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Confusion posted:It is still amazing to me that this movie's opening weekend it seen as a abysmal failure, while it has earned about the same as Titanic, the second highest grossing movie of all time. Sure, there is inflation and all, but still... From what I can tell online, this movie opened on a hell of a lot more screens than Titanic. And the reason Titanic did so well? People saw it again and again and again, so it always stayed on the top. I doubt this will happen.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:08
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Confusion posted:It is still amazing to me that this movie's opening weekend it seen as a abysmal failure, while it has earned about the same as Titanic, the second highest grossing movie of all time. Sure, there is inflation and all, but still... This isn't a good comparison because the movie industry was completely different back then.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:12
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Nouvelle Vague posted:And the reason Titanic did so well? People saw it again and again and again, so it always stayed on the top. I doubt this will happen. Yea what made Titanic unique was that it just kept going and going. It had a decent opening weekend but then it had that same weekend over and over again for like 8 weeks.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:15
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Basebf555 posted:Yea what made Titanic unique was that it just kept going and going. It had a decent opening weekend but then it had that same weekend over and over again for like 8 weeks. Well, also it stayed in theaters for like 8 months.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:16
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Confusion posted:It is still amazing to me that this movie's opening weekend it seen as a abysmal failure, while it has earned about the same as Titanic, the second highest grossing movie of all time. Sure, there is inflation and all, but still... I don't mean to add to a pile-on since I'm sure you're just making an off-hand comment, but just for conversation's sake there's a LOOOTTT of context you have to take into account. Titanic's opening weekend was 18 years ago, on a lot less screens, during the holiday season where weekends are a little deflated and grosses tend to get spread throughout the week, and was higher than expected, and the movie was also getting great reviews and word-of-mouth, with Christmas and New Year's still ahead. You could tell the movie was off to a very strong start. Fantastic 4 opened in the summer where bigger weekends are expected, in a genre where bigger weekends are expected, in many more screens, with 18 years' worth of inflation, in a series that previously opened with twice as much, and the movie underperformed even modest expectations and has garnered horrible reviews and word-of-mouth. You can tell the movie is not off to a good start and it's certain to drop like a rock. So, with context it's actually pretty easy to see why these two movies could debut with the same numbers but be judged completely differently.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:43
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Ape Agitator posted:Most of the examples are studio-forced casting choices which in retrospect turn out to be far better than the director's choice. But that's a crapshoot because plenty of times the person forced in can be terrible. And there's more than a few examples of director's cuts being bloated and including really bad storylines with the caveat that many (most?) DCs are just non-director-driven padding to make home releases more attractive. Fair points, but I'm specifically talking about instances where a studio takes the film away from the director and re-edits/reshoots the film without their cooperation or consent. It seems like that almost always raises more problems with the film itself than it solves, at a higher cost and at a risk of extremely bad buzz.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:09
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Did anyone else like this movie besides me? I mean, personally I wish there were no fight scenes, they cgi was terrible and everyone just looked ridiculous, but basically enjoyed everything but those scenes. If this movie just focused on Ben/Johnny becoming militarized, Dr. Storm/Reed/Susan working on fixing things, and Doom's relation to the other planet, I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:58
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Did anyone else like this movie besides me? According to Rotten Tomatoes, yes. 14 other people also liked this movie.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:08
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I think the problem of this movie is there is a complete lack of crowd pleasing moments. Only Reed and Doom had their moments, but Reed's was very short and ended with him knocked out in 1 hit anyways. Doom had a much better scene, but that too ended in a lame manner. This isn't a real blockbuster action movie, and that's why its being rejected. FOX probably saw that, as some of y'all have alluded to.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:33
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computer parts posted:Well, also it stayed in theaters for like 8 months. You realize that's BECAUSE it kept performing, week after week, right?
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Aug 11, 2015 21:56
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Surlaw posted:You were upset about the goofy name Planet Zero in a story about Dr. Doom? Upset? Hardly. I just thought it was hilarious that somebody thought it was a totally better name than "the Negative Zone", and then they still kept stuff like Dr. Doom in (even if Doom was only called such as an off-hand joke). It's pretty generous too to say the story was "about" Doom, as his only characterization was being 1) creepy about Sue, 2) feeling threatened by Reed, and 3) being a romanticized Snowden-esque anti-authority type. Of those three qualities, only the last is relevant at all when it becomes full-blown genocidal misanthropy. He is a macguffin as much as Reed's dimension-hopping machine was.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:59
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Jenny Angel posted:Yeah next time you feel like a sci-fi story is trying too hard to give its planet a cool name, remember that all but one planet in our own solar system is named after a dead god of an ancient empire. Which makes it extra-goofy that the planet in this one was called Planet Ominous Letter. Reed could have dubbed it Planet Nautilus or whatever, he had that Nemo thing going for characterization, right?
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Aug 11, 2015 22:09
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Surlaw posted:Blade Runner I'd agree with this, but I'm really unforgiving of the voiceover version. I'm not sure if it's bad per se, but I can see how it would get clobbered (  heh) by something like ET. Not sure how ET also buried The Thing (Carpenter) in the same weekend though.Also, the Donnie Darko director's cut is pretty bad. The first cut worked better, but I suppose that highlights that it's a bad movie.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:09
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second-hand smegma posted:
I really like Donnie Darko but the directors cut really messes the movie up by trying to explain things.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:36
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Four Score posted:Upset? Hardly. I just thought it was hilarious that somebody thought it was a totally better name than "the Negative Zone", and then they still kept stuff like Dr. Doom in (even if Doom was only called such as an off-hand joke). How loudly did you yell this out in the theater?
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Aug 11, 2015 22:50
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ghostwritingduck posted:I really like Donnie Darko but the directors cut really messes the movie up by trying to explain things. I'd argue that what messes up the DD Directors Cut isn't the explanation stuff. Having the contents of the Plot Books float about was a good idea since characters kept bringing up the book throughout the movie. It's everything else that sinks it. "This movie makes sense if you read this other thing" was and remains an unacceptable thing.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:51
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Is Planet Zero thaaaat weird? I took it as like, a temporary codename placeholder for a newly discovered thing. Like if we found a new dwarf planet or something. There's no situation where the Negative Zine Zone flies.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:53
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ALFbrot posted:You realize that's BECAUSE it kept performing, week after week, right? For reference; Titanic made 20-30M a weekend for like two months and still stayed #1 for 2 months after that. It was a set of legs we haven't seen since with the sole exception of Avatar. F4 has nothing going for it; Titanic still got good reviews, Cameron had production problems but his film was good despite that and word-of-mouth was so much better than the pure venom you will see online.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:59
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Can China right this ship? I hope at least the studios reshot some scenes for those markets. Maybe that explains the wig...
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Aug 11, 2015 23:02
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oldpainless posted:Hold on, do you mean THE Philip Glass?! He apparently spent alot of time discovering new arpeggios for this project. Too bad they'll go to waste.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:03
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TheFallenEvincar posted:Is Planet Zero thaaaat weird? I took it as like, a temporary codename placeholder for a newly discovered thing. Like if we found a new dwarf planet or something. There's no situation where the Negative Zine Zone flies. It was funnier when it was Unobtanium.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:06
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TheFallenEvincar posted:Can China right this ship? I hope at least the studios reshot some scenes for those markets. Apparently China only has so many slots for foreign releases and they don't want to waste one on FF. China cannot help this movie.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:19
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Grendels Dad posted:Apparently China only has so many slots for foreign releases and they don't want to waste one on FF. China cannot help this movie. What are you talking about? Can you source that change? FF was slated to go to china along with several other movies.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:36
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Drifter posted:What are you talking about? I'll have to look in the Comic Book Movie Thread, I got that bit from there. That's why I put the "apparently" in there.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:43
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Did anyone else like this movie besides me? I just got back from seeing this, and while I won't say I liked it, I thought it was mediocre, which is a long way from 3.9 or whatever it currently has on IMDB. I mean, I went into this expecting it to be as bad as something you'd see on MST3K. Let down by internet hype again... I do think the ending was absolutely terrible, though. That more than anything made it clear just how much the studio likely hacked this movie to pieces.
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Aug 11, 2015 23:46
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I have to assume even if they remain firm on a sequel, there's no way Trank is back right
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Aug 12, 2015 00:18
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If a movie has a very low IMDb/RT/critic score, that doesn't mean it's always a bad movie that's worth watching for fun (MST3k). Sometimes it means a movie is a boring piece of poo poo (Fant4stic). Sorry for stating the obvious.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:37
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Justin Godscock posted:For reference; Titanic made 20-30M a weekend for like two months and still stayed #1 for 2 months after that. It was a set of legs we haven't seen since with the sole exception of Avatar. More like 4 months; noted classic Lost In Space was the movie that finally bumped it out of the #1 spot in April. It was a combination of well-liked movie, hype and weak competition that we might never see again.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:45
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second-hand smegma posted:I'd agree with this, but I'm really unforgiving of the voiceover version. I'm not sure if it's bad per se, but I can see how it would get clobbered ( While it came out a month earlier, I recall that The Thing was destroyed by Conan the Barbarian which was mega huge and untouchable IIRC according to some special features on The Thing DVD releases. E.T. also hurt The Thing on VHS for a bit too since of course people were all about more optimistic stuff like Return of the Jedi and E.T. itself. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Aug 12, 2015 |
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Aug 12, 2015 00:55
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Four Score posted:Upset? Hardly. I just thought it was hilarious that somebody thought it was a totally better name than "the Negative Zone", and then they still kept stuff like Dr. Doom in (even if Doom was only called such as an off-hand joke). Oh hell yes "Planet X? More like.....THE NEGATIVE ZONE AMIRITE?!" *gets like five blowjobs while being paraded around the theater by the applauding pations*
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Aug 12, 2015 01:02
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Why would you call it the Negative Zone when it's a planet?
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Aug 12, 2015 01:04
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PoshAlligator posted:The first half of the movie is the best film FF origin. There's a lot of greys and genuinely interesting characters. I can actually identify the exact moment when the movie turns to poo poo for me. It's just after the origin when the time jump occurs and you watch everyone feel like poo poo and you're just like "where the gently caress is Reed?
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Aug 12, 2015 01:18
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I feel the same way a lot of people felt in that F4 probably would have been a decent movie with lots of detractors if they kept the tone of the first half all the way through. The body horror motif that was there (and what Trank wanted in interviews and his drunken online ramblings on 4chan) but...eh, that's kind of a dark thing to have when F4 is all about a dysfunctional family who bands together when Doom threatens to take over the Statue of Liberty or something. Yes, it's to show how these people would react to being made of rocks or stretching themselves but trying to go Cronenberg with it is just off-putting. But, Trank made it believable and I was actually following the first half wondering where they were going with it. Then "1 year later" happens and it all goes to poo poo. I was actually amazing, and I mean AMAZED, at how undercooked Doom was when he showed up. He basically arrives, goes "yup, I'm bad...time to die" and pulls a plan out of his rear end to destroy Earth and make Planet Zero his kingdom despite it being a dead ball of rock. The thing that sucks is the film actually has a brief moment of excellence where Doom is wandering down the hallway exploding heads and everyone's reaction is honestly frighteningly realistic like it was from a better film. But he's still a metal man with green veins who is a near God who never decides "hey, let's make the F4's heads explode because I can because I am a deity essentially".
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Aug 12, 2015 01:44
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Justin Godscock posted:who never decides "hey, let's make the F4's heads explode because I can because I am a deity essentially". They were immune to that because they all had planet X power.
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Aug 12, 2015 02:08
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Justin Godscock posted:F4 has nothing going for it; Titanic still got good reviews, Cameron had production problems but his film was good despite that and word-of-mouth was so much better than the pure venom you will see online. Cameron also isn't a bitch and likely would not let the studio boss him around. I'd be willing to bet on him telling studio execs, straight up in their face, to gently caress off at one point or another.
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Aug 12, 2015 02:14
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In the very first Fantastic Four origin comic, Johnny Storm screams out in horror, "You've turned into monsters... both of you!! It's the rays!! Those terrible cosmic rays!", as his own body starts to spontaneously combust. Ben and Reed are trying to beat eachother to death, in a battle over Sue's affections. Reed tries to calm everyone down by saying they should work as a team and use their powers for good, but then he not only calls himself Mr. Fantastic but names the entire team after himself without consulting the others. Reed is drawn separate from the rest of the group, standing over them. Ben only agrees to join because he wants access to Sue. Fantastic Four has always been horror. The 'family values' stuff is a hastily-imposed illusion designed to disguise and repress their collective monstrosity. We can call ourselves a family and pretend there's nothing wrong.
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Aug 12, 2015 02:17
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teagone posted:Cameron also isn't a bitch and likely would not let the studio boss him around. I'd be willing to bet on him telling studio execs, straight up in their face, to gently caress off at one point or another. Think he had a teeny bit more clout than this guy after The Terminator and Aliens and T2...
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Aug 12, 2015 02:20
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teagone posted:Cameron also isn't a bitch and likely would not let the studio boss him around. I'd be willing to bet on him telling studio execs, straight up in their face, to gently caress off at one point or another. Gee that would be a greeeat strategy for a director trying to make it in Hollywood on his first major picture.
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Aug 12, 2015 04:57
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I'd accept a total change in genre to some sort of existential horror. With how old superheroes are, changing them is often the best way to give them some more, very needed spice. Especially if said horror is worked through to strive toward America's Finest Family in a future movie. Seeing a genuine character shift as they work through their tensions with each other and their new, horrific circumstances over a trilogy could be incredibly poignant, and the development needed to reach said point could avoid the "nothing happens in the second movie" pratfall.
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Aug 12, 2015 05:08
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Despite the criticism of calling it Planet Zero, to me it seems like in some way it was just them wanting to keep the potential Negative Zone designation and design completely untouched for a sequel centered around that. Just like something such as Marvel doing a flick called "Thor: The Dark World", Fox doing a movie called "Fantastic Four: The Negative Zone"* sounds about right... (*RT doesn't have that as the current ratings on this film yet, right?) FF: TNZ sounds like it could be the title of a Cronenbergian other-dimensional SF/Horror flick.
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Aug 12, 2015 07:00
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