Gatsby77

Exactly -- fully 50% of Denzel's roles could have seen him replaced with "generic A-list white guy" (say...Tom Cruise) with no discernable difference. Crimson Tide Flight Magnificent Seven 2 Guns The Siege Fallen Inside Man Safe House etc. With Samuel L. Jackson? Not so...

Thor looked surprisingly low-budget with its Earth scenes. Like, three people in a desert frustrated with a Destroyer... as if someone crossed "The Terminator" with an episode of that '90s TV show "Renegade." That said,Thor 2 was (by far) the worst MCU film so far. I actually fell asleep in the theater for 20+ minutes and didn't feel like I missed anything. Couldn't tell you who the villain was to this day. I mean, because I'm a comic geek I vaguely recall its being Malek, but a) coudn't tell you anything about him and b) all I remember is the villain being The Nothing from The Neverending Story.

Saw this last night. Thought it was surprisingly good. I'd put it as an above-average MCU film - better than Thor / The First Avenger / Iron Man 2 / Doctor Strange, but not as good as the better films they've produced. And not in the same league as Wonder Woman. Really excited that they included Monica Rambeau as well. She's the Captain Marvel I grew up on in Avengers / West Coast Avengers in the 80s.

As a (slightly) older white dude, I could see that Sam Jackson usually plays the "same guy in every movie'' but I don't think that's a bad thing. As one review put it about a decade ago, "When you cast Denzel Washington, most often he could be replaced by a white actor - a la Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt - and you wouldn't notice the difference. But when you cast Samuel L. Jackson, you never forget that his character is black."

Apparently: 1) He has the biggest box office total of any actor in history. (A title he took from Harrison Ford a few years ago.) 2) He has the record for the largest number of non-porn film credits of the 1990s (an average of 4-5 films per year for the entire decade).

Umm...re-read my post and or the article to which it links. It's talking about an organized boycott of The Force Awakens, not The Last Jedi.

Again - anyone who takes _any_ stock in the "Audience Reviews" on Rotten Tomatoes is doing it wrong. It's infinitely exploitable -- not just by trolls, but also by paid studio hacks and bots -- both for and against a film. Bosco - Here's good coverage of the plot to derail The Last Jedi's audience scores: https://deadline.com/2017/12/star-wars-the-last-jedi-rotten-tomatoes-metacritic-imdb-users-cinemascore-posttrak-1202228837/ Main takeaway: Only trust audience scores from CinemaScore or PostTrack - as this is audience data collected in real-time via exit polls, vs. online polls that are subject to manipulation.

I don't recall, but I do know that "Men's Rights Advocates"/Alt-Right folks organized -- and then bragged about -- the results of their boycott of The Force Awakens' bottom line. That movie's great sin was casting a woman, African American and Latino in lead roles rather than the usual white men. Her's one wrteup: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/boycott-star-wars-vii-movement-833102 They tried again with Rogue One. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/star-wars-boycott-failed/

? I was referring the film's (objective) financial success, not any (subjective) assessments about its quality. It could easily make $750+ million worldwide and still be trash (like, say...Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Suicide Squad). I agree that recency bias is stupid, but also think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes, for instance, that: - Civil War is better than Infinity War; or - Captain Marvel is better than Guardians of the Galaxy, let alone Wonder Woman; or - Civil War, Black Panther or Infinity War are better than The Dark Knight. And I also don't believe that "cross-studio flare-ups" or biases exist among the general public -- or even beyond a very small minority on these boards. Joe Q Public barely knows, let alone cares, whether a comic book movie is produced by DC or Marvel or Fox or Sony.

Put another way, if Captain Marvel hits $155M, that's more than the opening weekends of Thor and Captain America combined, even after adjusting for inflation. Goes to show how far Disney has come with the MCU.

The forecaster at BoxOfficeMojo is now predicting a $155M+ opening weekend. That's like, higher than Venom's and Aquaman's opening weekends combined.

Sigh...we now live in a world where Fightin' 5 # 40 is a key issue.

I stand corrected. Still suspicious that of nearly 500 anonymous people who supposedly saw it last night, not one thought it was a bad film -- that 100% ranking thus far is 50% higher than the average given by the named film critics.

Where? I live in Washington, DC. It's not opening here until next week.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The "Audience Scores" on Rotten Tomatoes are worse-than-useless because they are open to endless manipulation by parties lobbying for or against a film w/ little true verification. The two movies posted above are exquisite examples: 1) Anyone who has seen Gotti would understand it was garbage. And there's zero chance that a film with a domestic lifetime gross of under $4.5 million inspired 6,900 viewers to post their thoughts about it online. 2) Triple Frontier has 488 audience reviews? Fat chance. It won't be released until next week. Vs. the critics reviews where they come from verifiable named critics from named (and well-known) outlets. The reality is Rotten Tomatoes -- like Wikipedia -- does an exceptional job of aggregating the thoughts of the 230 or so major U.S. critics, including those from the top 50 outlets (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Rolling Stone, etc.). Sure - they may be as many as 10-20 bad apples, but overall, these professional journalists -- the bulk of whom have studied film theory and/or literature, are qualified to do their jobs and seeing the bulk of their reviews in one place is an incredibly valuable service.

With about 14 hours until it opens, looks like the film's settled into an 83% positive score, roughly equivaelnt to Guardians of the Galaxy 2's score of 84% positive.

Harsh, man. Lotta' venom in that there response...

Thanks.

I'm not sure it matters if the film's front-loaded, particularly if it knocks its first weekend out of the park. I'd have to do a full set of comparisons to be sure, but I think about a 3.0x first weekend multiplier for the total domestic cume is average. Compare it to say...Jonah Hex (2.0x) on the low end to Aquaman (5.0x) on the high end. For Marvel, Captain America did 2.71x and Thor did 2.78x so 2.75x is probably a more realistic standard, with anything above 3.0x considered really good. If judging this purely on a "female superhero" film, Wonder Woman set the pace at 4.0x. It's more about the first weekend, as 2.0x $130m gives a higher total result than 3.0x $85m, particularly because Disney gets a much higher % take of the first two weeks than they do weeks 3-12.

I think Jordan Peele's Us will open to $40-$45 million. That means even if Captain Marvel does really well, it will still likely fall to the # 2 position in its third weekend.

I'm confused - last I checked Disney is following the exact same formula with Captain Marvel as with some key Phase 1 heroes. She'll have had a post-credits stinger introduction that hinted at - but did not show - her and one solo film before appearing in an Avengers movie. Similarly, both Captain America and Thor each had a post-credits stinger introduction that hinted at - but did not show - them and one solo film before appearing in an Avengers movie.

Huh? In my post I literally started by comparing it to a bunch of films that excelled. Namely, it looks like it will open "about in line with Iron Man 2 / Suicide Squad and well above Guardians of the Galaxy, Wonder Woman and The Winter Soldier." Also, the comparison to Green Lantern is apt because of all the major comic book movies -- produced by any studio -- so far, Captain Marvel looks closest to Green Lantern -- in origin, powers, and space-focused story. I've also noted before that my biggest concern about Captain Marvel is from the trailers it looks like a lot like Green Lantern -- a film I was incredibly disappointed by.

I agree with you, Chuck but take a somewhat different tack. I think the majority of these boards are made up of guys in the 40s or early 50s, and they have a hard time wrapping their heads around major Hollywood productions of 3rd-tier characters that they weren't reading or actively collecting back in the 80s or 90s. An old-school comic nerd would never believe a Black Panther or Ms. Marvel movie could be a legit blockbuster worthy of a $200M budget (let alone transform into A-list superhero characters) not because of any PC or feminist stuff, but simply because no one was clamoring for FF # 52 or Marvel Superheroes # 13 or breathlessly waiting for the next Black Panther appearance when they were collecting as kids. You can say the same for Ant-Man, who was arguably a bigger and more well-regarded character - but still C-list. I also suspect there's some frustration among folks who bet big on early Warlock appearances because those of us who grew up in the early 90s knew he was the lynchpin not only to the Infinity Gauntlet story but to Thanos's entire arc as a character...only to see him (presumably) entirely absent from the films and (also presumbably) replaced by Ms. Marvel. It will be interesting to see what happens with this film -- both in terms of audience and box office reception. Tracking is pointing to a $130M+ domestic debut -- about in line with Iron Man 2 / Suicide Squad and well above Guardians of the Galaxy, Wonder Woman and The Winter Soldier. Even funnier? That Captain Marvel's opening weekend may eclipse Green Lantern's entire domestic total. We'll see...

Interesting. That's 900+ more appearances than Black Panther (currently at 2,535).

To be fair, Warlock's also a 3rd-tier character. I haven't checked, but I reckon Ms. Marvel's had more appearances/is a bigger character in the comics over the last 45 years than Adam Warlock at this point.