Now LOSING to Bad Boys 4, The (Third) Garfield Movie, IF, LOTR 3, The Watchers, AND POTA 10! - Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Discussion

[–] bozo_500 (12512) 11 days ago

I didn't even know they'd rereleased LOTR , And I'm kind of surprised Garfield hasn't done more completely obliterating Furiosa

Hopefully this be a lesson for franchises, don't do a spin off movie of a side character esp with a new actor (even Han frickin Solo suffered!), so no Moneypenny The Early Years: A Bond Saga!

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 11 days ago

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!

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 11 days ago

>> 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.

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[–] bozo_500 (12512) 11 days ago

True but I was thinking GF might be as huge as Super Mario but yeah its still beating Furiosa comfortably (coming up to 200m over Furiosa nearing 150m)

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[–] FilmBuff (6830) 11 days ago

You're comparing apples to oranges. 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. Of course Garfield is going to outperform it. That's a kid's movie, and it has a built-in audience. 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.

I doubt very many people expected Furiosa to do well at the box office. This is the exact sort of film that fails to earn back its cost during its initial theatrical run, but slowly does so over time with streaming revenue, home video sales, re-releases, etc.

In the past, it was mass appeal for the morons like Bad Boys, Garfield, etc. that allowed studios to fund quality pictures like Furiosa. Art for art's sake and all that. We'll likely see less of that now that even the top-grossing films aren't making much, and even blockbusters made for the idiots are being streamed at home by even bigger idiots.

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 11 days ago

>> 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.

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[–] FilmBuff (6830) 11 days ago

Fury Road may have brought Mad Max back into the minds of some people, but it didn't perform particularly well at the box office. It wasn't even one of the top 20 grossing films of 2015. Mad Max films have a very limited audience to pull from. They aren't for kids. They aren't date movies. Women don't watch them. The audience is a mix of the art house fans who want to see a masterful director at work, and fans of a certain kind of highbrow action film. That severely limits the number of people who will even consider going to see a film like this. Now throw in streaming, and you have maybe 25-30% of the audience you would have had before 2020.

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 11 days ago

>> 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!

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[–] Ripkens25 (1951) 11 days ago

It sounds like you're just dead set against an expansion of the Mad Max universe. But for George Miller and his vision, 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. I say we trust him, and respect that vision. 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?

In the end, it will all come back to Max, as he is the backbone of this universe. And it makes things that much more interesting, knowing this....as we learn more about his world, and anticipate his return. With Star Wars, the first 3 (original films) seemed very much about Luke and his arc.....but then Lucas decided to expand the universe, with prequels, and different standout characters to learn about. Ultimately, the story came back to Luke, but learning more about his universe made the anticipation of his return even more interesting, and layered.

You should really watch the film--especially if you liked Fury Road. It might just surprise you. It is very well done, and quite a quality movie. As you yourself have suggested....box office returns aren't always a reflection of quality.

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 10 days ago

>> 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!

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 10 days ago

>> 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!

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[–] FilmBuff (6830) 11 days ago

Garfield and Furiosa have the same problem: people stopped going to the movies. You can pretend there is something unique about Furiosa's box office, but there isn't. It attracted the cult audience it was going to attract, exactly as expected, and that's that. Streaming is killing theaters the same way Amazon killed bookstores and Napster killed the music industry.

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 10 days ago

>> 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!

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[–] FilmBuff (6830) 10 days ago

You're proving my point for me.

In the past, most people went to the movies. Young people went for fun, teens and 20something for dates, older people just to see movies. It was the norm. Anytime a movie came out that interested you, you went to see it in a theater, because you knew you'd wait 6 months to a year until you could rent it. And, because it was what everyone did. Social norms matter.

Now social norms have shifted. Streaming movies at home is what everyone does. When a movie comes into a theater, if it even does, it sometimes streams the same day, or a week or two later. Many films are not even released in theaters.

Now, movie-going has become something people rarely do. Each year, two or three films capture the zeitgeist, and become "the movie everyone is seeing." Those are your Top Gun 2, Barbie, Oppenheimer, etc.

Movie-going has shifted from being a once-a-week to a once-a-year thing for most Americans.

The quality of the film isn't an issue. It never has been. Rarely have the movies most consider "the best" also been the ones that sold the most tickets. That's still the case. Look at Furiosa, the film we're discussing. Most everyone who has gone to see it is raving about it. It's widely considered a great movie, by audiences and critics alike. The Fall Guy is another such film-- it rates even higher than Furiosa. In years past, both would have cleaned up at the box office. Instead, now both will dominate streaming and everyone will talk about how great they are, but their box office grosses will be small. That's simply the way it is now.

You can pretend all you want that Americans have suddenly become savvy, cultured individuals who only go to see the most highbrow of entertainment, but we both know the truth is that streaming has killed cinema-going.

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[–] rateater (9504) 10 days ago

what’s lotr 3? rotk?

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[–] ReelReviews14 (1174) 10 days ago

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.

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