Predicting the Movie Hits & Bombs of 2022

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Jan 7, 2022.

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  1. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Of what exactly? this is the first time I've heard this.
     
  2. Holerbot6000

    Holerbot6000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Me too. I understand about Ghost in the Shell because the lead character was supposed to be explicitly Japanese, at least in the original Manga, but I don't think there was any such explicit intent in Alita. I appreciate the motivation behind some of these concerns but it does seem like kind of a slippery slope at times. There is a danger in becoming reactionary, which I think dilutes the original intent.
     
  3. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    As I said before, Alita was given a robotic neck in the manga to identify that she was a cyborg. Her eyes were proportional to all the other characters and were intended to look human. Just as in The Simpsons, Bart does not have freakishly large eyes that set him apart from other humans. The style of the animation simply gives all humans large eyes. Alita, in the context of the story, has eyes that look the same size as anyone else's.

    Not if we're trying to cut the budget.

    Many theaters were closed for half the year, and the rest were showing almost nothing new. The lower sales are basically because there was no movie theater industry functioning for half the year, at least at the consumer level, hence only about half the normal amount of movies came out.

    The article is clueless. They think her "doll-like" eyes are sexual when we all know they were an attempt to copy the anime. And the mere fact that you can detect that a woman has breasts does not make something sexual. These type of activists sound eerily reminiscent of the Puritans who used to put cloth coverings on table legs because they thought they looked sexual. It may present as feminism, but I think the same impulse is behind both things, an uptightness and shame about sex. At any rate, I doubt these views are mainstream enough to cause any pushback on the movie.
     
  4. noname74

    noname74 Allegedly Canadian

    Location:
    .
    It’s an Asian manga/story with all white actors.
     
  5. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Ok - those people obviously have not seen the movie or looked at the actual manga series that it's based on.

    Side by side comparison to the 1993 animated movie
     
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  6. noname74

    noname74 Allegedly Canadian

    Location:
    .
    I am not arguing either way..the person asked what the controversy was so I just posted what it was with no opinion on legitimacy of it.
     
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  7. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

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  8. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    So the Japanese author was actually culturally appropriating the U.S. when he wrote it? :laugh:

     
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  9. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Yes, and Cameron moved the location to South America, near the equator.
     
  10. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Until Covid is on a major decline I won't be going to a movie theater...and I think that is the general feeling around the globe, so the chances of big hits in 2022 are slim.
     
  11. drh

    drh Talking Machine

    The Alita discussion is, I suppose, "thread creep," but I'm enjoying it. My teen daughter, who is an anime fan, loved the movie and hopes for a sequel some day. I, alas, didn't see it; she went with a friend, not Dad. What I can note from personal observation is that not all anime are set in Japan or a Japanese milieu, and not all anime have big eyes, although most do. Among the most popular series at the moment is Attack on Titan, and it's set somewhere that reads "Germany"; the main character, for instance, is Eren Jaeger--hardly a Japanese name! Only one of the other character names is Japanese, and the city's architecture is much more Stuttgart than Sapporo. "Spice and Wolf" is another, with a setting (and music track, among the best I've heard) modeled on Medieval/Renaissance Europe. In that one, the eyes are pretty normally proportioned, at least to my, er, eye. Not saying Japanese settings and big eyes don't predominate--nor do I have experience to judge, since my daughter says I gravitate to "weird" examples, not the mainstream, popular ones; indeed, I've seen only a few episodes of Attack on Titan, and I just finished watching a series, which I really wouldn't recommend to anyone, that was set in Japan and in which the eyes were about the size of salad plates in the average set of fine china--but just that the world of anime is hardly monolithic in settings or style.
     
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  12. noname74

    noname74 Allegedly Canadian

    Location:
    .
    I was really close to feeling ok to go in Nov but then the theatres here were allowed to seat strangers beside one another again so I decided to forget it. No way am I sitting less than a foot away from some mook that may or may not be vaccinated.
     
  13. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Are you confusing Alita with Ghost in the Shell? Rosa Salazar and Mahershala Ali aren't white.

    I do remember there being "controversy" around Alita but it had to do with its proximity to Captain Marvel in the release calendar and troglodytes on the internet pitting the two against one another. I don't recall criticism of Alita as whitewashed, although Ghost in the Shell definitely was criticized (and justifiably) along those lines.
     
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  14. noname74

    noname74 Allegedly Canadian

    Location:
    .
    Uggg…you’re right. Sorry about that.
     
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  15. brucewayneofgotham

    brucewayneofgotham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bunkville
    That was a joke , and just shows the power of the "fringe". Captain Marvel outgrossed Alita , by 5 times in the US. The narrative of the Alita fanbase, and their hoping for a return to the 1950s, is what ultimately killed the movie and any chance for a sequel.
     
  16. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    You are assuming that James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, and Jon Landau all made a stupid, elementary mistake when designing their lead character. Maybe they did, but it wasn't because they were ignorant of anime.

    Alita was given gigantic eyes for marketing reasons. If you recall the posters for Avatar, their central image was a close-up of Neytiri's inhumanly gigantic eye. The idea was that that image connected with audiences on some kind of primordial level, making them want to see the movie (the Avatar posters were otherwise very light on info about the movie) and so they tried it again with Alita. Evidently it didn't work, but it was worth a try. And frankly I think Rosa Salazar and the CGI artists did manage to imbue the character with a lot of spirit and emotion.

    If you are genuinely curious about what Alita with a normal human face would have looked like, James Cameron tried just that with his unauthorized and thinly-veiled TV adaptation Dark Angel 20 years ago.
     
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  17. Holerbot6000

    Holerbot6000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Too bad - I think Alita is by far the better movie.
     
  18. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    I went to see Captain Marvel. I will not be going to see any sequels / future Captain Marvel movies. Just because you went once, does not imply a return trip!

    I would be willing to bet, if a sequel were to be made of both movies, that a greater percentage would return to Alita.
     
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  19. brucewayneofgotham

    brucewayneofgotham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bunkville
    This is an impossible question to answer, as we will never see an Alita sequel.
     
  20. brucewayneofgotham

    brucewayneofgotham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bunkville
  21. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    The Captain Marvel sequel or semi-sequel is coming in 2023. Looks like it'll turn her character into part of a new all-female team of characters. I won't be seeing it either. I can't reward them after the awful first movie they made. But I'm planning to skip most of the MCU movies from now on due to their continuing decline in quality.
    This article is just extremist agitprop clickbait feeding into the cult mentality of their readers. It's full of lies and nonsense that are so extremely far out in the land of Oz that it reads like a parody.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2022
  22. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Maybe not, but it appears that you have your own issues with the movie, which you are welcome to.

    Keep in mind that Alita, is a Disney property and there all always options on the table. Disney's and Cameron's first priorities are to get the Avatar franchise in gear and moving forward.

    I think that that would have greater impact than any other factor. They spent way to much money on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (and managed a profit), nonetheless ST did turn out to be a successful property. They did reduce the budgets for the sequels and that worked out fine. Noting, that the original TV show was never a success in the ratings.

    Alita fans have contributed to over 400M in box office receipts. Negative publicity by the nanny naysayers is not going to decide whether a sequel is or is not made.

    Alita is now a known and established property. If future sequels are to be made, they can be produced for a lot less money, giving them the opportunity to make a profit.
     
  23. brucewayneofgotham

    brucewayneofgotham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bunkville
    The people running Disney will never move forward with another Alita film. The backlash would be huge. And stop with the 400 million , the US was only 80 million, and Disney looks at US/Canada , 1st to make money. Everything else is considered a bonus, as the studio grab , is a lot less. Vidiot has explained this before , I believe. And it is not just Disney , it is the other 4 studios , that view things this way.
     
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  24. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    You're killing me... :doh:

    I believe that number was more like 185M, but what's another 105M, more or less?

    So does every other studio, that's why we have a domestic gross statistic.

    Let's see, 405M - 185M = $190M Bonus. :goodie: Not bad for some extra pocket change?

    World population 7B+, US population 300M+

    Europe doesn't matter, they just don't matter...

    China, why bother? (133M for Alita)

    And consider the costs involved for making all of those "digital prints"?

    Just checking the international gross for a few movies...

    Movie,
    Worldwide Box Office,
    Domestic Box Office,
    International Box Office

    Avatar $2,845,899,541 $760,507,625 $2,085,391,916

    Avengers: Endgame $2,797,800,564 $858,373,000 $1,939,427,564

    Titanic $2,207,986,545 $659,363,944 $1,548,622,601

    Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force Awakens $2,064,615,817 $936,662,225 $1,127,953,592

    Avengers: Infinity War $2,048,359,754 $678,815,482 $1,369,544,272

    Jurassic World $1,669,979,967 $652,306,625 $1,017,673,342

    The Lion King $1,654,367,425 $543,638,043 $1,110,729,382

    Spider-Man: No Way Home $1,543,313,257 $675,813,257 $867,500,000

    Furious 7 $1,516,881,526 $353,007,020 $1,163,874,506

    The Avengers $1,515,100,211 $623,357,910 $891,742,301

    Frozen II $1,445,182,280 $477,373,578 $967,808,702

    Just checking on those "Bonus" dollars. Threw in a few Disney properties.

    And now, we return to 2022 and more important domestic releases like 355.
     
  25. jason88cubs

    jason88cubs Forum Resident

    Location:
    Us
    I wanted to go watch Scream this weekend but suffered a cold so I am out

    Hoping to attend to a matinee next weekend when hopefully it's smaller audience
     
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