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Gatsby77

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Posts posted by Gatsby77

  1. This Variety piece is worth reading.

    It goes to what I wrote above, about Aquaman's failure not being specific to the film (or Warner Bros.) itself, but rather superhero fatigue more generally.

    Although this author's point can be summarized as "Bring back the A-list characters," he does a good job of reviewing the evolution and cultural impact of comic book TV shows and movies from the 1960s (Batman TV show) to present.

    https://variety.com/2023/film/columns/fall-of-comic-book-movie-culture-inevitable-superman-batman-deadpool-1235858728/ 

     

  2. How to Lie With Statistics, an example.

    Pretend the calendar doesn't exist.

    Publish international results for a film released during Christmas / New Year's week - and compare those seemingly robust weekday results to those of films that were released outside the holiday season, and then brag about how the former film is outpacing the others.

    Put another way, basically no chance the international take for this ultimately matches Black Adam's $225 million.

  3. I bet The Rock's going to be popping the bubbly early this weekend.

    It takes skill to open to less than half of Black Adam - but somehow Momoa and company managed to pull it off.

    Feel kinda' bad for Patrick Wilson, tho.

    1) Been a huge fan of his ever since Hard Candy

    2) Physically, he *put in the work* for his role this time around.

  4. But some of this is likely not specific to Aquaman 2 itself, but rather general superhero fatigue.

    I know...I know...

    But look at the top films of 2023.

    Barbie and Super Mario Bros. took the top 2 slots, and only 3 superhero films were among the top 10.

    Plus - the top comic book film of the year (in the # 3 slot) was an animated one, not officially part of either the MCU or DCEU.

    The Flash and The Marvels fell well outside the top 20, and Blue Beetle and Shazam 2 (and likely now Aquaman 2) fell well outside the top 30.

    The predictable result?

    Fewer comic book films we be greenlit going forward and those that are will likely have smaller budgets.

  5. Einstein once said, "If you can't explain a thing simply, you don't understand it well enough."

    I'd submit if you need to spill mountains of ink to make your point - and account for nearly 30% of the posts in a given thread, you may be overdoing it a bit.

    • Aquaman 2's opening weekend was 40% below that of The Marvels.
    • Its Rotten Tomatoes critical score is also 40% below that of The Marvels.

    Therefore...

  6. On 12/25/2023 at 1:57 AM, Aman619 said:

    good point about the running.  But did Cruise run?  I thought he was great!  Now, having read age books I see he wasn't visually perfect, or close to the mental picture every rider created in their head.  But as Ive posted here a lot on the subject:  Cruise's Reacher was a small, tightly wound MF who could think on his feet and take out the bad guys every time.  Not knowing he was supposed to be 6'5" and 250, Cruise was just fine for me. Probably my favorite role of his.  (I havent seen more than parts of the MI films.)

    Another *huge* issue with the Tom Cruise Reacher is that Reacher doesn't drive.

    And then the trailer for the first film puts him behind the wheel of a car as a major setpiece.

    Don't get me wrong - both Cruise films were better than they had any right to be (including the resolution to that car chase), but Cruise wasn't the character from the books.

    Ritchson fits *far* better.

    I hope he gets a Batman role, or Superman role - or whatever major comic book role is next in the cards...and then knocks it out of the park.

  7. Weird.

    I remember the critical and theatrical failure of BvS leading to the cancellation of 4 planned DCEU movies (Justice League 2, Cyborg, Ben Affleck's Batman, and Deathstroke).

    Wherein the catastrophic 69% 2nd weekend drop led to WB panicking, reworking Justice League Part 1 to lighten it up with Whedon, and then - audiences simply didn't show up for it anyway - having already been burned by the prior film.

    But hey - at least we've still got Ezra Miller :whee:

  8. On 12/1/2023 at 3:23 AM, Prince Namor said:

    ‘NAPOLEON’ & ‘FLOWER MOON’ FLOPPED HARDER THAN ‘MARVELS’ — WHY THE DIFFERENT NARRATIVE?

    “The Marvels” is a flop. Narratives as to why greatly differ. Yet when male-directed and led films like “Napoleon” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” perform even worse with similar budgets, they’re lauded as successes. Why is this? Let me quote a writer from two sentences ago: “male-directed and led films”.

    Could it really just be that? Aren’t both “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” part of an Apple TV+ 5-dimensional-chess marketing strategy that’s totally OK with them losing millions? Even if that were the case – instead of being massively overstated as an argument in publications like Forbes and Deadline – it still doesn’t change the resulting box office measure of audience interest.

    Let’s dive into a bunch of numbers. They’re fun, I promise:

    The Marvels

    Budget: $220 million
    Opening U.S. weekend: $46 million
    Global to date (3 weeks): $187 million
    Box Office Narrative: Flop

    Killers of the Flower Moon

    Budget: $200 million
    Opening U.S. weekend: $23 million
    Global to date (6 weeks): $151 million
    Box Office Narrative: Moderately Positive

    Napoleon

    Budget: $200 million
    Opening U.S. weekend (+Thanksgiving): $32 million
    Global to date (1 week): $79 million
    Box Office Narrative: Triumphant

    All three had very similar budgets after their various tax breaks. “The Marvels” cost a bit more at $220 million to $200 million. It also had double the opening weekend compared to “Killers of the Flower Moon” and a 40% higher opening weekend than “Napoleon”, which got the benefit of an extra day in Thanksgiving.

    “The Marvels” performance has spurred a lot of conversation about whether there’s an audience for women in superhero movies. First thing’s first – what I’m about to write isn’t an assessment of the quality of any of these three films. This is about how we measure audience interest and describe a woman-directed and led film as a flop when two others of similar budgets, directed and led by men do worse and are called successes.

    Women-Led Superhero Films

    Since a sample size of one is pretty meaningless, let’s set the stage with other women-led superhero movies. “Captain Marvel” is the 8th highest earning MCU movie domestically, and 10th worldwide. That means it outpaces 25 other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe domestically, and 23 globally. This is even more impressive when you consider it has just the 20th highest budget of all MCU films.

    To put this in perspective, “Captain Marvel” made more domestically than any single Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, or Ant-Man movie. Only Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the Avengers themselves have had films that earned more.

    “Captain Marvel” is the fourth-highest solo outing in the MCU, and that’s only if we’re really considering “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as a solo outing. It is the second highest debut solo outing after “Black Panther”. Does it ever got talked about this way, or analyzed for its success? Is it referred to as proof that women-led superhero movies make money. Not really.

    “Black Widow” is harder to assess for two reasons: It came out during the height of the COVID pandemic, in 2021. It also had a day-and-date release on Disney+, meaning it launched in theaters and streaming on the same day. While it’s a popular target as a failure narrative on social media, it had the fourth highest domestic box office of 2021. It made $183 million in theaters, but its simultaneous online premiere earned it at least another $125 million. This would give it $308 million domestic, or 21st out of 33 films – reasonably average.

    Perhaps more revealing is that as a debut solo film, it would be behind Black Panther’s, Captain Marvel’s, Iron Man’s, and Spider-Man’s – if you consider Spider-Man as only debuting within the MCU. It would be ahead of debuts by Doctor Strange, Shang-Chi (which came out the same year but had a dedicated theatrical window), Captain America, Thor, and every single Ant-Man movie. Some of these you’ve got to take with a grain of salt – Captain America and Thor were building a franchise that wasn’t established yet. Others, you’ve got to look at and admit that if 3 Ant-Man movies get Paul Rudd the face of an Avengers sequel, “Black Widow” star Scarlett Johansson should’ve gotten a little more than having to sue Disney for stealing her profit cut.

    That’s the MCU. For The DC Extended Universe, “Wonder Woman” remains the highest earner by a wide margin at $412 million domestic. It’s third in global earnings behind “Aquaman” and “Batman v Superman”.

    “Birds of Prey” is a favorite to bash on conservative social media. It places 10th in the DCEU with $201 million globally. Sure, its run was truncated by the beginning of COVID, but it’s still not great…until you consider it had the smallest budget of any DCEU film at $82 million. Only “Shazam!” had a similar budget at $85 million – everything else has cost $120 million+. The smallest budget doing better than several other films, including two that cost 50% more and released this year? That places it higher than expectations, at least by a small margin.

    “Wonder Woman 1984” is the worst performing DCEU movie, but came out mid-pandemic. HBO Max (now Max) argued that the movie accelerated its subscriber forecast to hit goals two years ahead of their forecast. Hold on to that argument, it’s going to become important in a minute.

    But It’s a Marketing Strategy, Babe!

    Where are we going with this? Women-led movies in the MCU have demonstrated that they can at the very least hold par with male-led ones. They have had successes. They have had average performances. Does “The Marvels” undo all of that as a failure? Let’s apply that logic across the board: if under-performing to the extent of “The Marvels” indicates women shouldn’t lead superhero films, then two films under-performing to the extent of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” should also indicate men shouldn’t lead historical epics. It’s the same logic, double the sample size.

    But that’s a ridiculous argument? Yes, that’s the point. It’s all a ridiculous argument. Let’s get into how ridiculo–

    BUT WAIT – Apple TV+ made both “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” as part of a marketing strategy of original content with a theatrical window where it doesn’t matter if they lose money so long as they something else goes here no one can tell me what exactly.

    I’ll let Anthony D’Alessandro at Deadline carry the water:

    “Wake up to the fact that Apple and Disney’s goals couldn’t be more separate. One is a tech business with a streaming service, and the other is a content-driven conglom that extends into travel lifestyle and merchandising. Two very different businesses. Film finance sources tell me that a $200M production cost on Killers of the Flower Moon is literally an advertising expense for Apple, and its P&L is different from the way that The Marvels would be assessed. At the end of the day, it’s not Apple’s goal to make money in the theatrical business. They don’t care about profit in TV and motion pictures. Disney’s goals and plans are similar to Max, Paramount+, Peacock, etc., and they’re beating the aforementioned.

    “However, all streaming services associated with the majors are still losing money. For Apple, theatrical is a bonus on Killers of the Flower Moon, and they didn’t make the movie for theatrical, rather, locking people into their ecosystem. This compared to the fact that Disney institutional shareholders demand short-term profitably from their OTT service and content.”

    He loses sentence structure at the end there, but the passion is evident. If you’re looking for a precedent that’s similar to Apple’s approach here, consider what Epic Games Store started doing within the gaming industry in 2019 by providing games to consumers at a financial loss in exchange for building market share. That storefront has yet to turn a profit. In fact, there was one organization that hated the strategy so much they once argued in court that sacrificing profits for market share on a digital platform was dishonest and a dealbreaker for business partners. That baby’s name? Albert Einste- I mean that organization’s name? Apple Inc. So they’re hypocrites. Of course, that’s not big news. It just amuses me.

    But you know what, it’s a beautiful November day outside, let’s just let ’em have this one. Let’s pretend producers don’t care about making money and corporate loss projection is a replacement for box office when measuring audience attendance. What? Yeah, let’s just do it anyway. If you accept all this at face value, then you also have to consider the two shining examples of it: what “Black Widow” did for Disney+ and “Wonder Woman 1984” did for HBO Max. If you excuse “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” for doing far worse despite the pandemic being a lesser obstacle at the box office, then you’ve got to include these two as triumphs and yet further demonstrations of the success of women-led superhero films. Making more would be one of the biggest no-brainers in film history. You cannot argue this is the strategy for this year’s films while ignoring the two films that best succeeded with that strategy.

    Now, the argument that’s made about “The Marvels” is that it proves a lack of audience interest. How would “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” not prove the same while having worse numbers? People are not deciding to see or not see a movie in the theater because Apple’s marketing strategy might be OK with a loss.

    “Oh babe, I’m sorry, I don’t feel like seeing ‘Napoleon’ cause Apple’s OK with a financial loss as a marketing expense.”

    Date says that, tell them you forgot to return some videos. It’s a red flag, they’re a psychopath, get a cat. No one makes a movie-viewing decision that way. Audiences make viewing decisions based on – get this – whether they want to see the movie.

    The argument against women-led superhero films is based on a lack of audience interest in “The Marvels” as measured by box office, the same metric that shows worse performance for the similarly budgeted “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon”. If the lack of audience interest is true because of a metric, it’s not solely true for the one film where you want it to be true, but no others. It’s either an accurate metric, or it isn’t. Box office is the most accurate metric we have for paid audience attendance.

    If audiences don’t attend “The Marvels”, and that one statistical outlier is an argument to not make women-led superhero films, then its doing markedly better than two male-led historical films of similar budgets is also an argument to not make male-led historical films. Both arguments are ridiculous, but they are consistent with each other. If you think both kinds of films shouldn’t be made anymore, I disagree, but at least you’re consistent. If you make the first argument and excuse the second, you’re just playing pretend.

    The Streaming Side

    I’d add that “The Marvels” also feeds into Disney+ and is going to sell a lot more branded content than “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. Its indirect profits will be exponentially greater.

    In terms of streaming, it’s not even a contest. It’s estimated that globally, Disney+ has about 150 million paid subscribers. Apple TV+ has about 25 million paid. Those numbers both expand when including free promotional subscriptions, but even with this, Apple TV+ numbers pale in comparison to those of Disney+. That means in the end, a lot more eyes are going to see “The Marvels” than “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”.

    If just 10% of Disney+ paid subscribers watch “The Marvels”, that’s 15 million subscribers. To equal that number, 60% of Apple TV+ subscribers would have to watch “Killers of the Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. If 20% of Disney+ paid subscribers watch it, Apple is incapable of matching that number. So what are we using to gauge lack of audience interest in “The Marvels” that isn’t also true for the two historical epics? More people have seen “The Marvels” in the theater. It’s had a much better opening weekend. It’s made more globally than “Flower Moon” in half the time. Both its U.S. and international totals outpace the others. Far more people will see it on streaming.

    Matthew Beloni puts it bluntly on Puck:

    “Will Killers of the Flower Moon help bring people to Apple TV+ when it debuts there? Sure, though that service has only about 15 to 20 million subscribers in the U.S., according to Parrot Analytics. In all likelihood, The Marvels will also be very meaningful to Disney as a Disney+ title because it will satisfy the Marvel fans who subscribe for exactly this kind of content. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the most recent Marvel “flop,” debuted at No. 2 on Nielsen’s streaming top 10 for movies when it dropped on Disney+ in May; it was top 5 overall that week. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 debuted at No. 1 on the film chart, and No. 3 overall. The Marvel movies do really well on streaming, and arguably do more to add value to Disney+ than a Scorsese limited series masquerading as a movie will ever do for Apple TV+, given the greater scale of Disney+ and the importance to its bottom line.”

    So what measure are we using to judge “The Marvels” as failing in a way that “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon” won’t? By extension, what measure are conservatives using to argue women-led superhero movies shouldn’t be made, that wouldn’t count double for male-led historical epics. They each cost about the same. It’s not audience attendance, where “The Marvels” outpaces both. It’s neither domestic nor global take, where “The Marvels” outpaces both. It’s not streaming viewership, where “The Marvels” will enjoy an enormous advantage. Where is the argument that it uniquely lacks viewer interest in a way the others don’t?

    If “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” perform worse, how can you argue that women-led superhero movies shouldn’t be made if we still believe in male-led historical epics?

    But we’re measuring superhero films – which are currently much more popular – against historical epics, whose heyday has passed? That’s not the flex they think it is. The argument’s based on audience interest. Reminding us that women-led superhero films tend to have a higher ceiling than male-led historical epics runs counter to the idea that we should make fewer women led-superhero films.

    Other Films We Shouldn’t Make, I Guess

    I’ll mention again I’m not judging the quality of any of these films, their genres, or these streaming services. I tend to like historical epics better than superhero films. I tend to think Apple TV+ is a much better value than Disney+, their original content has much more consistency, and my series of the year last year was “Pachinko”, one of their originals. But we’re talking about numbers, how those numbers define our narratives of success, and who is offered opportunity as a result of those narratives being accurate or inaccurate. My point is that treating measurements like they’re teams instead of measurements is ridiculous. Doesn’t matter if I like one better than the other – my preference doesn’t magically change numbers.

    What numbers indicate doesn’t change based on how we want to feel about them. I’m talking about how numbers represent audience interest, and the justifications being used to argue against one type of film – and thus argue against who makes or leads them. We haven’t even addressed those historical epics having the added advantage of household names like Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott behind them, or A-list stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix leading them. They are names and selling points in a way “The Marvels” director Nia DaCosta and star Brie Larson aren’t yet – and those bigger names and selling points are performing worse.

    You don’t say this audience’s lesser attendance magically doesn’t count as a negative, but this audience’s greater attendance does. You’re not going to stop making male-led historical epics because of two flops any more than you should stop making women-led superhero movies because of one. They are all flops. Either that indicates something for all of them, or we look at all the other precedents we have and decide it’s a bit soon to overreact based on an infinitesimal sample size.

    By the way, what was the film already in its second weekend that “Napoleon” couldn’t beat in its first? The Rachel Zegler-led action movie “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”. But that’s an established franchise? Sure, and it cost $100 million to make, or half the budget of either “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. And Zegler is hardly as household a name as DiCaprio or Phoenix…or Scorsese or Scott for that matter.

    For that matter, Hunger Games will easily turn a profit while Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible struggle to break even this year. By the logic being applied to “The Marvels”, I guess that means we should only make action-adventures with women leads from now on.

    Every argument about how “The Marvels” proves audience disinterest in women-led films fails to hold up. The best performing movie of the year is “Barbie”. “Captain Marvel” and “Wonder Woman” are among the best performing superhero films in their respective universes. If you’re going to excuse under-performance by “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” as part of a marketing strategy to accelerate streaming subscriptions, then the effect “Black Widow” and “Wonder Woman 1984” had on Disney+ and HBO Max are the shining examples of that marketing strategy succeeding, and must be considered further examples of the success of women-led superhero films. If you’re going to consider the singular failure of “The Marvels” as overriding that mountain of previous evidence, then you must also consider double the number of similarly budgeted, worse performing films as evidence that male-led historical epics can no longer succeed and shouldn’t be made.

    If you’re going to use a measurement, apply it consistently, not just when you feel like. If you cannot do that, what point does your argument have? If you cannot make an argument without replacing evidence with your feelings, what good are you? I am sick of this wildly_fanciful_statement. It may only be box office narratives, but that gives men more public shielding to keep handing off larger budgets to other men regardless of terrible performance. That impacts who has opportunities, the art we get to see, and the art that shapes our cultural and political norms.

    We pretend like this doesn’t matter, after 20 years of seeing ESPN debates about dudes’ feelings overriding evidence, a presentation format that then overtook 24 hour-news networks so they do the same, so the country does the same at the voting booth. Then we scratch our heads wondering how it happened, as if this nonsense doesn’t test in entertainment circles where there’s little consequence before being mainstreamed everywhere else. The extensive testing of social media brigading and disinformation campaigns through Gamergate. They always test normalizing this mess on movies, on games, in sports, in the places where they think others are least likely to push back. When it’s mainstreamed in these places, it’s easy to then mainstream in the news and in politics. Then we’re shocked and wonder how it’s so sudden when we had plenty of warning and just ignored those early chances to push back.

    Why write 3,000+ words about it? Why write these articles pushing back on these narratives multiple times a year? Because if the argument is that women can fail only once, and that’s it, that’s their chance, we shouldn’t give them work anymore – and men can fail harder and repeatedly but be praised and rewarded for it and given more chances – then we are shutting out half of our talent in any field – filmmaking, engineering, governance, whatever it might be. That narrative has no place anywhere. Imagine shutting out half your possible talent and thinking you can make progress in this world. What a narcissistic theft of the things we could accomplish.

    I should wrap this up in a more streamlined way, end on some kind of high note, but that’s it, that’s the sentence. That’s the everything I can say about these constant narratives that seek to dismantle the opportunities for so much talent in this world: what a narcissistic theft of the things we could accomplish.

    Interesting article.

    I mean - the math doesn't lie.

    Napoleon was obvious Oscar bait, and instead it:

    • Opened to # 2 over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend
    • Received an atrocious B- CinemaScore
    • Dropped out of the top 5 in its 2nd weekend
    • Did less in 10 days domestically than The Marvels did in 3.

    At this rate, it'll be available for streaming by New Year's Eve.

  9. On 11/30/2023 at 2:04 PM, Dr. Balls said:

    I find it a little funny that the Glitterati brow-beat and look down on comic book movies - which not only helped prop up their hilariously self-indulgent and glorified masturbatory profession - but gave people insane paychecks for running around doing other-worldly activities for the purpose of entertainment.

    Do these imbeciles not understand that comic book movies are simply a differently-dressed action movie? Or gangster movie? Let me see:

    1. Good guy who triumphs over bad guy. Check.

    or

    2. Bad guy who triumphs over other bad guys. Check.

    or

    3. The story about a bunch of people taking matters into their own hands with no regard to authority. Check.

    I could go on and parallel practically any movie that involves action or weapons to a comic book movie. Scorsese may think he's got the 'What I Make Is Cool, What You Make Sucks' ground - but last I checked, Goodfellas and The Boys stand on equal moral ground in character development, with the only determining difference being one cast wears expensive Italian shoes.

    Another glaring example of idiotic Hollywood hypocrisy. I imagine for an encore, they'll make another "guns are bad" commercial featuring actors who use guns in movies. :eyeroll:

    Yeah - all of this.

    I love John Woo - but his moralizing about superhero movies when he made A Better Tomorrow and Face/Off?

    To be clear, Face/Off is one of my favorite films of the '90s - and among my top 10 all-time action films, but it's almost a cartoon. And with few tweaks, it could have been a really good Punisher movie.

    Ditto - I can respect Jodie Foster not wanting to appear in superhero flicks, but I'd much rather see her as a one-off character in a superhero project (a la her colleagues Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver, & Amy Adams) than in some of her own past misfires (like Nell).

    You can't headline a mediocre episode of Black Mirror on the one hand and then write-off an entire genre of film on the other without absolutely drowning in hypocrisy.

  10. On 11/21/2023 at 5:23 PM, Zonker said:

    See, I don't think the movie is pretending that at all.  Before the movie was even written, the foundation was set with the toy Barbie having a history of being both: 

    a) a certain physical body type often thought of as an ideal; while also
    b) at least in recent years, a vessel for the widest possible career aspirations for women (Astronaut Barbie, anyone?)

    Re. b) I'd disagree with the "in recent years" bit.

    Barbie has been showcasing wide-ranging aspirational careers for women (beyond just teacher or nurse) for decades, since near its inception.

    Astronaut Barbie is a perfect example - the first Astronaut Barbie doll was released in 1965, years before the moon landing.

  11. On 11/19/2023 at 3:02 PM, paperheart said:

    There is no getting around the fact that this is a historic bomb but the tragedy is that Silvermane is not here to enjoy it

    Gitesh is not necessarily right, tho.

    Steel also dropped 78% in its 2nd weekend.

    Have to wait to see weekend actuals to determine if it actually bombed harder than Steel.