anything like that since Titanic - because internet, and especially Internet 2.0 prevented it and put conversations that happened in the lunch queue and the office cubicle into private internet forums. And that's a good thing on the whole to be honest.
  2. I didnt say the ones seeing it weren't enjoying it. I said they weren't seeing it in the numbers they once were. Which is objectively accurate. As pointed out, the same demo split as GOTG2 would have led to a 140m opening weekend.
  3. I nearly did the first bit of this but you've done it in much more depth and better than I could. Excellent analysis and absolutely highlights that the trends we were pilloried for in the GOTG3 thread regarding the seeming tone of the movie and its potential impact may indeed have played a part. The young male and enthusiastic audience who are seeing this film are loving it. And that's great and will have likely some impact on legs. But thats not the whole picture unless families and women are convinced to see it in the numbers they previously were.
  4. People aren't really mentioning the 65/35 gender gap but i think theres a clue here. Some of the MCU success was that compared to other iterations of superhero franchises it managed universal pull. 65/35 is overt "boy movie" territory perceptually. That might be a Gunn thing in that he has excellent reception but the appeal here may be among a *slighty* more niche market or it may be that the wider culture aroumd the MCU (including perhaps that it simply is less cool) is convalescing. Either way, that 65/35 is an eye openee IMO. OS seems like the potential soother here. Seems like better performances there may salve the DOM narrative. Agree that 700m ww is the benchmark here for okay v disappointment. 750 would be good/solid and 800m a big success at this point. The billion references (mostly not on here but on youtube and the like) were always silly and never were going to help this film.
  5. I enjoy almost everything he's done (other than Brightburn and about a third of TSS). I also think it's foolish/brave/desperate to give him the captain's seat on any mainstream big budget project without the kind of oversight Feige gave him in the first two Guardians movies and find it weird this is seen as some kind of wacky take. I think it's possible to have the nuance to say, for instance, that I both really like Slither personally and rewatch it quite frequently and also that it was a weird film to greenlight for the budget it had and expect mainstream audiences to go to.
  6. I've already addressed this. He got two A's with excellent films he made while being subject to tight oversight. There is no doubting that he has enormous upside as a director of mainstream films...as long as he is subject to that oversight. That edge he has is a huge selling point...as long as it is used in the right way at the right time. It's the Seinfeld paradigm: Jerry Seinfeld on his own would just make a bland albeit popular sitcom - Mad About You style with no staying power. Larry David on his own would have made something incredible and subject to cult status, but would never have made anything for a mass audience. It needed the two together to make Seinfeld. There are flecks of bad judgement in both the first Guardians films where bad-Gunn comes out: the Jackson Pollock line and especially the horrible Drax "Whore" line to Gamora. But largely Gunn's tendencies are expertly negotiated to stay on the line of mainstream acceptability while feeling dangerous and exciting. TSS gave him free reign and we got mega-Slither. Yes it was incredibly well received by those who watched it. Just like Scott Pilgrim. Just like Jesus Revolution. Just like Book Group. But great audience scores from evangelicals aren't going to pull non-Christians in to watch Jesus Revolution; great audience scores from the blue rinse brigade aren't going to pull non-yoga-moms to watch Book Group and great audience scores from moviebros and film Youtubers who follow James Gunn, enjoy 90s and 00s style edgy humour and don't mind mixing high levels of violence, kaiju and wacky shark men aren't going to pull in much outside of that demographic. Except that demographic is the most online, the most visible and the most vocal and is also *quite* big so it seems more dissonant. And Spielberg didn't have one enormously well received film before AI. He had about a dozen behemoths. Hardly an equivalent.
  7. I was a teenager from the earl 90s to the early 00s. I followed the Troma films and Gunn's early career. I watched Slither in the cinema (one of the few). I know what Edgelord means. At least in the same way Gunn would understand it. Well received films don't drop 71% in their second week on top of an already disappointing opening and make 47% of their whole takings on opening weekend. Tenet managed 67% and that was released in eons times worse a scenario than TSS was. And wasn't even that well received itself. You have to explain that far beyond the covid and day/date context. Deadpool was a R-rated superhero movie that had marketing that kept all the hyper violent stuff out of the adverts and had Ryan Reynolds doing viral Bob Ross shenanigans. TSS had splooging angels, execution competitions, pointless swearing and shark men eating people. You can have all those things, of course. But you can't put a $185m price tag on it and then turn around and be surprised nobody has come to your super-awesome movie other than other people who are very similar to you.
  8. It is a film that had an edgelord sensibility; the trailer had jokes about "angels splooging", toilet seat helmets, sharks eating people humorously. The film had an extended sequence in which an innocent camp of good guys were slaughtered by the protagonists for laughs = edgelord. Polka Dots Melting people. Face blown off gunshots. Birds burning inside a cage. It was a movie made for a much narrower band of people than it needs to to be a mainstream hit: it's just that that narrow band of people included all the online dudebros, reviewers and enthusiasts like us so it wasn't immediately obvious and so people looked around trying to justify why it was a flop rather than accepting that it was. Exactly like Scott Pilgrim. And no matter how many times you keep saying it: TSS tanked far worse than the other movies that released day and date, had a poor CS score for a superhero movie and had horrible legs even compared to other day and date movies. Of course it's not "Like Ari Aster" hence why I didn't include Super - which never purported to be for a mainstream audience - on the list of failures. It had a different rationale and so can be judged against other elements. Super didn't have a $185m budget.
  9. I was referring to Slither and The Suicide Squad. Both of which were targeted at mainstream audiences and both of which tanked hard. Super was an indy-style movie made for an indy-style budget. It was not targeted at a mainstream audience.
  10. Okay so I'm not saying there were *no* "everyone dying in Infinity War will hurt it's box office" takes. But there were next to zero and nobody took them seriously. I know you're trying to play it that some of us are saying "the film passively supports animal cruelty" or something equally self-evidently ludicrous but I'm pretty sure you know we aren't saying that. We're saying that James Gunn has already twice had movies proven to have been too edgelordy for most mainstream tastes. Three times if you include Brightburn, which technically made money due to its minuscule budget and big name paycuts but got a horrid CS and a poor overall box office given its marketing. The two times he has had movies not be too edgelordy for mainstream tastes have been under close oversight. He hasn't had close oversight with this film, and some early critiques of the movie indicate there are multiple lingering scenes of animal cruelty. Some people - lots of them - don't want to watch that, especially not on anthopomorphic or "cutesy" animals like Rocket. It's not about whether it is framed within the movie as good or bad. It's about what sits within the scope of what people want as part of their entertainment. It also doesn't help when the first shot of the trailer was "Lol, look at this cute little animal get hit in the face!". Very 2000s dudebro humour. I'm not saying that means it's bad. Nor am I bothered by that sort of thing - I'm someone who rushed out to see Evil Dead Rise first day. What I'm saying is it's the kind of thing that quietly puts people off putting on their family 'to-watch' lists.
  11. If (and it remains an if) GOTG gets a B+ CS, then giving Gunn the DC keys to the kingdom following TSS will surely look increasingly extraordinary as a choice. I've said it before and I'll say it again, TSS got so many overgenerous goodwill excuses for its failure. Yes it had genuine, major conditioning factors for not reaching its initial goals; but nowhere near enough to cover its losses and WOM disinterest and the B+ cinemascore and 2nd weekend despite glowing, glowing critiques and even more glowing commentary in internet moviebro spaces should have been treated as the deep red flag that it was. I think it was @TwoMisfits who pointed it out: Gunn's edgelordery needs conditioning factors. I like Slither too, but Slither was another massive failure - and the recent references to it coming out from his fandom, indicative that this is the direction he's going back in, is another worry in terms of BO potential. TSS was Scott Pilgrim 2.0. It is very possible GOTG3 will be, if not Scott Pilgrim 3.0. (it won't do THAT badly), SP 2.5
  12. Terrific news and well-deserved. Obviously none of this makes a huge move for now or prevents the movie being a relative flop in theatres, but continues to indicate that late WOM is excellent and this will play very well for years to come. Slowly changing the perspective has to be the real target with this property and franchise since that is arguably the biggest issue here outside of timing. And changing the perspective will take a while. Still don't think it would make 100m DOM but given that on the second weekend when it got completely Mario'd it looked like it might not get to 80m the last couple of weeks have felt like nice small wins.
  13. This seems to be about as bad as it gets. What was the pitch that got this to be made, does anyone know? Just seems an odd film to have ever been greenlit. I assumed the first time I saw the trailer that they were leaning heavily into the preacher element and that this would be pitched heavily at the Christian market but it seems that's not happened at all.
  14. Saying that after Endgame very few things felt special is pretty much the same as my argument - everything feels precedented. The only thing that felt unprecedented was No Way Home becuase it was bringing back Andrew and Tobey. The rest of your assertion about No Way Home is incredibly generous: to say Andre and Tobey were brought back in 'organic' means that weren't gimmicky is, I would argue, being caught up in the hype and that actually gimmicky is exactly what they were. The film requires Doctor Strange to act completely out of character, a plot contrivance with Wong that is completely cynical, a completely-out-of-nowhere ability to generate portals for an untrained character to make a main plot point, the choice for no reason to stop making portals once the two fan faves have turned up...and all sorts of other deeply un-organic elements. Objectively, it has a hokier plot than anything else this side of Thor 4 and maybe Quantumania. One of the most eye opening things indeed to me is that NWH commits the exact same problems as the rest of the Phase 4 films except nobody cared - critics or audiences - because there was something to feel arbitrarily special about.
  15. I think one thing that's being overlooked in the critics shift towards the MCU is that it's a perfectly natural progression and what critics are *meant* to do with time. The UNPRECEDENTED becomes The PRECEDENTED and to most critics, and evaluators of art in general, the precedented has less perceived cultural value than the unprecedented. The Endgame finale gave a perfect signifier to everyone, including critics, to shift the former to the latter. Ant Man and the Wasp, Thor 2 and other Infinity Saga Marvel movies that may otherwise be seen as only okay all had the benefit from association with an *unprecedented* franchise, an *unprecedented* cultural shift, and an *unprecedented* ascent of relatively modestly-known products into the cultural zeitgeist via competently made, systemically okay, broadly well acted and very well cast films. Ant Man 3 and Eternals do exactly the same....except that they are now precedented. So the perceived artistic value is naturally lower. And unless they have additional value beyond that they'll get lukewarm responses. It's the Joker issue. Joker got mediocre critiques because to critics (and in materiality) it is just a bog standard iteration of a well-trodden formula that had been done better by First Reformed and You Were Never Really Here in the 18 months that led up to it. But most of the people that loved Joker hadn't seen First Reformed and You Were Never Really Here and certainly not The King Of Comedy and so *to their eyes* were watching a film as good as The King of Comedy because they were viewing the very precedented as unprecedented and with a character they had an attachment to. And perhaps critics didn't realise/appreciate the impact of doing a very well-precedented narrative but attached to a cultural icon like the Joker instead of an original character. At this point with the MCU *nothing* they can do pretty much seems unprecedented. The first Fox tie-in (Deadpool 3?) will feel that way and probably get high praise as a result. Likewise maybe a smart use of pre-MCU Marvel characters at some point. I don't think it's necessarily that critics are going from being 'kind' on Marvel to being 'harsh'. It's just a naturally dynamic of the linear progression of time and more and more precedents being set.
  16. Ponniyin Selvan 2 looking like a pretty significant run in the UK - not surprising given the buzz in the screening of 1 I went to. Looking like a good hold for Evil Dead. Anecdotal experience is that word of mouth has been convincing people to go - might hoover up a bit of younger audience this weekend. I almost can't believe the Polite Society number is that bad in a literal sense. Like, I almost can't buy it coming below George Foreman and the second week of Missing. If P-S 2 has murdered Polite Society by taking the entire subcontinental family and blockbuster demographic then that's one of the dumbest pieces of scheduling of recent times, surely.
  17. Planet of the Apes is an entirely different franchise with an entirely different tone that had been established from the first reboot. And it's a franchise that was operating with lower BO and a narrower audience than the MCU is expected to.
  18. This is a complete fallacy. The noise around it distracted from how poorly it did and gave easy excuses for it. It was not the reason for the poor performance. Second Weekend drop was worse than the other equivalents in that position. It's legs are horrible even when taking even single dynamic into account. It had modest to bad WOM in the general audience. It had great responses and great WOM in the internet bubble. DC listened to the internet bubble. It was Scott Pilgrim 2.0.
  19. Just watched Dan Murrell's full review fleshed out - didn't see exactly what it had been that had got him 'flamed' on Twitter. And, yeah, I don't see how he doesn't have a point, rightly or wrongly. Whatever artistic response we may have and how much the trailers may have indicated there would be *some* of it, there may well be people turned off by *that* element of the film... ....if he is representing accurately that it happens over several scenes and another case of Gunn's ex-edgelordery not helping his instincts.
  20. Again, The Suicide Squad got (very questionable given the structural issues) raves from critics but middling to negative WOM. It's a viable possibility with Gunn, who has a tinge of the old edgelord days that helps him at times but not at others. The twitter and youtube and formal/informal critics crowd are all definitely going to be hyper aggressive with the "Superhero Movies/MCU is BACK, kids!" message - but whether the GA take it is a real pickem possibility for me. I think this still has the possibility of disappointing BO-wise. I'm really looking forward to the film. I enjoyed the first one a lot and the second one quite a bit. I think Rocket and Nebula are the real stars, and just hope they get good arcs. I don't think Gamora especially has ever been served all that well, so hope she is given more here.
  21. This is painfully on the nose. It would end up with Depp/Burton-in-the-2000s-and-early-2010s levels of self-plagiarism and repeated beats. It will probably happen. I hate it.
  22. The fact that so many people in this thread are using The Dark Knight as the benchmark for "best superhero movie" is testament to just how ephemeral this stuff is though. The idea anyone to this day, or at least anyone who wasn't aged 12-16 when The Dark Knight came out, thinking that it's better than S:TMP, Rocketeer, Batman 89 & 92, S-M2, S-M: ITSV, Dredd (if that counts), Unbreakable, the Incredibles, Logan or even TBM or Winter Soldier blows my mind. Like, it isn't even a film that would threaten my top 10. Yet clearly it would still be one of the major choice, if not THE major aggregate pick. And that's fine, but you, I or we can't really have pops at people making "best superhero movie of all time" references when the idea of what that would be is so contestable. What's my point?: just that the "Best Superhero movie ever" tag is a pointless red herring. Not something to get hung up on. It's just standard marketing and there's no point in getting either excited or ultra-cynical about. The biggest clue as to the nature of this movie IMO is Muschietti and IT. At the end of the day with It Muscietti sacrificed almost all of the tension in the second film, in order to make the first as compelling as possible. The restructuring of the story that he formulated had no impact at all to the kids' story - indeed enhanced it for film - but completely undermined the adults' story since the narrative was predicated on flashbacks that were no longer there. He's a front-loader. On the basis of hype. There's no accident that all the memes from It come from the first movie and indeed, barring the dancing Pennywise, from the first act of the first movie. So that this movie goes HARD and relentless on hype is not exactly a surprise. Just expect it to be front loaded and put most of its eggs into selective baskets.
  23. Ben Hur yes. Good shout. I'd say maybe Casablanca, Seven Samurai, 12 Angry Men and Singin' In the Rain are all fairly non-contested in terms of greatness as well. Gone with the Wind has too many people who would claim it to be a bad movie I suspect. Obviously a landmark cinematic juggernaut that isn't even surpassable in some ways from a box office perspective. It's objective quality though is highly disputable and it benefitted enormously from a bit of a desperation to declare something to be "The Great American Story" leading to an extreme cultural insistence surrounding the embrace of its greatness at the time. Of course Mockingbird came along and put pay to "The Great American Story" claims, both in literature and on screen. For what it's worth I think Titanic, Jurassic Park, Casablanca and Ben Hur would make a pretty good top 4 and one could make very strong cases for all of them. (The Godfather will always be argued into the position as well but it's less universal than the others I'd argue. There is a reason its grading from men tended to be quite a lot higher than its grading from women)
  24. This. I think attributing Scream's recent success to Halloween is cheeky and overhypes the legacy of that 2018 film which was successful but didn't feel like any kind of game changer so much as another brick in the wall of the memberberry nostalgia obsession permeating the whole of film from the mid 2010s onwards. Horror had stayed strong throughout the previous decade, regardless of specific 'slasher' hits and IT - sure not a slasher but pretty strongly aligned in its structure - had been an absolute megahit just the year before. Scream 4 was notoriously badly marketed, and came a decade after a film that a) was widely perceived as the definitive end of a complete trilogy and b) was widely perceived as a franchise killer anyway. It was unclear as to the extent of continuing the same storyline and half-positioned itself as a relaunch despite being a straight-up sequel. Within 5 years, maybe even less, it was widely accepted as one of the strongest in the series. I'd certainly agree that the successful relaunch wouldn't have been as successful if 4 wasn't perceived very well today, and if the new versions had been tasked with getting rid of the bad taste in the mouth from 3, which is something they didn't have to worry about.
  25. The Ghostbusters (2016) trailer was poor but plenty of trailers have been poor without getting the kind of vitriol and pile-on that it did. However.... I think the Fresh tomato is a little questionable in that case because I do think it was a then-unique situation where critics were so meta-aware of the debate and the moment was so heated that it felt like one was making a cultural choice. So I do think it was heavily over reviewed. Somewhat understandably. I for one would put my hand up to say that I was very actively trying to see the best in the film when I first watched it. Ultimately Ghostbusters is a high-concept, plot-driven conceit that Paul Feig inexplicably thought would work with laissez-faire improv comedy. Despite the original being tightly-written to within an inch of its life. There is nothing wrong in saying that such a conceit is broken at scaffolding level and he could have gotten the ghosts of Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Buster Keaton and Lucille Ball together and that wouldn't have worked. But that applied once, ever. After that with Captain Marvel and the like the cultural knowledge and expectation was there and it felt like the over-countering that happened with 2016 just wasn't there on that next occasion. CM is still underrated but it got good reviews on its own merits. Will The Marvels get caught up in a general slowdown for superhero movies? Maybe, perhaps probably. But it thankfully won't be because due to the bad-faith Dislike crowd.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Guidelines. Feel free to read our Privacy Policy as well.