"Tomorrowland" Is a Mess!

And the "fresh" reviews are not positive. So even that number is misleading. How is one chosen as "fresh" or not?

Jeff

 

Tomorrowland might be the second film in a row to get pitch-slapped. Pitch Perfect 2 is being forecast to take the weekend, though the race is neck & neck so far.

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/b...2-beating-tomorrowland-tight-race-1201504167/

 

A good point. And an awful lot of films find a big audience later when on video.

 

Took the kids to see this today. "Meh" reactions all around. My wife really didn't care for it. Felt kind of half-baked and could have been edited a bit more judiciously, but I wouldn't call it bad exactly. Just unremarkable.

 

It's not "John Carter" bad, but I think Tomorrowland is being looked upon as a big disappointment, given the involvement of both George Clooney and Brad Bird. A $190M+ film like this would have to make over $500M just to break even, and I'm certain they were hoping for a $75M holiday weekend. But it looks like it's gonna get beaten by Pitch Perfect 2, which is kind of bewildering.

I'll say this for the movie: at least it's an original story idea, it's different from a lot of sci-fi movies out there, and it's a movie about ideas more than anything else. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of action or explosions or fight scenes, and it seems like this is what modern summer audiences expect.

 

Damon Lindelof: I'm off!

Sure this guy gets to come in later to 'polish' other peoples scripts but he really needs to start using Shinola rather than s**t.

 

IMDb has it at 7.0, I don't think the public hates it but it won't be a financial success, that much is clear. It sounded like a good story to me when I read a little about it, I will catch it on home video next year.

 

For this kinda film that is bad.

 

Wow. I loved his MI. It was the best of the lot and very imaginative. My son is an animator illustrator and Bird is one of his heroes. He's 24 and is not really an action film fan and hates Tom a Cruise but he loved Bird's MI too

 

Variety is reporting that it will come in just slightly ahead of Pitch Perfect 2 for the weekend with a take of approximately $32 million, which is below the initial predictions which were in the $40 million range. It also fell well short of predictions in the overseas markets, only bringing in $27 million.

 

This seems to be The Way of the Internet Video Review - make the review so 'quirky'/annoying that it'll be memorable. It's like that much-viewed critique of "Phantom Menace" where the reviewer speaks with this insanely dorky monotone voice. I guess people figure if they seem normal, no one will watch...

 

I saw this today, and I enjoyed it...

 

If it crashes and burns next weekend (which I suspect it will), Disney will be in trouble. Realistically, they needed to hit over $200M domestic in the first month. I think ultimately, the movie will break even years from now, but it's not the big blockbuster hit they were hoping for. On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that Avengers 2 paid for just about every Disney movie this year, and I think Inside Out is going to do extremely well, so they're not gonna go out of business anytime soon.

I hated the first Mission:Impossible film, but I have to say, Brad Bird's film was the most enjoyable installment so far.

 

He is not one of the writers on the film and I'm sure Brad Bird's vision shaped this as well. Bird is,ultimately responsible just as Ridley Scott was for Prometheus.

I'm sure Disney shareholders are thanking whatever deity they believe in that Disney owns Pixar and Marvel right about now.

 

Not according to IMDB. He's usually called in to do re-writes and supposedly add sparkle to a script. All he does is ruin it. He also re-wrote and re-edited the script for Prometheus.

Hack.

 

The official credits:

Story by
Damon Lindelof, Brad Bird, and Jeff Jensen

Screenplay by
Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1964418/fullcredits#writers

Fans are "gunning" for Mr. Lindelof...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-there-are-people-who-are-gunning-for-me.html

I'm not so quick to say Lindelof is horrible, and I'm sure he had a lot of help in writing bad scripts and making bad choices. There's often about 5-6 other writers in the wings that punch up scripts without credit, plus there's some loose rewriting done on the set, plus reshoots done months later that may or may not have the writers' involvement.

But it is interesting to note that Tomorrowland is a movie about a few characters who are plunged into a bewildering world that they can't figure out if it's fantasy or reality, where different rules apply, and there's tons of mysteries and a possible conspiracy trying to stop them from learning the truth... and in the end, not much is explained and it kind of falls flat. (Stop me if there's a TV show that has similar problems. Hint: it rhymes with cost.)

 

It appears to have won the weekend box office with a three day total of $32.2 million and a four day (Friday - Monday) estimate of $41 million. It looks like this Memorial Day Weekend box office revenues are much lower than usual all round.


http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/24/box-office-report-tomorrowland-leads-slow-memorial-day-weekend

 

I saw this film. Great buildup, zigzag plot direction, weak payoff. Overall a B-minus story/edit. The scenes of the boy flying his jet pack were startlingly realistic. All the attention went into the production.

I saw at one of the only-six-in-the-country AMC Prime theater locations, so I saw the new Dolby projection system with the subwoofers in the seats. You couldn't ask for a finer presentation. Dramatically better color and contrast ratio than the usual digital projection.

Apparently this and "inside out" are the first two films released in the new format.

 

I am very fond of both those films that your name, and have watched each of the more than 10 times. These films just seem to get better with repeat viewings.

 

If I have to keep telling people to see Iron Giant for all these years and they still won't... well, enough talk about The Rocketeer. I've always liked... it's too early in the morning. Damn. James friggin' Bond.

Point is, I've heard this is an under-seen good old time feeling film (actually so is Iron Giant). So I have replaced Dr. Katz Disc 4 on my Netflix cue and next up... The Rocketeer! (I'll never catch up with even the Marvel movies I like at this point - I keep bumping Winter Soldier - and Captain America and The Hulk are really the only two characters I care for! Until they make a film out of Sergio Argones' Groo the Wanderer... he could probably animate a 90 minute film himself in twenty minutes!

Jeff

 

FYI The Rocketeer is streaming on Netflix until 5/31/15 - time to catch it!

Jeff

 

I don't doubt that he can do a lousy job.

I do like to remind people that even a lousy writer can hit a home run on occasion. Akiva Goldsman won an Academy Award for "A BEautiful Mind" and he also wrote "Lost in Space", "Batman Forever" . It's a collaborative medium.

 

Absolutely. Who knows what happens to a script? I've read director's calling a script their "blueprint' for their film -- just something to use as a springboard. Boy, does that tick me off. I remember the script of "Se7en" and how I had to learn part of it (long story). And then seeing the rushes and how Brad Pitt just went off on his own tangent making up his lines as he went along. Some poor writer spends days agonizing over a scene and hours crafting the perfect sentence and then some actor comes along and improvises on the spot. And that somehow is supposed to be "better." Collaborative. Ugh.

 

Thanks for the theater review. I was planning to see this in Dolby Cinema but my local theater still shows it as "coming soon". If they actually have six theaters showing this format AMC is sure doing a poor job publicizing it.

 

Iron Giant is a really, really good movie. Off the top of my head, that's the best movie flop I can think -- a movie that failed so big, the studio (Fox) shut down their entire animation department and laid everybody off.