CaptainFoamerang
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Posts
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Quote:Singer was smart enough to limit her with the expanded cast in the second film. Unfortunately for the third movie they could have just renamed it Wolverine & Storm. I mean what the **** business does Storm have getting into a fist fight? Gah.Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
The point is that they are doing a reboot to fix everything that failed in the first three movies. And lets not gloss over the glaring short-comings of the first two movies or do we not remember Haley Berry's depiction of Storm?
Not to mention all the wasted opportunities with the cast and characters. -
I like the idea of making the murders more public, but it looks like they'll be abandoning that after the first gory scene.
It would be neat if the whole film was more like a big ole Dark Knight social experiment that forced people in public to make decisions about who lives and who dies. -
Still missing that John Williams theme, though.
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Quote:And a more faithful LOTR trilogy would have sucked balls.Originally Posted by Vox Populi
A movie isn't better just because it's faithful to the source. Someone could make a more faithful version of Wizard of Oz, but I doubt it will be as good as the 1939 classic. Kubrick's The Shining was much better and more interesting than the faithful TV version.
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Let's hope it's better than Legion.
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Quote:She's pretty but a bit on the skinny side for my tastes.Originally Posted by NinjaPirate
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Quote:X3 sucked and only really leached off the success of the first two films by Singer. If Singer hadn't done so well with those first two and set the franchise up for an epic third film, it wouldn't have done so well.Originally Posted by Divus
It was also rebooting the franchise, which is a much smaller risk. Also, Singer isn't directing, he's only producing. If anything the director gets more leeway for doing such a good job with Kick *** and having an extremely tight production and release schedule.
X3 did what it was supposed to do: make a lot of money and bookend that part of the franchise.
Wolverine underperformed X3, even though it and X3 had the same production budget, of course it's going to have changes made, but that's not the fans, that's the economics.
Arguably, Wolverine was also hurt by the massive leak of the film. But still, Wolverine underperformed X3 at the global box offfice by nearly a hundred million and nearly twenty five million on DVD sales.
Fans can pad a gross, but Fox has realized that the mainstream audience's interest is paramount to making something a success. If anything the new Scott Pilgrim thread indicates is that geeks and fans are nice, but if you cater to them your movie will take a big hit.
In some cases they actually do pay attention to more than just the box office. Everybody saw that Spider-Man 3 wasn't as good as the first two, and the experience put a bad taste in the mouth of the creative team and stars, so they had to reboot. People didn't like the Superbastard angle of Superman Returns and now they've sent Nolan over to attempt to right the ship. -
Quote:All I'm saying is if you have Colossus and Juggernaut in your movie and they don't throw down, you have no soul.Originally Posted by Divus
X3 made more money than X2. It is a success for the studios. Only the fanboys hate it (and hated it since Ratner signed on) and the hate did not affect the box office. If the mainstream movie going public likes FC, then expect more flashbacks.
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I'll be waiting to hear about the first accident that causes. But it said they're only keeping it up for a week right? And we don't know how busy the street usually is, so if there aren't any problems, they're free to assume it worked, eh?
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Quote:And thank christ for that. But comics do cover all the basic genres, so it can't be said that they aren't diverse, unless you're narrowing your own perception on the medium.Originally Posted by starphoenix
Anime and Manga are purely a literary style. Comics are the same, but most of it is superhero based. If you can think of a particular subject, then you can find an anime or manga that deals with it. The same thing can't be said about Comics. I have heard of a bread-making manga/anime, but I have not heard of a bread-making comic.
A lot of the time the creative teams stick around for a run that spans years, so I think in terms of sticking with a writer you'll like, it still applies to comics as you can follow them around from one book to another, the same way you would for manga. And I would argue that having different writers can keep things fresh and allow for new ideas. I sure as hell wouldn't want some kind of rule established for comics where one creative team was limited to a title for the rest of their natural lives. I like a lot of different writers and a lot of different artists and I enjoy seeing them all take a crack at the characters I love.Quote:The main advantage that Anime and Manga have over Comics is that there is only one person in charge of it. Comics are usually longer lasting and have more than one person in charge over its lifespan. If you enjoy the writing style of one writer, then the Comic can be ruined when their successor comes around. Also, writers like to modify their projects to their own tastes so it requires to be retconned a bit. Retcons happen with Animes as well, but they are rare and results in a new anime that is closer to the manga than the original anime since the storyline doesn't catch up. Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragonball Z, and Claymore are animes that have gone or are undergoing this process. -
Quote:That's what I'm hoping too.Originally Posted by Shadowrush
Also one has to remember that being this is a stunt man, he is mostly likely wearing a stunt suit version of the costume. It's padded and more bulky for blocking purposes and to protect the stunt man.
For comparison here's the bulky stunt man suit from the Dark Knight:
Might look better as it's moving and the actual version should look more refined. -
Everything in those shots looks a little too new and plastic-like. I hope with the right lighting it will look better.
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Quote:Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
And Pierce & Pierce!
Though I prefer my cards in an eggshell white. -
I'm wary of this one, but it's got some people I like in it.
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Quote:Well you noted other niche bombs that came out previously. If those films didn't stop them from going forward with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and, according to you, giving them too much money to work with and shoot themselves in the foot in terms of ROI, it seems unlikely they'll stop making such films after this one.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't think your impression of how movies get made is realistic.
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Also, tough economic times are hurting comics as well.
As someone else pointed out, it's kind insane to ask for $4 for some of these issues. I pretty much always wait for the TPBs cuz the price per page is much more reasonable. -
Quote:Since this forum is the center of my geek world, and a lot of folks have come into this thread and other about it and expressed their enjoyment with the film, it seems to me that the movie did reach the audience it intended to reach: geeks and gamers. It's not the filmmakers part that they decided to give him a bunch of money to make a niche movie. Is he going to turn them down? I don't think so.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm not commenting on whether the movie might "succeed" for a single viewer. If it succeeds for you, great. I'm talking about the fact that the movie failed to reach the audience it intended to reach, and there are consequences for failing at that level that will make it harder for the next guy.
And while I can't blame the director for what the marketing people do, I can still blame the director (especially when he also worked on the screenplay) for very obviously failing to synchronize scope with reach. He made a $90m movie that needed to reach triple the audience just to break even, before a single marketing dollar was spent. If you make a $90m movie that you actually *know* only a subset of a subset of the gamer-geek population will go see, you're either the best Hollywood con man who managed to steal a bunch of money and donate it to the Scott Pilgrim fan club, or you're an idiot.
Since I don't think Edgar Wright is an idiot or Robin Hood, I think its more likely that he simply failed to consider that his movie was unrelatable, and that this was more than a trivial defect in an otherwise niche-genre movie.
I'm not telling you what to like, or how to choose how to spend your entertainment dollar. And as I said, I don't think Scott Pilgrim is a bad movie as such - I liked it for what it was. But I can still take a step back and say it failed in at least part of what it tried to do, which was project Scott Pilgrim to a wider audience.
And there has to be a balance between artistic freedom and commercial success. Who is supposed to subsidize your personal taste in movies otherwise? Hollywood is not going to spend a hundred million dollars on Scott Pilgrim movies that only make back forty as a form of community service.
I'm saying let the execs and marketing department worry about how what they did affected the movie's box office performance, and we as the intended audience can worry about whether or not it was actually good. -
All I'm saying is that that baby will grow up to be the next Hitler amirite.
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Quote:Well there's the storyteller and there's the marketing department. You can always go back and forth assigning blame to one or both of them if a movie underperforms, but, as I said way back in I think my first post of the thread, I tend not to care how much a movie made at the box office when I'm considering which movies to buy or watch for the night. So long as I enjoyed the movie I'll consider it a success no matter how much it made or lost. Still, you can't really blame the storyteller if the marketing department and executives target a larger audience; I think it was made quite clear from the trailers that this was going to be a movie for geeks/gamers, so if doesn't reach anyone else outside of those groups, there's really no reason for anyone to give a **** except for the marketing department and executives.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm critical of it because I believe in Scott Pilgrim's case, its the singular reason its failing to find more than a tiny audience. If that was *intentional* then I have to question the enormous amount of money spent on production and marketing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a very specific story you know is only going to connect with a very small audience. Its not like Christopher Guest thought A Mighty Wind was going to make a hundred million dollars. But people don't criticize movies like that for being insular, because they are being deliberately insular. Best in Show probably targets almost as small a niche as Scott Pilgrim does, but it does so consciously. If Scott Pilgrim was deliberately made intended for that small of an audience, there'd be no problem. But it aspired to reach a much larger audience, yet made absolutely no attempt to engage them. That's a mistake worth pointing out, because if the lesson Scott Pilgrim teaches is just "the movie going audience is too dumb to recognize its genius" then its really Scott Pilgrim's fans that haven't learned the lesson.
The real lesson is that the storyteller must always target their audience, and must always speak their language. Its asking a lot for the audience to keep an open mind and hear what the storyteller wants to say. Its asking too much for the storyteller to force them to learn a different language just because he doesn't want to translate for them. Its a cop out to sit around and wax poetic about how great the movie was, and therefore the problem has to be with the audience. Whatever else the movie was, it failed to reach the audience it seems to have aspired to reach, and it failed for obvious reasons. Its worth coming up with a more nuanced lesson other than "we should never make these movies ever again" or its polar opposite "we should keep making these movies until the movie going audience grows a brain." Both of those are equally bad lessons to learn. -
Quote:But I think it's more the fact that he saved his family and he died so two others could live. If her kid was sitting on the same side as the dad and she swerved to save them, that would be more in line with what happened.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Actually it would be considered a greater tragedy. Society puts children, pregnant women and the elderly in a class that should more protected than the general public. Therefore harming or saving one of them is always considered either more villainous or heroic.
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Quote:Um, says who?Originally Posted by Father Xmas
If the rolls were reversed, if his wife was driving and swerved but only enough that the husband survived, it wouldn't be the same story. She wouldn't be cast as the noble hero, it would simply be a tragedy.
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Quote:That is the thing, though. Not only does tolerance for the unexplained vary from person to person but from movie to movie. And you've got camps of people that view films as purely for entertainment purposes and thus roll with everything they're presented, ones that believe films and whatever they deem to be lesser forms of media explain themselves too much and the audience should be left to figure it out for themselves, and ones that think that films have to explain and account for everything or it takes away from the quality.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its not a question of having higher standards. Its more a question of meeting a threshold. Everyone's threshold is different, even situationally different at times. But its apparent that SP was not going to meet very many people's critical comprehension threshold, and if you're going to spend that much money on a movie you probably should try to.
I just think with everything that comes along with a story, we can find better things to criticize than how much background information we're given or how gently we're eased into the world. -
Quote:I don't see any danger of "America losing its roots" to be associated with Anime gaining popularity.Originally Posted by Bin Man
I just find it sad that a country like America is losing its roots. You know what i mean.. just list the super heroes from America. People are getting more into the Japanese culture which isn't a bad thing of course, but it can be because when the Japanese experience the American culture in say 50 years from now.. comic books could be completely gone from shops or production.
And there's a **** ton of superheroes from America.
I just see it as perhaps a combination of a more accessible medium and fans getting bored with current comic books and wanting something else. -
Anime isn't ruining comic books.
Joe Quesada is. -
Quote:I think part of what goes with a cheapshot defeat is that you'd actually expect something more for the character, like they deserved a more respectable beating/death, in which case I think Widmore qualifies but the others don't really matter.Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
You say cheapest, I say funniest!
"Dude, you got a little Arzt on you..."
Yeah, Widmore's death was cheap, but Lost has always given its secondary characters cheap (and sometimes hysterical) deaths: Widmore, Arzt, Naomi, Island Tina Fey, Cesar...