South Korea Box Office

[Olive]

16 minutes ago, yjs said:

so I think the Wailing really cut off CW's late legs.. It's the current go-to movie and the fact that it's a very controversial one got Korean audience very excited too. Because of a slight totalitarianism that we have here you just have to be up to date and join "the debate" everywhere you go, at work, on TV/the internet: "Haven't you seen it yet? I think this was this and that was that..." CW on the other hand was more like a unanimous crowd pleaser which ironically made it a little less interesting.

 

another thing about CW is that,

 

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it seems many of the Korean audience couldn't relate to Captain's motive to support Bucky and thought Bucky was despicable to murder Tony's parents, even thought it wasn't under his free will. Since patricide is like the biggest taboo here and obeying to parents/respecting the elderly is such important issues people just couldn't root for Cap/Bucky anymore and the most of the reactions were like "poor, Tony.. I hate Captain now!"

 

I think the this can explain the same bad legs in CHina too, most audience are team Iron man.

[yjs]

2 minutes ago, Olive said:

I think the this can explain the same bad legs in CHina too, most audience are team Iron man.

haha yeah! not to mention that RDJ/Iron Man was already the most popular avenger while CA people felt is "too big and muscular and nice and clean cut"  haha

[cannastop]

@yjs

 

Was Zootopia the subject of any controversy or discussion in South Korea?

[yjs]

56 minutes ago, cannastop said:

@yjs

 

Was Zootopia the subject of any controversy or discussion in South Korea?

 

not really, most of the racial/immigrants undertones got neglected by the audience in the first place and it was more received as a more simple "don't judge a book by its cover" fable which can get unanimous approval. think the society here is wired and thought as "homogenous" and people fail to notice that racism or immigrant issues can also be a thing here. even the in your face kinda lines like "bunnies can call each other cute but when other animals do it, it's a little..." didn't seem to resonate much.

 

one minor interesting discussion on Twitter tho, raised by a group of feminist/liberal users, is that even though it borrows certain problems from the real world, it never actually directly addresses them and rather deliberately simplifies it as "you are all equally bad to misjudge people based on prejudice" so that it claims even the obvious prominent threats and dangers also as just "prejudice" and makes the social problems that they borrowed look less serious which would be a bad influence for the real world. like,

 

 

after all, the predators literally hunted down and slaughtered the preys and it is natural for the preys to have that innate fear and the way how Nick threatened Judy and got disappointed to see Judy putting up her guards was a little unfair to Judy they felt, juxtaposing the situation to the real world where women raise awareness about misogyny and men are all offended and go "why do you treat me like a potential offender/criminal".

 

I personally think it had some fair, valid points but then again, it was Twitter, which serves more as a minority SNS for the liberals, and for the most of the audience the movie was just a sweet, very very well-made family entertainment that also pleases the adults.

Edited May 19, 2016 by yjs

[Rsyu]

The handmaiden (아가씨), from oldboy director Park Chan-wook got some great reactions at Cannes film festival. Release date is set at June 1, and it is going to be distributed to 175 countries worldwide which is a record for a korean film. 

[yjs]

1 hour ago, Rsyu said:

The handmaiden (아가씨), from oldboy director Park Chan-wook got some great reactions at Cannes film festival. Release date is set at June 1, and it is going to be distributed to 175 countries worldwide which is a record for a korean film. 

 

I'm so excited for this! based on Sarah Water's Fingersmith and super graphic lesbian romance-thriller set in the Japanese colonial era. love it already!

[Rsyu]

6 hours ago, yjs said:

 

I'm so excited for this! based on Sarah Water's Fingersmith and super graphic lesbian romance-thriller set in the Japanese colonial era. love it already!

 

Haha yeah, it's definitely something you don't see on the screen every day which is always nice. I'm kind of polarized when it comes to Park Chan-wook; some of his films I really like, but others like Thirst or Stoker I'm really not a big fan of so, while I'm looking forward to it, I'm trying not to go into this with too high expectations.

 

BTW have you seen The wailing? what were your thoughts on that?

[druv10]

12 hours ago, Olive said:

I think the this can explain the same bad legs in CHina too, most audience are team Iron man.

Interesting theory, I've watched it 3 times and can certainly agree with the sentiment. I don't see how anyone can favor Cap at the end of movie especially how things play out. It's a depressing ending which may have caused lousy legs throughout WW.

[Sam]

13 hours ago, yjs said:

so I think the Wailing really cut off CW's late legs.. It's the current go-to movie and the fact that it's a very controversial one got Korean audience very excited too. Because of a slight totalitarianism that we have here you just have to be up to date and join "the debate" everywhere you go, at work, on TV/the internet: "Haven't you seen it yet? I think this was this and that was that..." CW on the other hand was more like a unanimous crowd pleaser which ironically made it a little less interesting.

 

another thing about CW is that,

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

it seems many of the Korean audience couldn't relate to Captain's motive to support Bucky and thought Bucky was despicable to murder Tony's parents, even though it wasn't under his free will. Since patricide is like the biggest taboo here and obeying to parents/respecting the elderly is such an important issue people just couldn't root for Cap/Bucky anymore and the most of the reactions were like "poor, Tony.. I hate Captain now!"

 

 

That's an interesting theory. Heck, I agree with it. I can't find myself supporting Cap even though I'm a big fan of the character. Tony Stark was really sympathetic, not just in the final scene but in the whole movie, and RDJ sold it well. Whereas the character we should be sympathetic to with the tragic past, brainwashing stuff, failed at selling the part. No amount of acting and prettiness from Chris Evans can compensate for that black hole. 

 

10 hours ago, Rsyu said:

The handmaiden (아가씨), from oldboy director Park Chan-wook got some great reactions at Cannes film festival. Release date is set at June 1, and it is going to be distributed to 175 countries worldwide which is a record for a korean film. 

 

Another movie from high profile director! Yes! 

 

I am ready for some record breaking numbers (for an R-rated movie that I assume it'll be)

 

 

[Fullbuster]

16 minutes ago, druv10 said:

Interesting theory, I've watched it 3 times and can certainly agree with the sentiment. I don't see how anyone can favor Cap at the end of movie especially how things play out. It's a depressing ending which may have caused lousy legs throughout WW.

Nobody having watched The Winter Soldier can be Team IM : a government, an organization, can be infiltrated by dangerous people..These heroes need to be independant to avoid such a risk. There also are all the risks because of bureaucracy : while the bureaucrats will debate and take their time as they always do the bad guys won't have this problem.

Plus, the UN hosts some dictatorships that rarely favor the common good.

 

Iron Man didn't think seriously about these problems, he did the same mistake with Ultron.

 

Team Captain America all the way, best Marvel hero

[yjs]

3 hours ago, Rsyu said:

BTW have you seen The wailing? what were your thoughts on that?

 

not yet, but from what I heard from my friends I might have to skip this one... :--P still curious tho!

[Olive]

Thursday admissions

The wailing 186,925 (-40%) 3,205,792    

CW  21,899    (-67%)    8,370,631

Angry Birds 10,183  (new)    11,940

Allegiant 578 (-94%)  98,519

Zootopia 397 (-60%)    4,697,765

 

[chasmmi]

10 hours ago, yjs said:

 

I'm so excited for this! based on Sarah Water's Fingersmith and super graphic lesbian romance-thriller set in the Japanese colonial era. love it already!

 

I really want to go see this, but am not sure how odd it will look to have a foreigner sat alone in a subtitleless cinema watching a Korean 'lesbian drama'  

[yjs]

44 minutes ago, Sam said:

Another movie from high profile director! Yes! 

 

I am ready for some record breaking numbers (for an R-rated movie that I assume it'll be)

 

the current record holder for the top grossing R-rated movie is a local film called "Inside Men" by dir. Woo Min-Ho which did about 9M admissions.

Snowpiercer did slightly more than that but it managed to get a PG-13 rating here. (15+) which is weird cause I've always thought it also got an R here.

basically in Korea it's rather hard to get an R rating solely for violence but the rating is very strict for sex scenes or thematic elements that are not "comfortable" for those old people in the ratings board. (Carol got an R with a warning for the "potential bad influence for juveniles.") 

 

The Handmaiden from what I heard has very graphic lesbian sex scenes so it getting an R is a given and the "thematic element" would also chase away some conservative audience so it won't do big numbers like 9M but hopefully it can still do 4M, which would be the biggest Park Chan-Wook number to date after JSA. (Most of his past movies did 2-3M. Stoker bombed miserably with mere 400K tho.) 

[yjs]

46 minutes ago, Fullbuster said:

Nobody having watched The Winter Soldier can be Team IM : a government, an organization, can be infiltrated by dangerous people..These heroes need to be independant to avoid such a risk. There also are all the risks because of bureaucracy : while the bureaucrats will debate and take their time as they always do the bad guys won't have this problem.

Plus, the UN hosts some dictatorships that rarely favor the common good.

 

Iron Man didn't think seriously about these problems, he did the same mistake with Ultron.

 

Team Captain America all the way, best Marvel hero

 

I personally agree to all this but the debate in Korea wasn't even about the civil war. People didn't really seem to follow that plotline cause most of them were just casual moviegoers and not really savvy about MCU's timeline and history. 

but it was more about Captain having basic sympathy and decency towards IM for having to lose his parents to Bucky. People all complained that Captain took sides and only cared for Bucky but not for Tony even though Tony is also his friend. and the audience felt Bucky should have at least pretended to look sorry for what he had done even though he had no memory of it, but instead he beat the crap out of Tony. with Captain's assistance. That's what they mostly complained about. haha. Maybe IM has been a much bigger franchise than CM must have been a factor for this too. Many were like "who the hell is Bucky?" so they couldn't really sympathize with the Cap/Bucky storyline. 

[yjs]

 

hahaha speaking of Winter Soldier, the flashback scene where Bucky implicitly invites Steve to move in with him rent-free after Steve losing her mom,

the Korean translation for the sub was waaay weird and it said: "...you wanna do it?", which almost read as "wanna f--" and it felt super suggestive. ?

[yjs]

17 minutes ago, chasmmi said:

 

I really want to go see this, but am not sure how odd it will look to have a foreigner sat alone in a subtitleless cinema watching a Korean 'lesbian drama'  

 

haha want me to join you?  

[Fullbuster]

12 minutes ago, yjs said:

 

I personally agree to all this but the debate in Korea wasn't even about the civil war. People didn't really seem to follow that plotline cause most of them were just casual moviegoers and not really savvy about MCU's timeline and history. 

 

  Hide contents

but it was more about Captain having basic sympathy and decency towards IM for having to lose his parents to Bucky. People all complained that Captain took sides and only cared for Bucky but not for Tony even though Tony is also his friend. and the audience felt Bucky should have at least pretended to look sorry for what he had done even though he had no memory of it, but instead he beat the crap out of Tony. with Captain's assistance. That's what they mostly complained about. haha. Maybe IM has been a much bigger franchise than CM must have been a factor for this too. Many were like "who the hell is Bucky?" so they couldn't really sympathize with the Cap/Bucky storyline. 

 

I see.

I can understand.

 

Quote

Many were like "who the hell is Bucky?" so they couldn't really sympathize with the Cap/Bucky storyline. 

The problem could be that : if they have no idea who Bucky is and what he did for CA in the first movie and what he suffered from in the second one they can't judge accordingly.

Bucky was CA's childhood friend and sacrificed himself to save him and the country from the Nazis, after that he has been mind-controlled like a robot for decades without knowing what he did.

Spoiler

How could CA abandon him? I would have done the same. IM targeted the wrong enemy, his anger was perfectly normal and understandable but letting him kill Bucky would be unfair. Bucky is certainly sorry about that but you need to remind he's shocked, pursued in a world he doesn't know and nobody left apart from CA, he didn't have time to think too much about that.

 

[chasmmi]

51 minutes ago, yjs said:

 

haha want me to join you?  

 

Hey if you can find your way to a cinema near Bundang  But don't you go telling folks here how awful my Korean is, my only claim to fame on this site is being the token Korean (despite being British, white and well thinking about it, if its good enough for Hollywood... )

[yjs]

8 hours ago, Fullbuster said:

The problem could be that : if they have no idea who Bucky is and what he did for CA in the first movie and what he suffered from in the second one they can't judge accordingly.

Bucky was CA's childhood friend and sacrificed himself to save him and the country from the Nazis, after that he has been mind-controlled like a robot for decades without knowing what he did.

yeah, totally! I think there's definitely a reason why it's Captain America 3, not the Avengers 3.