Menor the Destroyer

Actually I'm not sure the difference between Venom and Suicide Squad's reception is as big as people think. Both had ok multipliers (TSS multi was not that good but we have seen a lot worse, and it opened much higher than Venom), identical Cinemascores, and Venom's PostTrak scores (as reported by Deadline) were somewhat higher but not overwhelmingly so.

No way was Venom's reception on the same level as JW. JW was a legit hit with audiences. It had a great multi even off a massive OW, with an A Cinemascore and 4.5 stars on PostTrak (compare to B+ and 4 stars for Venom). Despite that Fallen Kingdom had a big drop, but JW sold itself on nostalgia while Venom did not, so Venom 2 has that advantage vs FK. Also re what people have said about Venom's trailers, they have certainly done really well, but no better than the first one's trailers. Not sure it will increase much but probably won't have a big drop either.

I feel like it's very common for people to call protagonists boring when secondary characters and villains stand out. Luke gets a ton of this online, people in my family even called Han "the real protagonist" which is crazy to me. I see a lot of Aang-bashing for ATLA because of how well Zuko's arc was done. But personally, I loved both protagonists, and so did many people (see how after TLJ a lot of that latent love for Luke came out on both sides of the debate).

It was definitely a big thing that people said BP was "boring" in his movie and way better in Civil War. I never understood that criticism and don't particularly understand the criticism in SC as well. Both Black Panther and Shang-Chi were engaging protagonists imo and only look worse because both movies had fantastic villains (not the norm in MCU movies). Was Simu RDJ level of course not. But I thought he did pretty well.

Part of it was HBO Max, part of it was just TSS didn't do well for a superhero film. In the UK it did the equivalent of a 40 million OW in these times.

24th would be a better date but I guess they want to give a bit more time for the marketing campaign. Still I'm sort of glad they chose October 1 so Shang-Chi can still have 4 weekends to itself.

I expect something like this. Feige knows that there is work to do with making Shang-Chi more popular in China/East Asia with mixed reception in the region so far. So adjustments will be made.

Close enough that actuals can put it over.

Ok I didn't see those Monday PS from Keyser. Those are incredible. Now I understand the high predictions from the weekend thread. I think we are seeing WOM kick in here.

That fits with the WOM basically everywhere else lol. SC at 91%, pretty good I think.

Looking at the Ghostbusters trailer numbers they are actually okay. I could see this doing well. Actually second trailer did really bad for some reason it didn't seem to get uploaded to the main Sony Channel, only the Ghostbusters channel.

Trailer seemed to be really heavy on nostalgia. Probably will attract an older audience at least to a degree.

Is buzz there though after the 2016 version had poor reception? Being a good movie is only part of the battle.

Did not think of that. That seems to make the most sense. That would be ~20.3 million.

Yeah I suppose 1 must mean 21. Nothing else seems to jump out. I suppose "127" can be unscrambled to 21.7.

I did not like the CGI in the WW finale but the rocks in TLJ looked fine to me, as did the creatures in this film. I agree with others that the gray lighting was ugly but I didn't have a problem with the bat sidekicks. Actually now that I go back and rewatch the scene, I think having many rocks that appear sort of weightless better fits what the scene is trying to convey. It would have a different tone if they did what you suggest.

Bolded makes little sense to me honestly. There are plenty of other concerns at play when choosing whether to go CGI or practical and there are plenty of fake-looking practical effects. I will never understand the idea that practical effects are inherently superior just for being "real." None of these movies are actually real.

Wow, you really got me there. Because I liked a third act fight that you didn't and don't hate CGI like most people online, I "don't care about anything but eye candy."

This seems like 97% of Saturday at the same point. Are you expecting night shows to be that weak? Holiday Sunday should be able to keep the pace for the most part.

Third act fight was quite good for me. I feel like people hold CGI sequences to a much higher standard than "practical" sequences and will bash on anything that isn't top-tier CGI as being unnecessary. Personally I like it when blockbusters go big rather than try to be "grounded"

Trailers have been doing better than Shang-Chi so I suppose the hook of large-scale sci-fi action is working.

This movie was awesome other than Trevor Slattery who felt unnecessary and slowed down the pace of the movie at the wrong moment. I wish there had been more scenes between Shang and Wenwu and Shang and Xialing, felt like there was a bit more to unpack there. But other than that a really strong movie, great action, flashbacks were inserted well and flowed well, nice emotional hook, and the third act was suitably grand. I loved the dragon fight, it was exactly the sort of large-scale action that blockbusters should do. A.

Was an awesome movie. Some nice emotional moments, great villain, great action. Loved the third act craziness as well, wish more blockbusters would go that route. I did think that it slowed a bit in the second act but really picked up again which was nice. Easily the best Phase 4 release so far and the first one that lives up to the quality of most of Phase 3.

If so then perhaps Canada can have a smaller drop than the US today.

True but ideally this sort of tracking should provide info about those who haven't bought tickets yet. Like if a film has high presales but low interest, it should be very presale-heavy since it didn't attract the general audience. It doesn't seem to really do that though.