Why Guillermo del Toro's 'Pacific Rim' Will Be a Bigger Hit if Summer 2013 is an Artistic Failure

As I mentioned last week, the success of Guillermo del Toro's large-scale monsters vs. robots action tale Pacific Rim is at least partially predicated on how well-received the previous two months of summer films happen to be.  This summer will mark the ten year anniversary of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.  As most of you know, the Disney pirate adventure was a surprise of sorts, both in terms of its unexpected quality and its huge financial success.  The film was a proverbial dark horse of summer 2003, a film based on pirates (box office poison!) starring Johnny Depp (usually box office poison way back when) and based on a theme park ride.  On paper, the $130 million film was seemingly a recipe for disaster.  But two things happened that summer.  Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was very good and a large portion of the May/June summer releases were not.  As such, by early July, summer movie audiences were primed for a would-be tent-pole that actually delivered the goods.  Gore Verbinski's pirate adventure was the one we were waiting for, and audiences responded accordingly with a $73 million five-day opening and a $303 million final domestic total.

In praise/defense of The Haunting In Connecticut.

I have nothing but envy for those critics who got more out of Mama than I did.  But I do take issue with a certain thread that pops up in many of the more positive reviews, the idea that is somehow the first mainstream horror movie in forever to actually have three-dimensional human beings at its core.  To be frank, I think the prestige associated with producer Guillermo Del Toro and star Jessica Chastain has caused certain critics not so much to overpraise the film but to assign it undue credit in terms of presenting a humanistic horror film.  Just as each new 007 film sees cries of 'most feminist Bond girl ever!', I think at least some of the praise being heaped on Mama is perhaps selective amnesia in terms of the oft-derided horror genre.  For a prime example of a horror film that exists as a character drama first and a horror film second, one need only look at a film that's receiving a somewhat under-the-radar sequel this Friday, possibly tonight in certain theaters.  I'm talking of course about The Haunting In Connecticut.

Review: Mama (2013) is a horrifying psychological drama trapped inside a mostly routine ghost story.

Mama

2013
100 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

There is potential for an absolutely fascinating character study hidden within Andrés Muschietti's Mama, but unfortunately the film feels content to follow the road oft-traveled in its genre.  The film's first ten minutes or so are absolutely superb, and the opening credits are among the best in rest years, if only for how succinctly they offer copious exposition in a way that is downright chilling in its simplicity.  In a sea of remakes and franchise reboots, it is indeed admirable that Mama attempts to tell an original horror story, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that it's often quite creepy.  But the real-world horror that we are presented with is actually scarier and far more disturbing than the supernatural elements at play, which puts the viewer in an odd position of wanting less horror and more drama.  The picture is well-acted and contains a few genuine surprises during its relatively brief 100 minute running time.  But the film somewhat hampers its intentions by coming out of the gate so strong that what it offers for much of its running time is merely the wrong kind of horror.

Pacific Rim gets a suitably large-scale teaser...

Between this and Man of Steel (along with The Hangover part III), Warner Bros. is going to have a very nice summer. I don't know whether or not Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim is going to be anything more than basically a straight version of Monsters Vs. Aliens, but I've remarked before that I wish the 2009 Dreamworks animated feature was willing to take its 50's sci-fi throwback more seriously.  The scale of this picture is obviously huge, although these days commenting on the scale is about as useful as saying "Wow, great special effects!" about pretty much any major film past 1994. *Big* is the new normal for stuff like this, and I hope that either the film is more than just Robots Vs. Monsters or at least that it's a really really exciting version of said template.  Del Toro doesn't generally do soulless blockbusters, so one can presume that the picture has some substance.  If the film really hits big, expect Idris Elba's (in his natural accent it appears) rallying cry: "Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!" to become a catchphrase of sorts.  Anyway, this looks pretty terrific so we'll know more when we know more.  Pacific Rim opens July 12, 2013.  Any thoughts?

Scott Mendelson      

Review: Rise of the Guardians (2012) is a stunning disappointment, with little substance, no character.

Rise of the Guardians

2012
97 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

Rise of the Guardians is an astonishing exercise in generic storytelling, with so little new to bring to the narrative plate that even a morsel of good ideas can't save it from tedium.  I can't speak to the source material, but the film amounts to a high concept idea ("What if the various holiday mascots formed a superhero group?") where no more imagination was offered after the initial pitch.  The story is basically a Mad Libs team-superhero origin story, where we follow a new recruit into a new world and learn the mythology through his eyes.  That the story shamefully rips off the first X-Men is less of a problem than the heroic cohorts having almost no discernible characteristics beyond their costumes and holiday-related duties.  With paper-thin characterization and no real surprises in the offering, Rise of the Guardians amounts to a mostly dull effort that diminishes both big-budget animation and superhero stories at the same time.

Weekend Box Office (08/28/11): Summer 2011 ends with a Hurricane, kneecapping three new releases (Colombiana. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Our Idiot Brother) and all holdovers.

It's a tough thing to accurately gauge how well a movie would have done if not for an unforeseen variable, such as in this case a massive hurricane that threatened much of the East Coast of the country and shut down hundreds of movie theaters over the weekend.  As such, it feels a little unfair to pick on movies that didn't open all-that well, since who is to say how they would have performed under normal conditions.  So, for the sake of not kicking people while they are down, this summary will be focused on the positive developments over the weekend.

While it was not number one this weekend, Sony's EuroCorp pick-up Colombiana opened with $10.3 million for a solid second place.  The Luc Besson-produced vehicle would likely have opened between $12-$15 million without the storm issues.  But even that smaller number is worth noting.  Point being, the film confirms the genuine bank-ability of Zoe Saldana, who co-starred in Avatar and Star Trek in 2009 and had supporting roles in The Losers, Takers, and Death at a Funeral in 2010.  Saldana's face was pretty much the entire poster, and the marketing campaign centered entirely around her.  This is among the larger opening weekends that I can recall for a female-led pure action picture (as opposed to sci-fi/horror) that isn't based on a comic book or a video game. Even with the diminished numbers, this is still a larger opening weekend than the far-more high profile Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, and One Day from last weekend.  Point being, there is indeed a market for action pictures starring minorities and/or women. Maybe the market isn't big enough to support $100 million+ productions, but as long as the budget is reasonable (in this case, $40 million), we damn-sure should be seeing more of this kind of thing.  The film earned an A- from Cinemascore and played 65% over-25 and 57% female.  And yes, it's pretty darn fun and well-crafted, even if the narrative is contrived and the film guts itself for that PG-13.

Never bet on breaking records: Why I wouldn't have greenlit Guillermo Del Toro's R-rated, $150m version of HP Lovecraft's At the Mountain of Madness.

Let's be honest for a second. Under normal circumstances, Inception likely would not have been greenlit in its current form at Warner Bros. While Warner Bros. until recently had a reputation for giving lots of money to notable filmmakers and more-or-less staying out of their way, even they had their limits. Had Christopher Nolan not just delivered a $1 billion-grossing and critically-acclaimed superhero sequel, and had not Warner Bros. desperately wanted to guarantee that Nolan would return for what would become The Dark Knight Rises, Inception would have been a very different movie, if it even would have existed at all. On paper, would you green-light a $200 million science-fiction film based on an original screenplay that was full of complex ideas, difficult-to-explain story elements and a distinct lack of bright colors and conventional sex appeal? There are but a handful of filmmakers who could have made Inception as it was. Chris Nolan, coming off The Dark Knight, was one of them. Other than perhaps James Cameron and Steven Spielberg (George Lucas would have just funded the thing out of his own back-pocket), I cannot think of anyone else who could have gotten the greenlight without severely slashing the budget. Guillermo del Toro isn't one of those directors either.