Amph The Box Office Thread

Are you sure?

 

So, is "21 Jump Street" expected to open at #1 this coming weekend?

 

It's rated R so I can't see it being #1. I think it will be third this week.

 

Third? I doubt that... probably 2nd after The Lorax.

"Casa de mi Padre" is opening in very few theaters, so Will Farrell nonwithstanding, it may not even crack the top 10.

 

I was thinking Lorax, JC then 21 Jump Street in third.

 

Alice in Wonderland has a box office performance that can only be made sense of in the one-time context of riding the coattails of Avatar's never-to-be-repeated 3D success to $1 billion. It's a truly awful movie. Without having seen JC I would not be at all surprised if it is the better film.

Disney must have understood that it could never repeat AiW's results. When was the March release date chosen? I get the sense that they knew for quite a while that the movie was going to go belly up and so they dumped it into early March.

Lorax has a decent shot at a 3 peat

 

Disney made their own Avatar - Great visuals, lacking in almost every other department and at least half an hour too long. Michael Bay at least has more explosions in his movies, that seems to help him make big money despite them being utter **** most of the time. Disney should have employed him to make John Carter it seems, he knows how to make successful trash.

 

Actually, I think AiW is a far, far better movie than John Carter. Whatever else one might say about Tim Burton, he's a seasoned director and most of his movies have been good or very good. The John Carter director had never done a live-action movie before.

The conversion job for AiW wasn't one of the better ones, imho, and only moderately added to my enjoyment of the movie. But the story of Alice has always been one of my favorites, and I've enjoyed almost every version ever made, going back to Paramount's 1933 all-star extravaganza (that one featured Cary Grant, W.C. Fields, and Gary Cooper!!)

 

I love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - a truly wonderful novel, but the Tim Burton adaptation is almost as bad as his AiW. Burton is truly talented, but those two movies are completely incoherent. And AiW's success has nothing to do with Burton. He owes it all to the nostalgia for the Disney animated feature film and the immediate prior international phenomenon of Avatar.

I am looking forward to Dark Shadows though. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of the soap opera, so I don't really have any bias for or against whatever Burton has done to it.

Anyway, Lorax stays at number one this weekend for sure.

 

How was AiW "incoherent"? Granted, it was a slightly different take on the original novel... did it seem a bit too feminist for your taste, or was there something else?

 

I think his Alice in Wonderland is his worst movie. I truly loathe his Batman so that's saying something for me. It's just all over the place and I am not a fan of the design style used for the movie.

 

Funny - that's what I thought was best and most fun about the two movies, the design style/production design. To each their own?

Getting back to "21 Jump Street" - it's expected to open at somewhere between $30 - $35 million:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/03/box-office-21-jump-street-could-leap-to-more-than-30-million-debut.html

 

It's so funny, I saw it tonight at work. So many good laughs. Tatum and Hill have great chemistry. I don't want to mention anymore but it was hilarious.

 

I'm a huge Burton fan, and I'm astonished at the loathing of Alice. But to each his own.

My least favorite Burton film is easily Planet of the Apes. Now that's a misfire. Even

Burton admits it.

 

I pretty much agree 100%. I'd probably want to watch any Burton movie again, except "Apes". And it would be even worse now, because the recent reboot was so much better in almost every imaginable way.

 

How was AiW "incoherent"? Granted, it was a slightly different take on the original novel... did it seem a bit too feminist for your taste, or was there something else?

Am I required to support AiW for its heroism in promoting the radical idea that women should not be forced into arranged marriages?

I'm all for the dozen or more recent fairy tale movies sporting revisionist feminist themes, but AiW is not the best of the bunch. It's just chaotic, messy, poorly paced and disjointed, and not in a way that positively reflects the controlled chaos of the novels.

I don't like Planet of the Apes either, but it's a better movie than AiW.

Burton has taken a number of high profile, can't possibly fail, license-to-print-money titles and utterly ruined them, in particular Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and AiW.

On the other hand, this is the guy who directed Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood and Corpse Bride, so all is forgiven.

 

Burton's Alice is neither incoherent nor awful. As a fan of the original books I was prepared to dislike the film but found it vastly entertaining and gorgeous to behold.

Sweeping and unsupportable assertions like "Alice's success had nothing to do with Tim Burton" are embarrassing to read for their lack of insight into how films are made. Regardless of timing or nostalgia, which certainly must have been factors in the movie's success, if it had not been entertaining, coherent and gorgeous it would not have raked in a billion dollars.

 

Obviously I disagree with that tautology, if it's possible to disagree with a tautology: "A movie is good because it makes money. And it makes money because it's good."

If I look at the top ten list of all time global money makers, all the ones that have made a billion or more worldwide, fully half of them absolutely stink.

Stranger Tides: an inchoherent mess
AiW: an incoherent mess
TPM: ditto
Transformers 3: the worst of the bunch, and one of the most successful
HP Deathly Hallows, part 2. Maybe not incoherent, but also not very good.

 

I agree with that. I thought it was a really fun movie to watch, and would have felt the same way even if it hadn't been in 3-D. (Though I wouldn't doubt that some of the people who went to watch it in 3-D were excited, in part, because of "Avatar" being such a huge 3-D hit).

 

Your definition of "incoherent mess" differs widely from my own. Whereas I can follow the plot, action and characterizations in a film it cannot possibly fit any definition of the word "incoherent" with which I'm familiar; whereas it entertained me I cannot call it a "mess". I followed Alice's plot easily and enjoyed it immensely.

Since that tautology is one of your own creation, and does not accurately describe my opinion on the matter, it doesn't affect me whether you agree with it or not. Alice was beautifully crafted and vastly entertaining; much of that artistic success can and must be attributed to director Burton, whose fingerprints are all over the movie. You want to make straw men and pretend Burton's contributions had nothing to do with the film's success, be my guest.

 

Uh-huh??

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/21-jump-street-channing-tatum-the-lorax-box-office-301356


Looks like it *will* be the #1 movie, for sure!

 

"21 Jump Street" racks up $13.1 Million on Friday

 

Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory wasn't terrible, but although it was closer to the book I wouldn't watch it again. Especially since the Gene Wilder version is a lot more fun and colourful.

Alice in Wonderland looks nice and has some good performances, but it's not something I would own or re-watch intentionally. But it's by no means Burton's worst movie, Charlie & Planet of the Apes are worse movies.