How much Star Wars is too much Star Wars?

Disney announced two days ago that their new plans, having previously purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion, aren't just to make a new trilogy of Star Wars episodes, nor even to make a few spin-off films set in the same universe.  No, they are planning to make one Star Wars movie every single year, with off-shoot films alternating with official new 'episodes'.  How much Star Wars is too much Star Wars? The idea of a new trilogy of Star Wars films, set to debut ten years after the finale of the prequel trilogy, is perhaps also exciting, even as J.J. Abrams replacing George Lucas as the proverbial leader of this specific universe calls for cautious optimism (Is Star Wars without any real input from George Lucas really Star Wars?  Discuss...).  But how long will the casual fans remain excited about the prospect of new Star Wars films when they appear as frequently as Thanksgiving dinner for years and years on end?

The lesson of Jack the Giant Slayer: Delaying failure and fixing the unfix-able is expensive and often counter-productive.

As most of you know, Warner Bros. intended to release Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer in June of 2012 before pulling it from release, ordering reshoots and the like, and calling it a more kid-friendly Jack the Giant Slayer.  I don't know what the film's budget was prior to the date change and related reshoots, but it was probably a lot less than the $195 million that they ended up with.  And for what?  The film opened this weekend to $28 million.  If patterns hold for this kind of release, it'll likely top out at $70 million domestic at best and around $250 million worldwide as a best case scenario.  But point being, how much better of an opening could Warner Bros. expecting for a half kid-friendly/half dark-and-violent retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring absolutely no one of any box office worth? How much worse of an opening would Warner Bros. be looking at had it just gone ahead and opened it in June of 2012 as they intended?  Is it really worth the extra tens-of-millions of dollars that they ended up spending on the picture? Delaying the inevitable oftentimes merely gets you the same result at a greater cost.

There can only be two! A possible future where Disney and Warner Bros. dominate franchise tent-pole film making...

The news that has broken over the last couple days is not a little depressing.  While the Seven Samurai-esque Star Wars stand-alone film to be helmed by Zack Snyder was quickly denied, we have gotten word for Disney that there would indeed be stand-alone Star Wars films.  The bad news?  So far, they seem to be entirely centered around well-established characters from the original trilogy.  You want a stand-alone prequel involving Yoda?  Or how about films centered around a young Boba Fett or a young(er) Han Solo?  If so, you're going to be pretty happy over the next half-decade or so.  But if you thought that Disney was buying the Star Wars franchise to somewhat expand its universe rather than merely give us unneeded origins and/or backstories for the very characters we already know a good deal about, well this news won't make you happy.  In fact it reeks of the kind of lazy corporate thinking that gives entertainment corporations a bad name.  It's frankly the first bit of news that might make one thing that maybe Disney, which in general has been relatively good to the properties they have purchased over the years (Muppets, Marvel, etc.) might not be the perfect owner of Lucasfilm that we all thought.

Skyfall has crossed $300 million domestic! A closer look sees James Bond near the top of the action-film record books.

Sony is reporting that Skyfall grossed $260,000 yesterday, which was just enough to put its domestic total over the magic $300 million mark.  Putting that in perspective, this means that Skyfall has nearly doubled the previous domestic-best gross of the 007 series, the $168 million grossing Quantum of Solace and the $167 million-grossing Casino Royale.  Now that it's theatrical run is pretty much finished (it's got $5 million left in the tank, at the absolutely most), let's look at how it did in the grand scheme of things.  Even when adjusted for inflation, the film is the third-biggest domestic earner in the series, surpassing the adjusted-$279 million gross of You Only Live Twice ($43 million in real 1967 dollars) and hanging out below only the $515 million-grossing Goldfinger ($51 million in 1964) and the $585 million-grossing Thunderball ($65 million in 1965). It's the biggest-grossing spy film of all time and the highest-grossing non-fantasy action film of all-time.  Even when playing the inflation card, it's the sixth biggest spy movie ever, behind the aforementioned 60's 007 films, Mission: Impossible II ($310 million adjusted gross/$215 million actual gross) Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me ($315m/$205m), and the first Mission: Impossible ($318m/$181m).  If you factor in pretty much every remotely recent non-fantastical/non superhero action franchise, it still ends up with more tickets sold than all but the likes of Beverly Hills Cop ($522m/$234m), Rambo: First Blood Part II ($329m/$150m),  Rush Hour 2 ($310m/$226m), and Beverly Hills Cop II ($305m/$153m).  

A look at the six-day opening weekend for The Amazing Spider-Man. Has Sony established a new franchise or merely temporarily dodged a bullet?

There are a number of ways to judge the six-day $137 million debut of The Amazing Spider-Man (review).  First of all, in all but the most unlikely of circumstances, a film grossing $140 million in its first six days ($62 million over the traditional Fri-Sun weekend) is a pretty big financial success.  For the record, the film played 44% 3D and 10% IMAX.  The film earned an A- from Cinemascore and played 75% over 12 years old and 25% families with kids under 12.  Of the over-12 audience, it played 54% were male and/or over 25 years old. Of the under-12s, 73% were under 10 years old and 65% were boys. While final figures won't drop until Monday, the six-day weekend puts in between 25 and 30 among the biggest six-day totals.  It's the fourth-biggest Fri-Sun debut of 2012 and the second-biggest of summer.  On the other hand, as far as Spider-Man films go, it's actually pretty weak sauce.  Spider-Man 2 opened on this same holiday weekend back in 2004, earning a then-record $180 million in its first six days (with $88 million over the traditional Fri-Sun weekend, among the top-five opening weekends ever at that time).  The first Spider-Man film (audio commentary) opened in May 2002 to a then-record $114 million Fri-Sun debut, earning $144 million over its first six days of play, three of those days falling in the middle of the school year no less.  As for Spider-Man 3, it also broke the Fri-Sun record back in May 2007 ($151 million) before earning $176 million in its first six days.  So factoring in inflation (Spider-Man - $196m, Spider-Man 2 - $229m - third best six-day of all time, Spider-Man 3 - $202m) and the 3D ticket-price bump, The Amazing Spider-Man sold far fewer tickets than its predecessors over its first six days of release.  Point being, the Sam Raimi trilogy set box office records, while The Amazing Spider-Man merely exists as another relatively large-scale blockbuster amid a sea of preordained blockbusters.

In mainstream films, dead moms don't count...

I had originally planned to do a spoiler-filled discussion of the various things that vexed me about The Amazing Spider-Man, but frankly my heart just isn't in it.  The film is obviously a victim of severe post-production tinkering (Devin Faruci laid it out here) and it just feels petty to further attack a film that A) I've already panned in 1,500 non-spoiler words and B) is more a disappointing mediocrity than an outright travesty.  Instead, I'd like to use the film's release to discuss something that has bothered me for at least the last several months, something I made a brief note about during the run-up to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  If you've seen The Amazing Spider-Man (and this isn't a spoiler if you haven't), you'll know that Peter Parker's emotional trauma is partially centered around the fact that his parents abandoned him when he was a young child and then died soon after.  But as the film progresses, it's clear that Peter's journey and Peter's discoveries center almost exclusively around his father (Campell Scott).  His mother (Embeth Davidtz) gets barely a line of dialogue and no real character to play.  And that's the pattern, it would seem.  Be they dead at the start or be they dead by act one, dead fathers are often fleshed out characters while dead mothers are, at best, pictures on the bookshelf.

In a film-culture seemingly entitled to spoilers, simple concealed narrative become "PLOT TWISTS!"

Under normal circumstances, this post would require a 'Spoiler Warning(!)'.  But what I'm discussing aren't some shocking plot twists or stunning third-act reveals, which is kind of the point.  This Friday finally brings about the US release of Ridley Scott's Prometheus.  A major part of the marketing campaign has centered around its somewhat cryptic beginnings, the idea that Fox wasn't revealing the whole film in the trailer as is often the case.  This in turn led to speculation that there was some plot twist being held in reserve, be it a specific connection to the Alien franchise or some kind of stunning third act reveal.  We've seen this game before, as Paramount successfully sold the idea last summer that Super 8 had some kind of climactic reveal and/or plot twist.  Without going into spoiler-y details, this is not true for either of the above films.  Prometheus certainly has some narrative threads that haven't been revealed in the marketing, while other pretty major details have been blatantly spoiled because they contained 'money shots'.  But at the end of the day, and this is not a criticism per-se, Prometheus unfolds in a somewhat predictable manner, as did Super 8.  What's interesting is that in this day and age merely not revealing the entire narrative arc and/or every money shot in the film qualifies as 'hiding plot twists'.

Unconventional Wisdom: So Chris Nolan's Batman films inspired a trend of dark/gritty blockbusters? Such as?

I've discussed this a few times over the years, so while debunking the concept in question I must accept guilt for believing it uncritically on prior occasions. If you've been reading reviews and general commentary for The Avengers, you've probably read at least a few pundits talk about how Joss Whedon's The Avengers is a welcome respite from the grim/gritty blockbusters that were born from the massive success of Chris Nolan's Batman movies (the second of which is still falsely held up as a NeoCon propaganda fantasy).  It's an easy sell, as the bright, colorful, and larger-than-life super-heroics found in The Avengers are worlds away from the street-level fights and chases in the Nolan-verse.  But in the seven years since Batman Begins debuted, where exactly are all of these grim/gritty blockbusters that Nolan is constantly credited with inspiring?  In short, they basically don't exist.  Whether it be comic book films or unrelated fantasy blockbusters, the films that soared highest are still the biggest, most colorful, most larger-than-life, and arguably the most 'fun'.  Four years after The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan's second Batman epic remains not a template for blockbuster success but somewhat of an anomaly.

"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning." No better end for our stalwart heroes, no better goodbye for Star Trek.

Second Star to the Right

By the time J.J. Abrams's Star Trek 2 (or whatever it's called) debuts in the summer of 2013, it will have been just under 21 years since the release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was supposed to be the final Star Trek film.  Since that time in December, 1991, we've had (counting the upcoming sequel) an additional six films, meaning that just half the Star Trek films explicitly involved the original cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise.  Star Trek: Generations had cameos from several members of the crew, and Spock showed up in the third act of Star Trek, but we will soon reach a point where we've spent more cinematic time in the company of the Next Generation crew and these alternate-universe youngins than we have with the original icons.  I have no criticism or commentary about that, other than to say that it's not a little ironic that Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew have slowly been put out to pasture by younger replacements.  After all, the first six Star Trek films were all about the now-elderly crew coming to terms with their own mortality, their eventual retirement, and whether or not the lives that they had dedicated to exploring that final frontier really made a damn bit of difference.  All of this is just a silly essay to justify posting this scene, the climax from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  It is the best film in the Star Trek series, one where the two-fisted swashbuckler Captain Kirk comes to terms with his own rage and his own eventual irrelevance, forgives his mortal enemies, and becomes a broker of peace rather than a weapon of war. This final bittersweet moment never fails to move me.  I can think of no better goodbye than this moment, and there is a part of me, my enjoyment of the next six films aside, that wished they had let this final grace note be the true and undisputed finale.

Scott Mendelson

Kinda neat: IMAX schedules a week of discounted 'old favorites'.

http://www.amctheatres.com/imaxbigmovies/

Since Contagion isn't exactly burning up the IMAX box office and Real Steel still has a week before opening, IMAX is trying something a little different.  For one week, starting tomorrow, various IMAX theaters will be showing a slate of three popular IMAX titles over the last three years.  For just $7 a ticket, you can opt to revisit Star Trek, Inception, and Fast Five on the large-screen format.  Nothing much to add here, but I almost hope this starts an occasional trend.  I'm not sure if my schedule would permit such a thing, but I'd love the opportunity to revisit Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in their IMAX glory before seeing The Dark Knight Rises.  Anyway, click on the link below the big banner ad for tickets and what not, otherwise consider this a plug for what I think is a rather fun and smart idea.  Will you be attending any of next week's bargain rereleases?  What movies would you like the chance to revisit in IMAX, or what older movies would you pay to see reconverted to IMAX (IE - the Lord of the Rings trilogy?).  Share below if so inclined.

Scott Mendelson

How 2001 was a film game-changer III: Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes 'reimagining' invents the modern reboot.

This is one of a handful of essays that will be dealing with the various trends that were kicked off during the 2001 calendar year, and how they still resonate today.

At the time, the term 're-imagining' was ridiculed and mocked in the entertainment press.  20th Century Fox, Tim Burton, and those involved with the 2001 redo of Planet of the Apes refused to call it a remake, instead calling it a re-imagining of the classic 1968 sci-fi adventure that itself was a groundbreaking venture in several important ways (it was the first ongoing continuity-laden franchise from a major studio, the first sci-fi franchise, the first to do an 'origin' story, the first prequel, etc).  While the film was massively successful, the critical aftertaste (read - mixed/negative reviews quickly turned into general dissatisfaction) caused Fox to do, what is now a rare thing.  They quit while they were ahead.  They took their $362 million in worldwide grosses (off a $100 million budget) and closed shop on the Planet of the Apes franchise.  Despite a near-record opening weekend ($69 million) and a $180 million domestic gross, Burton was openly annoyed at the final result (it was among the first films to earn Fox a reputation as a micro manager among the big studios) and vowed not to return for a sequel.  Audiences too didn't care for the somewhat flat narrative, the blank-slate Mark Wahlberg performance, or the seemingly arbitrary shock ending.  Anyway, the film was a smash hit, but it was a classic quick-kill blockbuster that closed the book on the franchise until this very week, when 20th Century Fox is releasing Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Positioned as part-prequel, part quasi-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the film is indeed a reboot of the beloved franchise.  Because reboots are all the rage now...

Weekend Box Office (07/18/11): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II dethrones The Dark Knight, earning $169.1 million in its opening weekend.

The Harry Potter series finished where it started, at the top of the box office with a record breaking opening weekend. Nine-and-a-half years ago, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone opened the series with a $90.2 million, breaking the 4.5 year old opening weekend record set by The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($72 million).  Over the next 9.5 years, said record was broken four more times, with the last such toppling this very weekend three years ago with The Dark Knight's $158 million Fri-Sun take.  With nearly ten years of anticipation, The Boy Who Lived has returned to the top of the opening weekend charts with a massive $169.1 million Friday-Sunday gross.  That includes a record $91 Friday (best single day, best opening day, best Friday) which in turn included a record $43.5 million at 12:01am alone.  As expected, the picture was massively front-loaded, ending the weekend with the second-smallest weekend multiplier on record, 1.85x (for newbies, weekend multiplier is the final weekend total divided by the first day).  It also set another 'negative' record, earning 25.7% of its weekend total in those Thursday at 12:01am showings alone (the previous such record was set by the last Harry Potter film, which grossed 19% of its $125 million Fri-Sun haul at midnight).

Can Sex & the City 2 overcome the TV-sequels curse? Is it Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan or X-Files: I Want to Believe?

As most of you know, Sex & the City 2 opens worldwide on Thursday, May 27th. Expectations are running high, with the general consensus that it will perform in a similar fashion to the first picture ($57 million opening weekend, $152 million domestic total). But the odds are indeed stacked against it. There are two major issues at play. First, and more obviously, the $95 million picture (costing $30 million more than the first film) will have to overcome the infamous Tomb Raider trap. For those new to this site, the Tomb Raider trap (named for the enjoyable adventure yarn that is Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life) is the phenomenon in which a generally-disliked film becomes a smash hit based purely on marketing and hype. But the arguably superior sequel flops or under-performs because even though it is a better movie, audiences aren't willing to take the chance again (other instances of this phenomenon include Addams Family Values and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). Unless you were a die-hard fan of the original show, you probably didn't care much for the original Sex and the City movie. So theoretically only the hardcore fans will check this one out this time, right? But the real danger is the fact that it is a sequel to a film that was itself based on a television series. It's a tiny genre, one that is made up of either out-of-the-park smash hits or out and out flops. If it ends up as an example of the latter, the Carrie Bradshaw sequel should be thrilled to gross 1/2 of what the original made.