Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2017

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Dec 3, 2016.

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  1. I've predicted the downfall of the current DC Extended Universe for quite some time due to its overall tone not being what the real world needs from an escapist series of comic book adaptations right now, while Marvel has rarely put a foot wrong (beyond perhaps Thor: The Dark World), and I'll be interested to see if the talk of both Infinity War installments having a combined budget of $1b turns out to be true... Ironically, it may yet end up being Marvel that bursts the cinematic superhero bubble rather than the struggling combination of DC and WB!
     
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  2. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

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    The Man Who Invented Christmas

    My wife and I caught this film this weekend, and it was very moving. It is the true story of how Dickens created A Christmas Carol. The film does an incredible job of showing the writing and book publishing process. I highly recommend this film.
     
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  3. shokhead

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

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  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Audiences are fickle and get sick of this crap. Anybody remember Superman 3? How about Superman 4: The Quest for Peace?

    I think the whole Universal "Dark Universe" horror reboot thing has pretty much been put on hold after the disappointing returns on the Tom Cruise Mummy movie and the departure of producer/writer Alex Kurtzman from the studio.
     
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  5. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

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    That's a nonsensical argument. Of course if they start making really terrible films then no-one is going to be interested. But as long as they maintain a decent quality level they will be popular forever. And it's a bit silly to call some really great films 'this crap'. Doesn't help at all in your argument.
     
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Let's agree to disagree. History shows that mass audiences do eventually get tired of a long movie series, particularly if it just repeats the same thing over and over again. And I would reiterate that some studios (particularly Warner Bros. and Universal) have no idea how to keep an enterprise like this going. Whether Marvel can stay successful with Phase 4 after next year is a very good question.
     
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  7. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

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    Well, speaking personally, I think the superhero genre is due a disaster on the level of Heaven's Gate. (Of course, it seems that movie's reputation has improved since The Criterion Collection picked it up.)
     
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  8. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

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    The thing is, if that budget is correct for the next two Avengers films, you are literally banking on them being two of the highest grossing films of all time to break even which is a bit of a gamble. There isn't much room for error if the budget is half a billion.
     
  9. Oatsdad

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

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    There have already been notable flops like 2015's "Fantastic Four"...
     
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  10. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

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    That was a franchise killer; I'm talking genre killer.
     
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  11. Oatsdad

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

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    I don't think that's possible, honestly. The genre is already so established - it might fade some but I can't imagine one movie would "kill it".

    If we got a slew of flops, then yeah - those would kill the genre. But one movie? Don't see that...
     
  12. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

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    Those were terrible, or rather, haaarible movies. I would have been delighted to get a Superman III and IV along the lines of the first two and so would many other moviegoers. The way they dropped the ball on that series is quite mystifying to me.
     
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  13. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    If only Hollywood would party like it's 1999.
     
  14. Where they absolutely trashed the source material. Fox was contractually obligated to knock out a Fantastic Four movie or lose the rights, so they put out the cheapest FF movie they could produce and dumped it on the market.

    Most of the real superhero turkeys are a product of lazy studios completely disregarding the characters in their original medium, the comic books.
     
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  15. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

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    The problems with these films aren't the production budgets. It's the scripts.
     
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  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    No less than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg predicted years ago that we could be on the verge of a time where a studio that releases a few too many huge flop blockbusters could conceivably be put out of business.

    Steven Spielberg Says Superhero Movies Will Go "the Way of the Western"

    George Lucas & Steven Spielberg: Studios Will Implode; VOD Is the Future


    I suspect both will be proven right in the long run.

    The meddling and kibbutzing and screwing-up of the Batman and Superman movie series in the 1990s is absolutely baffling and incredible. The 90-minute documentary The Death of Superman Lives tells the tale of how Tim Burton's effort to make a new Superman movie totally crashed and burned when WB decided at the last minute not to spend $100M+ on a radical reinvention of the genre:

    The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?

    I think it would've been a weird, weird, weird movie, but I gotta say the documentary itself is fascinating. It's a great insight into why "movies by committee" generally do not work, especially when the studio tries to second-guess the writer and director a bit too much.

    I agree: it would take a slew of flops in a row to really kill off the genre. But everything in Hollywood is new again, so they'd just wait 10-15 years and then try it again a different way.
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2017
  17. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    I just wish they would would cartoon directors like Bruce Timm
    Direct a Dc movie .. I have more respect for him and others
    that worked on batman the animated series superman and justice league.
    Than most of these hacks we have now of these days.
     
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  18. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

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    I felt the first half of the FF was a pretty good general sci-fi film which would have worked without the 'FF' name and then it was almost like someone reminded the makers this was a FF film and cheaply tacked on the ending they did.
     
  19. shokhead

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

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    SoCal, Long Beach
    :agree:
     
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  20. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

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    But the way I see it these are linked so much. Once you have a high production budget then the bosses get nervous and they start messing with the script as they don't want anything in it which could cause it to fail.
     
  21. Oatsdad

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

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    The 2015 "FF" cost $120 million and was heavily promoted - neither cheap nor "dumped on the market"...
     
  22. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

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    San Francisco
    Well, except that final flop FF movie had a comparatively low budget. So that shouldn't have prompted excessive studio meddling.
     
  23. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
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    No, $120 million doesn't compare with the $250 million of the same year's "Age of Ultron", but I wouldn't call it "cheap" - it's about the same budget as "Ant-Man"...
     
  24. PhilBorder

    PhilBorder Senior Member

    Location:
    Sheboygan, WI
    I have to wonder how many times the battle for the Universe or mankind or 'everything' can be at stake. In my passing familiarity with Marvel, I thought Galactus (big enough to threaten, small enough to care) and Silver Surfer were among the more conceptually interesting comic book creations.

    But they kind of screwed that up with FF. Thanos and Ultron just seem like variations on a well worn theme, and the Infinity Stones seems like another conceit designed to evoke more interest than is justified. The real villians these days seem to be Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, so I'd like to see the latter go up aginst Hulk. Powdermilk biscuits vs. Gamma Rays!
     
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  25. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

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    Is there some confusion here with the extremely obscure cheapo FF movie made in 1994? That really was made just to hold on to the rights (not by Fox, by some European production company that had them for a while).
     
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