Entertainment
Sponsored by

Hollywood Posts Worst Summer Since 1981

16,022 Views | 270 Replies | Last: 2 mo ago by Faustus
maroon barchetta
How long do you want to ignore this user?
How are you on long flights?
Bruce Almighty
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I still love going to the movies. I'm much more emotionally invested in a theater than I am at home when I can be easily distracted. Same with sporting events. They are so much better live than on tv in my living room.
fig96
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Cliff.Booth said:

fig96 said:

do you really think they said "we think this film is going to bomb but we're going to drop $200 million on it anyway"?


They fundamentally don't understand what people want. It's the same as the geniuses that greenlit spending the GDP of a small nation making Furiosa. How many average dudes want to see a Mad Max movie starring a skinny chick. Not a lot. How many women want to go see a movie about flaming psychotic car wrecks and explosions just because there's a chick in it. Not a lot. Either make that movie on a (far) smaller budget or just don't make it.

I promise that in someone else's hands Top Gun Maverick would have been about a promising, assertive young female pilot who overcomes misogyny to prove to Maverick that SHE is the new top dog. And it would have lost a ****ton of money. But, it was made by people with common sense and who like money.
So, like in most any other industry, some people are great at their jobs, some aren't, and even the best have both hits and misses. The people that made Furiosa also made Mad Max which was huge.

There's lots of projects that barely got greenlit or almost got cancelled during production that were hits, and there's also been "can't miss" movies with all the right people involved that bombed.
BadMoonRisin
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Im not sure. I used to go to the theaters maybe once a month when I was in high school and college. Then I stopped going and now when I sit down I count the minutes until I can leave. I even look up the running time of the movie so I can try and figure it out.

Now, I mostly go and see stuff with my kids like Dogman, Ninja Turtles, How to train your dragon, so maybe that is it.
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
fig96 said:

The people that made Furiosa also made Mad Max which was huge.



Exactly, so they know how to make a great movie, they just didn't have the discernment to know that no matter how much weird people in LA would love a skinny chick version of Mad Max, normal people across American won't give a ****.




Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Does it have to do with feeling unsafe or what? That's interesting.
BadMoonRisin
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
No, i dont feel unsafe. Maybe im the opposite of Brice Almighty, I like to be able to get up and move, stretch, piss, whatever.

I also dont care for movies over about 2 hours. I think the last movie I saw in theaters over that length was Inception when I saw it at the imax at Bob Bullock when it came out.
fig96
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Cliff.Booth said:

fig96 said:

The people that made Furiosa also made Mad Max which was huge.



Exactly, so they know how to make a great movie, they just didn't have the discernment to know that no matter how much weird people in LA would love a skinny chick version of Mad Max, normal people across American won't give a ****.

I have no idea what your actual point is.

You're singling out two extremes and acting like this is some binary choice when most things actually fall in the middle.
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
I think I've explained myself clearly about 4 times now.
ABATTBQ11
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
fig96 said:

While I get your point, I think you're oversimplifying.

With Snow White, for example, it sounds like the production was a train wreck, first evidence of that being the studio totally backtracking on the dwarves after hearing public opinion which apparently led to a very disjointed film. Add to that problematic comments from the lead that alienated a lot of people and that film was set up to be successful. But whatever miscalculations were made, there's absolutely reason to believe that a live action retelling of Snow White could be a really profitable film particularly after some of their other remakes had been huge winners, including some that many labeled as "woke".

With The Marvels, I think it was a better film than it got credit for but obviously didn't have the audience (for the record Ms Marvel continues to be one of the most underrated Marvel series), and you again have certain actors that are polarizing to some viewer. But do you really think they said "we think this film is going to bomb but we're going to drop $200 million on it anyway"?


No, I don't think it's that black and white. It's not necessarily an active decision but more of an emerging group/organizational behavior. It's not, "Let's make this bomb," so much as it is a critical mass of people ignoring everything that says, "There is no market to support a movie with a budget this large for a film like this."

Yeah the production of Snow White was train wreck. That's the result of systemic bad decision making and a perfect example of an emergent organizational behavior. There were plenty of terrible choices made at every stage of making that movie, but they weren't all made by the same people. It was a group effort of people smelling their own farts and not reading the room. That's the result of an entire organization thinking more about messaging and what they personally want to say than what is going to sell and bring in audiences.

Not all of those decisions were made by the same people, but they were all made in the same general direction. Ultimately, it was a series of individual decisions made around personal beliefs or preferences instead of money making that killed any chance that movie ever had, not any single decision or problem. It's the same attitude and decision making paradigm that killed any shot Lightyear had and convinced enough people that Strange World was a project worth pursuing to blow a couple hundred million. Same with Eternals and The Marvels. Same with The Acolyte, She-Hulk, Echo (which I kind of forgot existed), and Ironheart (not to hate on Disney, but they've given us a lot of great examples in the last few years).

Hell, The Acolyte is another perfect example. Plenty of people at Disney and in the media *****ed, moaned, and complained about how "toxic" the Star Wars fanbase was because of the sequels trainwreck, and then they decide to make, in their own words even if I'm paraphrasing a little, "the gayest Star Wars ever"? What kind of studio blames their fanbase for not liking poorly written slop led by the queen of Mary Sues and then dumps hundreds of millions of dollars into a project that, by their own complaints, is all but guaranteed to piss in their Cheerios?

This industry has plenty of historical data on viewers and what appeals to different demographics. They should have known that a lot of what's been made in the past 10 years was trying to put a square peg in a round hole and the audiences they were seeking didn't exist. They also should have known that anything politically or socially polarizing is going to immediately cut your audience in half. Yet they made them anyway. I don't think that's individuals or executives deciding to go that way, but there is definitely a level of widespread politically motivated groupthink and confirmation bias at work at many different levels that has long reinforced bad decision making and an overestimation of potential audiences.
20ag07
How long do you want to ignore this user?
You really haven't.

Do you think the reason Jurassic World Rebirth underperformed is because people didn't want to buy into Scarlett Johansson as a hired badass who saves some people from mutated dinosaurs?

I don't. I'd in fact argue that it made quite a bit of extra money bc of that.

It underperformed bc it was a trash, poorly written movie that was released way too early following previously bad sequels starring men.
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Yeah, Jurassic Park is just played out.

But, you're the kind of guy who isn't going to concede a point regardless of how it is explained, so it isn't worth it to clarify any further. You get it, you just can't admit that.
ABATTBQ11
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
fig96 said:

Cliff.Booth said:

fig96 said:

do you really think they said "we think this film is going to bomb but we're going to drop $200 million on it anyway"?


They fundamentally don't understand what people want. It's the same as the geniuses that greenlit spending the GDP of a small nation making Furiosa. How many average dudes want to see a Mad Max movie starring a skinny chick. Not a lot. How many women want to go see a movie about flaming psychotic car wrecks and explosions just because there's a chick in it. Not a lot. Either make that movie on a (far) smaller budget or just don't make it.

I promise that in someone else's hands Top Gun Maverick would have been about a promising, assertive young female pilot who overcomes misogyny to prove to Maverick that SHE is the new top dog. And it would have lost a ****ton of money. But, it was made by people with common sense and who like money.
So, like in most any other industry, some people are great at their jobs, some aren't, and even the best have both hits and misses. The people that made Furiosa also made Mad Max which was huge.

There's lots of projects that barely got greenlit or almost got cancelled during production that were hits, and there's also been "can't miss" movies with all the right people involved that bombed.


There will always be some uncertainty in anything and examples either way, but there are some things that are pretty sure bets at success and failure. Lifetime and Hallmark movies follow very similar templates (respectively) because they work. They may switch out characters and settings, but you can tell what they are by just watching about 5-10 random minutes of them. Likewise, taking an action/adventure, sci-fi movie or franchise, like Mad Max, and gender swapping the lead basically never works. Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in BSG is about the only successful example I can think of. You could say the SW sequels, but it could also be argued a lot of people only saw those because of the franchise and nostalgia and a lot of people think they ultimately hurt the brand.

He has a good point. Anyone could have told you that Furiosa would probably bomb because Mad Max is not the kind of movie women want to see, regardless of the main character, and Furiosa is not a main character that men who would want watch Mad Max are interested in either. Most women aren't interested in a movie set in a desert hellscape with war buggies and fire. Men interested in a desert hellscape with war buggies and fire aren't interested in an estrogen fueled badass girl boss. The audience for the confluence of those two things is not huge, and that's something a long history of movie watching demographic days should make pretty clear.
fig96
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I don't disagree with much of that and I think that leadership failures are largely to blame for a lot of this, whether it be because they bent to popular opinion or strayed too far from the core of what makes some classic stories great. And it's definitely pretty easy to point a finger at Disney with their recent missteps.

But other than Disney and a few one offs, I don't know what the real takeaway is. I feel like the "they don't get the general audience" is kinda misplaced when there are hits and bombs every year, and sometimes the surprise hits are ones that most people think shouldn't work on paper (Sinners anyone?).
ABATTBQ11
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Disney somehow went off the rails and started letting the inmates run the asylum. There is no question a lot of their creatives were making decisions based on what they wanted to push and not what was going to appeal to an audience. I think Chapek and other leadership ****ed the company over hard by letting them treat films and projects like their own personal soapbox or megaphone.

It's probably more of a problem at Disney because it's so easy to fall into that trap with IP like SW and Marvel. We saw the same thing at WB with WW84. That movie was hot ****ing garbage because it tried so hard to be about Trump that it forgot that it was supposed to be entertaining. That's not to mention the fact that it pretty much alienated a huge portion of the potential audience. Back to the point though, the super hero genre has always skewed male and that movie tried really hard to be something... else.

"They don't get the general audience," is a little broad. I think the issue is that they often forget the audience, and that's easier to do in certain instances. Trying to broaden appeal is one instance. Like bud light, they take their core audience for granted and **** on them while reaching for a new one. Second instance is trying to come up with something original. It's really easy for groupthink to set in and a group of like minded individuals to go down the wing path while brainstorming because they don't have enough contradictory opinions in the room. Third is trying to reboot or refresh something. Gender/race swapping characters is a shortcut to a "fresh take" no matter how cliche or nonsensical. It's a stupid gimmick that gives us **** like Ghostbusters or the SW sequel trilogy. There's not necessarily something bad about it per se, but it's cheap and overdone. Disney's had those in spades, but other studios have had their share.
TCTTS
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I just want to say thank you for arguing actual, cogent points, highlighting specific examples, acknowledging certain counter-points, and doing so all in pragmatic, level-headed fashion throughout the thread. Truly. "Woke" discussions would go so much better on this board if they started or were expressed in these terms instead of immediately coming from such an antagonistic, hate-filled, overblown, looking-to-be-offended, all-libs-are-pure-evil attitude. I can not only see where you're coming from, but I can get behind a lot of it. Half the time it's not the argument itself, it's the way it's delivered on this board, that leads to so much fighting, me popping off, etc. Here, though, your thoughtfulness and delivery makes want to actually listen and find common ground.
veryfuller
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Staff
AG
I also think, in general and painting with a broad brush, that the writing for movies has gotten worse in the last 20 years. So characters are not fleshed out well and are being underwritten.

So it creates a situation where they are trying to diversify in these IPs, but it's all done so poorly and without much for the audience to grab on to. Then to save face, it's often blamed on a resistance to diversity instead of just bad writing. If you give the audience good characters they will connect with them. If you give them card board cut outs and say….like this or you're a biggot!, well it doesn't work.

This is a broad brush of course, and as an example I'll do Black Panther vs. Captain Marvel. Ryan Coogler created a whole world of interesting characters and themes. It didn't connect with everyone but it clearly was a home run. Captain Marvel was just an empty vehicle for girl power with zero things to connect to.

But I think a lot of movies have bad writing right now and are failing to connect because of it. It's just a bigger deal when the creators/studio are saying at the outset they want to "say something" or do something with the movie and it doesn't connect. But like Fantastic Four was bad, had bad writing, and its characters were shallow and had nothing to latched onto. And it has nothing to do with wokeness. Same with JW.

And these are TV examples and just Star Wars but: The Acolyte and Ashoka terrible writing. Andor excellent writing and so much diversity and everyone loves it and has so many great characters to latch onto.

For non Disney, go watch the 1996 classic film Twister. Then watch Speed just for fun. But then watch 2024s Twisters and tell me that screenplay holds a candle to those two movies. It just doesn't come close.

Again, I'd say it's a volume issue. They are trying to do too much without making any single thing really good.
Quad Dog
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I think enough has been said about the kiss in Lightyear that I don't want to rehash it.

But that movie is a great example of the "everything has to be IP" era. It felt like a pretty generic sci-fi story that was probably written for original characters and backgrounds. It got the Lightyear likeness and name slapped onto it so it could be made into a movie but abandoned all the history, mythology, and attributes of that character. Therefore, it's hard to tell if it failed because of a one second meaningless kiss or if it was a really bad way to tell a Buzz Lightyear movie. Or as other posters have said above an example of poor decision making from the very beginning.
easttexasaggie04
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I have to REALLY REALLY want to see a movie in theaters now to pay the price. I can wait a month or so and see it from the comfort of my couch. There are some movies that are way better on theaters...Dune, etc etc.
EclipseAg
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Quad Dog said:

But that movie is a great example of the "everything has to be IP" era.

And not to go OT, but Disney is making the same mistake in its parks.
Sea Speed
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I'm honestly surprised that when the WNBA discussion arose it took so long for the obvious fact that Caitlin Clark is the entire reason for the surge in popularity to be brought up.
Quad Dog
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Sea Speed said:

I'm honestly surprised that when the WNBA discussion arose it took so long for the obvious fact that Caitlin Clark is the entire reason for the surge in popularity to be brought up.

So? Every sports league has a handful of players that were the backbone of the league during that league's establishment or in times of struggle.
Sea Speed
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Sure, but the conversation was about the increased popularity of the WNBA but it's really just the popularity of Caitlin Clark. They would still be languishing if she didn't exist.
maroon barchetta
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Quad Dog said:

Sea Speed said:

I'm honestly surprised that when the WNBA discussion arose it took so long for the obvious fact that Caitlin Clark is the entire reason for the surge in popularity to be brought up.

So? Every sports league has a handful of players that were the backbone of the league during that league's establishment or in times of struggle.


Times of struggle?

Like the first 25 years of the league's existence?
Quad Dog
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
maroon barchetta said:

Quad Dog said:

Sea Speed said:

I'm honestly surprised that when the WNBA discussion arose it took so long for the obvious fact that Caitlin Clark is the entire reason for the surge in popularity to be brought up.

So? Every sports league has a handful of players that were the backbone of the league during that league's establishment or in times of struggle.


Times of struggle?

Like the first 25 years of the league's existence?

If the WNBA is consistently profitable after 25 years, then it is ahead schedule of the NBA consistently turning a profit by 15 years. NBA wasn't consistently profitable until the 80s, 40 years after its creation. Again, mostly built on the back of a few superstar players.
maroon barchetta
How long do you want to ignore this user?
What?

The segregated NBA, which played its first game a year after the conclusion of WWII while the country was recovering and babies were booming and later went thru all of the turmoil surrounding Korea and Vietnam and eventually desegregated, just in time for the terrible economies of the 70's, didn't turn a profit until the 80's?

All while competing for tv time on three networks against the NFL, college football, MLB, the Olympics, and a number of other events (auto racing was big and so was boxing)?

Meanwhile, the WNBA has none of those hurdles and many channels dedicated to sports and is subsidized by the NBA for 25 years?

I'm shocked.
Bruce Almighty
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Quad Dog said:

maroon barchetta said:

Quad Dog said:

Sea Speed said:

I'm honestly surprised that when the WNBA discussion arose it took so long for the obvious fact that Caitlin Clark is the entire reason for the surge in popularity to be brought up.

So? Every sports league has a handful of players that were the backbone of the league during that league's establishment or in times of struggle.


Times of struggle?

Like the first 25 years of the league's existence?

If the WNBA is consistently profitable after 25 years, then it is ahead schedule of the NBA consistently turning a profit by 15 years. NBA wasn't consistently profitable until the 80s, 40 years after its creation. Again, mostly built on the back of a few superstar players.

That's not really a fair comparison though as the WNBA only exists because of the success of the NBA. Basketball wasn't really an established sport when the NBA existed and for most of those 40 years, there were only 3-4 channels on tv.
fig96
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I don't know if it's a Chapek vs Iger thing, but Disney has definitely had more misses than hits in recent memory.

The somewhat troubled Star Wars universe is an interesting example. You have The Acolyte, which for all the talk around the show's messaging was pretty benign from that aspect. At the end of the day it presented some interesting ideas and a few cool moments but just wasn't a good show, character motivations were all over the place, the Jedi were morally gray/incompetent, major conflicts/events occurred with no real build up, etc. (there's a long list)

On the flip side you've got Skeleton Crew which was an absolute blast and was the most Star Wars feeling thing we've had in years. It captured that feel of kids being on an adventure and gave us all the things we've been missing from recent Star Wars content.

Both showrunners were, I'm assuming, given freedom to make the show they wanted to make, though we've heard that Kennedy may have pushed The Acolyte to make more of a statement.

And If a show is really good, most people will watch it no matter it's political or social view. But it seems like Disney has just lost the ability to discern whether something is genuinely good or not.
javajaws
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
veryfuller said:

I also think, in general and painting with a broad brush, that the writing for movies has gotten worse in the last 20 years. So characters are not fleshed out well and are being underwritten.

...

Again, I'd say it's a volume issue. They are trying to do too much without making any single thing really good.

I don't think its 100% about volume - I think rising costs are playing a large part here as well. And the problem isn't just in the writing - its also in the acting and special effects. Some of all that may indeed be due to volume and spreading the on and off screen talent thin across too many projects. But I think its really a lot about cost as well and the need to keep expenses low enough to make a profit.
ABATTBQ11
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
I'm not sure exactly where I stand on that. Quality vs quantity and volume are certainly issues, but so are studios that sink money into someone's vanity or passion projects that have no business being made. I don't know if those are symbiotic or if one causes the other. I could see it both ways. Yeah they're making way too much, but are they making too much because they're trying to cram in woke or statement projects or are they bringing those to fill a slate? I also wonder if trying to work in woke or statement projects stretches executives thin when it comes to quality control and oversight.

Diversity armor for bad writing has been around for awhile, and honestly I'm sick of it. In large part, no one cares about the diversity of a cast until the studio or someone else starts making a big deal about it or it's done as blatant tokenism. Ham fisted political rhetoric, characters, and plot points are also fair game for ire.

But I wonder if here, too, we have a chicken and the egg problem. Do we get a focus on diversity to cover for bad writing or do we get bad writing because of a focus on diversity? Do we see studios and production teams preemptively checking boxes as insurance for down the road, or do they start putting so much thought into diversity and representation throughout the process that they lose sight of the bigger picture?

I tend to think it's the latter. Looking at Andor, it has a diverse cast and a lesbian couple, but Tony Gilroy was obviously focused on telling a story first and foremost. There was character and plot development in every second, and there was clearly a lot of thought put into making the rebellion real by looking at all the facets of it. Everything diverse about it is peripheral. Then I look at The Acolyte. Leslye Headland set out to make the queerest Star Wars ever, and she certainly did, but just about everything else about it made even the sequels look good. It's pretty obvious where the focus was in writing and developing it, and that's why, IMO, a good concept was brutally executed. That show felt like the characters and story were peripheral to Headland's quest for maximum queerness. It's things like that that make me lean the way I do. Diversity can be well done and well received, but not when it's the purpose and motivation for making something. That might be why a lot of these films fall flat also.
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Pretty ****ed up that I wasn't picked for your award, TC. Maybe next thread.
TCTTS
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
More proof that one minute you're whining about me mocking you or ad hominem attacks or whatever, then the next minute you're doing **** like this. At least you're consistent in your hypocrisy.
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
I thought you'd like it. Do you ever lighten up?
TCTTS
How long do you want to ignore this user?
AG
Did you not see my laugh-cry emoji?
Cliff.Booth
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Well you reacted like my post was some kind of attack on you. I'm ****ing with you with a goofy meme, I'm not trying to ruin your afternoon.
 
×
subscribe Verify your student status
See Subscription Benefits
Trial only available to users who have never subscribed or participated in a previous trial.