ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

Nah, I aimed it at the correct target. Thanks though.

I've found this to be almost completely untrue. In fact, many sci-fi/genre fans are some of the most conservative thinkers I've ever met in my life. I don't mean politically conservative (although sometimes they're that, too, which always confounds me considering the social good that is often advocated in sci-fi allegory) but I mean they categorize/define the thing they're reading, and then they rigidly reject any changes or encroachments on that definition for as hard and as long as they can. Examples of this abound. Star Trek can only be *this*, Superman can only be *that*, so on and so forth.

Anyway: Terminator's reviews are almost uniformly bad, but most people that will be watching the film this weekend don't care about reviews (most people don't use them as part of their ticket-buying decision regardless) they'll be swayed by the marketing or they won't. Unfortunately, the marketing is also awful, and as such, the film is apparently tracking towards an opening weekend in the mid-30s.

Odds are better than decent it could open at 2nd, if not 3rd.

 

Abrams is a network tv level hack who should never be allowed near $200 million motion pictures. I hope I have to eat my words about this, and I get the whole Disney-Abrams relationship, but it seems like a near-total failure of imagination that led to this decision.

On the other hand, hiring the director of "Safety Not Guaranteed" to direct Jurassic World - that's pure elephant testicles.

 

No, they make themselves great. Meaning all that Lucas put into them.

It's a very odd and disturbing thing now that Mike Klimo has cracked the ring structure of the movies that rather than celebrating it and being amazed at it some fans are bizarrely trying to turn it to to a negative.

All it means to me is that movies that were already brilliant are simply moreso in construction. Obviously we knew of the paralells for years between the movies on various levels but the reason and meaning for it eluded us until now. So it doesn't really change the basics but does 2 things. Organizes what we already knew and makes us look for more which creates an even deeper understanding of the story, character through the visuals and music.

They are the work of a genius. No one else has done much better in film. EVER.

Kubrick is great. Lucas is great. SO WHAT?

Of course he was making it up with a plan. That is the genius of it!!

Oh no not the Jar Jar arguement. So you believe Yoda and Han were toned down for ROTJ because they weren't liked in TESB?

Which is why those sad fans spend so much time taking what Lucas gave them and then adjusting it to what they want them to be?

So really what you are saying it all went wrong with TESB?

Interesting take.

Total brilliant success. One of the greatest trilogies of all time. The OT as great as it was is made far better than anyone could ever think it could possibly have been. Luke's journey is all the better. Vader is even more evil than we ever thought he could be.

Never saw BB but The Godfather? ROFL! Let's see the son of a mob boss....becomes a mob boss!! How could that happen? It's unthinkable. I mean just because everyone around him was a criminal doesn't mean he would... oh wait he did.

Never mind.

On that I agree.

Let's talk box office here.

 

I'm FAR more concerned about a film's writing than I am its directing. Most directors and actors are at least reasonably competent, but the story and dialogue are where I tend to scratch my head.

 

I've read a review of TG that made me grit my teeth and think that they could easily say the same things when TFA comes out. If not careful, we could easily hear and read things like "a movie that tries to justify itself" or "relies way too heavily on the past for nostalgia sake" among other things. SW always had a fairy tale type of story structure with the classic hero journey. Even if the hero's journey is somewhat repeated, there can always be a different twist on it and not merely just a reversal like what JJ did (or rather the writers which he wasn't one) in STID. I am not sure if JJ can write something that follows that fairy tale/fantasy type pattern. Hopefully he, with Kasdan, were somewhat passionate about sticking with that mindset in the 3 months they supposedly spent re-writing Arndt's screenplay because they felt it was more loyal to the aesthetic feeling of SW, whatever that may be.

 

The problem with making a movie that tries to mimic the action/pacing beats of ANH is that countless movies since 1977 have tried to do that. It's like rebooting Die Hard and appealing to Die Hard nostalgia by aping the style of Die Hard. That would be interesting if half the action movies made since 1988 hadn't already done it.

 

The Terminator franchise just doesn't tap into the myth/fantasy reserves that SW does, and it never had the amount of goodwill banked up that SW amassed in the '70s/'80s. The last two Terminator films drove a stake through the heart of that franchise. SW, OTOH, has people holding out for another good entry, and people are much more willing to give it a chance.

TFA has to be good for it to be a success, but it has a much lower bar to clear than TG.

As for old-vs-nuTrek, I have to agree with bobbyroberts. That franchise has always been pretty shallow intellectually. All Abrams did was strip it of its pretentiousness.

 

Terminator was lucky to get away with a 2nd movie, honestly. That premise is pretty thin. You can only send killer robots back in time to kill someone before they're supposed to die so many times, and that's the storyline of basically EVERY SINGLE Terminator movie. Even when they do try to switch it up a little with the surrounding details, at the core, it's robots sending a robot back to kill someone, and humans sending a robot back to protect the target from a killer robot. That's the sole story, and this is the 5th movie with that story, a movie whose only hook is "we're kinda remixing the first two movies into one movie, and then going somewhere... else with it. I think."

So it's not surprising that audiences aren't reacting all that well to it. They've come off two movies that weren't very good, and haven't gotten any better with the passing of time, and now are being presented a greatest hits mashup of the two movies they DID like, but uglier, and with a spoiled plot twist that just makes anyone who sees it go "ughghghgggg"

Whereas with Star Wars - nobody that isn't the couple thousand of us hangry for spoilz has any real idea WHAT the story for Force Awakens is, and the stuff they're seeing doesn't look like stuff we've already seen, either. It's familiar, but it appears to be going forward, as opposed to literally looping back on itself.

 

Exactly. TG is a movie nobody asked for and nobody wanted (except for the studio). SW is in a whole 'nother league.

 

People talk about how Fantastic Four is an example of a film that is being made solely because of rights expiration, but there appears to be an attempt to actually do something with the property that wasn't done in previous attemps. With Genisys, it really does seem like it was only made because something had to get made before the clock ran out.

 

"He sent a Terminator back to the time before the war - to kill my mother!" Cheesy as hell. Give me back Edward Furlong and Guns N`Roses everyday.

But what happened to Cameron? What kind of stuff did he take to express such overwhelmingly happy feeling about the new Terminator? Just take a look...

EDIT: Of course - it´s his characters, he created the universe, but still, strange that he find the film so successful in in its own. Was there not something like a deal that Cameron gets the rights to Terminator back after 2018, 19 or?

 

He does that pretty frequently, actually. He also went on record as saying he really, really liked Alien vs. Predator, and that Terminator 3 was "great"

 

There's a lot of that goes on in Hollywood. It's a bit of a mutual backslapping society. They're clever enough to know that mutual bridges should never be burnt.

 

The game is more than just the game, after all.

 

Cameron endorsing Terminator: Germsicle doesn't mean **** because at the end of the day, the movie still looks like ****.

 

Does anyone but a hardcore fan really want post Lucas Star Wars? After 38 years, the nostalgia factor may be played out. No one wanted a Lone Ranger movie after a half century had passed, and that was one of the great pop culture entertainment icons of its day.

Sure Star Wars still has some merchandise value, but is Disney really going to be able to convert it into a viable movie enterprise? At least Marvel is based on several landfills worth of lowbrow pop children's literature. But Star Wars really has only two classic but very venerable films, one sub classic movie and three forgettable average and sub average films holding up the whole edifice. It's a shaky proposition, and it's been put into the directorial hands of a hack.

 

Huh.

I mean - the name of the film as it stands is already dumb as hell. You gotta come up with something a lot better (worse) than "Germsicle" to make that gag work.

To rank the reaches on this single page, on a scale from "trying to get the remote at the edge of the couch" to "Mister Fantastic":

5) "Germsicle"
4) "I really, really liked Alien 3"
3) "Does anyone outside of hardcore fans even like Star Wars?"
2) "Terminator 3 was GREAT"
1) Ring Theory.

 

Wait...what?

 

Firstly, I think "hack" is a bit harsh for Abrams. He's a competent filmmaker in terms of directorial style, and he works well with actors, and that's all you really need from SW. Kershner wasn't a strong auteur but he made shooting ESB a collaborative experience--that, combined with Kasdan's understanding of screenwriting is what elevated that movie. I don't see any cause for concern regarding the team behind TFA.

Secondly, yes, I think the public are receptive to more SW and are willing to give it a go. ROTJ benefitted from the momentum of the OT and is pretty well regarded, IME, but that was still 1.5 generations ago, it's true. However, I still see SW making (positive) headlines regarding TFA. That seems to be a pretty strong indicator that there's still a market for SW movies.

 

A lot of people don't realize that "hack" doesn't mean "sucks at his job" but "doesn't CARE about his job." A hack is someone who works solely for the check, cares not for the content, and cares not about the quality of his work.

You can say things about Abrams' abilities as a storyteller, but you'd have a hard time arguing he doesn't actually CARE about the stories he's telling, and whether he's telling them well. He absolutely does care - which makes him the opposite of a hack.

 

hehe, Jabba, now, i will really need to give you a smack ( a friendly one though) and say: Is this the dystopian version of it? Lone Ranger? C`mon! I am a pessimist myself....in general, but hey, TFA will, if not rule the world, be great!

 

TFA will gross 5 trillion domestically, and ultimately, it will cause another great depression.

 

Where are you getting your facts?

The Star Wars brand remains massively popular.

 

Honestly, I don't see large-scale conventions dedicated to The Lone Ranger. And Disney aren't stupid--they wouldn't spend $4b on LFL without seriously investigating the current market for SW.

 

A great film is probably the least likely outcome. It will likely be a reasonably entertaining movie, despite Abrams. And it may be serviceable dream come true for aging OT fans. And it can probably make $750 million worldwide regardless of quality, if not $1 billion. Abrams is the master of ok movies that don't quite get the job done in terms of box office. It's not going to be as little seen as Tomorrowland, but TFA could easily be as bad as Tomorrowland. Disney doesn't know the formula for making Star Wars a smash hit. The only thing they really know how to do is Marvel and princesses.