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ReelReviews14's Replies
Here's a scene I wanted but didn't get:
Max (Mel Gibson): Just who the hell are you?
Faux Max (Tom Hardy): My name's Max...ummm yeah... that's my name.
Max (Mel Gibson): Wrong answer. There's only ONE Max, and that's me.
Faux Max (Tom Hardy): Huh?
Max (Mel Gibson): That's MY vehicle. If it's all the same to you... I'll drive my Pursuit Special, now.
Faux Max (Tom Hardy): ::grunts incoherantly::
Max (Mel Gibson): I wouldn't do that. I've got the skills.
Faux Max (Tom Hardy): We might be able to... together... ::grunts incoherantly::
Max (Mel Gibson): You want to get out of here? You've got to go thru ME.
Max Mad proceeds to beat the crud out of Faux Max, and then takes his wheels and rides off triumphantly into the desert.
Flopiosa is Even Worse. Both films should have never been made and pretend to be "another installment" when they're really a belated followup that can't recapture the magic of the original trilogy's 1980s heyday, but Indy 5 has several things that place it a notch above Flopiosa.
For starters, Indy 5 has Harrison Ford back as the "star" and John Williams back as composer. I was dead set against making an "Indiana Jones" film in 2023 and trying to copy the "style" of the older movies, but the 25 minute opening prologue freakin' NAILED it and won me over, the ONLY thing that didn't work was Indy's voice sounded way too gravelly to buy him being World War II era Indy. Other than that, they convinced me when they had an INCREDIBLY high bar to measure up to. Too bad the REST of the film wasn't like that 25 minute opening.
Second, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is actually about... yup, INDIANA JONES. It's not some fake spinoff with new actors pretending to be a proper "installment" of the franchise, like making SHORT ROUND: An Indiana Jones Saga (with a totally new actor portraying Short Round), and having Indy AWOL the entire movie except for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo where he's "played" by Harrison Ford's stunt double.
Finally, in terms of being destroyed at the box office, Flopiosa is doing EVEN WORSE and hasn't even generated the revenue of the film's budget yet ($168 million), and its losing to a half dozen OTHER less-than-stellar films at the box office. Indy 5 flopped anyway, but it did manage to still gross nearly $400 million, and was #1 at the box office its first two weeks of release.
Dune 2 is a masterpiece. Flopiosa is not fit to shine it's shoes!
>> It is indeed a woke movie, insofar as it's a prequel to Fury Road, which George Miller himself was proud to go around in interviews announcing as a "feminist film." I don't particularly care how much they toned it down on this one, as long as it's in any way related to that so-called Mad Max film <<
Good point, is cut from the same cloth as the other Faux Max garbage film.
On the other hand, I have to agree its a bit unfair to blame Anya Taylor Joy for this one. Most of the people bashing her casting and whining about Chalize Theron not returning were fine and dandy with getting rid of Mel Gibson and replacing him with non-look-alike Tom Hardy, so their position is just a tad bit hypocritical.
Anya Taylor Joy could have pulled off a cool supporting role in a REAL Mad Max movie with Mel Gibson. Missed opportunity! It's like how they cast Idris Elba in The Dark Tower movie, and he would have made an AWESOME supporting role as one of antagonist characters, but nope, they had to totally miscast him in the LEAD role as "Roland Deschain". Epic fail!
It looks like it's flopping hard than The Trash with Ezra Miller did last year, and I remember mocking that one crashing hard AFTER they tried to sweep Ezra's criminal behavior under the rug, market the movie around Michael Keaton's Batman instead, and put out a slew of absolutely glowing reviews claiming how fantastic the movie was, blah blah blah....
I googled it. It's actual a special limited edition re-release of The Two Towers. They put the Extended Version back in theaters and it's making a lot of money on IMAX and in 4DX.
So minor typo, it was actually LOTR 2 that's kicking Flopiosa's butt at the box office.
>> Garfield and Furiosa have the same problem: people stopped going to the movies. <<
Until Deadpool & Wolverine comes out this summer and TONS of people go to see it IN A THEATER, rather than simply "wait a few weeks to catch it on streaming".
Same situation last year, it supposedly was "viewing habits and Covid" that caused the live action Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones 5, and The Flash to all bomb, and NOT the quality of the film itself. Until Barbenheimer happened and the Super Mario Bros. Movie came out and grossed a zillion bucks, causing audiences to magically return to theaters AFTER they had "stopped going".
It couldn't possibly be because people WANTED to see those films, and DIDN'T want to see the movies that flopped. Perish the thought!
>> You should really watch the film--especially if you liked Fury Road. <<
I have never watched Fury Road, and have no intention of doing so. There are only THREE legitimate Mad Max movies, ALL of them star an actor named Mel Gibson, and NONE of them have a character named "Furiosa".
Sure, two later films were made that pretend to be part of the same canon (and just like Terminator 5 and 6, have the original creator and director on board, crafting the story), but they are not legitimate "sequels". It's like all the later Home Alone movies made without MacCauley Culkin. There may be six Home Alone movies that exist now, but really only the first two are legitimate parts of the "franchise". I haven't seen any of the non-MacCauley Culkin "Home Alone" movies just like I haven't seen the non-Mel Gibson "Mad Max movies. There is no way to buy that Tom Hardy is the "same character" as Mel Gibson and that it's a "sequel" to Beyond Thunderdome.
If it makes you feel better though, I DID watch the Pink Panther films like Alan Arkin and Steve Martin instead of Peter Sellers. Most people don't consider them to be legitimate Pink Panther films anymore than I consider Fury Road and Furiosa to be proper Mad Max movies!
>> you're just dead set against an expansion of the Mad Max universe. he very much wants to expand that world and tell more stories. He's very much about world-building, and has quite an expansive plan for it. If we got nothing but stories focusing on Max, film after film, it would get very old and repetitive....ala Rocky III, Rocky VI, Rocky V........what stories are left to tell, unless his world and context expand? it makes things that much more interesting, knowing this....as we learn more about his world, and anticipate his return. <<
A similar case could made for the Terminator franchise. They greatly "expanded the universe" beyond the basic "Terminator goes back in time to kill John Connor or his mom so he won't save humanity" AFTER the first two films. In Terminators 3, 4, 5, and 6, they added the idea of the T-X (an "anti-Terminator, Terminator model"), John's wife Kate, Sgt. John Candy explaining why all T-800's look like Arnold, Judgment Day happening on screen, Marcus Wright (a human-terminator hybrid experiment), explained where John's facial scar comes from, showed T-600's on screen, gave us a personification of Skynet (twice), introduced the T-5000 Terminator, showed the actual time machine on screen, had John Conner transformed into an evil, advanced "T-3000" thing, had the T-800 re-programmed later in life to become "drapery salesman named Carl", made Dani Ramos is the savior of humanity instead of John Connor, introduced the Rev-9, and finally killed off John Connor on screen.
Did adding all that "lore" and "expanding the Terminator universe" make those films "good"? I would say no! Most people would agree with me they should have stopped at two movies!
>> Of course Garfield is going to outperform it. That's a kid's movie, and it has a built-in audience. <<
Garfield has similar problems that Flopiosa does: It's an attempt to revive some franchise whose heyday was the early 80s and just isn't what it used to be anymore, and its "another installment" that NOBODY asked for, but the filmmakers want to pretend is some kind of summer blast popcorn film that audiences will love. Lots of kids movies with a built-in audience has crashed and burned lately, most prominently Disney-Pixar films in the last couple of years. ("Lightyear", etc.)
It's not that Garfield is doing "well" at the box office either. It just looks good next to how BADLY Flopiosa is doing is comparison! On its own, Garfield is getting a lukewarm response and not doing much better than its predecessor that came out 20 years earlier. It's only making a modest profit because its budget was three times lower than Flopiosa's!
>> Mad Max films are not for mainstream audiences. This is a niche film for a niche audience, and even in pre-COVID times it wasn't going to bring in a fortune. None of the Mad Max films have. These are cult films. You're listing all the mass appeal blockbuster-type films. A better comparison would be to films like Night Swim, Civil War, Poor Things, etc. <<
You're correct that Mad Max is NOT an "A list" billion dollar franchise like say: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Avengers, etc. If you were discussing only the first two Mad Max films, you ALSO might be correct in saying they are under the radar "cult films" that only got attention from a niche audience. But otherwise what you're saying is simply not true, after Mad Max Fury Road put the franchise back in the public spotlight, and it had nonstop swooning praise in the public spotlight over the last DECADE, and brought it hundreds of millions of dollars. A more apt comparison than those "art house" movies would be a prominent, long-lasting film franchise that IS well known to the public and critically acclaimed in the past, but has never been "A list" level huge blockbusters: e.g., The Pink Panther, Star Trek, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.
Good point, if the Chinese box office numbers had made Genisys profitable and successful, they would have greenlit a sequel instead of deciding to make Dark Fate a total reboot. For either film to succeed overall while failing in the United States, they probably would have had to gotten big sales THROUGHOUT all overseas and international box office sales, not just in China alone (I think the F&F franchise is such a "hit" worldwide because it does great in all international markets, even if Americans are sick of it)
Weird that the Chinese would love Genisys and not Dark Fate though. Both films had a past-his-prime Ahnuld shoehorned in for "fan service" and attempted to be "the real Terminator 3" and a "fresh and new Terminator scenario" while just making the old universe MORE convoluted, and shamelessly copying all the "popular" troupes of the previous movies, like Terminator 2.
Interesting, a lot of soulless, brainless action movies that get a lukewarm response in the USA still make tons of $$$ overseas in China, which explains the endless Fast & Furious sequels and Transformers sequels. Flopiosa should have had a similar "advantage".
Flopiosa didn't even need to be marketed as "part of" the Mad Max franchise in China, they don't care what kind of legacy it has from an Australian action movie franchise. They probably just marketed it the way Mad Max 1 & 2 were marketed in the USA, and focused on all the "kewl" car chases and explosions.
That's funny they STILL didn't care, though. Maybe George Miller can increase the numbers in China by having Anya Taylor Joy hold up a sign in Chinese that says "Taiwan is NOT a country!"
>> And I'm kind of surprised Garfield hasn't done more completely obliterating Furiosa <<
Garfield DID completely obliterate Flopiosa last week: it grossed $3,175,000, while Flopiosa grossed only $1,305,000.
You have to remember, they premiered at the same time and were originally neck-and-neck at the box office. Since then, Garfield has increasingly outpaced Flopiosa in box office sales.
And it's not like Garfield is actually a GOOD movie. Flopiosa was lucky it had to complete with another worthless entry in a "franchise" that NOBODY asked for. As I noted at the time, its the battle of the 98 pound weaklings. But its still getting destroyed by Garfield anyway.
Worse, they tried to market the spinoff movie as a direct "next installment" of the real franchise (Men in Black: International tried a similar gimmick, marketing it as a direct MIB4, even though Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith had zero involvement in it)
But yeah, if they came up with MONEYPENNY: A 007 James Bond Saga and tried to market it as a direct prequel to No Time to Die (even though the only scene with "James Bond" was a 5 second background cameo played by Daniel Craig's stunt man, and "Ms. Moneypenny" wasn't played by any of the actresses who portrayed the character in the real Bond movies), it would be a similar failure.
I was honestly surprised about LOTR 2's re-release kicking Flopiosa's butt at the box office, but I checked it and the numbers don't lie: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers made $1,914,981 last week, while Flopiosa made only $1,305,000!
>> Hardy is the prime example of a face that always looks pissed off. Perfect for a character called "Mad" Max. <<
Ummm, the character is called MAD Max because he's considered a crazy, unhinged vengeance-seeking MADMAN, not because he looks brooding or annoyed. Watch the end of the original Mad Max movie from 1979 and not this crappy poser Max.
George Miller must have been doing some good drugs with Stuart Baird and Christopher Nolan. They had to be so incredibly out of their minds that the conversation sounded like this:
Stuart Baird: Hmmmm... y'know what? I think Tom could be a dead ringer for PATRICK STEWART!!! Bald, classically trained, urbane, Shakespearean Actor type!!
Christopher Nolan: Really? Well I think he looks JUST LIKE Bane from the Batman comics! Nothing says 6'8, ripped, steroid-pumped south american latino dude like TOM HARDY!
George Miller: Hey guys... I got it!!!! Tom Hardy IS Mel Gibson's TWIN!!!! It's like looking at Mel's reflection in a MIRROR!!!!!! I haven't seen anyone that close since Danny DeVito was a practical real life clone of Arnold Schwartzenegger!
I haven't seen either film, and have no desire to.
But if you put a gun to my head and make me pick one, then Happy Feet. I'm sure a cute kids film about talking penguins is less irritating than sitting thru two hours of a fake Mad Max movie where "Max" only shows up for a 5 second, non-speaking background cameo.
>> Why is it so hard for you to believe that people have different tastes in movies? <<
Again, because you don't see this type of artificial "buzz" for other box office failures all over social media, weeks AFTER the movie ALREADY crashed and burned in theaters since its first very day.
The comparison I used in my OP was the 2020 film Dolittle. As I noted, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I thought it was the ONLY faithful version to the original source material (the 90s versions with Eddie Murphy had nothing to do with the books aside from the same basic premise, and the 1967 Rex Harrison musical followed the "story" extremely loosely)
The fact it failed financially (IMO, a big reason it failed is it ended up in theaters during the traditional "dump months" of Jan-Feb. when box office is low, and it came out right before Covid) didn't change the fact it nevertheless had very POSITIVE reception from audiences. Those of us who DID go see the movie, LIKED it. It has 4 out of 5 star rating from viewers, and is Certified Fresh with VERIFIED audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a 76% score. Flopiosa had similar levels of heavily positive "audience" score from viewers, and similarly poor numbers of tickets sold and people who ACTUALLY watched it on the big screen.
The difference is Dolittle didn't have some kind of bizarre "movement" on social media weeks AFTERWARDS, trying in vain to convince the general public how awesome it was. You didn't see oodles of posts gushing over the film several weeks later with comments like "Just got back from seeing 'Dolittle' last night. My take': **** out of ****!!!! One of Robert Downey Jr.'s BEST films!!! Tom Holland was hilarious in this!!!! If you see ONE film this year, see Dolittle! Don't believe the naysayers, you OWE it to yourself to get out there and watch this masterpiece in HD on the biggest screen possible! YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT!!!!"
Hmmm. Interesting. You make a good point that Hemsworth has starred in a bunch of "installments" that have ruined iconic franchises lately.
I don't think any of those bad films were Hemsworth "fault", though. Actors have to work with the material they're given, so the only blame I can assign him is agreeing to those putrid scripts in the first place.
MiB:International was similar to Flopiosa, marketed as "another installment" of a beloved franchise, but it was really pointless spinoff with none of the original cast. The UK setting was particularly jarring since neither of two major actors that are supposedly secret agents at the "UK branch" had a British accent, including Hemsworth. Still, I don't think it was as bad as MiB2, which DID star the original cast.
Ghostbusters 2016 idiotically gender swapped all the original roles for its "reboot", and had Hemsworth in the role of a "Janine" type character. That premise was DOA before anyone saw a second of the film.
Flopisa cast Hemsworth as the bad guy in some post-apocalyptic world. Nothing wrong with that, its actually GOOD casting and Hemsworth can pull it off nicely. The only disadvantage he had there was the villians of the previous Mad Max films were so iconic that its difficult to top them.
I don't think I can really point the finger to any of the film's cast members for Flopiosa sucking so badly.
The one thing I would disagree with my fellow Flopiosa critics on is them bashing Anya Taylor-Joy for looking nothing like Chalize Theron and the original actor not being asked back. As I noted, the exact SAME thing was true in the LAST Mad Max movie, and they were fine and dandy with Tom Hardy replacing Mel Gibson despite looking, sounding, and acting absolutely nothing like the character that Mel had established. The Johnny-come-lately attitude of whining about recasting in the Mad Max franchise NOW just amounts to rank hypocrisy.
I've seen Anya Taylor-Joy in other stuff. It would be one thing if she's a "bad" actress, but she's usually pretty solid and I doubt this film is an exception. Even though, she's apparently not even IN the movie for the first 40 minutes, so the whole first act of this film is carried by an even younger actress playing CHILD Furiosa, and by all accounts she does an excellent job "selling" the character.
Same thing with Chris Hemsworth. He's got the charm, looks, and attitude to pull off most action roles, I doubt this is an exception. More likely, he put in a good performance in a crappy movie, like how The Phantom Menace is filled with stupid Jar Jar Binks slapstick and idiotic plot points about "midiclorians", but there's nothing wrong with Liam Neeson's acting. He put in a solid performance despite the film around him being overhyped, overstuffed, overbudgeted CGI schlock.
There ARE box office bombs where the actors ARE part of the problem (including people trying to convince us of the reverse, and claim its not Gal Gadot's fault that Wonder Woman 2 flopped, when in reality her 'acting' in that movie was terrible), but I don't think it's the case for Flopiosa. I blame George Miller for losing touch with what made the franchise successful in the FIRST place.