Ipickthiswhiterose
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Posts posted by Ipickthiswhiterose
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16 hours ago, Grebacio said:
Crawdads Sings, Elvis, Everywhere Everything All At Once, Sonic 2, Puss In Boots, Cocaine Bear
It feels like lots of places really undersold/forgot/ignored how well Crawdads did. Perhaps just because it's not a genre this forum and online types in general care for that much.
Dungeons and Dragons finally with a decent drop. I don't care if it's too late. Just hoping at this point for signs it will become appropriately beloved in the next few years and have a quick turnaround into positive reception. And keep trucking through some digits that push it away from absolutely colossal bomb territory and merely into mundane flop that was quickly reclaimed.
I should have said earlier on that I didn't buy teens for Evil Dead Rises and that it would perform waaaay better than that. It's an adult crowdpleaser for the audience it caters to. I didn't love it like I love ED2 and the 2013 masterpiece, but it's a really good, fun time at the movies if you like that sort of thing.
I finally watched Renfield this week. I thought it was okay, quite enjoyed it indeed, but I absolutely get why it has fallen between every demographic crack going and hit with a thud. Just misses every target group other than "person who in general quite likes spooky movies and Nicholas Cage and is okay with extreme violence but only very occasionally but also okay with slow bits, lingering focus on existentialism and personal worth and teased but ultimately unsatisfying romances" which does include me, but I'm not sure was the wisest market.
And once again I was going to see Air because it looks quite good, then decided against it because it's just what it is. Which frankly sounds like the story of its run.
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On 4/20/2023 at 10:34 PM, RobrtmanAStarWarsReference said:
strange world got a 72 on rt, critics didn't hate it lol
This is fair. Except audience score is 66 so audiences didn't hate it either.
Should have said:
Critics and Audiences agreed Strange World was okay and watchable but generic. Which is hardly going to make any money these days especially when barely marketed.
While we're at it Critics and Audiences seem to be pretty much in agreement on Evil Dead Rise too. Amazing.
But they disagree on Pope's Exorcist in fairness. Which is funny because I don't hear Pope's Exorcist fans raging about critics being out of touch. Almost like they just accept that possession films can be fun and watchable without necessarily being great or original....and that that's fine.
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28 minutes ago, Jeight said:
Every suggestion i see here regarding marvels future storytelling makes me really glad no one here has any say in it. Hilariously bad
Literally the closest anyone has come to talking about Marvel's future (or rather alternative) storytelling was just me writing once that they could have left more flexibility to benefit from more popular characters, and that was with reference to that being exactly what they did in Phase 1. Nobody has said anything else and nobody at all has said anything about the future from here.
Is this 'hilariously bad' for some reason? Or are there loads of posts hidden from me? Or is this just a piece of classic internetting of just pretending that other people have said whatever you want them to have said so that you can act condescending towards it?
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6 hours ago, scytheavatar said:
The reality is that the most positivity received characters post Endgame are at best B list characters rather than C list characters like Shuri....... trying to make a Shang Chi 2 is basically Shazam 2 happening all over again. Shang Chi was just an ok MCU film. It was a cookie cutter MCU film that's reasonably well executed, that's enough to make it the best post Endgame MCU film. But is it enough to make it deserve a sequel? I don't think it is, and the exact same can be said about films like Shazam and the first Fantastic Beast. It is a bit delusional to pretend your Shang Chi/Yelena/Agatha are such great characters that they should be milked like cows and appear everywhere like Tony Stark.
1) "My" (lists characters)? Im referring to what were broadly the best perceived characters since Endgame. Unless you disagree with this assertion I'm not sure what you're point is in making this personal.
2) I'm not sure what your actual point is here: are you advocating to just end the MCU? Are you saying the only thing the MCU can do is have XMen/Fantastic 4 films? Or do you think what the MCU is currently doing is working really well?
3) "Milked and appear everywhere like Tony Stark" Tony Stark wasn't particularly famous in 2007. It's easy to forget this. I realise that to a comic book fan or someone who delves deeper there are such things as B and C and D tier characters. But in popular film there aren't particularly. It's much closer to a binary: There are characters that producers can assume that the average punter knows about.....which for Marvel were Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk and to a much lesser degree Captain America. And then there is basically everyone else. And everyone else is close to the same level and it's a matter of how well you can bolster them up.
4) "Just an OK film" - I mean, unless we're at cross purposes here the MCU generally aspires to "just OK films" in terms of quality. OK films done right in popular brands and established franchises are hugely successful. Unless you sincerely believe there are any A-grade Marvel films, which I certainly don't despite mostly enjoying the MCU. B/B+ is still the best they've ever realistically got. And those Bs include Shang Chi and Wandavision.
5) The first Fantastic Beasts did easily enough to make a sequel. The problem was that the first film had a dud reveal at the end and the sequel, partially as a result of that dud reveal's consequences, was poor. I'm not sure why you think that's a comparison. Shazam doesn't work either since the reaction to the first was lukewarm and it was always dissonant to the rest of what DC was doing. Plus the box office performance of the sequel to Shazam can't be evaluated as a comparison since the studio threw all their current projects under the bus with the reboot that renders them all pointless anyway.
6) Which A list characters would you focus around? Bear in mind Thor, Hawkeye, Deadpool, Guardians etc are only "A tier" characters because of the films lifting them up and doing that in the way you *don't* think they should do with Yelena/Shang-Chi/Wanda. The average Joe on the street before the MCU had all equally heard of none of them.
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2 hours ago, vafrow said:
Shang Chi is an interesting one. It's probably one of the most interesting characters they've developed post Endgame, but, yeah, who knows when we'll see him again.
During the Infinity Saga, once introduced, the major characters were never gone from theatres more than a couple of years at most.
I think it's the ability to have the situational awareness they had with that IM2 scenario. Or even how they've played the Spider-Man card with Civil War.
As in have the flexibility to see the response to Pugh and put $80m aside to turn around a lower budget espionage Widow 2 straight away with her, Val, Harbour and maybe the Power Broker rather than expand and expand with Eternals.
Or see how well Shang-Chi was shaping up and break it into two movies - a martial arts movie that ends with the intro of Wenwu and a fantasy movie...just so they could turn around an 18 month sequel.
Instead of giving full priority to a BP2 that is leading to...? And a Love and Thunder that just sits in a pool alone. And Hawkeye, She-Hulk and Moon Knight which regardless of consideration of their quality are just standing there like lemons untethered to anything else.
As you say, the mandate to grow turning it into a machine prevents the possibility of flexibility and situational awareness.
Culminating in perhaps the biggest momonetum-less nonsense of all: Schrodinger's Blade.
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13 hours ago, OceanBlvd said:
I agree that it needs to stay rotten just to prove how out of touch most critics are.
Critics and Audiences agreed Avatar was good
Critics and Audiences agreed Puss was good
Critics and Audiences agreed Strange World was bad
Critics and Audiences agreed Scream was pretty good
Critics and Audiences agreed Ant Man was below par
Critics and Audiences agreed Shazam 2 was below par
Critics and Audiences agreed D&D was good
Critics and Audiences agreed Cocaine Bear was watchable
Critics and Audiences agreed Air was good but perhaps not very cinematic
Critics and Audiences agreed John Wick 4 was good.
Should I go on?
Critics and Audiences ironically agree Mario is an okayish insubstantial light film that didn't need to clear a high bar. The only actual difference is that audiences were looking for that and don't care. And yet that is enough for some to have the traditional anti-critics hissy fit.
This conversation is so damn tedious.
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1 hour ago, vafrow said:
Even their two stumbles (Iron Man 2, Ultron) lead to questioning of their methods. Both were helmed by key filmmakers to Marvels success, and both never returned.
Actually the more time goes on, the better that fast-tracking of Iron-Man 2 looks.
It put pay to IM2 creatively by all accounts, but I really feel as through Phase 4 suffered not being able to do anything with momentum by having such a predetermined plan and not rushing a sequel for a liked property.
Surely based on response they would ideally have made something more of Yelena by now. Or Shang Chi. Or have taken Wanda and Agatha in a different direction post WandaVision.
Just maximise one of their properties and characters that actually were positively received rather than go through a pre-planned order and leaving characters in limbo/on the bench for ages at a time.
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19 minutes ago, vafrow said:
Then, phase 4 continued the trend with No Way Home, Doctor Strange and Thor all continued that pattern. All three saw jumps, even as reviews for some were mixed.
Then, Wakanda Forever and Antman are two in a row of not doing so. Guardians will be three unless something changes. Marvels likely is four. If you count Captain America 4 as a sequel to Civil War, then, high risk of five.
This is all good faith stuff, but as a point of information while Thor Love and Thunder did jump domestically which was the trend you said it was broadly only in line with inflation and was seasoned by a very significant drop worldwide of 850 to 760.
Did those on the podcast you mention class Mario as a Summer film. I'd take it very hard to take anyone seriously who thought, even before Mario came out, that Guardians 3 would get anywhere near it. Of course, they may class Mario as a Spring film.
But yeah, I think this does have the potential to catch people off guard. Especially given the likelihood of one of the female skewing films going big (Lit Mermaid/Barbie), and how overdue we are for a huge breakout comedy.
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Re: The Spoiler Debate.
Surely there is a pretty gargantuan difference between
1) Being clear as to what the inciting incident in the plot of the movie and therefore the basis of the objectives/quest/mission/narrative is.
and
2) Showing anything regarding the resolution of the objective/quest/mission/narrative.
It has never occurred to me that giving 1 constituted any kind of "spoiler". And it is utterly self-evident to me that 1 should be made clear by a decent trailer in most circumstances.
2 is surely where "spoilers" kick in.
It's not being "pro spoilers" to expect to have an idea of what the inciting incident or the basis of the framework of the film is. "pro spoilers" to me means giving unnecessary details regarding the resolution of the plot or the obstacles faced.
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All I can say about that Voiceover/Radio Comms trailer is that ANYONE who moaned about The Marvels being "cringe" or looking "goofy" or "MCU-Humour" who doesn't respond the same to that is being very selective in what they choose to find funny and what they choose to be antagonistic towards.
I'm sure it's selective and has been chosen because it's a self-contained joke but boy that doesn't represent the film well at all, and especially not at a time when people are sensitive to the overuse of both humour and green screens.
But then it doesn't have Brie Larson, and instead might have people they like in so maybe certain demographics will suddenly find mediocre jokes funny again.
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Just so we have it on record here for accuracy:
Batman 89 AFI: $577m
Batman Returns AFI: $359m
Batman Forever AFI: $388m
TDK AFI: $681m
DKR AFI: $516m
The Batman: $369m
Also to note the earlier films will have lower relative ticket prices so admissions despite AFI will still be relatively higher against their counterparts from later decades.
Having experinced both, I'd say Batman 89 was bigger feeling as a cinema experience, while TDK was a bigger feeling as a cultural zeitgeist moment. Batman 89 is what I'd give it to in terms of feeling bigger, but then I WAS a child so that might be a factor.
Also note, despite what may be the perception, Forever wasn't really any kind of big improvement on Returns - had a bigger budget too.
Also in my lifetime Lion King, Jurassic Park and Titanic would beat all of them, but Batman 89 would probably come fourth after those (note: too young for ET and too British for Forrest Gump which was perhaps that size in the US).
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15 minutes ago, John Marston said:
Uh modern perception among an internet fanbase maybe. Definitely wouldn’t top the Nolan films or the 89 film with the average person. Remember the internet does not always equate to the general public
My perception is not drawn from the internet. It's mostly drawn from having discussed pop culture with about twelve years' rolling of undergraduate students.
Returns would be an easy number two for them, close to challenging TDK. But I would admittedly factor in that these are mostly students in performance and visual arts subjects who are drawn to aesthetics and camp and so might have an overrepresentation of love for Returns. Hence why I'll accept that TB and 89 might join in a wider pool. IMO Rises and Begins are only highly thought to that degrree either by people who were 13-18 when TDK came out and were completely obsessed with that trilogy OR by people who take Begins as Nolan's best and much prefer it to TDK.
Almost all the female UG's I've asked have a major preference for Returns. Due to aesthetics, lack of moodiness and obviously extreme girlboss.
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If there is such a thing as people who think Batman Returns is the bad one, I have never heard of them.
Batman (1989) was a huge cultural zeitgeist movie and the sequel was almost guaranteed not to do as well. Not least because the cultural pace was moving incredibly quickly around that time and if something came from just a few years ago it was perceived as lame really rather quickly. Of course, Returns did have a big target on its back and there were arguments about the tone.
But my understanding was that modern perceptions framed Returns as one of the very best.
Which, also, it is. Quite - to me, anyway - obviously.
I mean I'm a 1. Returns, 2. Batman 66, 3. Batman 89, 4. The BMan, 5 Begins kind of guy. But I'm aware that TDK would be on average thought of as the number one by the general audience. But Returns would be fighting for number two alongside 89 and TB. Pfeiffer, Walken and DeVito are surely all iconic.
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59 minutes ago, Count Eric said:
And this is also like arguing that because the prequels were bad that Force Awakens would do bad too.
Okay, but hear me out here....
The Force Awakens was the Force Awakens entirely because of the prequels.
That film was
a) Designed to be the most down-the-fairway, risk-averse, retread of the first film so far as anyone could get away with precisely BECAUSE of the prequels.
b) Positively received despite being the most down-the-fairway, risk-averse, retread of the first film precisely BECAUSE of the prequels.
Heck, you think if Lucas had pulled a Force Awakens and just remade the original when the Phantom Menace came out he would have gotten away with it? With either critics or audiences? Equally do you think if the Prequels had been considered unassailable masterpieces that expanded the Star Wars lore and were embraced by the whole fandom that 18 years later Abrams would have just gotten away with remaking the first film again? And that that would have been something audiences with 6 Great Star Wars films behind them would have just accepted?
People wanted and craved a palate cleanser that made them go "Yes, that is Star Wars and feels like the Star Wars I like". Of course it felt like the Star Wars they like, because it WAS the Star Wars they like; only with a pair of spectacles and a false moustache.
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Surely franchises like this have fundamentally different degrees of linking together.
One of the reasons James Bond is so resilient is by definition any terrible film that may happen is irrelevant by the time of the next one. Hence Quantum of Solace can happen, the vast majority can hate it, and it matters not one jot because the impetus and momentum is totally different with each film. There will be a new inciting incident at the start of the next film unrelated to this one.
Indiana Jones is similar to a large degree. Except not quite as resilient since Indiana Jones has always struggled with agency and objective and being prone to mostly reacting to things in a way that Bond, because he always has a specific assignment, doesn't.
The Ongoing Expanding Universes though are far more interlinked than this. At least one of their inciting incident or resolutions is usually linked to a wider mythology related to the other films. Hence they are far more likely to see one failure impact other films.
Even, say, John Wick is like this. One badly received Wick film to the extent of Quantum of Solace and the whole thing would crack heavily. Fortunately that hasn't happened.
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Drops for D&D are utterly, utterly disheartening for such a solid film.
Prone to say I don't think there's anything that could have been done. For a mass audience the name just has too much stigma and too many negative associations. Of course it has had a renaissance as a game, but trying to play in a mass culture marketplace seems like it's not possible. The 80s and 90s were a brutal time for genre properties in terms of perception and they still have their legacy. It happy with Trek to a degree I think also.
Video games, comics, superheroes and Star Wars can be mainstream culture; but anything primarily associated with that black hole of 80s and 90s nerd-dom is still toxic to many and will still pull up mental pictures/references to mom's basement/neckbeard/body odour. And D&D is right in the middle of it. It's not fair, not even close to fair. But it's what it is.
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2 hours ago, thajdikt said:
TSS is an incredible movie.
Okay there's a balance to be had between the subjective and objective means of assessing movies here but ultimately.....objectively TSS contains a 40 minute tangent that operates as an entirely separate act of the film that literally doesn't need to be there, has nothing to do with the main plot of the film and changes the pace of the film.
Also the whole film is largely repeating the plot of his first (mainstream) film. And he'd repeat the plot again immediately in Peacemaker. If I had a quarter for every major release James Gunn made about a hivemind entity with a disgusting centrepiece and lots of sentinels that killed people on touch and completely change the way they behave making them uncanny parasite people but that this was played amid largely laughs rather than horror while a bunch of misfits ran around incompetently bumbling their way into fighting it and finally being victorious more by luck than judgement I'd only have 75c but it's damn weird it happened three times.
You can like that and not care about the fact it is a tangent because you think its full of cool stuff. You can not care Gunn is prone to repeat himself. You can think neither of those things have anything to do with the quality of the film.
BUT it is something that 9 times out of 10 a critic is going to severely criticise under normal circumstances.
And Thor L&T had no business getting better scores than Eternals and AMWQ. It is a rank poor film with very few qualities that a critic is going to be generous towards under normal circumstances. It's problems are very, very obvious. 6.4 is a ludicrously generous average for that film.
And again, I'm a guy who largely hate bagging on critics. All I'm saying is that any one time there are a handful of chosen ones.
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The critics had kid gloves with Taika for T:L&T and arguably with Gunn for TSS. Likely will have the same for Gunn with GOTG3 even if it's mediocre.
I'm not an anti-critics person, quite the reverse. But there's no doubt that on aggregate they have favourites and these are definitely 2 of them. I suspect Gunn would need a succession in a row to get poor ratings.
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6 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:
I can’t believe how far Marvel has fallen in the public eye in just a couple of years. They were the definitive Hollywood juggernaut by the end of the 2010s, and outside of Eternals, that still seemed to be the case by the end of 2021.
To be clear, I’m not saying Marvel can’t turn things around, but boy is the contrast ever striking.
I mean, when you hit a very natural endpoint such as Endgame you need a clear plan and to make good decisions to go forward. But that's also hard because you aren't going to know al the factors. They made noises about a clear plan but we just haven't seen it.
I think when we look back on it it's going to become clear that the high volume of D+ shows being a demand that came from outside Marvel and within the top brass were the big issues.
They just haven't been able to make use of their best assets - indeed their best assets were spread completely around and the progress is unwieldy: Agatha becomes a big ol' meme after Wandavision and they commission a series but it won't come out until years after anyone cared. Lightning in a bottle gone. Yelena Belova is the best new character in an age and Flo Pugh is the gal of the moment....but she only gets side roles in team up movies. Shang Chi captures a bit of excitement and....we don't know when we'll even see him next. Oh look, Hayley Steinfeld and Oscar Isaac.....are in series and we miiiight see them again down the road maybe. Probably. Sort of.
I think another of the things that will be spoken of in eventual hindsight is this is when they should have distanced from the source material and used situational awareness to take advantage of their best assets regardless of the comics templates.
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2 hours ago, scytheavatar said:
There's far more examples of movies like Ghostbusters 2016 and Cats which after getting hated in the initial trailer struggled to ever gain traction.......... in general getting people to come watch your movie is hard. That's why trailers exist, they should be getting audiences excited to see your movie. If instead you are getting hate you should be concern and ask yourself what is happening.
Counterargument.....
While Ghostbusters 2016 and Cats are both very poor films, their main box office problems were little to do with the quality or even the reception of the films.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is a largely loved movie, barely has any different a box office than Ghostbusters 2016 (and it's overall lower, though there is a slight covid factor) - notably including its legs. Indeed, for all the cartwheels after its release it has less than x3 budget. Both did pretty horrendous numbers abroad.
So really the lesson there is that Ghostbusters has limited viability as a property, ESPECIALLY when it comes to foreign markets as it's basically a North America and to a lesser extent English Language only brand. And that the $144m handed to the 2016 movie was a preposterous budget to give to any Ghostbusters movie, whether or not it turns out poor.
Cats was widely perceived as an insane project well before the trailer came out. Because it was.
Surely the best comparison to Captain Marvel 2 is Captain Marvel 1, where the same thing happened.
Brie Larson, JK Rowling, Amber Heard, Kathleen Kennedy, Lizzo.....if only we could ever discern what the people who get insane levels of deeply affective, deeply permanent, scar-tissue levels of knee-jerk hate that dominates the conversation hysterically whenever their name so much as comes up - regardless of which direction it's coming from - have in common. I'm sure if we think really hard we could put our finger on it.
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On 4/11/2023 at 10:36 PM, Count Eric said:
I could be wrong here, but I believe this film was a major influence for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. And yeah, this does capture the swashbuckling fun of the ride and movies very well.
That's my understanding as well. Obviously a lot now has been effected by the Pirates movies overlay, but I remember the original ride and you can REALLY see the connections and influences in the feel of the wider town sequences. Amazing film that I put very high up as well as Public Enemy. Hope to check out some of your other recommendations.
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48 minutes ago, Willowra said:
That's not how movies work. If the lead is Captain Marvel or Captain America, they can't market it as a Spider-Man or Doctor Strange movie; they can't mislead the audience, as they are smarter than the studios think.
Suicide Squad
Joker
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1 hour ago, TwoMisfits said:
Not sure it was you or not, but talking about how nice seeing Cap working with people to save the world...
I think that's one reason why I liked the Hawkeye show so much (that I just watched last month). It was back to a street level problem that people could help solve...and did. The LARPers were some of the MVPs of that show for me.
This is the double bind sadly. Half the negative comments are about how Marvel is always the same, and the other half are complaining that "It looks like a Disney plus show, why should I care" which is code for 'not high stakes enough'.
The other annoying dynamic I keep seeing is......fine, I'd rather the jokey tone was toned down a bit too, but are we seriously acting like the start of undermining threats in the MCU doesn't literally go back to Iron Man being the worst culprit of all? The guy made a Spongebob joke in the middle of an apocalyptic event. And there are some seriously acting like it was phase 4 when Marvel suddently started doing frivolous comedy.
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45 minutes ago, ThomasNicole said:
I honestly hope the target audience [women, LGBT´s and you know... normal straights men] support this, it would be kinda sad seeing this flopping and those morons claiming a cultural victory
It is an interesting if unfortunate curio that the two films that these pillocks tend to claim as their greatest 'victories' actually instead came about for roughly the same reason.
Solo and Lightyear
Both movies that Studios, many journalists and a lot of people who follow films but hadn't thought it through simply assumed would be no-brainer megahits based on what are widely assumed to be "great and popular characters"....except that the "great characters" weren't inherently great characters, but only became so due to the context in which they were deployed and the skill of the actor who played them. Indeed both characters were by definition completely bog-standard, borderline boring, tropes (slightly rogueish lawbreaker who comes good; very serious space leader man) which is why they worked incredibly well in the properties they were originally used.
Then they were taken completely out of original context, played by someone new, and deployed in a way that had nothing to do with their original premise or popularity retaining only their generic character base. And so the studios cataclysmically misestimated the inherent appeal of those characters once removed from the context that made them interesting and not their original tropes.
In other words just standard bad business thinking and bad business practice. And yet they both happened at horrible moments, conincidentally, for those types to do braying online self-congratulatory laps of honour.
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Weekend Thread | Friday #s: Mario 14.1, Evil Dead 10.3, Covenant 2.25, John Wick 1.6, Air 1.4
in Numbers and Data
Posted · Edited by Ipickthiswhiterose
"The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn Is Just to Die. And be Dead By the Dawn."
"One by One We're Going to Slay You"
After all, nobody ever really asked WHY the curtain was red.....