Menor the Destroyer

It all depends on whether the effects in this one will be worth the hype. If Cameron has truly delivered a leap forward like the first one had, then the sky is the limit imo. I'm quite excited to see what he has in store. The first, while the story/characters were merely passable, had a truly immersive world and the visual ambition was awesome to behold. I don't think there has been a blockbuster since that has matched it in that department. If this one can match it then I will be there opening weekend.

Ugh. I suspected it would be so but it still sucks to see after the way PS was going.

LOTR and HP were a lot more audience-friendly than is even possible for a Villeneuve film.

Really excited now after reading these.

The claim in that article that a "dragon mother" would have no problem with Katy's job because of her degree does not make sense to me. At least from Chinese-American friends I have, their parents seem to be a lot more concerned with them getting a high-paying job than with their degree. In fact, I would think it would make the mom more mad, since Katy has credentials to get a better-paying job and instead works as a valet.

I was negative on this (BO performance-wise and reception-wise, I was always confident in quality), but the early indicators are looking nice.

UK presales for Bond will be way higher than US presales. It's a way bigger franchise there.

You are right. Actually didn't realize WhatIf got that high. I guess that kinda throws doubt on the predictive value of D+ trailer metrics, though it still may be more useful for live-action projects. Though I think WandaVision was in high 600s before release (I don't remember where Loki and Falcon were) so Hawkeye may still be the highest.

To add onto that the one time Bad Batch charted was the 75-minute premiere (WhatIf never had an individual episode even half that long).

For that reason alone it should at least be better than the first. Riot was trash.

Hoping this does great. A good start in Europe could help build buzz here in the States (hopefully would help counteract the HBO Max issue).

That's the animation penalty. A live-action MCU show won't fail to chart. DCEU shows will be more dicey in terms of viewership because there's a less locked-in fanbase so each show will have to attract audiences on its own.

It was fun but not that amazing, not sure I really understand the glowing reviews and the glowing (online) response. The pacing gets weird in the Harley section in the middle (which I did not like). The part with the guerrilla commander did not land at all for me, she should have been way more angry that they just slaughtered her entire camp. The character arcs were mostly pretty thin, Polka Dot Man's was the only one that landed (and then he died gratuitously). Like Bloodsport's "arc" is that his daughter sees him on TV being heroic, but they never actually get any moment of reconciliation, so it falls flat. Still I liked the ending with the starfish villain, and it was overall entertaining throughout. B

He definitely has a better chance than the USO. In the past painful losses have usually pushed him to play better tennis as well (after the 2015 RG final he went on that ridiculous tear for 12 months). But now Medvedev will be much tougher having gotten over the hump. I would say Djokovic is only slightly favored if that. Also if Thiem can get healthy and get his form back he will be a big contender for sure. I won't discount him at the US but in Australia I would say he's more in the second tier of contenders than the first.

Thing is wouldn't her arc would be very different because of the way Luke's story went? It would be more of a "same concept and name" sort of thing.

Um...cool? Looks better than I expected (this was my least anticipated MCU project). Trailer is doing pretty big numbers too. Edit: 522k likes in 6 hours is actually bonkers now that I think about it. I think Loki has the most likes of any MCU D+ trailer with 715k. I didn't expect this to beat that.

Different situation to be fair. It's not like the USA has blocked the release of Ip Man.

Odeon has a CAPTCHA. Vue maybe.

Don't know where you got that number for DP2. It opened very close to the first iirc. Edit: Yeah checking it, opened to 125.5 million.

I feel like a Villeneuve movie would skew more to film buffs in big cities in the USA. Not sure if the trends in Europe are different. That said Shang-Chi was Paris-heavy in France at least so maybe this won't be that much more so.

I hope it does do that but I don't know if we should put that much expectation off of the comps from a few theaters. We have seen in DOM tracking how films can skew to different regions. Not sure if it will be the case but I can see Dune skewing to big cities as I said in the Spain thread.

Next year will be interesting for sure. I think Nadal has a couple more RG in him and Novak has a couple more Wimbledons in him but it does seem like the NextGen has finally taken over on hard courts.

Medvedev finally got it. I am sad (been a Novak fan for a decade) but he deserved it. What a performance.

In what way is Shang-Chi propaganda?

I think they overshot the Sunday. Disney has overestimated before.