Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Dear god. https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons/Shazam-Fury-of-the-Gods-(2022)/Morbius-(2020)#tab=day_by_day_comparison

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/marvels-victoria-alonso-fired-argentina-1985-1235360231/ Interesting.

We're so screwed. ETA: These bloody LARPer's have doomed us all.

Google tells me D&D HAT has a budget of $151 million US dollars. Depending on the marketing spend and commercial tie-ins, it probably needs $400-$500 million to break even.

Maybe they did and I just didn't notice. Those Kids are crafty I tell you. - So I finally Saw DC: League of Super Pets and I liked it a lot. I don't know what I was expecting but whatever expectations I had, this exceeded them. It's a shame this film didn't do better because they might have had a pretty good (animated) shared universe on their hands. With few exceptions, 2022 was a brutal year for big screen animation at the box office.

Is Knight not a member of the Screen Writers Guild?

The churn, continues. https://variety.com/2023/film/news/star-wars-steven-knight-damon-lindelof-justin-britt-gibson-1235560466/

DC: League of Super Pets Way better written, way more clever, and way funnier than I was expecting. Not as good as Puss in Boots 2, but better than many of the other 2022 animated films I've seen. Yeah, it's got a few groan inducing moments and plenty of cheese, but it's just a fun kids movie. When people talk about a film "embracing is goofiness" as a positive, I think this is what they're talking about. There's one sequence with a homicidal kitten that was gloriously bonkers. It also demonstrates a good depth of knowledge when it comes to classic DC stuff, with some interesting references to previous films. It doesn't blaze any new trails in terms of the animation, but it's solid and more than good enough to have me questioning the reported $90 million production cost. A film like that with that IP and that voice cast; it doesn't seem possible. Kate McKinnon stands out.

The one in Prey wasn't too bad. Tuunbaq had an uncanny valley thing going on for other reasons. I'm talking about the environments and some of the sets. The carnival scene where everything gets set on fire, including the guy, had a lot of CGI. I could have sworn a good bit of that was practical. How could you miss this? Yeah, totally. I definitely got the hype. I remember going into Avengers thinking, "Please don't be League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Please don't be League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." I have a more personal connection to Age of Ultron, so I can't hate on that movie too much. But yeah, aside from a few great scenes, it was kind of disappointing.

Or overusing bad CGI. I love it when it's there and you don't realize it because it's done well. Check out the VFX reel for season 1 of The Terror. It's amazing just how much of that show wasn't practical effects. Dune and Blade Runner 2049 also incorporated them pretty seamlessly. Obviously Avatar 2 was almost entirely green screen and it looks amazing. It also helps when you have a director and cinematographer who know how to block and light scenes correctly.

Don't forget negative-to-meh reviews and a few disappointing recent films. That tomato meter still counts for something and if Black Adam, DC:Pets, and WW84 had been bonafide hits, this would have had more buzz. Again, I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not offering an opinion on the quality of the film. I may well end up disagreeing with the critics. I read Katie Walsh's review in the L.A. Times. Scathing. Yeah, blame The Rock. My nieces have sneaking vittles into the movies down to a science, man. We had sushi when we went to see Cocaine Bear. That was fun. But yeah, I suspect most people gave this a miss in lieu of streaming.

I have no doubt that that things were proposed along those lines only to be veto'd by Dwayne Johnson. I just don't think it had a damn thing to do with Shazam! 2!'s box office bomb. If Black Adam had been a massive commercial and critical success, they might have a point, maybe. But it wasn't. And couldn't you argue that not including Shazam in a film that was a critical and commercial failure is actually a good thing? To be fair, COVID also put the brakes on any franchise momentum the first film generated. If this thing had come out 2 years ago, who knows?

I dunno. When TGTBTU came out in '66, the scenes involving Tuco getting getting interrogated and bloody, emaciated civil war soldiers must have been something of a revelation. Come to think of it, that might be the first film that did any business in America that didn't romanticize the American Civil War, at all. And the movie starts off with Angel Eyes gunning down a whole family. Plus Tuco punches a priest. I bet they never saw that before either. That's got to be worth, like, 20 severed limbs.

Incredibles 2. Yeah, I'm behind. Fantastic. Maybe even better than the first, even if it does tread some familiar ground.

"The drugs fall into the ocean and..." This thing practically writes itself.

Note: The Dollars Trilogy and Once Upon a Time... In the West all predate The Wild Bunch.

Based on what I've read about Disney's VFX issues, the problem is constant tweaking without the appropriate time and money in the timeline to account for it. It's notes from multiple production people who maybe don't really have a vision of what they want and just find the film in the edit by seeing what's good or bad with test audiences. This results in staff that are overworked, burned out, and producing a sub-par product. Changing one person might be a step in the right direction, but I don't see it fixing that. And given Disney's financial performance of late, I don't see that squeeze letting up.

Also, "17 reviews". RT scores are of dubious utility at best. RT scores with thin aggregates; especially so. Still, if this season approaches the standards of the first, I'll be there.

The elusive "inside source" strikes again. https://www.thewrap.com/dwayne-johnson-black-adam-shazam-dc-universe/ Yeah, I don't buy this. CBM fans care about the rivalry between Shazam! and Black Adam; the general audience does not. They just want to see a good movie. And I find it unlikely that cameos in each others films or, "the right post credit scene", would have saved them from middling to bad critical reviews, or a rotten tomato-meter score, which still has weight for CBM fans. Opening weekend box office is all about anticipation and buzz; and this film had neither.

Interesting thread.

I'd imagine a good bit of it was plain old American chauvinism. What business does a European director, filming in Europe with primarily European cast and crew doing messing around with a distinctly American genre? Pfft. I bet he doesn't even drive a Chevy. His films were also somewhat more gritty than most westerns of the time if I'm not mistaken. I wonder if they had any expectations that these films would play in the United States at all.

I've read that. Is she singularly responsible though; or was she managing a weird situation? Everything I've read about the issues with the MCU and VFX seem more structural to me.

does this mean anything to anyone?

Looking at Leone's wikipedia page, its clear that he never got any love from the academy. I bet there were fans of the genre back in the day who absolutely hated those films.

It will be interesting to see what happens when they get back to Europe and upgrades/cost cap become a factor. Alonso is very close.