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I do think that before, say, the 90s or so that a lot of international box office information isn't complete. Before studios were owned by worldwide conglomerates the international rights for films were often sold to overseas distributors, and I can see a lot of public reporting of grosses falling through the cracks among different companies in different markets.
That said, that very same reason could very well account for some of the peculiar international grosses of the time. Say for some reason you have to switch distribution partners in Europe or Asia or whatnot (or maybe due to some circumstance you end up not releasing in some countries at all!), that could certainly have a big effect on grosses.
Also: careful comparing worldwide numbers between franchises. It's not all apples and oranges. Superman's known globally but does lean a little America-centric, while James Bond of course does stronger business in Europe, etc.
You really have to understand that before the 80s comic books REALLY WERE kind of stupid. They were "junk" for kids, or at best a source of camp like the 60s Batman TV show. And that was considered ok! It would've been "missing the point" if you made a comic book movie and took it too seriously.
Now people were indeed down for the reverent tone of Superman I & II and they're in part responsible for comics (eventually) getting a classier reputation, but the long origin scenes of the first were almost unanimously considered the worst part of both movies, going too far and considered too dramatic and pretentious. The second half of part I and the majority of part II, being lighter and more comedic, were praised as being "more true" to the source material.
So they double and tripled-down on that with Superman III, and the reaction to that is you definitely don't want to go too far in that direction, either!
As the years went by and people had less and less of the idea that comics were just "trashy junk for kids" (largely because comics themselves had grown past that for a long time) people were better able to take the reverent and dramatic long first act to Superman I at face value. Superman II and especially III aged kind of poorly afterward, as it appears there's this long trend of the films getting steadily sillier and further away from the tone set by the beginning of the first film, rather than it looking like it was the beginning that was betraying the tone of the rest of the films.
Mean Drunk Superman is the side of his personality that resents having to be Clark Kent. Now that he's destroyed Clark (or so he thinks), Mean Drunk Superman no longer has to put on the glasses and "become" Clark ever again. He can crush them, toss it away like a coke can, it's just useless garbage to him now, and he's savoring the moment.
I can see H.G. Wells being extremely wary about trying to change the past and potentially making a mess of the present.
That said, I think it's funny how Wells treats Jack's time machine jump with so much urgency that he just immediately follows him right away, as if Jack must be stopped "before it's too late!" Even though, you know, they literally have 80 years to come up with a plan to deal with him. I'm fine with it since it's all just a set up for a lighthearted comedy story but it's pretty amusing to think about.
Thread's years old (I feel like a time traveler myself) but it wouldn't be right if no one mentioned Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the fish-out-of-water sci-fi comedy adventure featuring time travelers exploring late-20th century San Francisco. Co-written by Nicholas Meyer!
It's not that he wants to die for its own sake. John Ryder has contempt for the civilized person. He thinks they're all "useless wastes" who deserve to die because they themselves won't fight for it: they all either plead and cry, or ask him what he wants and try to cooperate, or run away, or call the police (whose goal is to contain him or rehabilitate him, not destroy him), or even if they do fight back they never go all the way and finish the job.
What John is looking for is someone he can respect under his twisted morality: someone willing to do whatever it takes to stop him.
This might sound weird at first but The Conversation actually reminded me a lot of The Ring. The protagonist gets involved in an analog recording because it might lead to someone's death, winds up misinterpreting who the guilty party is, and the person who ends up getting killed is not who she thinks. The Ring also feels like it takes the creepy vibe from the end of The Conversation and extends it to the whole movie.
I've always liked that this movie's low-key reputation lets it take people by surprise. That said, it deserves a much higher profile than its current level of obscurity. This really could use, say, a spiffy blu-ray release or something.
Even if not everyone finds it to be a masterpiece, it's definitely an interesting, twisty mystery thriller that's got ALL these big names attached to it that have only gotten more prestigious over the years: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Sorkin, Alec Baldwin, Bill Pullman, George C. Scott, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft, Bebe Neuwirth, Tobin Bell! And of course great noir-ish cinematography by Gordon Willis. It's got a lot to offer new viewers.
They seemed to want to set her character up as spoiled and rich, but not *so* spoiled and rich that she doesn't have a job at all and just hangs out at the house 24/7. At the same time, if she were, say, a successful business woman she probably wouldn't be spoiled enough. It seems having her be an actress was the happy medium .
As for why they wanted her to be spoiled and rich in the first place, recall that the demon aims to cause everyone to lose hope, and eventually have everyone give up on poor Regan (in this case have her institutionalized full-time in a mental facility), even her parents. Choosing to possess a girl with an absentee father and an overindulged mother is the demon stacking the odds in its favor.
Not sure what's so cringey. She's a tall middle-aged jaded broad in a denim jacket, leather skirt, and high heels singing in a raspy voice a new-wave blues tune about how she doesn't care about love because she's seen some shit. It's definitely not like she's trying to be a dainty flower.
Ike & Tina Turner were pretty well known in the 60s to early 70s. Only a few of their songs hit it big, but they released a LOT of material and were constantly performing on TV and on the road. At their peak they were probably a rough equivalent to pre-TV show Sonny & Cher.
Tina's being broke in the mid-70s is supposedly down to her forsaking a lot of her & Ike's fortune in their divorce in exchange for the rights to her stage name.
It's no joke, Tina Turner really is pop music's GOAT comeback story.
Dana's presence shows signs that the Freelings weren't always the stable family unit that they currently seem: she's noticeably older than the two other kids, and fairly old even in comparison to her mom Diane (if Diane is 35 and Dana is 16, that means she had her when she was 19 at the latest). Dana also looks a little different from the rest of the family and could possibly be a stepdaughter.
Throughout we're shown signs that Diane harbors regrets about her family life. She openly misses the days when she and Steve were carefree pot-smoking hippies, to the point where she isn't alarmed at discovering bizarre supernatural activity in her house but rather excited, and instead of getting out (even temporarily) they stick around and end up getting their youngest daughter kidnapped.
The moral of the story is to not let regrets about your past take away what you have in the present. It's important to the story that Diane be the one to go in and rescue Carol Anne, showing she's let go of her lost youth and fighting for the family she loves.
Marketed to a mass audience... and at one point was the 2nd highest grossing film of all time in the US! It had everybody talking, an absolute phenomenon.
Scanlon doesn't literally know that there are hitmen coming in a few minutes to kill him. Rather, everything about the conversation he's having reminds him of his station in life and that sooner or later he's going to get what's coming to him and he probably deserves it. Because he's a criminal, and there's no changing that.
But he can accept that now. He's bittersweet, not despondent: his eyes are sad but he actually has a sort of odd Mona Lisa smile. He doesn't have to run from fate so desperately, he can stop and smell the roses. Because he proved to himself that he isn't *just* a criminal.
This isn't a tragic ending, but a quietly victorious one.
I've always taken the last scene as a dream/hallucination or otherwise something that doesn't "really" happen, as is the case with most of the similar Carrie-style final stingers of the time.
It's the character who's a snob, not the movie. She's either humbled herself and learned to appreciate popular work, or she's humiliated by her own hubris. Either way it's the character being belittled, not the videogame.
She explained she wanted to hear what it would sound like in the format most people would hear it in.
Nah, I don't think so. It was probably just Mr. Elrod. His wife's always picking on him. He probably got angry and decided to start beating her. ...Well, big deal!
...<i>They</i> are gone. My dad had to take my Aunt Ruby to Harding County and my mother decided to go along. >:-)
...Did I hear about what? Hold on... I can't believe it. Where did it happen? ...That's right down the street.
Sally, I can hear the sirens coming... Do they know who it was?
Oh, God.
Who is it?
<i>Who is it...?</i>
Oh! I should add: it was a couple weeks before release that word got out about a Yoda lightsaber duel. Honestly, in that period just before and after opening weekend the "Yoda fight" was easily the single buzziest thing about it.
Now, you'll probably find few people willing to admit it, but it must be said that at the time "the Yoda fight" went down like [i]gangbusters[/i]. People who'd heard about it were excited and anxious to see it, those who didn't were amazed and happily surprised, people clapped and cheered Yoda on. That moment was 100% a crowdpleaser. Yes, it was ridiculous and everybody knew it. But people loved Yoda, and seeing him open up a can of whoopass out of nowhere was just too gosh-darned sweet to resist.
There's never been a holiday-themed feature film called "Christmas." I reckon that "Halloween" probably just seemed like an extremely generic title or something geared towards kids.