Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2018

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Dec 17, 2017.

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  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    I think that was part of the discussion: that they had always allowed their actors to do a lot of ad-libbing on set.
     
  2. yamfox

    yamfox Forum Resident

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    They were likely hired because they were highly hyped around Hollywood as very creative directors who have yet to do wrong even when handed the dumbest of premises (they made critically and commercially successful movies out of a 20 page kid's book about raining food, a building block toy, and a reboot of a campy 80s cop show, and they have a cult fanbase for their particular sense of humor too, I'm personally a huge fan of their old show Clone High) and they were eager and willing to try their hand at it. Their comedic chops were probably seen as appropriate for the character of Han Solo too, but ultimately what seemed to be the big clash was with them refusing to strictly adhere to Lawrence Kasdan's script and having an unconventional (for big budget tentpoles) actor-oriented working style that Kennedy wasn't sure how to manage, with Lord & Miller sticking to their guns at every impasse.
    I'm sure there absolutely is enough material there to write a highly interesting book, but I'd wonder if anyone with juicy info wouldn't have been forced to sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement.
    For the record, I totally believe they could handle a big budget movie (they have a high administrative position on Warner's animation division, put there in an attempt to emulate Pixar's "brain trust", so at least some studios must see them as trustworthy and competent), just not one with such strict guidelines and so many clashing egos when they seem unwilling to deviate from their distinct style.
     
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  3. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

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    :agree:
     
  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    I don't think there is such a thing as a studio giving somebody $180 million to make a film and not giving them strict guidelines on how to shoot it.
     
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  5. yamfox

    yamfox Forum Resident

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    For sure there are limits on the kind of risks anyone is willing to take on a budget like that, but it seems to me like Lucasfilm’s current regime is against any kind of deviation from the established tone and style of these movies.
    Contrast to Marvel, who while definitely having a strong-handed producer in Feige who guides the direction of the franchise and keeps everything in sync with each other also allows directors to be themselves when their own storytelling strengths and styles will add some personality to a film (James Gunn’s Guardians movies and Taika Waititi’s Ragnarok definitely show a personal touch) and is willing to employ a team of professionals to help with the more technical aspects of action and SFX shots if the chosen director(s)’ sensibility makes up for their lack of proficiency and experience in that area (such as with the Russo brothers, who were known for TV sitcoms like Community before making Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which had action scenes ghost directed by the makers of John Wick).
    It seems like current Lucasfilm wants something very specific out of the Star Wars movies and bails on directors whenever they deliver something that isn’t exactly to the specifications they expected. I think it’s fine for them to have a strict plan if it will help deliver strong movies, but it shows they don’t seem to understand the directors they’ve been hiring like Feige does if they are continually finding themselves getting the wrong people for the kind of result they want.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2018
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    I can think of several Marvel directors who have been fired for not toeing the line or agreeing on story and "tone" issues (as well as budget). There's been some big ones, including Edgar Wright, who developed Ant Man with Paul Rudd for more than 2 years. I think it's fair to say that everything at Disney -- including Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Muppets -- are fairly regimented to the extent that they keep directors on a very tight leash, with rare exceptions.
     
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  7. I suspect the relatively smooth production of recent Pixar animations is a direct result of the problems that very nearly derailed the original Toy Story:

    Toy Story - Wikipedia

    Considering the box office potential for their work, it wouldn't surprise me if Disney put safeguards in place to prevent similar from happening again...

    P.S. After reading through the rest of that Wikipedia article, I was stunned to learn that Toy Story was rendered at a native resolution of just 1536x922!
     
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  8. yamfox

    yamfox Forum Resident

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    They re-rendered both the first movie and its sequel at a higher resolution for the 2010 3D re-release, which is the transfer on the Blu-ray - thus the version currently available isn't technically the originally finished film (with a notable change being the elimination of the transition from the Disney logo to Andy's wallpaper at the opening, which was altered due to them switching out the 90s Disney logo with the present version).
    The early DVDs (as well as the VHS and Laserdisc) of the original Toy Story were also a film transfer rather than being direct digital encodes like every subsequent Pixar movie.
     
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  9. Jord

    Jord Forum Resident

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    It's amusing to see people talking about the superhero movies burn out that was sure to happen last year. And this year. And next year.
    I guess most of these people haven't watched a lot of Marvel movies then. The thing is, "Superhero" movies isn't a genre in itself the way Marvel and Disney handle these properties and that's what gives these characters such a long cinematic lifespan. If every Marvel movie was an Avengers-like spectacle I'm sure the Marvel movies would have burned out by now.
    I had my doubts on how Marvel would follow Avengers 1 at the time but by going into different directions with most of the movies it gives the brand a long lifespan. Yes there are spectacle movies like the Avengers movies but we also got a spy thriller (Winter soldier), a heist movie (Ant Man), space comedies (both GOTG movies) and a teen comedy/coming og age story (Spider-Man) amongst others. Yes, these movies star heroes with amazing powers but the focus in these movies doesn't always lie on their powers, it lies on the story with the hero's powers merely being a storytelling tool.
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Yes -- it's not widely known that Toy Story was not even at HD resolution. Sometime between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, Disney/Pixar quietly reshot Toy Story from scratch and redid it all at 2K resolution to match the rest of the movies. It wasn't as expensive as you might think since they didn't have to recreate anything -- merely follow exactly what had been done before and fix a whole bunch of small technical mistakes.

    Both 100% true. But they did do a lot of digital clean-up and sharpening even on the original Toy Story versions, so an effort was made to "fix" them as much as possible. Pretty much every feature done over the last 10-12 years has involved digital transfers to DVD and Blu-ray (and 4K), without any film. It's rare you have any director demanding an actual film transfer per se, but in many cases, digital film grain is added for texture.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2018
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    I think it's more complicated than that. Remember that for the last 10-15 years, when movies are made they first have story conferences where the producers, director, and writers all sit down and hash out what they want in the script. Often they haggle down to every apostrophe and diphthong. Once the script is approved, artwork is prepared to illustrate all the key scenes (particularly important in an action movie), often hundreds of drawings and/or paintings. Once those are approved, they create a pre-viz version (or storyboards) of the movie which basically uses temporary actors' voices and moving cartoon-like images to present a quickie version of the movie from start to finish. That way, they have an idea of where the camera will be placed, where the actors and sets are in relation to the camera, and a sense of what the visual effects need to show.

    And once that pre-viz is approved... then the studio sends the director(s) out to actually shoot the real movie with real actors and a real crew in real places. The problem is: if the director starts shooting a movie that's different from the script, from the artwork, from the previz... then the studio gets very angry. Particularly if hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line. And even more so if the director is going overbudget and over schedule (which they were on Solo).

    So it's not just a question of giving directors creative freedom. They had all the freedom in the world during the 6-12 months prior to shooting the film, and that's when they should have come up with all those great ideas for new stories and new dialogue. I think there's always room to change things a little bit, but generally the idea is to shoot the script first, and then if there's time, do some ad-libbing afterwards as later takes.

    But if they're told to make a drama with light comedic moments, and then start shooting a comedy with occasional dramatic moments... that's a big problem, a major "change in tone" as they say. It would sort of be like you paying a guy $50 million to build you a 2-story house on a cliff in Malibu, and instead he builds you an $80 million house by a highway where you can't see the ocean at all, only it's now a 4-story house with a glass roof. You could argue, "this isn't the house I wanted!", and the builder could say, "but this is so much better than what you want!" Who wins that argument?
     
  12. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

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    I'm pretty sure no one at Fox is giving Cameron technical advice or any advice for that matter on the Avatar sequels, more like blanket approval and this better work or else.
     
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  13. gojikranz

    gojikranz Forum Resident

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    haven't read everyones prediction but on seeing the title I immediately though of when I saw the Robin Hood trailer and figured it would be a big bomb. just looks bleh.
     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Jim Cameron would be a very, very rare exception. But there are generally conditions for creative freedom, particularly schedule, budget, and film length. If he gets it done in X number of months for Y dollars, it's under 140 minutes, and he has it completely finished by December 1, 2019, then I don't think Fox can argue with him. But even with Titanic and Avatar, Fox had input on what went on in the film, how long the released film would be, and how much he could spend. They balked at hiring a third editor for Titanic (as one example), so Cameron himself took some Avid classes and edited part of the film himself... and won an Oscar for it.

    Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino, and several other A-list directors have lamented lately that they've had some projects fall apart at the last minute over concerns over budget, casting, script, and other problems. So it's never a 100% sure deal when you're using somebody else's money.
     
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  15. townsend

    townsend Senior Member

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    The movie Peppermint, starring (back from the acting dead) Jennifer Garner, looks to me like a dud:
     
  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    And it looks like the new Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson action film is tanking...

    This weekend The Rock is getting squashed by a horde of bloodsucking vampires as Sony Animation’s Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is the prime destination for families with an estimated $42.2M, knocking down Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper to third place with $24.2M, a low result for the action star in his recent solo PG-13 credits...

    There’s a few reasons why Skyscraper is in shambles, but chiefly Johnson’s family crowd here is being swallowed up whole by both HT3 and the second weekend of Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp which remains solid with an estimated $28.1M in second place. Another reality is that the last two weeks of the year brings in more multiplex traffic than the middle of July...Some will say that Skyscraper is shackled by the fact that it’s original IP in a franchise-laden marketplace of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Incredibles 2, etc. I don’t necessarily buy that because Sony’s Jumanji was a dusty brand completely reinvigorated in its concept and comedy that outpaced Last Jedi in its wide-weekend play, 14 weekends to 8 weekends. If the premise and execution are intriguing enough, people will come out in droves, and clearly moviegoers aren’t feeling that with Skyscraper in its Die Hard redux.


    ‘Skyscraper’ Up In Flames With $24M+ As ‘Hotel Transylvania 3’ Books $42M+ Weekend Voyage
     
  17. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

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    Canada
    I'm not surprised at all with this result, there might a little bit of burnout happening here.
     
  18. Exit Flagger

    Exit Flagger Forum Resident

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    New York
    He's a likeable guy but this one looks a little too much like Die Hard 10 or something.
     
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  19. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA!

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  20. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

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    I expected "Skyscraper" to be 70% disaster movie, 30% "Die Hard".

    It's more like 90% "Die Hard", 10% disaster.

    The movie literally duplicates scenes from the original "Die Hard"! :help:
     
  21. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

  22. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
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    Yeah, I had Skyscraper pegged as "Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno" from the first time I saw the adverts on TV. What the hell, I'll watch it anyway...eventually. It can't be any worse than the last Die Hard movie was, at least:laugh:
     
  23. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    Why did people go to see his last film Rampage but have no interest in this? It's puzzling. He keeps churning out all these nonsense action films and I really don't see his appeal but I guess I'm in the minority.
     
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  24. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I haven't seen any of his movies as they don't interest me, but even so, I can see his appeal - dude is handsome and very charismatic.
     
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  25. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    too bad she seems like such a likable lady, and a man who cheats on her has to be a ***** (or a Maroon)
     
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