Ipickthiswhiterose

This is a very good take IMO. Power Rangers is an absolute sand trap. It is untappable nostalgia because the core product itself is bad, bordering on there not even being anything there to hang anything on. I dearly hope the BO for D&D is enough to allow a franchise to develop. Saw it this evening and while not flawless it does every core element right for both D&D fans and non-fans to find things to really relish in it. It is perhaps missing a bit of special sauce, but it really does deserve the chance to grow. It does though feel that that difference between a more frugal $100m budget and that actual $150m budget may just be an exponential factor. But I'm very worried now that the inevitable movement for the next week is that Mario comes out and does a Spider-man No Way Home. Ie: It is utterly bang-average but inherent good-faith towards the property and there being **STUFF** that people prexistingly have decided they like makes people cream themselves over it and convince themselves it's amazing, and everything else gets blown out of the water in the blast radius.

Depending on "of the year" (obviously the release straddles 22 and 23)....but Fabelmans was made by a huge name director, was critical darling, had a pretty big marketing run and then....made $39m on a $40m budget WW. Shazam already has at least made over its budget WW and has a chance at x1.5. And obviously it's nowhere near as much of a bomb as Babylon or Amsterdam were. Though those movies are solidly 2022.

Ah, sorry if I took kitten steps with this automatically because on the whole one has to do so in order to do any convincing at all on this issue with many. For the record, while I would reiterate that she has some deeply unfortunate mannerisms under stress, I completely agree with you. It was and is a cult, and one of the most disturbing insights into people's relationships with celebrity, gender and perceptions-of-supposedly-objective-decision-making I've ever had the misfortune to see. Illuminating in the worst way.

I thought Scream 6 was ruddy awful but no doubt that its box office returns are excellent and that the run of Creed, Scream, Wick has been exceedingly successful. Shazam is really sad as a story. Absolutely sold down the swanee. Saw it yesterday and while not great it was absolutely fine, bordering on above average. I'm not the first to say this but it REALLY needed to be marketed at families. What on earth it was doing using an Eminem track in the trailers, for instance, is completely beyond me - not even vaguely of the tone of the film. Aquaman and Blue Beetle in trouble too. I'm not sure at this point if we aren't making enough of just how financially disastrous the DCEU has been if one considers the amount of money it could have made in the same timescale from just releasing, say, 3 mediocre standalone Superman films and 5 standalone Batman films. I know it does get bagged on and all for its creative choices but as a business proposition it has surely been even more of a debacle. And I don't see how, while it may get creatively better, it stands any chance of getting any better from a business perspective. Please, please, please, please, please can Dungeons and Dragons do well. Been a long time (okay, well since Puss) since I've really wanted a property to get its dues to this degree. They have CLEARLY done this the right way and in the right spirit, please let it pay off.

The problem with this is you get a Saville or a Weinstein where everyone knows for years they are a bad-un. And then after the fact people are astonished that nobody comes forward...except what most people have heard are RUMOURS. The people who are abused feel powerless, have generally been gaslit, have false sense of loyalty and in many cases hate the scrutiny and naval-gazing that comes with accusing someone. Because for every Saville or Weinstein where everyone piles on and the system works, there are several examples of people making life absolute HELL for their accusers and use every hole in the system to take advantage of "innocent until found guilty" (and of course innocent until found guilty is the best system anyone has). I work tangentially to the UK acting scene and know several names who "everyone knows" are awful people, abusers or otherwise nightmares to work with. But could I eve accuse them of everything? Do I have any proof? No. And the public reaction to the Heard/Depp case is RIGHT THERE for people to see just how automatically the "defend the person that people like" instinct actually is. Ignore your personal opinion on that for a moment, take note - every if you're a Depp defender - of just how much people, in many cases automatically, DESPISE the awkward, unpopular one and LOVE the charismatic popular one in a situation where, objectively speaking, both of them were pretty clearly as terrible people as each other (except one was twenty years older and the other ones hero when they got together).

I think there's a big difference in terms of things happening in a relatively public venue as well. NFL players, black and white alike have been abusive and gotten away with it. Ray Rice however did it in public with camera footage and that was indeed the end of his career overnight. It is hard to balance the rights involved in assumption of legal innocence alongside the court of public opinion and casual knowledge of people and things that - as are being claimed in quarters here - "everyone already knows what they are like". The biggest issue here is that the person who has been harmed is okay, whether they and/or others have been subject to a pattern of abuse, and how to make that right as best as possible. I dearly hope that this isn't the start of the pathway we saw 30 years ago where the dynamic turns into "People X (wrongly) get away with this so why shouldn't People Y (wrongly) get away with it too." .....It's always wrong for privileged and powerful people to get away with things because they're privileged, no matter whence that privilege or power comes.

"Batman 89 and TDK are not on equal footing at all" By box office standards I've already shown they are. By cultural impact they easily are. The only argument you're really leaning on here is quality.. But what betrays you here is "Keaton's films are hokey" I don't know how to break this to you.....ALL superhero movies are hokey. Nolan pulled a trick where he convinced a percentage of the audience that if it looks a bit like Heat and smells a bit like Heat then that means it's "like Heat" no matter how cartoonish the logic and how magical the villain is. But make no mistake scratch at the surface just a little and the plot of The Dark Knight (and every other Batman film) is as ludicrous as Adam West just not being able to get rid of a bomb. And that was a very clever trick that Nolan (and some very clever casting and savvy acting) pulled. Very clever and it still works with MANY audience members to this day because they bought in to the sense of a 'gritty' superhero film no matter how paper thin it is. But I'd much rather something didn't pull the wool over my eyes and embraced what it is, which is what 89 and 92 did with their joyful unashamed celebration of what a superhero movie could be. Which is why those movies are still so beloved. And when it comes to 'superhero movie with gritty demeanour' The Dark Knight was treading the ground that Unbreakable had established. Batman and Batman Returns were treading new territory, both in superhero films and marketing. Keaton returning as Batman is not as big as Nicholson would be as Joker, not as Ledger as Joker. But he IS as big as Bale returning as Batman. Because the elephant in the room is Joker is a bigger cultural icon than Batman for the general international audience.

This is really fudging it and is just being straight up guilty of bias based on timing: Batman 1989 was one of the biggest blockbusters of all time at the time of release. Only 4 other films released that year managed even half of it's box office and one of them - that it still blew out of the water - was a freaking Indiana Jones movie in its pomp. No movie released in 1988, 1987, 1986 got close and you have to delve backwards to Jedi in 1983 and forwards to Jurassic Park in 1993 to better it: In other words it has a DECADE CLEARANCE on either side in terms of its success. It's box office towers even over titans in that era like Top Gun, Roger Rabbit, Beverly Hills Cop, Ghost, Ghostbusters, 2 Indy films and Back to the Future Now even as the resident person who thinks The Dark Knight is overrated crap I'm not going to pretend it didn't have a massive zeitgeist hit and that even though it may be baffling to me it is still VERY well thought of. But the two are equivalents...not one over the other. And the call of 'definitive Batman movie' is especially confusing when applied to Dark Knight given how flagrantly disinterested Nolan is in the Batman character in the second and third films. Batman 1989 was only the second truly successful superhero movie property ever and was absolutely gargantuan as a box office and cultural presence. Don't dismiss it or its legacy.

I think there was a degree to which Warner Brothers absolutely convinced themselves that 1. Margot Robbie as Harley wasn't just a zeitgeist moment that carried literally one movie (that also had the Joker and Will Smith in) but was a new A-lister and was a huge draw in her own right especially in that role. 2. James Gunn was a huge draw in his own right. 3. Taika Waititi post Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit and Free Guy WAS the moment and a pally cameo from him was a draw no matter how brief it was and how awful he was. 4. It was going to be similar to Deadpool in tone (it wasn't and the marketing was even less so) 5. It would have amazing word of mouth just because Guardians did. 6. The terrible reception to the first one meant that the box office to that film was the floor, and reflective of a SS squad with BAD reception. As opposed to being reflective of the initial concept PLUS Will Smith PLUS Joker PLUS first-impact Halloween-Outfit zeitgeist of Robbie as Harley in that costume, plus effective marketing all despite the crappy movie. Of course, all of those things were wrong.

Oh I think that Joker was 100% the biggest factor. Joker is historically an even bigger box office draw than I think people give him credit for. Will Smith too. But even so that second weekend was outright rejection from a casual audience. Deadpool showed the way to go in terms of the enormous advertising and heterogenous-appeal work an R-rated superhero movie has to do to still maintain a mainstream sized audience - it has to pull out the demographic stops in every other way (and hoodwink some parents of kids who are probably too young to see it helps too). James Gunn decided to literally ignore all of that in TSS: included alienating "wacky"/"goofy" characters (note how little Colossus was in the marketing for Deadpool), a pile of toilet humour in the trailer and no guerrilla or clever marketing campaign.

Pirating = 0 Money. So it's completely comparable. Plus the issue with TSS was not people who comment on forums and their friends. It was that it had absolutely no cultural penetration beyond that kind of group. Hence the similarity with Scott Pilgrim. It was made exclusively for the noisiest and most visible demographic, but in such a ways that virtually outright alienated almost everyone else.

Well obviously it means little to nothing. That was largely my point. Although there are few films that intersect quite as badly as positive/beloved online reception and negative real world reception like TSS. Maybe Scott Pilgrim. Not sure what you're referring to as "the biggest movie of the pandemic" since in my head that's, what, Tenet or Spiderman No Way Home? And I've never thought of either of those as being hated online. If anything I think No Way Home continues to get the same very easy ride that Force Awakens did and it's going to take over a decade for people to realise it was all hype and no trousers.

Why does everyone still forget The Suicide Squad? It remains the biggest red flag of all. Adored online movie that absolutely fell with a splat and horrendous legs. I know there was supposed mitigation with the simultaneous release, but that was a $185m movie with elevated critical response, successful (box office wise) previous instalment, adoring fans online and a big name director. I still think some remain (I'm not saying the OP does here) in denial about everything to do with TSS. Just easier to pretend it didn't happen. Heck while the OW is probably going to be behind TSS, finals for Shazam are still going to beat the pathetic 55m TSS earned total domestic.

I have just returned from another trip to visit my generally-conservative-but-not-terminally-online father whose favourite MCU film by miles is Captain Marvel precisely because it has somewhat generic qualities and is new-watch friendly alongside a more internal struggle, a focus on character interactions, and no sky-beam. He is really excited that there's a Captain Marvel 2 (and Guardians 3 since the first of those is his other fave), having not bothered with the MCU since Spiderman NWH which to him was confusing and just had a bunch of noisy incoherent stuff in. The real world is so different from online when it comes to CM and Brie Larson it's insane.

Fabelmans is a $40m budgeted movie from a mainstream film director that made less than the 'artisan' niche Banshees of Inisherin and The Whale and was absolutely overwhelmed in popularity by the experimental EEAAO. 20 years ago, the debate would have been whether the tiny box office for The Whale, Banshees and EEAAO showed the Oscars were out of touch when Spielberg was churning out a $250m box office drama. I swear much of the press and film media were STILL acting like that was the case despite Fabelmans being so utterly rejected by audiences. And I think that made the backlash double-up. Major critics and commentators still acting like Spielberg was a shoo-in for best director and talking about Fabelmans like it was one of the self-evident films of the year I think only made its perception worse and worse and made people like me root against it even harder.

Really? She's someone who since Cinderella has kind of chronically played the secondary and tertiary leads in films apart from GuernseyL&PPPS. Whereas she's the definitive lead in this. For someone with a classical look who undoubtedly gets most of their offers in period dramas I can definitely see why this would appeal - especially if she thought it had cross-cultural Bend it Like Beckham/Yesterday style breakout potential. And it's about as good as those films, it just doesn't ultimately have a populist hook like they did. Not sure what you're seeing in this that's so bad. Again, it's an enjoyable romcom and made a splendid double bill set against bear carnage. Sure as heck better than most romcoms I've seen in the last 12 months (Maybe I do, Your Place or Mine, Ticket to Paradise)

??? It's absolutely fine. It's an enjoyable rom com. And I quite like Lily James but geez, since when is she the crown in Britain's acting arsenal?

I have never seen my local as busy for a non blockbuster (blockbuster by UK standards so including musicals and family films) as the showing of Cocaine Bear I was in. Lots of people just clearly hankering for silly fun. I did a double bill with What's Love Got To Do With It. Which was also very busy (and I also enjoyed). Though my friend and I were 2 of the only 4 men in the theatre and 2 of the only 6 white people.

There can be huge cultural diversity on this kind of issue that makes demos uneven. For instance here in the UK, there are parts of the population with a higher density of people with South Asian backgrounds, and because lots of them - especially the Muslims - don't drink they therefore don't go to bars in the evening and instead go for group hangouts to either ice cream/dessert bars to hang out in the evening or the cinema. As such there is a disproportionate percentage of Asians who go to the cinema in my area matched against the national demo (reflected in films that are shown as well). So I imagine there are similar fluctuations in the US in terms of the general recreational choices - especially in the evenings - of people from various different cultural backgrounds that mean that the baseline cinemagoing breakdown demos aren't necessarily in line with the national demographic breakdown.

I haven't seen it yet but the (obviously limited to personal experience) anecdotal responses I've had so far are actually really positive - not reflective of the overall critical/film-twittery trends at all.

I though Unwelcome was the worst film I've seen in the cinema in ages. A nasty film with a rotten heart - I came for a creature feature, not to revisit the worst excesses of hoodie horror. Jesus, I hated hoodie horror at the time, and there was nothing in the marketing for this that indicated the throwback to that vile (for so many reasons) nonsense that this was for 80% of the runtime. Enys Men didn't play anywhere near me. I kept at eye out but would have had to make a track to Home in Manchester.

Seriously guys, is Pathaan worth seeing? I was planning to watch it but then saw the trailer and wasn't particularly impressed.

Regardless of whether or not it's down to the barren landscape of UK cinemas over Christmas, the Whitney biopic very likely getting to £10m is a pretty great achievement, and a big surprise. My cinema's Aftersun showing had good numbers on Monday, but it's only being shown once a week. Seems like a good healthy opening for M3gan.

Also anecdotally: Megan very busy last night at my local. Pretty sure I was the oldest in the cinema - it was rammed with the 16-25 demographic.

How are people for Tar in cinemas where they are? Appears to be barely scheduled here in Lancashire.