mother! | 09.15.17 | Paramount | Darren Aronofsky, Jennifer Lawrence | Razzie Awards frontrunner

[straggler]

17 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

 

Right it's being rejected by mainstream audiences. In order for it to be divisive, most people who see it need to be more mixed on it. Since most people are part of the mainstream audience, most people are rejecting the movie. 

 

For the record "not designed for mainstream audiences" is the biggest bullshit ever. 

That is only if you make CinemaScore synonymous with mainstream audiences. I see a lot of divided reactions on social media as among critics. Been that way since it premiered. Also see very divided reactions on RTs. So how many people did Cinemascore poll again? So that is the end all be all of whether something is a divisive film. Bullshit is the word. 

 

So there is no such thing as a non-commercial, non-mainstream movie? OK. All films are equally commercial regardless of everything else. Awesome.  

[Hatebox]

2 minutes ago, straggler said:

So there is no such thing as a non-commercial, non-mainstream movie? OK. All films are equally commercial regardless of everything else. Awesome.  

I think Water Bottle's point was that no-one intentionally makes a movie for it to be seen by hardly anyone. Let's remember that Black Swan could be described as 'non-mainstream' and still broke out big time.

[Water Bottle]

Just now, straggler said:

That is only if you make CinemaScore synonymous with mainstream audiences. I see a lot of divided reactions on social media as among critics. Been that way since it premiered. Also see very divided reactions on RTs. So how many people did Cinemascore poll again? So that is the end all be all of whether something is a divisive film. Bullshit is the word. 

 

So there is no such thing as a non-commercial, non-mainstream movie? OK. All films are equally commercial regardless of everything else. Awesome.  

There is no such thing as a non-commercial movie from a major film studio with a wide release. 

 

Paramount spent $30 million to make this according to BOM. They spent at least another $30 million on P&R. That means mother! needed to do $60 million to gross even. You don't expect those kind of numbers for a "non-commercial, non-mainstream" movie. 

 

Meanwhile Black Swan, another supposedly "not designed for mainstream audiences" made $100 million on a $13 million budget. You don't get anywhere near $100 million without catching on with mainstream audiences.

[grim22]

7 minutes ago, Hatebox said:

I think Water Bottle's point was that no-one intentionally makes a movie for it to be seen by hardly anyone. 

I dunno, we did get a third Human Centipede movie which im guessing was only seen by Tom Six and his crew.

 

ETA: this little excerpt from the wiki plot summary sounds like mad libs for grossing out people

 

Bill orders a 'mass castration' of the inmates, and castrates one of the prisoners (Robert LaSardo) himself. He covers his face in the blood of the inmate and later eats the cooked testicles for lunch, calling it "Energy Food." Daisy is forced to perform fellatio on Bill while Dwight is in the room. Upon completing the act, Daisy eats one of the dried clitorises, mistaking them for candy.

[TalismanRing]

6 minutes ago, grim22 said:

I dunno, we did get a third Human Centipede movie which im guessing was only seen by Tom Six and his crew.

 

ETA: this little excerpt from the wiki plot summary sounds like mad libs for grossing out people

 

 

 

 

and yet the most shocking thing about this is that it was the THIRD Human Centipede Movie. 

 

[straggler]

36 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

There is no such thing as a non-commercial movie from a major film studio with a wide release. 

 

Paramount spent $30 million to make this according to BOM. They spent at least another $30 million on P&R. That means mother! needed to do $60 million to gross even. You don't expect those kind of numbers for a "non-commercial, non-mainstream" movie. 

 

Meanwhile Black Swan, another supposedly "not designed for mainstream audiences" made $100 million on a $13 million budget. You don't get anywhere near $100 million without catching on with mainstream audiences.

There is certainly that element of the film being backed by a major studio. But Aronofsky has made movies that are not the type of films that mainstream audiences generally embrace. Requiem. The Fountain. Black Swan was imo much more conventional movie than those others or especially this one, and it still had a platformed release, not reaching 2K screens until its 7th week to give it time to find an audience. Maybe this is comparable to Malick's Tree of Life. Even the budget is on point. And that was not a commercial film. 

 

Let's just say that some movies are more commercially palatable than others without necessarily being bad movies. Some movies are art movies. I think Paramount backed this because it was Aronofsky and Jennifer and Bardem and gave Aronofsky a lot of freedom. I think this will liikely pay off in the long run but it is not for everyone.    

Edited September 16, 2017 by straggler

[Water Bottle]

3 minutes ago, straggler said:

There is certainly that element of the film being backed by a major studio. But Aronofsky has made movies that are not the type of films that mainstream audiences generally embrace. Requiem. The Fountain. Black Swan was imo much more conventional movie than those others or especially this one, and it still had a platformed release, not reaching 2K screens until its 7th week to give it time to find an audience. Maybe this is comparable to Malick's Tree of Life. Even the budget is on point. And that was not a commercial film. 

 

Let's just say that some movies are more commercially palatable than others without necessarily being bad movies. Some movies are art movies. I think Paramount backed this because it was Aronofsky and Jennifer and Bardem and gave Aronofsky a lot of freedom. I think this will liikely pay off in the long run but it is not for everyone.    

 

Tree of Life was done by the arthouse branch of FOX. It didn't have a wide release but rather a limited platform release. There are loads of differences between that film and mother!

 

I also disagree that just some movies are art movies. I think all movies are art by their very nature regardless of quality (there is bad art) or "mainstream" it is. 

 

This was a risk by Paramount sure but I think the expectation was JLaw would bring in mainstream audiences and they would make money. 

[Macleod]

19 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

 

This was a risk by Paramount sure but I think the expectation was JLaw would bring in mainstream audiences and they would make money. 

 

Aronofsky is and has always been "a risk" as far as studio filmmaking is concerned...but he's a risk that they seem to continue to be willing to take...for now. 

 

Well...it's all risk, isn't it?  But some risks seem bigger than others...

Edited September 16, 2017 by Macleod

[HesAPooka]

I've never seen a RT rating drop so much. Was at something like 8.5+ from 20+ reviews and now it's down to 6.6. It's almost like now that the public hate the movie the critics are okay with being harsher on it.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

34 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

There is no such thing as a non-commercial movie from a major film studio with a wide release. 

 

Paramount spent $30 million to make this according to BOM. They spent at least another $30 million on P&R. That means mother! needed to do $60 million to gross even. You don't expect those kind of numbers for a "non-commercial, non-mainstream" movie. 

 

Meanwhile Black Swan, another supposedly "not designed for mainstream audiences" made $100 million on a $13 million budget. You don't get anywhere near $100 million without catching on with mainstream audiences.

But a movie can catch on with mainstream audiences without necessarily being designed for them. The degree of Black Swan's success was a pleasant surprise, that doesn't mean anyone planned for that when it was greenlit. Awards success, maybe, but if Black Swan had made just  $40m it would still be considered a hit that tripled its budget, but not in break out territory.

 

All directors and studios hope their movies are successful, but hope is one thing and expectation is another. A studio expecting mother! to replicate Black Swan's success or thinking a $60m spend (between the budget and P&A) would be worth it financially, well, I'll be nice and call it extremely optimstic. Critically is another story. Anyway, we've all followed movies and box office long enough to know studios can make some...interesting decisions, and certain failures are easy to spot from a mile away.

 

So, maybe the studio expected, say, $60m, but maybe people also aren't wrong for questioning if that was ever realistic, considering its content. Now that it's opened, though, saying "It was never meant to be commercial!" can come off like a bit of an excuse but to be fair, there was a, "Yeah, I don't know about this," argument going all along before it opened.

[NoobSaibot]

1 hour ago, Hatebox said:

Dang, I knew when I saw the page count of this thread it'd be a J-Law fanboy shitshow.

 

Anyway, I'm one of the few people who still thinks Black Swan is a pretty good film so I'm sure I'll give this a go at some point.

 

Yes, Black Swan was good because it was coherent. mother! is the opposite of coherent. I have no fucking clue what they were trying to do with this, if they even knew what that was.

[Webslinger]

mother! isn't supposed to be coherent. It has a purposely dreamlike (or more appropriately, nightmarish) approach in which significant changes/additions/escalations turn on a dime and make only as much sense as necessary for viewers to gather a basic idea as to what's happening. Whether this approach works is in the eye of the beholder, but it never pretends to be straightforward in its narrative.

[AJG]

11 minutes ago, Webslinger said:

mother! isn't supposed to be coherent. It has a purposely dreamlike 

 

If only David Ayer was smart enough to come up with this lie when promoting Suicide Squad.

[baumer]

F isnt a low enough grade for this. Its beyond horrible.

[ddddeeee]

My favourite movie of the year so far.

[Cochofles]

I did not hate the film.

I was enthralled, shocked, even disgusted by some of the images, but I appreciate that it made me feel something.

Like I said, maybe this will get cult status eventually, but there is no doubt that this is flopping.

 

[TalismanRing]

11 minutes ago, Stutterng baumer Denbrough said:

F isnt a low enough grade for this. Its beyond horrible.

 

4 minutes ago, ddddeeee said:

My favourite movie of the year so far.

 

 

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Movie was decent. I liked the first half more than the second.

[MrGamer]

Pretty much sums up what I thought. 

 

[Goffe]

Seeing which people liked and didn’t like mother! makes me fairly confident I’m going to dig it a lot.

 

Now, I just have to wait for the VOD release since mother’s bombage ensures it won’t come to theaters here.