Craig's MovieBlog

Michael Bay is Loved by Everyone

This is both true and painfully ironic.

His film, Transformers 2, had the second largest opening single day of all time on Wednesday, raking in $60.6 million dollars.  So, he is clearly loved by lots of you.

At the same time, the reviews of the film were blisteringly awful, but many were staggeringly creative:

“It sounds as though the script…was written in serial novel form during an all-night mescaline bender,” Christopher Orr, The New Republic

“I’d rather listen to Mr. Roboto on a loop for 150 minutes than watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen again,” Mike Ward, Richmond.com

“Will insult your intelligence, hurt your eyes, and offend your sense of decency until you worry that your skull might explode while your brain trickles right out of your ears,” Tricia Olszewski, Washington City Paper

Please note that the following is from a POSITIVE review of the film:

“It’s like watching a blender for two hours while someone shouts at you. And then the last half an hour is the same, except it’s more like having your head strapped to a washing machine while you watch a blender and someone shouts at you,”  Paul French, FHM

But perhaps the best comment was called out by former Deadspin editor Will Leitch after he read what Roger Ebert wrote:

“I didn’t have a stop watch, but it seemed to me the elephantine action scenes were pretty much spaced out evenly through the movie. There was no starting out slow and building up to a big climax. The movie is pretty much all climax. The Autobots and Deceptibots must not have read the warning label on their Viagra. At last we see what a four-hour erection looks like.”

Mr. Leitch also gleefully called out Rian Johnson’s recent tweets.  Rian Johnson is the writer and director of Brick and The Brothers Bloom.  I’m sure Michael Bay will gladly call out that Mr. Johnson’s films combined were outgrossed by Transformers 2 in the first 60 seconds of its release.  Having said that, Mr. Johnson writes:

“I think Bay's creative process is clarified by describing any scene from the film then putting the words "and shit" at the end of it:”

"And they're in Egypt, so they're driving past camels and shit."

"And they need to get to this machine they have to bust up the pyramids and shit."

"And this sliver thing activates something in Shia's brain so he's seeing symbols and shit."

And finally, the “Fake Michael Bay” twitter page is fantastic.  It’s kind of like the Chuck Norris jokes, but still brilliant.

David Poland, Batman, and Titanic at the Box Office

I know this is old in internet time, but it’s still goodness.

The Dark Knight is currently at $342 million after just 13 days.

Titanic is the all time biggest grossing film at $600.8 million.

David Poland isn’t sure whether The Dark Knight will pass Titanic in total domestic box office (probably not), but he once again changes the discussion and says that we’re all looking at the wrong race.  The worldwide box office is the real game, and there’s no way Titanic is beaten by Batman this year.  Why?  Well, just start with the fact that while “no Batman film has ever even matched the level internationally that it reached at home,” Titanic made twice as much around the world as it did here in the states. 

Wa-wa-wait, what? 

That’s right – not only did Titanic break all records domestically by making $600 million here, it made $1.2 billion more overseas for a $1.84 billion total.

Put another way, Titanic made more money just overseas alone than any other movie has ever grossed in total worldwide.

That’s a big iceberg.

Where’s My Kaboom?

Warner Bros. is making a Marvin the Martian movie.

If this doesn't outgross Alvin and the Chipmunks, something will have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Wanted: Second Biggest #2 Debut Ever

Does that even make sense?  Wanted opened to $51.1 million this weekend, and while it wasn’t enough to beat Wall-E ($62.5 million), it was the second biggest debut ever that didn’t hit #1. 

I love stats like this.  Also, I am a dork.

Here are the top five #2 debuts of all time (via Box Office Mojo)

Rank	Title	Opening	Weekend Winner (Weekend Gross)
1	The Day After Tomorrow	$68.7 million	Shrek 2 ($72.1 million)
2	Wanted	$51.1 million	Wall-E ($62.5 million)
3	The Longest Yard	$47.6 million	Revenge of the Sith ($55.2 million)
4	Alvin and the Chipmunks	$44.3 million	I Am Legend ($77.2 million)
5	Casino Royale	$40.8 million	Happy Feet ($41.5 million)

More Dumb Math

E! Online is reporting today that Iron Man just broke the $300 threshold at the North American box office today.  Their lead sentence is:

“The biggest movie of the summer just became the biggest movie of the year.”

Um… no. 

It already was the biggest movie of the year and had been for some time.  Does it not count as the biggest movie of the year until it breaks $300 million?  Why don’t they consider it the biggest movie of the year at $250 million, or $200 million, or the second it passed the previous number 1 film, Horton Hears a Who when it (here’s the key) moved into first place on the list of domestic box office grossing films?!?!?!

I know.  Film is a visual medium.  Numbers is hard.

Thank Goodness Someone Is Paying Attention

Hats off to Nathaniel R over at Film Experience Blog who beat me to the punch today.  I mean, I know math and stuff is hard since we’re all so busy watching The Hills and Living Lohan, but why is everyone in the industry so happy that the new Hulk film opened to $55 million with a $150 budget, while the so-called Ang Lee bomb from a few years ago opened to $62 million with a lower ($137 million) budget?

To recap, here’s a handy table:

	The Incredible Hulk	Hulk
Year	2008	2003
Director	Louis Leterrier	Ang Lee
Stars	Ed Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth	Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly
Production Budget	$150 million	$137 million
Opening Weekend	$55.4 million	$62.1 million
Per Screen Average	$15,810	$16,974
Industry Buzz	Yay!	Boo!

Yes, opening weekend is just one measure of success, as the 2003 Hulk suffered a severe drop off and bad word of mouth, but can we all stop salivating and crying a sigh of relief when the numbers are clearly worse? 

Expectations must have been god awful to celebrate this way…

Oh, and as David Poland rightfully points out, the new Hulk film “faces Wall-E, Wanted, and Hancock while Hulk faced Charlie’s Angels 2, Legally Blonde 2, and Terminator 3.”

Let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back, shall we?

Playing Chicken

According to Box Office Mojo, Get Smart has a production budget of $80 million, while The Love Guru has a budget of $62 million.  Neither of those numbers include the massive costs sunk into marketing these two films.

Let’s just say, these are big investments.

So why… why oh why… why would the Warner Bros and Paramount plan on releasing these two films, both big budget comedies, both with big stars that came from television, both targeting the exact same audience, why would they release them on the same day?

There’s a good piece in the LA Times discussing that there are more films being released each year than ever before, and (I don’t know if you’ve noticed) the number of weeks in a year is remaining remarkably constant.

That’s a nice excuse, but are you telling me you couldn’t find a single weekend to do some appropriate counter-marketing?  You couldn’t release one of those films this weekend against The Incredible Hulk and The Happening?  What new film are women going to see this weekend?  Not those two, but maybe they would have seen that big action spy movie with that funny Anne Hathaway that they loved so much in The Devil Wears Prada (which, if you remember did a brilliant job of counter-marketing against Superman Returns, to the tune of a $27 million opening and a $125 million gross domestically.)

This smells of nothing but ego, pure and simple.  Someone picked a date, another person picked a date, and no one wanted to “show weakness” and move, even though it probably would have made them another $50 million.  Silly.

Can Everyone Get a Grip on Reality Please?

I am certainly not a Disney apologist, but I have to say I'm flabbergasted (yes, flabbergasted) by the reaction to the box office totals of Prince Caspian, both from the public, and then from Disney itself.  After opening weekend, box office pundits declared it "disappointing" even though it made $55 million.  Yes, the 54th biggest opening of all time is now classified as disappointing... I guess because it made about $10 million less than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe a few years earlier.  Yeah... sometimes that happens to sequels.  See, the people who didn't like the first one, don't usually go back to the second one.

Anyway, over this past holiday weekend, its second weekend in theaters, in the face of Iron Man, Speed Racer, and Indiana Jones, it still made another $30 million.  Mind you, I'm now apparently an old fogey who remembers when a $30 million opening was a big deal, but the film is now up to $101 million domestically AND has made another $51 million overseas.

So, to be clear, we live in a world where a film grossing $150 million after just being in theaters for 13 days is disappointing, or as Disney President Bob Iger put it, "isn't performing as well as expected."  Sigh...

Again, I'm not saying the movie was good or bad, and I'm not saying that they should have spent over $200 million making and marketing this film.  (No wait... I am.  They really, really shouldn't have done that.)  I'm just looking for a little perspective here people.  Not every movie is either the BIGGEST THING EVER or a giant disappointment.  I'm tired of the hysterical attitude, and I'm even more surprised that Iger addressed it.  There are shades of gray, and everyone needs to take a breath and think once in a while.

Craigslist

• "Speed Racer is just barely going to beat out Harold & Kumar II at the domestic box office.  Brutal." - David Poland.  Yes, that would be the Harold & Kumar that cost $12 million versus the Speed Racer that cost $120 million.
• Brett Ratner wants to make movies based on video games.  I don't have a joke here.  Just ponder that for a while... and then try to stop yourself from crying.
• Motley Crue's new single sold 10,000 copies on iTunes, but 47,000 copies through Rock Band on the Xbox 360.  Very interesting to think about new distribution patterns...
• I can't believe how bored I was during Indiana Jones IV.  It's not that the film was bad... it was just "meh."  The ultimate sin - just plain boring.  After seeing how Bourne and the latest Bond film (Casino Royale) reinvented the action/adventure franchise, and reset audience expectations, why would Spielberg and Lucas deliver this?  Anyway, here's a good review  :)

It's The Movie, Stupid

So, now that Iron Man debuted to a $100 million opening weekend AND Grand Theft Auto 4 opened to $500 million in first week sales, maybe (just maybe) it's time for Hollywood to stop blaming poor ticket sales on video games.

If you make a good movie, that people want to see, it doesn't matter whether Halo 17 comes out that week or not.

Just a thought.

Just So We're Clear...

...about the insanity that we've created: with Iron Man opening to $100.8 million this weekend, it has now become possible to break $100 million in your opening weekend, and yet still NOT be in the top 10 of all time best opening weekends.  In fact, Iron Man will most definitely fall out of the top ten in just a few weeks, when Indiana Jones 4 opens.

It feels like we need to track box office differently now, and I'll use a sports analogy.  In baseball today, there's a complaint that the small markets can't even hope to compete with the larger ones, especially since there's no salary cap in baseball, unlike basketball or football.  Some are even saying that it's so unfair, that to maintain competition, the league should be split in two: one for the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox of the world, and another for the small market Twins, Royals, and Brewers, etc.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and I've written and re-written and deleted some ideas a few times now in this entry, but it feels like there's a level of "fairness" that isn't being addressed in regular box office tracking.

What does it mean when a film in just 3 days can (hypothetically) gross more than all the Best Picture nominations combined through their entire runs, but still can't break into the top 10?  I don't know...

I have to noodle on this a bit.

Okay... Now She's Just Rubbing It In

Aaron, I say this with all the love, admiration, and respect in the world.

Tina Fey's latest film, Baby Mama, starring Amy Poehler, made $18.3 million in its opening weekend to place at #1.

Aaron Sorkin's latest project, Charlie Wilson's War, starring some people named Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and getting promoted on some show called Oprah... opened to $15.9 million in a four-day-holiday weekend, behind some chipmunks.

Hoo boy... Tina's still got the quote of the (last) year: "I hear Aaron Sorkin is in Los Angeles wearing the same dress - but longer, and not funny."

Craigslist

• I don't love Noah's writing, but his Summer Movie Preview is pretty complete, if nothing else.  I find myself looking forward to Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Get Smart (why open this on the same day as another huge comedy, The Love Guru?), Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock (could be Will Smith's first misfire in some time), The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, The X-Files sequel, Choke, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, The International, Towelhead, Hamlet 2, and finally, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (no, not really).
• David Poland handicaps and predicts the box office of the summer hits.  If Hancock hits $250 million, I'll be stunned.  Also, I think he's underestimating the geek quotient on Wanted.  I mean, if 300 can hit a massive opening weekend, then don't you think Wanted will gross more than $62 million all up?  Finally, if Sex and the City only makes $60 million, someone's getting fired at New Line Cinema.  Oh, wait - nevermind.  See David's full box office chart here.
• Dilbert author Scott Adams hated No Country for Old Men and proposes a new system for reviewing movies.
• The first full-length movie has been launched on YouTube, and the creators have an interesting business model behind it.  And by interesting, I mean "no way in hell will this work."
• David Poland again, talking about the Juno Blu-ray DVD.  It comes with a "bonus digital copy" that you can put on your iPod, PC, etc, etc.  This is brilliant, and I'd love to see every DVD come with this.  I mean, if I buy the DVD, and I want to put it on a different platform - can the studios save me some frustration and do the extra work for me?  I don't want to go find special ripping software, potentially breaking several laws... I want to put 17 Curious George episodes on my laptop or iPod for the airplane trip with my kids, but there's no convenient way to do this today.

Giant Nerd Orgasms

As you may have heard, there's lots of fear excitement in various entertainment industries about the fact that the film Iron Man is opening the same weekend that the video game Grand Theft Auto IV is released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Nikki Finke says that the video game will hurt Iron Man's ticket sales, and Variety is reporting that GTA IV may pull in as much as $400 million in its opening week.  Nikki also brings in a 3rd party to discuss whether video games are bigger than movies.  He basically says that the numbers are bigger in video games, but that's because the games are almost 10 times more expensive.  I say, "money is money."  If studios could sell movie tickets for $60 a pop, they would.  But yes, there are fewer people buying video games than movie tickets - tell it to the shareholders.

There were similar rumblings a few months ago, when Halo 3 supposedly hurt the box office take of Ben Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid, but I still believe that (oh, I don't know) the movie wasn't really interesting to anyone and was destined to fail anyway.  Besides, is the core Halo 3 audience really the same people going to a Ben Stiller romantic comedy?  I'm just sayin'.

You know what I predict for that weekend?  With a huge comic book movie and a giant video game being released?  Well, just look at the title...

This Isn't Surprising

Hey, guess what?  Movie studios don't put women in lead roles!

There were about 110 movies with a male lead and 5 with a female lead. Of the second-billed females, nearly all are written as love interests of the first-billed man. There were over sixty movies in the sample with two male stars top-billed. The only movies with two top-billed female roles, on the other hand, were The Devil Wears Prada and Scary Movie 4.