The Movie Thread Reloaded

[Omega]

it essentially establishes that a sequel is required.  

Having seen both, I think Captain Marvel was the better movie and had much broader appeal.  

$900 Million+ compared to $400 Million would make a premise of 'Alita outperforms Captain Marvel' difficult to fathom.

1: Sounds like it ends at about the same point the anime way back ended on. There never was a sequel far as I know.

2: Alita just doesnt appeal to me. Im more curious to see Captain Marvel. But I am going to wait and get it second hand off E-bay rather than put money in Disney or Marvel's pocket at this point.

3: Apparently Alita had a bigger budget than CM. But from all accounts CM had a substantially bigger marketing budget. Also apparently someone has been tinkering with the numbers for CM as well. Disney? Someone else? But there has definitely been some underhanded goings on with CM so all bets are off on their claimed numbers. I am also dubious of the claims it is the sixth highest grossing film since 2002 as wikipedia claims. But who knows at this point?

x: I did like Antman & Wasp. Aside from a few slow points it was an overall fairly good movie that suffered a little from trying to shoehorn in five or so different stories from the comics into one movie and using hardly any of some of them.

[jhkim]

3: Apparently Alita had a bigger budget than CM. But from all accounts CM had a substantially bigger marketing budget. Also apparently someone has been tinkering with the numbers for CM as well. Disney? Someone else? But there has definitely been some underhanded goings on with CM so all bets are off on their claimed numbers. I am also dubious of the claims it is the sixth highest grossing film since 2002 as wikipedia claims. But who knows at this point?

You describe "claimed numbers" here. But box office results aren't internal numbers from Disney claimed without verification. They're from exactly the same source as all the other box office results - collected from theaters. Disney could hide some production or marketing costs internally, but I don't see how to question the box office gross except by conspiracy theory that box office results for all movies everywhere are rigged. Particularly given the variety of international distributors, it seems highly implausible that a conspiracy to massively manipulate numbers could get through without notice.

Still, if you have a source for that, I'd be interested to hear it.

[Omega]

You describe "claimed numbers" here.

Numbers can be manipulated, and apparently Disney bought up a bunch of tickets for the movie. How much? No clue. At first I thought that was just for the boxtop discount tickets they were doing. But seems after that so who knows what the hell is up. But seems people are noticing something. They sure as hell noticed Rotten Tomatoes manipulating the numbers. Weird stuff that is honestly perplexing.

The movie does seem to be picking up at the box office again. Probably because most of the viewers are unaware of Larson's bad attitude and self proclaimed "agenda" she pushed into the movie.

[deadDMwalking]

I think people are watching the movie because it is fun.  

I saw the movie twice on opening weekend and I saw a different movie a couple of weeks later and the number of people per showing appeared to me to be relatively consistent with a popular movie.  The box office receipts from movies this decade tend to be higher because of IMAX/RPS/3D which include a higher ticket.  I don't know that more people saw Captain Marvel than saw Iron Man in theaters, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me; a lot of people know what they're getting with Marvel movies and a lot of people who aren't into comics have been enjoying them.  

I think that if you feel that the numbers are lying, it means that the movie doesn't fit in with a narrative you want to be true; I think that's a far bigger problem.  Johnny Cash described the problem in Man in Black:

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.

It's easy to believe that you're 'standing up' for others who agree with you when you're just...not.

[Omega]

I think its more a matter of various companies, including Disney, caught pulling various tricks and it means you really can not trust them after that. Are the numbers as good as they appear? Who knows? But with all the other trickery going on it is best to not just believe at face value. Movie companies have been turning more and more to manipulation. A few years back it was just shill reviews to generate fake good news. But over the last few years its getting worse.

As said. I was hoping the movie would do well and advocated that people were reading the wrong things into the trailers. Then Larson herself proved me so very wrong. And things went downhill from there.

[jhkim]

I think its more a matter of various companies, including Disney, caught pulling various tricks and it means you really can not trust them after that. Are the numbers as good as they appear? Who knows? But with all the other trickery going on it is best to not just believe at face value.

You are still speaking as if the box office numbers are a just some numbers made up by Disney, and we have to trust in Disney to believe those numbers.

Box office totals come from groups of theaters, where each theater chain publishes their ticket sales. Box Office Mojo is just one front end for showing that - you can compare the numbers with many others. I believe Entertainment Data, Inc. (EDI) is the most common central source - but they are transparent about the numbers they get so they can be spot checked. Particularly in the international market, theaters are under different management - and different people working there can see the data that is attributed to their theaters.

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_office#Box_office_reporting

So it's a highly distributed system subject to a lot of little uncertainties, but I find it hard to credit the idea that box office receipts could be off by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Movie companies have been turning more and more to manipulation. A few years back it was just shill reviews to generate fake good news. But over the last few years its getting worse.

Of course companies try to use manipulation to get people into buying their product. To my mind, that's basically the definition of marketing. Do you feel that there was a good old days when companies were just honest and didn't try to manipulate people into buying?

As said. I was hoping the movie would do well and advocated that people were reading the wrong things into the trailers. Then Larson herself proved me so very wrong. And things went downhill from there.

I dunno. I don't follow entertainment news and haven't seen anything from Larson (or pretty much any other celebrity). I don't know what you got from that. I watched the movie and I liked it - as did my friends and family. That's how I base things.

[Ratman_tf]

Bumblebee

During the first third, I wasn't very enthusiastic. It has it's moments, but nothing really stood out as great. towards the transition from the middle to the climax, the characters got got quite a bit better. They started to make the cookie cutter characters a bit more relatable. Last third was good. I could follow the action, unlike all the other movies in the franchise, which were a godawful CGI mess.

Serviceable story, nothing earth shaking there. The Transformers characters were actually characters, for a nice change.

I don't expect anyone will understand, but

Spoiler

The scene at the end where Bumblebee meets up with Optimus Prime, in his G1 Freightliner truck mode got me all emotional. Up until now, I'd been resigned to the live action Transformers movies being garbage, but for a moment there the G1 cartoon I loved as a kid was on the big screen. The whole movie was worth it just for that scene, to me.

[jhkim]

Bumblebee

During the first third, I wasn't very enthusiastic. It has it's moments, but nothing really stood out as great. towards the transition from the middle to the climax, the characters got got quite a bit better. They started to make the cookie cutter characters a bit more relatable. Last third was good.

I hadn't seen any of the other movies in the franchise, and barely remember the cartoon. But I agree with this. It definitely got better.

It straddled a fine line between shallowly repeating 80s tropes and really engaging with them, but yeah, I think it got better. And it did make the transformers into characters - even the bad guys.

[Ratman_tf]

I hadn't seen any of the other movies in the franchise, and barely remember the cartoon. But I agree with this. It definitely got better.

It straddled a fine line between shallowly repeating 80s tropes and really engaging with them, but yeah, I think it got better. And it did make the transformers into characters - even the bad guys.

As a Transformers fan, (That's the TF, in Ratman_tf) I've had some time to brew up some specific opinions, and read a few reviews.

Bumblebee was better than the previous films in the franchise, but Bay has set the bar very low.
The film still suffers from the casual violence and over the top action of the Bayhem precedent. For example, the Decepticons casually killing humans and Autobots. Now, I don't mind that the bad guys do bad things, but it's treated very casually. Like, oh well, Cliffjumper just got cut in half. On with the film! Bumblebee casually kicks a Decepticon's severed head in the first battle sequence. The good guys seem just as shitty as the bad guys, and there's very little reflection on the extreme violence. Even the cartoons were more thoughtful than that!
The whole movie suffers from moving far too fast and not building tension. A problem I have with a lot of modern movies. Action-Drama-Humor, repeat in quick succession until the credits roll. It makes for a very unsatisfying story.
Charlie starts out walking a very thin line between being understandably upset over her father's recent (ish?) death, and being shitty towards her family over it. I think this actually pays off when the film starts building towards the climax, and the family has to come together. Though it has the same pacing problem where it's all thrown together at the last moment.
The semi-love interest is at least not a complete goofball, but really doesn't add a whole lot to the movie besides being the person who stumbles into the situation while pursuing Charlie, and being a foil for the whole "Girl and her robot" situation. But it does give some cool scenes where Charlie gets to show off her cool alien car robot to him. So eh.
I think the movie needed to prune some scenes, and focus on the remaining elements to make them more resonant and impactful. Pacing and building up the story.

Nitpicks-
1. I believe Charlie was trying to fix her father's Corvette engine with parts from boat motors? I don't think car engines work that way. I'll have to re-watch to make sure that's what she was doing.
2. Sector-7 guy racking the slide on his pistol in his office. Such an eye-rollingly bad movie cliche.

[deadDMwalking]

@Omega

You're in tinfoil hat territory.

Disney is a publicly traded company.  They have to report to their stockholders about their financial performance.  

I don't know what you think they're getting by inflating the numbers - the more they do that, the more it costs them.  If Disney were going to try to make movies look successful, surely they would have done the same with John Carter of Mars?  

From all appearances, this was a decent Marvel movie and performed like a decent Marvel movie.  Other than 'I don't like SJWs and I want this movie to fail', on what basis do you suspect that they didn't just cross the $1 Billion world-wide this week?  

It boggles my mind to think of how many people would have to be in on this conspiracy.  If theater owners were showing the film to empty auditoriums, surely we'd have heard reports of that?  I saw the movie twice and the theater I go to has assigned seats; it appeared that all the seats that were assigned before I bought my tickets were filled.

[rgalex]

Trailer for the Joker movie dropped.  Lots of people seem to be really excited but I'm just not feeling it.  I just... I don't know.  To me the Joker is just one of those villains I feel is better w/o an official origin.  Also, I kinda think he, of all the villains out there, should never come off as a sympathetic character.  Maybe it's just me though.

[Omega]

@Omega

You're in tinfoil hat territory.

Or are you blindly naive or been living under a rock all this time?

[Omega]

Trailer for the Joker movie dropped.  Lots of people seem to be really excited but I'm just not feeling it.  I just... I don't know.  To me the Joker is just one of those villains I feel is better w/o an official origin.  Also, I kinda think he, of all the villains out there, should never come off as a sympathetic character.  Maybe it's just me though.

I am not liking the look of this Joker. Another "Nut in makeup" take rather than the chemically deformed loon?

Depends on which joker they are using. Assuming its not another one totally unrelated to anything in the comics.

Depictions of the Joker, like about every comic character, have changed depending on the writer. But one older backstory is sympathetic. That being the one where the person that would become the Joker was a comedian who agreed to help a gang with a heist in order to help his ill and pregnant wife. Falling into the chemicals while trying to escape Batman. His wife and child die and all this drives him insane.

[deadDMwalking]

Or are you blindly naive or been living under a rock all this time?

I don't think so.  

Here, in release order, are Marvel's members of the billion dollar club.
Marvel's The Avengers. Global Box Office: $1.518 Billion.
Iron Man 3. Global Box Office: $1.214 Billion.
Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Global Box Office: $1.405 Billion.
Captain America: Civil War: $1.153 Billion.
Black Panther: $1.346 Billion
Avengers: Infinity War: $2.048 Billion
Captain Marvel: $1.003 Billion (and growing)

Clearly there are successful movies that aren't in the $1B+ club, even ones I quite enjoyed.  From this list, the films most closely associated with the Avengers have done the best; Captain Marvel was teased at the end of Infinity War and included a teaser for the next Avengers movie.  It's hardly surprising that Captain Marvel would correlate.  Further, it appears that GENERALLY, newer movies are grossing more than older movies.  I'd attribute that at least in part to more IMAX/3D screenings that include higher ticket prices.  That is, it's possible to gross MORE while fewer people watch the movie if those people are opting in for the premium experience.  

While I've never seen a movie in China, I'm not particularly skeptical of Transformers: Age of Extinction making nearly $300 million in China, so I'm not any more skeptical of Captain Marvel's gross.  This file appears to be in line with other films.  The audience in the theater appeared to be in line with other movies that have crossed the $1B mark.  I have not seen or heard any credible evidence that the numbers have been doctored.  It appears that the only people trying to cast doubt on the numbers don't want to believe that a super-hero movie starring a woman with 'outspoken views on gender equality' could perform well.

[JRT]

Or are you blindly naive or been living under a rock all this time?

I think the issue is that, while we can argue there's no such thing as "objective news", usually statistics are the ones hardest to spin unless the stats reporting has errors on that level.

I try to use Occam's razor when thinking about this type of thing.  Marvel Movies have done pretty darn well since they established the MCU, especially with The Avengers Movie tying them together.  Captain Marvel is consistent with the same box office performance, so I don't see any manipulation of the figures.  Seeing the movie myself, there was nothing in this movie to come off as heavy handed preaching, etc.  And I don't think anything Bree Larson said would have a significant backlash--there's been very little talk of that.  (For those that didn't know, she said something about wanting movie critics to not be dominated by "White Men" last year).

Also, most movie reporting on Box Office really loves to emphasize failures as well as successes.  Let's put it this way--if a Marvel Movie was not doing well, the press would be all over that.  People are actually waiting for "super-hero fatigue" to set in, and nobody's going to be on top forever, so I do expect at some point we will have a Marvel Movie that is considered a failure.  It hasn't happened yet.