The Dark Samurai

Foreign gross $700,340,509 Worldwide gross $1,336,610,337 It's going to finish around 8-9 million behind Black Panther, without having Russia and Ukraine, where BP made $21,468,820. Hopefully some Deadpool 2 shenanigans can happen with a re-release or some ridiculous cut, and it can surpass it. 😅

Thinking Zack Snyder and Todd Phillips are ''creative geniuses'' is why DC is at the bottom of the barrel and has been there since Nolan finished his trilogy. Phillips career average on Metacritic is 51, which is atrocious. His only film above 59 is The Hangover with 73. Snyder and him, have 24 combined movies on MC and only one is above 60. The only ''genius'' thing Phillips has ever done is aping two classic films (The Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy) and calling it a day.

Matrix 4 is one of the most unabashedly, earnestly romantic films Hollywood has produced in the last decade or more, especially in blockbuster filmmaking where romance has become almost a taboo. People are too focused on the Meta aspect of it. It's a love story. And i love it for it, while i also understand why it doesn't appeal to the majority.

Updated actuals for Inside Out 2 and D&W: Domestic $650,825,110; International $1,017,457,304 Total: $1,668,282,414 Domestic: $603,907,246; International: $660,805,354 Total: $1,264,712,600 Great updates for both.

I appreciate your response, and i thank you for returning my post. I won't post any more posts of that kind, if it's deemed controversial and polemical.

EDIT: Thank you for returning the post.

Usually, i would be very interested in what the critical reception is going to be, but after the fiasco of the previous film, i have no faith in the critics' ability to leave their own preconceived bias at the door. I would be shocked if the film has a higher grade than 70 on MC. The first ''Joker'' has worse reviews on Metacritic than 'Wonder Woman 2'', while being a vastly superior film in every facet of filmmaking from acting, score, to cinematography and directing. It has worse reviews than ''The Incredible Hulk'' and ''Captain Marvel''. All the criticisms they lashed out at the film ''Scorsese knock off!!'', ''It will inspire people to riot and shoot people'', ''It excuses violent behavior'', have been very appreciated in other films, underlining the hypocrisy when this film is in question. ''American Hustle'' was just as big of a Scorsese knock off, and yet it has 90 on Metacritic, while being an insufferable film that has aged out of existence. ''Let Me In'' was an almost shot-for-shot copy ''Let the Right One In'' made for illiterate Americans that can't be bothered to read subtitles and it has 79. It's a definition of a creatively bankrupt endeavor. ''The Force Awakens'' might as well be remake of ''A New Hope'' but they didn't mind when nostalgia was giving them those dopamine rushes. 80 on Metacritic. The John Wick films are far, far, FAR more violent, brutal, mindless and over the top in their repetitive killing and lack any discernable morality, but i haven't seen the critics clutch at their pearls that kids will suddenly blow a classroom because of them. Not to mention that the last three of the films have Metascores of 75, 73 and 78, respectively. I say all this as someone who wasn't a big fan of the film, and especially of Phoenix' performance. Apart from the talk show scene, i never bought his performance, i could feel the strings behind the mannerisms unlike Ledger's Joker, where even after 50 re-watches i never see the actor, only the character. But still, it's a film that was impeccably shot, scored, directed, and it was never reviewed for what it was, but for what the critics thought it represented. It never got a fair chance, ever since those ''Is the Joker a dangerous film?'' articles even before the film came out, and i was delighted it had such an amazing awards run and it turned into a box office juggernaut, despite all of that.

D&W is coming off of a $50+ million week worldwide but it's only going to make $35 million more for the rest of it's run. Some of these predictions are something else. 😐 The film is going to cross $1.3 billion with just the rest of it's domestic gross, and it made $24-25 million internationally this week, so yeah, these $1.3 billion final total predictions make zero sense.

So BoM finally decided to correct the Black Panther worldwide gross, only to still manage to mess it up. I'm honestly marveling at the incompetence of whoever is managing the site. They've corrected the ridiculous re-release gross which is now the actual $731,661. So: Original release: $1,346,913,161 2020 Re-release: $731,661 So the total should be $1,347,644,822, right? No, it's somehow $1,349,926,083. I give up. 🙃😆

Fantastic overseas week for D&W, around $24 million, and the actuals are usually a million higher. Foreign total: $658,400,000 Worldwide total: $1,257,925,117 worldwide total and that's without the domestic monday. Black Panther is going down.

Updated international totals with actuals for Inside Out 2 and D&W: $985,124,795 for Inside Out 2, up $1,3 million from estimates ($983,8) Worldwide total: $1,627,589,803 $597,933,034 for D&W, up $1.1 million from estimates ($596,8) $1,144,752,993

Inside Out 2 and D&W weekend grosses after their opening weekend: 101/57/30 for Inside Out 2 97/54/30 for Deadpool and Wolverine Grosses after week 4: D&W $546,819,959 Inside Out 2 $534,138,158 With Labor weekend coming up and little new competition, the path to $650 is not unrealistic for D&W. There's a decent chance of being over $605 million after Labor day weekend which again would be around $10 million more than Inside Out 2 after 6 weekends.

Both the-numbers and Boxofficemojo are a mess. The less said about the foreign grosses at the-numbers, the better. On the other hand, BoM has obvious and silly mistakes like Black Panther's WW gross being $1.375 instead of the $1.347 it actually has, because it somehow made $27,353,641 in a 2020 re-release in Australia, after opening with $35,897. It probably didn't add $100,000 to it's total there, let alone $27 million. I miss the prime days of BoM, when we had an authoritative source for all things box office.

If myself as a die-hard Mad Max fan in general and Fury Road in particular, had absolutely no interest in the film partly due to the casting (i liked ATJ in The Witch and in nothing ever since) and partly because there wasn't a mystery that needed solving behind the character's past, how would anyone that isn't invested in the franchise would be interested in it? It was the most predictable box-office bomb ever. It was a film that was neither made for the general public, not for Mad Max fans (considering the character isn't there) and not for Fury Road fans considering the two leads of that film are not in the film. Every director wishes he could get $200 million to make whatever he wants. And while that's good for Miller, it's terrible for Mad Max fans because we're not seeing another film for a long time if ever, after this debacle. Like i previously wrote, Theron WAS Furiosa. Her performance and unique looks made the character famous and popular, not the writing. It might not have made the film a blockbuster but i would have been invested in another story with her. Obviously, not in a prequel, as Theron is 49 years old, but a continuation of Fury Road, even without Max? I would have been there day 1.

Furiosa's (the character) greatest asset was Theron's performance. She said so much with her eyes, there's a lot of pain and regret underneath the tough-no-nonsense persona. There's isn't much to the character narratively, and that's not a bad thing at all. The heart of the film is the silent understanding that develops between Furiosa and Max throughout the journey. It could easily be a silent feature, everything is clear and understandable through gestures, looks and nods. The problem begins when you make a prequel, and you cast a vastly inferior actress with none of the charisma, or lived-in experience that Theron exuded, and that actress is only in the second half of the film. For my money, Mad Max: Fury Road is the greatest pure action film ever filmed. Furiosa is like the B-side outtakes, it has some great scenes but it delivers predictable answers to questions no one cared to ask for.