LawrenceBrolivier

Oh wow... nice catch. Revised my list as well. Thank you!

The Ringer wrote an article about Endgame beating Avatar, and is focused on the superfans who went hundreds of times, and the superfans running websites trying to explain why it was important to them https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/26/8931278/marvel-avengers-endgame-beat-avatar-highest-grossing-film-all-time Not that I give a lot of credence to CinemaScore or PosTrack for reasons explained way earlier in the thread, but it's not doing very well there. A "B" grade sounds okay until you realize a "C" is more or less a failing grade on their scale... plus the fact it opened with bigger previews than Dunkirk and will close at $10mil less speaks to the idea that people who saw it Thursday and Friday told other people it wasn't maybe worth catching in the theater...

So the 4pm previews did contribute to some meaningful frontloading on Once Upon a Time then? If the demographics that Hollywood Reporter are reporting is correct.... and the younger audiences aren't enjoying the movie as much because they simply don't have the cultural context to appreciate what Tarantino is doing with the movie.... plus the tone and feel of it being closer to Jackie Brown's focus on aging... how big will the 2nd weekend plunge be? Are we looking at Quentin having both his biggest opening weekend and his biggest 2nd weekend drop? Is a 65-70% drop possible considering the middling word-of-mouth?

Kevin decided to make The Eternals long before you ever heard of that decision being made public... it wasn't in response to "The New Gods" being announced. They're both pretty much the same thing because Marvel and DC have been more or less riffing off each other for longer than your grandparents have been alive. They're not in competiton like that. Yes, they're both trying to make as much money as possible, but they're not trying to do that at the expense of the other company. That's what I'm trying to get at... there's no intended endgame...pun intended.... where one company "defeats" the other and they lose and go away. Nobody on either side actually wants this, or is making decisions based on this impulse... It's not happening. The only place this thinking is taken seriously is in fanboy heads.

Right! it's pretty obvious that Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment aren't even trying to go that head-to-head route anymore. They're not making any moves by going "what's Marvel doing. Can we do that? So we can beat them?" They're trying to find their own niche in that market and settle into it as comfortably as they can... I'm still confused as to why they haven't decided to make that niche "animated movies" since nobody else was doing it... and then Sony put out "Into the Spider-Verse" and won an Oscar with it....They have a whole DC Animated Universe.... Batman the Animated Series. Superman the Animated Series. Justice League Unlimited. Young Justice... all they have to do is adapt those stories to the big screen with more money for better design and animation... And they would have had their niche. But they're approaching it in their own way now... It's not a winner-take-all competition. It never really has been. The only place that competition is happening is in the heads of fanboys.

People are aware that "Marvel vs. DC" as a phenomenon was basically entirely made up by people at Marvel & DC as a means to goose their paying marks into buying more copies of both publishers' comics? It's only as bad as it is now because the people in charge of the media reporting on this stuff were children who believed in it fully like it was WWF or WCW... and whose fandom is much more like professional wrestling fandom than anything else... The studios aren't really competing with each other, and if one of the studios (or publishers) goes down the other will actually be hurt by the lack of competition and contrast. Nobody at either place wants that.... mostly because most people who work at the one place end up working at the other... and some work for both at the same time... Actually, the pro wrestling thing is a good comparison. Eventually, WWF, who was scared of competition and whose endgame WAS to take out WCW, bought them entirely.... and you know what happened? WWF got crappier. Way crappier. And a lot of talent lost out... This is not what Marvel Studios or DC Entertainment are doing to each other. They're not really in competition like that. They're both just trying to make money for their investors. They can both win without the other needing to lose.

I'm not offended by you. And yes, you're meant to have some familiarity with the time period, and with the murders themselves. I didn't pull that from my arse... There are a lot of movies where the people making it expect you to have some sort of understanding about the setting, the time, and the people. Also, this movie isn't a biopic. Knowing about the late 60's, Charles Manson, his cult, and the murders they performed isn't going to spoil the movie. This movie is not a historical re-enactment, but it does depend on your having a knowledge OF that period in history for context... Nobody's calling you stupid or uneducated, I certainly wasn't. But I was questioning your decision to remain ignorant to the details of the period for no other reason than "spoilers!"

Seeing it tomorrow, really excited and really curious.... most people I know who like Tarantino keep comparing it to Jackie Brown and that's only adding to my anticipation. Although to be fair... Jackie Brown also didn't work with a lot of people when it first came out. That one was a grower...

was just talking about why this might be in the movie's dedicated non spoiler thread... it occurred to me maybe part of why it's not landing is due to some audience members not actually having any real familiarity with either the time period OR the Manson family.... Tarantino seems to assume a base level of knowledge about both those things, and it's possible if you DON'T have that level of knowledge, a lot of why the movie works just... doesn't. And at that point.... all you're left with is a hangout comedy in old clothes.

Human history isn't a spoiler, though. Are you really saying you don't want to learn about one of the most significant events of the late '60s because you don't want to ruin a movie? A movie that it's creator wrote and directed under the assumption his viewers DO know the story he's riffing on? You won't be spoiling "Once Upon a Time..." by having a working knowledge of Charles Manson. The writer and director expects you to know about the case, and the era it occurred in. It's possible the movie won't really work otherwise.... honestly, I wonder if that's part of the reason WOM is as mixed as it is, if some audience members are so unfamiliar with what Tarantino is riffing on that it just doesn't work right.

You really should read up on it... it's a pretty important piece of modern history. Not just for the completely crazy plot Manson cooked up, but for the way it sort of charted a course for the future we live in now.... the obsession with fame, being around famous people, real stories being treated as movie or TV show narratives, the inability to completely trust the police despite having a slam dunk case, the way the police also monetized the case with books in pursuit of their own fame... the way criminals become celebrities.... It was one of the events that helped pierce the bubble on the hippie movement and led to conservatism coming back hard in the 80's. You're not going to have the movie spoiled by learning about American history...

At least we're not talking about the death of cinema? ....or are we?

Cinemascore is most like the videogame reviewing curve. There may be 5 stars, or 5 grades, but it doesn't matter.... you only need 3 of them, and the 3rd one might as well be an F...

If some of you haven't read this, you should read this: http://collider.com/cinemascore-explained Interesting notes from the article: 1: the ballot is janky 2: they only go out on opening night 3: the letter grade is often applying just as much to the CONSUMER as it is the film. 4: the results are most often useful for the studios in terms of fine-tuning marketing, not making better films. That CinemaScore is paid attention to at all by people has never really made any sense considering those 4 things.... and yet it's become a knee-jerk part of analysis and box-office reporting, even though it barely belongs in the conversation.... Sort of like how everyone knee-jerk goes "but but but ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION" because someone once pulled that bad boy out in a fight when they realized some movie they didn't like made more money than the one they did, and then everybody kept doing it... CinemaScore only samples from people so eager to see a movie they'll go opening night, it only samples from a tiny number of them, the ballot they're asked to fill out is pretty janky, and in most cases (quoting from the article here).... It’s also worth noting that most movies land somewhere in the A to B+ range, which makes sense. Most marketing isn’t deceptive, and studios go to great lengths to pre-sell a movie whether it’s through stars people like, popular source material, or playing up the strongest aspects of the film. Rarely do people feel “cheated”, but more than that, they don’t want to admit that they were duped. You’ve already paid for your ticket and so a film really has to rub people the wrong way to get anything lower than a “B”.

It's possible the distinction being drawn is that Blade is a character from a comic book, but nothing in the Blade movies is really from those comics... and Blade didn't even get his own series until just before the movie came out... so except for the fact Blade is a "daywalker" who got powers when Deacon Frost bit his mom, almost nothing else was adapted. He doesn't look like Blade, he doesn't act like Blade, none of the story surrounding Blade really fits... David Goyer basically just took the character and used him for his own purposes... I wouldn't agree with that argument, and I think Blade is a comic book movie... but I think that's maybe the argument.

I didn't put Blade on my list because I don't think Blade is a great movie. I love it, and I own it... but it's not even the best movie in its film series... Blade II is a better film in basically every way. It's certainly not better than Dredd which IS on my list. But I also think it's weird to roll in and crap on people's lists because they don't look the way you want them to. That's why you make your own! So you can have it look just right for you...

He screened it once as "The Whole Bloody Affair" didn't he? I remember not wanting to buy the DVDs because it was a foregone conclusion he'd re-edit everything into one big movie and release it that way! A foregone conclusion! The Hateful 8 is a miniseries on Netflix now but Kill Bill still isn't one movie...

Looks like he's giving himself room to do Star Trek but then end on whatever he wants to really end on... he just gave an interview where he declared Kill Bill only counts as one movie, not two.

Pete's Dragon is low-key the best live-action remake Disney's done but nobody saw it.

But what you're describing isn't really a great argument for "the cinema" either. Measuring its health in terms of things like "IP" and "Franchises" doesn't make a lot of sense to me... You're basically arguing that the cinema is in trouble for no other reason than there aren't EVEN MORE Franchises... I remember when the idea of calling a movie series a "franchise" was a low-key INSULT. It meant that movies were disposable junk, fast food that cleaned up at the box office but ruined your health. And now people... not just here, but movie critics too... make straight faced arguments just like this one where they talk about Intellectual Property and corporate marketing plans and franchise possibilities in the ways people used to talk about stories and actors and directors... It's weird seeing people who only really care about blockbusters using this "cinema is dying" argument when what they really want isn't the resurgence of the old days of "cinema" they just want more variation in the fast food they eat. Cinema is just fine. And yes, it would be cool if there were different kinds of franchises to visit and patronize... but that's not the same thing as keeping cinema alive really. What would really help in keeping that kind of cinema alive is not only eating at franchises and wanting everything you like to BECOME a franchise... but nobody really wants to do that... I'm just as guilty... But making everything a franchise and judging everything on the exploitability of its IP isn't how cinema gets saved...

Considering how mainstream almost everybody's tastes here are, including mine... just look at our constant best-of-lists for all the proof you need we're as down-the-middle pop fans as there could be... all the handwringing about "cinema" just comes off like a front anyway... There's no need to be so dismissive about the "state of cinema," especially on a forum built specifically to discuss box-office, which is more than anything else just a reflection of popularity and marketing... "cinema" is lots of things. It's Dredd, it's Spider-Verse, it's Persepolis... yes I just named three comic book movies in a row because I just voted in the comic book movies poll LOL... but its also a good example of how limiting we're constantly making the conversation by pretending "cinema" is a knee-jerk high-falutin' idea of serious "eat your vegetables" movie-making, when "cinema" can be ANYTHING that looks amazing, that speaks to you in a way that excites more than just one of your senses at a time... that realizes the promise of film as art in ways that mean something to you personally... Roma is cinema, even though it's a Netflix movie. Logan Lucky is cinema, even though it's also "Oceans 7-11"... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is cinema... but Avengers: Endgame is just as much cinema, and could only work the way it does AS cinema... Citizen Kane gets used as an example of "cinema" in its purest form but it was also a weirdly cut together muckraking soap opera when it first came out... "Cinema" will be just fine whether Tarantino's latest kills at the box office or not... Theatrical exhibition is a different story... but "cinema" is very healthy right now. It doesn't need a "savior" and I don't know if ex-video store clerk and too-frequent advocate of rightly forgotten trash Quentin Tarantino needs to be framed as such, either... I love his movies but there's no reason to put that much weight on either this film or the man himself...

1: Persepolis 2: A History of Violence 3: Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse 4: Akira 5: American Splendor 6: Logan 7: Oldboy (2003) 8: Ghost World 9: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 10: Superman: The Movie 11: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World 12: V for Vendetta 13: The Dark Knight 14: Lady Snowblood 15: Thor: Ragnarok 16: The Death of Stalin 17: Snowpiercer 18: The Adventures of Tintin (2011) 19: Blue is the Warmest Color 20: Ghost in the Shell 21: Road to Perdition 22: Captain America: The Winter Soldier 23: Shogun Assassin (1980) 24: Dredd (2012) 25: Men in Black 26: Speed Racer 27: Josie and the Pussycats 28: Spider-Man 2 29: Avengers: Endgame 30: Popeye

How much do the 4pm start times factor into this preview number? You can probably stagger more than a few extra screenings into the 3 hour difference between this open and every other movie's opening. It's a very good number no matter what, but is this a bad sign for frontloading?

I keep seeing a lot of comparisons to Jackie Brown.... which is great, Jackie Brown is one of my favorite movies period.... not just Tarantino. But people didn't like Jackie Brown very much when it came out... They thought it was OK at best for a long time... it was only until much later that people started re-appraising the movie and realizing how much good stuff was in there. If this movie really does feel more like Jackie Brown than anything else, then it's probably going to have a lot of those same problems.... the people who feel like they KNOW what a "tarantino movie" is supposed to be will get impatient because it's not very "tarantino-y" and they'll leave the theater like "It was OK I guess"... and people will give it a pass because "OK I guess" isn't enough of a recommendation... And then they'll finally watch it like 5 years from now and say "wow, why did everyone give this a pass when it came out?"