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NorrinRad's Replies
[quote]Because Downey's getting paid too much, Marvel's going to want to get rid of him and his contract.[/quote]Tony Stark may indeed be killed but it won't be for the sensationalist reason that you believe. Robert Downey makes a ton of money because he earned it. Downey is neither holding Marvel hostage nor is he pricing himself out of future films. He's getting too old to continue playing the same character without a script that calls for an aging Tony Stark.
Marvel locked many of their stars to long term deals and it was a two way gamble and a bet that succeeded spectacularly for both parties. Downey has used his leverage to get increases for everyone else and it was Ike Perlmutter who wanted to keep salaries down and production costs down to make more money at the expense of moving stories forward. Ike is gone and Civil War netted Downey a big payday and Disney another huge hit.
Marvel will kill off characters that will allow a narrative to move forward not for financial reasons. Do you honestly think Downey as Iron Man isn't making Disney a ton of money?
[quote]He is one of the mightiests badasses villians in MCU together with Galactus, Apocalypse, Dr. Doom, etc.[/quote]And what would be the point of that death and mayhem? What would it mean? Why would that even remotely be enjoyable? How would you even relate to that?
Would it be a horror movie? How about a "snuff" film? What would a movie like that tell you about yourself or humanity?
What if Thanos killed a bunch of regular humans instead? Why wouldn't he be the Mightiest BadAss Villain for killing let's say 10,000 people? Let's say he got away with no punishment, no remorse and no consequence. What does it mean to be the Mightiest Bad Ass Villian?
Kid's choice award nomination maybe?
I'm Male. Thoroughly enjoyed the show and any alleged Feminist narrative, agenda, bias did not detract from the show nor the character.
Hayley Atwell is gorgeous, funny, smart, tough and a great talent.
Marvel Studios was operating from a handicap (not having their full category of A-List heroes) and [b]DID[/b] play catch-up and will soon be speeding past Warner/DC with the only property that mattered, their full slate of character IP's. Spider-Man and the X-Men had as much name recognition or more than Batman and Superman in the worldwide marketplace within the last 20 -30 years.
When it came to using their properties on the Big Screen, the Small Screen, Direct-to-DVD, Merchandising, video games, theme parks and print Warner/DC is ahead in some places and behind in others. What Marvel/Disney is doing with the MCU is increasing the value of the catalog of IP's and Warner/DC with their fractured and inconsistent DCEU is diminishing or narrowing their character's IP value.
Yes WW was worth more than GOTG before the slate of MCU films which shows what the MCU has done for Marvel/Disney. Disney is buying Fox for multiple reasons and one is that the Marvel catalog provides a wealth of content of varying kinds to create entertainment, when done with a plan.
I never ever thought that the obscure title GOTG would have a live action movie one day before the well established character of WW. Now GOTG's Star Lord, Groot, Rocket, Drax, Nebula, Gamorra have just as much or more market cachet than the Greek Mythology based Amazonian Wonder Woman.
[quote]There were no institutionalized racism against black people in Asia (e.g., no black African slavery) so there is no hostile racism against black people today, unlike in the US. That doesn't mean there is no hostile racism. There are plenty, like Han against non-Han people for example, but just not really against blacks.[/quote]Asians have their own inferiority complex with Dark-Skinned people or people of color allegedly culturally below Asians as even more inferior as their own inferiority complex metastasizes. Many Asians want to be European/Caucasian rather than Asian.
Slavery isn't the sole purview of racism as you noted. Racial and skin-tone superiority is steeped in ignorance.
Eventually an Asian led superhero film will come out of Hollywood and from Disney, it will be [b]Mulan[/b]. I'm serious.
[quote]Hot on the heels of Wonder Woman, Justice League looks to be a real monster. Will this film be able to make enough before Justice League sucks all of the oxygen up?[/quote]The short answer was, "yes"!
The longer answer is that Justice League continues to suck on the carbon monoxide fumes from sitting in it's own garage due to not getting the six cylinder engine started properly. It misfired badly. Recommendation is to go with 6 one cylinder vehicles that carry less people but still get you to the destination.
[quote]You misspelled "MCU" instead of "DCU", and also misspelled "Thor" instead of "Justice League". It happens, auto correct gets us all sometimes.[/quote]That was pretty clever.
It took awhile for the MCU to even be a recognizable 'thing' and it is still growing. The key for me to the MCU is the slate of characters. Why would I even care about a shared universe if I didn't like the characters? Limited to Comic-Book fans alone the Box office for a comic book movie wouldn't hit $1 Billion dollars.
I think the $700 Million mark for JL is spot on for the market that the movie was intended for. Warner/DC just overspent on that final product.
The DCEU as constituted is fine by itself. It could be a platform for telling a divergent set of stories that don't need to needlessly be connected to each other. The X-Men universe and the MCU don't HAVE to co-exist together either to be entertaining films.
[quote]years ago i would of expected a Justice League movie to make over 1 billion , its struggling to make 700 million , that is bad, DCEU is in serious decline[/quote]Let's think that through just a bit. When did the first Superhero/CBM crack $1 Billion? Second, prior to the Avengers, Marvel's solo features gave no indication that a team-up film would be that lucrative. It also wasn't an automatic and locked in amount. The audience had to be built and the audiences for Marvel's solo films were not really cumulative audiences they overlapped. No way the studio could build in repeat viewership for theaters that would predict $1 Billion. Marvel/Disney created an event film based on their characters that drew in other viewers.
Neither an Avengers film by itself nor a JL film alone would have garnered a $1 Billion dollar Box Office. No one knows what the Box-Office potential of either team-up film would have been without constructing the foundation. I agree with your underlying premise, a Justice League movie should have outperformed an Avengers movie by itself without either having a solo films as the Warner/DC JL characters were far more familiar than the Disney/Marvel Avengers characters.
The MCU and the DCEU weren't necessary to having a Team-up movie. Marvel took a direction and put in the work. Marvel continues to put in the work just by seeing the results from the just released Avengers:Infinty War teaser.
Thus the origin of the term, [b]Hot Mess[/b]!!
[quote]That's what makes the joke funny.[/quote]And it is also what makes movies crossing cultural and international borders and boundaries so difficult.
Wayne's World's infamous "SCHWING" doesn't have an equivalent in every language nor mass market SNL reference. Not everyone is going to "get" a Jackson Pollack joke when they don't even know who Jackson Pollack is.
I chuckled at Zune and my wife had no idea what the joke was. Having to explain it made it worse, just like on this board.
[b]"Why is THAT funny?"[/b]
[quote]I am a huge movie fanatic who loves the theater experience, and I'm skipping blockbuster films because studios can't get their act together. I doubt I'm alone. I hope they feel it in their wallets and start turning the ship around instead of plowing ahead with the same flawed game plan.[/quote]As a fan of movies I don't have a personal axe to grind against Blockbusters. The Blockbuster impacts only one part of my movie going experience. Most are enhanced on the Big Screen. Yes, theater chains and movie studios make the majority of their money on Blockbusters but they make more when the experience is maximized, with Good to Great products. I still see small films, foreign films, spy-thrillers, action films but not all on IMAX. The theater experience does not enhance all movies.
A movie with a Good Story gets a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and ownership viewing for me and my family. Inevitably the movie with a Good Story and a Great movie experience is enhanced with home viewing and a shared experience with friends.
In short, it's too bad you're having a bad experience with certain comic book movies and blockbusters in general. I personally continue to consume movies and appreciate the relativity of the products to each other.
Warner/DC is having a hard time to be sure but their products are still worth watching and experiencing.
Let me backtrack to Captain America:Civil War which you call captain America Three, as well as Avengers II, and iron man III. Marvel/Disney is executing a technique that has potential pluses and minuses for some, Long Form Story Telling. This allows for the MCU to be an actual character made up of multiple individual characters. There are You-tube reaction videos of the Avengers:Infinity War trailer where the reviewers are crying over the events that are being foreshadowed in the trailer. Why? Those reviewers who claim to have invested 10 years with the MCU and certain characters see the arc, the journey, the growth, the impact on each other and the MCU being affected and it affects them.
The MCU is near 20 films and the individual films share some connection with each and often have through-lines to themes across movies and other characters, in this case heroes and ultimately us. You know that phrase "The Whole Being Greater Than the Sum of the Parts" is what applies for the MCU.
Some will say that a Good Story/Good Film should stand alone and on it's own and the MCU is flamed for that. Some feel it is nothing more than a money grab with each film nothing more than a commercial for the next film. but I digress..
[quote] Never saw Spawn and haven't even heard of Steel.[/quote]Shaquille O'Neal as John Henry Irons would have words with thee, bruh!!
Okay let's talk about your Simple to Explain High Hopes.
The Thrills, the excitement, the emotional investment in the character's plight are aspects of things that you would realize after you see a movie that executes the thrill of a good story in the ultimate form of story telling on the Big Screen. Did I get that right? I'm not sure how to understand a definition or description that has the phrase in the definition or description.
The key or salient point is [b]A Good Story[/b]?
**I pre-purchased tickets to BvS, but when the reviews came out I refunded my ticket. It's obvious I made the right decision. I subsequently skipped Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Justice League. Never seen them, probably never will.**
You had your tickets refunded not based on your own experience but on reviews. How did you know that BvS as executed on the Big Screen was not a Good Story or wasn't a thrilling experience?
I would grant you that the Good Story dynamic of the DC films you mentioned (SS, JL) and the Fox product (X-Men Apocalypse) both carry some narrative flaws as franchises but all exhibit Big Screen goodness. The Big Screen did not hurt those movies though.
[quote]Then came a string of disappointing comic book movies. Iron Man III, Amazing Spider-Man, Man of Steel, Dark Knight Rises, Avengers II, Captain America III. I was tired of having my high hopes crushed.[/quote]Being that you are a [b]Self-Described[/b] Theater Fan-Boy it is interesting that the movies that you were disappointed in vary so widely in their respective theater entertainment value and perceived quality.
You don't describe yourself as a Comic-Book fan even though Spider-Man was your favorite Comic-Book character. So I am guessing that deviation from the source material is not your sticking point but is it possible you felt that those movies you made a decision to NOT consume you believe to be catered to the masses?
For some of those CBM properties the movie is very much about the character and for some it is about the spectacle.
What aspect of your High Hopes were crushed? You hoped that they would be true to the print canon with a panel by panel adaption to the Big Screen? I'm curious. Share..
Did you not like Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Blade, Spawn, Steel? I'm just kidding about Steel.
The odd thing about most of the negativism with Ultron is that he is very much the same in print canon with the exception of Hank Pym being his creator and Ultron having his humanized Oedipus Complex with Hank instead of Tony. Ultron was just as deranged and erratic over the years and the characterization and or behaviors are not really set in stone. My guess is most (and there are NOT that many) fans of Ultron only know him from the animated versions which are fairly recent. Most imagine Ultron to act in a way that they think he should act and behave and not how he was ever really portrayed.
Most fans wanted the gaping maw of a mouth (the deal with the eyes is a new one for me) but his plans always failed and he always returned which is why he is the Avengers' greatest [b]villain[/b]?
The Vision is a whole 'nother conversation. I like him. I like how he was portrayed. I've enjoyed his print version character arc. Sadly he is not long for this MCU I fear. Too bad. So sad.
The fairness doctrine isn't being used against JL but to QueenFanUSA who will cherry pick data that wrongly bolsters the poster's favorite and then is supposed to diminish QueenFanUSA's true target.
As you noted the Box office numbers for your Top 10 movies YTD are in total less than TLJ's OW numbers. The Apples to Apples hype, marketing comparison though is JL and TLJ. Warner/DC pushed and marketed this Superhero team-up as the answer to Marvel/Disney's The Avengers. The Avengers (2012) OW was ~$207 Million which for a CBM property was outstanding and demonstrated a remarkable accomplishment in crafting a product. Let's not get into the whole Transformers quantity over quality discussion for the moment.
In order to fix a problem of JL being a pretty bad movie (in your words) Warner/DC have to assess just where they went wrong. Sure no one at WD/DC is reading these boards but in these raging discussions between posters it would be refreshing if Facts/Truth/Honesty actually mattered and were used.
JL may be a good or bad movie (subjective) but why aren't DC fans attending? Star Wars The Last Jedi has a 56% audience score and Justice League has a 79% audience score. Something is clearly amiss with the WB/DC fan base. WB/DC audiences are giving thumbs up to the movie but aren't willing to pay to see it?
JL was heavily hyped, heavily tailored to the WB/DC audience for commercial appeal and yet they refuse to attend something made for them?
What am I missing?
Box office Estimates for 12/17/2017 for Thor Ragnarok. From BoxOfficeMojo.com of course.
[quote]Domestic:.................$ 306,375,120 36.4%
+ Foreign:.................$ 535,400,000 63.6%
= Worldwide:.............$ 841,775,120[/quote]
Well [b]Thor Ragnarok[/b] has not only hit the $840 Million Quasi-Win for Marvel mark, but has exceeded that as it soars on to $850 Million WW.
[b]Book Marked: 12/15/2017: $409,700,000[/b]
Okay. JL's new International numbers are in and the total has been updated.
[quote]Domestic $219,456,347 34.6%
+ Foreign: $414,500,000 65.4%[/quote]
An additional $4,800,000 has been added.
QueenFanUSA states: In regards to JL it's holding well in the face of stiff competition and will get a sizable holiday bump over the next couple weeks and is still got plenty of play left internationally.
So far that statement is holding as JL marches onwards and upwards to that desired $650 Million dollar almost breakeven total. :-)
Play fair Satan. Of the many, many, many, many, many, many, many times that QueenFanUSA has been wrong in this one the person is right. JL for it's 5th week in theaters is estimated to end the week with [b]$219,456,347 and TLJ's first weekend only will be $220,047,000.[/b]
The summary numbers still reveal the same quirky non-attendance for JL. More people went to see TLJ in one weekend than 5 weeks for JL. Let that sink in for a minute.