Wednesday Numbers | Official Estimates: Magic Mike XXL - 9.3M; Terminator: Genisys - 8.9M

[Gopher]

I come to really appreciate what Pixar did with The Good Dinosaur thinking about this. They saw the movie wasn't working the way they hoped and were willing to completely dismantle a film that probably would've been fairly successful at the box office through their brand power and rework it with the hope of producing a masterpiece out of it.

 

Yes, and you literally can't afford to do that with live action. That's what Stanton unfortunately learned with John Carter--you can't tinker with a movie until it's ready to shoot, you have to shoot the thing and see what comes out of it. Pixar produces hit after hit because they literally don't animate the movie until they think all the story and character beats are worked out perfectly. 

[zackzack]

TS might explain why he was kicked out of the editing room and there were re-shoots. 

 

There yo go. There is no director in the house. But some of the scenes in the movie are not even well directed, no editing can save them. Performances are often off. The is not a happy production.

 

Emilia whom I consider a rather bland actress is poor casting. She is too angelic, look at those baby-fat cheeks. Compare to the real 0% fat bad-ass warrior:

 

 

---and this:

 

 

No offense to Clarke, she probably has a nice career after Game o'Thrones (she's already having a nice career  because of GoT), but she is not right for the genre. GA expects a bad-ass Linda Hamilton. Probably they are marketing this to Asian audience who prefer baby faces for their actresses. A case in point, a Chinese actress called Angelbaby which Fox cast in an alien invasion movie..lol. Hollywood is only thinking of Chinese audience. Say bye-bye to US audience.

 

Google this: chinese actress baby face

Edited July 3, 2015 by zackzack

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Wow, can't believe yet another Terminator flop....

Edited July 3, 2015 by Rexy

[vc2002]

You will never convince me that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are actually trying to be funny

 

No, I'm not saying everyone in this business is trying hard. My point is consumers only judge you by the product, not how you make it. So whether you tried hard or not is gonna be judged not by whether you really did, but by whether the outcome is satisfying or not. And that's why the mis-understanding baumer mentioned will always exist, espeically in the movie business.

Edited July 3, 2015 by vc2002

[The Futurist]

But the rest is so good.

Directors cut ending is...an ok conclusion to great filmmaking. Not great...but ok.

 

 

Love you... wife.

 

 

Abyss final act features one of the most beautiful and epic James Horner's cues.

 

Edit : Alan Silvestri.

Edited July 3, 2015 by The Futurist

[John Marston]

Love you... wife.

 

 

Abyss final act features one of the most beautiful and epic James Horner's cues.

 

Abyss wasn't James Horner. It was Alan Silvestri

[Plain Old Tele]

Talent alone is not enough

 

Cameron made The Abyss, passion project that is plagued by production problems .Even though the CGI is ground breaking, the 2 leads put up a very strong performances, and the action is still Cameron at his best, but the movie suffers from a rather bland, preachy, anti-climactic 3rd act. 

 

Michael Mann did Blackhat. This is the guy who did Heat, Collateral, Miami Vice Series, Manhunter, Last of the Mohicans, Insider. What could go wrong? 

Some people are just semi-retired. And they probably took some project for mind exercise or to keep themselves busy.

 

Scorsese never made a boring  movie. But his last few ones: Gangs of New York, Aviator, Wolf of Wall St, and especially Departed, do not contain his passion for filmmaking he showed in Goodfellas, Raging Bull or Taxi Driver.

 

 

Michael Mann is absolutely obsessive and passionate about every single one of his projects... that passion and interest just hasn't translated on screen lately. And I disagree with you about Scorsese and levels of passion, but putting that aside, you're indirectly comparing Taylor to some of the greatest filmmakers in the last 30 years. Would I have preferred someone with that level of ability (and perhaps more important), that level of power and control? Sure, but it's also incredibly hard to get those people involved with a project. What so you do when you can't? You have a significant investment -- you get someone else involved.

 

Wasn't it you who said that Asylum produces their movies with quality being a secondary consideration? I mean, I don't want to compare Skydance to The Asylum, but I certainly can imagine a scenario where a movie's running over budget and they're behind their filming schedule and they just decide "You know what, we can live with the actor not emoting right with this scene. Leave it the way it is", especially with it being a franchise film.

 

I come to really appreciate what Pixar did with The Good Dinosaur thinking about this. They saw the movie wasn't working the way they hoped and were willing to completely dismantle a film that probably would've been fairly successful at the box office through their brand power and rework it with the hope of producing a masterpiece out of it.

Animated films are a different animal because you can see a completed version of the movie quite early (through animatics), and the whole thing is a series of iterations. You don't have that option with live action... you basically shoot once and that's it (minor pickups/reshoots aside). Full credit to Pixar for taking full advantage of their slow development process, but it's also not a fair comparison.

In terms of The Asylum... it's a weird mix. Yes, absolutely they make movies strictly from a business plan. However, within that narrow framework, the people involved try to do as much as they can as well as they can. It's just very, very difficult to take, say, $60,000 and 14 shooting days and make something that has some significant quality.

When you're dealing with a major production, you absolutely don't just say "eh, the day's running late and the performance is bad. Let's just call it a day". On any production, there are so many variables you're basically just trying to lay down track on the railroad while the train's bearing down on you, day after day.

[The Futurist]

Abyss wasn't James Horner. It was Alan Silvestri

 

Ahem, yeah.

[ddddeeee]

Love you... wife.

 

 

Abyss final act features one of the most beautiful and epic James Horner's cues.

Alan Silvestri...

[kowhite]

This seems like an appropriate moment to say..,

WHERE THE MOTHER FUCK IS MY ABYSS BLURAY

And True Lies.

Seriously.

Edited July 3, 2015 by kowhite

[grey ghost]

I think the TG casting director deserves plenty of blame for the film not working.

JW, with it's cliches and stilted dialogue, proves the right cast goes a long way.

[AniNate]

When you're dealing with a major production, you absolutely don't just say "eh, the day's running late and the performance is bad. Let's just call it a day". On any production, there are so many variables you're basically just trying to lay down track on the railroad while the train's bearing down on you, day after day.

 

Fair enough. But there are certain big projects that you just know are doomed to obscurity from the start as a consumer.

[Maxmoser3]

But Arnie isn't a cowboy or a Disney princess.

I mean he should just retire and go hangout somewhere nice, he has the money so just use it.

[The Futurist]

This seems like an appropriate moment to say..,

WHERE THE MOTHER FUCK IS MY ABYSS BLURAY

And True Lies.

Seriously.

 

PLEASE DON T MENTION THIS TO ME.

 

DON T.

 

I AM GONNA GO ISIS ON FOX VIDEO SOON.

 

SERIOUSLY.

 

I HAD ENOUGH WITH THE WAITING.

 

2014 was the 25th Anniversary of The Abyss and 20th Anniversary of True Lies but NOPE.

 

STILL NOTHING.

 

 

[vc2002]

This seems like an appropriate moment to say..,

WHERE THE MOTHER FUCK IS MY ABYSS BLURAY

And True Lies.

Seriously.

 

And T2 in real 4K remastered image quality

[superduperm]

Any Thursday updates?

[Gopher]

Any Thursday updates?

 

Here you go!

 

Inside Out- 7.7 

Jurassic World- 6.5 

Terminator- 6

Mike- 5.6 

[BadAtGender]

How many chances does Alan Taylor get?

And why does he get so many chances?

 

Well, he's directed two feature films. One of them did very good business and had good enough audience response. Thor 2 got him the Terminator job. We'll have to see if he has another shot after this.

 

I'm not even a huge Alan Taylor fan, but y'all aren't being particularly fair to him. I know to movie fans, all of these projects and people play out kinda like fantasy sports, but the reality is that Taylor is a solid and competent director who's had some great success in TV and much less (so far) in movies. At a guess, he'll either return to premium/high profile TV projects, or he'll work on other film projects that aren't at a tentpole level.

 

If Taylor can deliver on time and on budget, he can probably keep getting feature work. Though his next may be a lower level.

There are directors who basically have careers that are entirely underperformers and flops. Hasn't Renny Harlin basically been cashing in on Die Hard 2 for the past two decades or so?

 

Who runs Skydance again? Viacom which owns Paramount has a new CEO, a lawyer, since 2006 when Sumner Redstone stepped down.

 

David Ellison. Megan Ellison's brother, but they have separate production studios. Skydance is his and they've got a pretty good track record.

[zackzack]

And T2 in real 4K remastered image quality

 

Good call

[zackzack]

 

 

David Ellison. Megan Ellison's brother, but they have separate production studios. Skydance is his and they've got a pretty good track record.

 

These are the children of the Oracle CEO?