Iron Man 3 gets a photoshop poster spectacular!

I was holding off on posting those lovely character posters for Iron Man 3 because I wanted to put them all in one post, with the presumption that Rebecca Hall would get her own poster as well.  Alas, Hall is a no-go both for her own poster as well as even getting billing on the main IMAX poster.  That is a bit odd as her character in "Extremis" is basically a co-lead while Guy Pearce's scientist um... it's a small part in the original comic book arc.  I'll let others discuss the usual gender boilerplate here (expanding the guy's role while seemingly minimizing the female character's role, keeping the women on the poster to no more than one, etc.), and merely point out that this is basically a giant mash-up of several prior character posters smushed into one image, which may remind fans of the Batman Forever poster campaign from 1995 (with the five character posters copied and pasted into the theatrical one-sheet).  At least no one is unleashing exploding farts like the last time around...  Anyway, since they are apparently done for now, I'm including the rest of the solid Iron Man 3 posters after the jump, including the general theatrical one-sheet.  Iron Man 3 opens overseas on April 25th and April 26th but not until May 3rd in America.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Iron Man 3 gets a final and frankly terrific trailer...

I'll add commentary later today.  But for the moment, this looks like a pretty terrific action thriller that just happens to be a superhero threequel.  It's good to see that the bad guy isn't just targeting Stark this time around, and this may in fact dive head-first into the politics that the second film only skirted around.  Could this finally break the curse of the comic book part 3?  Share your thoughts below...

Scott Mendelson

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.

Iron Man 3 gets a creative and compelling Super Bowl tease.

This is the first piece of marketing we've seen since the teaser back in October, and it's actually a nice deviation.  The extended version (which only includes about 20 seconds of additional footage) is mostly stuff we've seen from the theatrical teaser while the remaining thirty seconds sets up without ruining a major action set piece.  I actually watched both Iron Man films over the last couple weeks and I have to say they have both aged very well, even the second one which is still flawed mostly in its messy third act and its weirdly kid-friendly tone when it comes to its poorly-developed villainy.  There's not much more to say, other than the set piece in question looks terrific and kinda scary (for no particular reason, the idea of being sucked out of an airplane, especially while still strapped to a seat, has always been kinda disturbing to me).  From what we've seen, it looks like Happy is the film's big death, but other than that I hope that Marvel and Disney show a little restraint especially as they actually have action sequences to market, as opposed to the last film which had just two major set pieces from which to cull footage.  I'm sure we'll get another trailer, probably attached to Oz: The Great and Powerful on March 8th.  But for now I'm glad about how little I know about the actual story, even having read the comic arc that it's loosely based on.

Scott Mendelson    

Burying the lead: Disney's cancellation of The Little Mermaid 3D leaves the Mouse House light on female-targeted movies.

From a business standpoint, one could argue the logic of Disney's surprise cancellation of the planned September reissue of The Little Mermaid.  The 3D reissues, which started with The Lion King back in September 2011 peaked to an absurd degree with that blockbuster rerelease ($94 million domestic alone).  The respective grosses for Beauty and the Beast ($47 million), Finding Nemo ($41 million), and finally Monsters Inc. ($31 million) trended ever downward to the point where the flop 3D reissue of Monsters Inc. probably didn't even break even when you account for prints and merchandising.  I would argue that Disney dropped the ball by moving the Monsters Inc. reissue from January (where we have absolutely nothing for kids to see during the first six weeks or so of the year) to the already brutally crowded Christmas season where it was crowded out by the holiday releases and the still strong Wreck It Ralph and Rise of the Guardians (which should be crossing $100 million domestic in the next couple days). I would also argue that The Little Mermaid, which has the same nostalgia factor as The Lion King and has not yet been released on Blu Ray while going for around $50 on Amazon for the 2006 DVD, is a likelier contender to get parents into the theater than Monsters Inc.  

Watch/Discuss: Iron Man 3 gets a solid, but rather similar-looking teaser, as Tony must save himself yet again.

That I'm not a fan of the new armor's color scheme is a minor point.  I'm still bitter that they switched Mario's color scheme in Super Mario Bros. 2 almost 25 years ago.  But while the footage looks good and the stakes seem higher this time around, I can't help feeling a sense of deja vu.  Is this not the second sequel where a diabolical villain decides to teach Tony a lesson in humility by tearing his world apart, just as Tony himself is going through a mental/emotional crisis?  Or more to a point, is this not the third Iron Man  film where Tony basically has to use his toys and his brains to basically save himself and/or his company from destruction?  We see a quick flash of Guy Pearce, reminding us that we're basically seeing The Mandarin (played by non-Asian actor Ben Kingsley) tossed into the "Extremis" story arc.  The most interesting moment is what is apparently a possibly mortally wounded Happy Hogan, as he's certainly a likely candidate for a major death who's absence won't screw up the franchise too much.  Since Favreau arguably doesn't want to stick around forever watching other people take on his franchise, it's a good bet he doesn't survive this chapter.  Anyway, Shane Black's Iron Man 3 opens in the US on May 3rd, 2013. As always, we'll see.  Now it's your turn.  What is the chance that Iron Man 3 can become the first truly *good* part 3 in comic book film history?   

Scott Mendelson

Iron Man 3 gets a teaser poster and a synopsis.

The trailer drops tonight at midnight, so I'll try to have it posted tomorrow morning.  Anyway, here is the first teaser poster, with the synopsis after the jump.

Scott Mendelson

Press release: Disney announces boatload of Disney/Pixar/Marvel release information...

I'll let you decide what is newsworthy versus what is not.  Of course it would have been more newsworthy had Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier *not* gone the 3D route, but there you have it.  I'd be shocked if Guardians of the Galaxy and the newly announced Ant Man (my daughter will be excited as she's a big fan of The Wasp) don't go the 3D route as well.  The sad news is the removal of Phineas and Ferb from the summer 2013 schedule to parts unknown in 2014.  That can't be a good thing, right?  Anyway, the whole load of newly dumped info is after the jump.  The field is now yours. Oh, and just for fun, here's the newly released synopsis for the rather epic-sounding Thor: The Dark World.

In the aftermath of Marvel's Thor and Marvel's The Avengers, Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos... but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all.

Scott Mendelson

She has a name. Her name is Sharon Carter! On the way we discuss actresses and female characters in genre fare.

One of the big would-be stories yesterday was the announcement of five actresses apparently on the 'short list' to play Sharon Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Such stories are always big news in the blogsphere, mainly because it allows bloggers to write a handful of sentences and then decorate their site with various pictures of attractive women.  What's amusing/disconcerting about these stories is how pretty much every single website describes this role as 'the love interest' or 'the romantic interest'.  Most of the sites can't even muster a token 'female lead', opting to describe the role as Steve Roger's "arm candy".  Look, barring some inexplicable surprise, we all know that one of the five actresses in the running (Emilia Clarke, Jessica Brown-Findlay Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, and Alison Brie) is likely playing Shield agent Sharon Carter, distant relative (grand-daughter/great-niece, etc.) of Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter in the last Captain America film.  She has a name, she has a character and a history that can be referred to when discussing this casting news.  How about we use some of that information instead of just referring to her as Steve Roger's newest sexy time partner?  

When the title of your superhero sequel is a giant spoiler...

There is a reason why Chris Nolan didn't call his last Batman film The Dark Knight Returns in No Man's Land During Knightfall.  The Dark Knight Rises may have felt like a painfully generic title thought up during a 7am brainstorming session, but it kept a certain amount of mystery alive in regards to what the movie was about.  With the next wave of Marvel comic book sequels, we're also seeing something new and arguably interesting.  Instead of numerically-titled sequels (Spider-Man 2) or even somewhat generic subtitles (X-Men: The Last Stand), we're seeing sequels that are explicitly telling you what they are going to be about by virtue of their title.  By which I mean they are being named after specific comic book story arcs.  Now fans may be thrilled about seeing their favorite arcs adapted to the silver screen, but the very title is a giant spoiler.  If you've read the arc in question, you pretty much know exactly what's the movie is going to be about.

Less is more. Why Marvel's decision to increase Iron Man 3's budget by $60 million may not be a net-positive.

This is old news, but it broke while I was busy and I suppose the release of the first official still is as good a time to discuss this as any.  Despite commentary running up to the release of The Avengers swearing that Shane Black's Iron Man 3 would be a scaled-back and character-centric affair, it now appears that the eye-popping success of The Avengers has changed the template over at Marvel.  The film's budget of $140 million has now been raised by a whopping $60 million, so that it will now cost $200 million assuming everything gets done on time and on schedule.  Instead of promising a low-key character drama loosely based on "Extremis", Iron Man 3 is now intended to be the biggest Marvel movie yet!  Iron Man 2 cost $200 million and still felt incredibly small-scale and the $140 million Captain America was the only pre-Avengers film that actually felt 'big'.  It's not that money can't buy quality or anything obvious like that, it's the idea that money wrongly applied and/or given to a film purely because it can be sometimes does more harm than good.

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'.

Weekend Box Office (05/13/12): Dark Shadows no match for The Avengers as the Marvel pic earns $103m in weekend two.

I've long said that, generally speaking, any would-be blockbusters slotted for the second major weekend of summer are doomed to somewhat under-perform, unable to break out of the spotlight hogged by whatever film kicks off the summer.  Since 1996 (when Warner Bros. officially kicked off summer with Twister in the first weekend in May), only two times has a film debuting on this very weekend actually topped the box office, and both times were due to a Hugh Jackman franchise film so disappointing audiences that moviegoers were more-than-ready to lap up whatever came next.  In 2004, Troy opened with $44 million against the second weekend of Van Helsing while Star Trek rode a wave of good publicity to $79 million against the crash-and-burn second weekend of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Other than that, the second weekend of summer is littered with either smaller films that didn't need to reach blockbuster status (The Horse Whisperer, Daddy Daycare, Monster-In-Law, Bridesmaids, etc) or would-be blockbusters that crashed hard on opening weekend (Dragonheart, Battleship Earth, Poseidon, Speed Racer, etc).  Falling into the 'close-but-no cigar' category would be Robin Hood from 2010 (which opened with a solid $37 million but still needed massive overseas dollars to recoup its $200 million budget) and this weekend's Dark Shadows.

Weekend Box Office (05/06/12): The Avengers does the impossible, scoring $207 million in a single weekend. Why the numbers are even more impressive than you think...

Ten years ago, Spider-Man shocked the industry by grossing more than $100 million in a single weekend.  Five years ago, Spider-Man 3 broke the $150 million weekend barrier.  This weekend, The Avengers has blown through the $200 million barrier, delivering a record opening weekend of $207.1 million in high style.  Yes, the number is beyond huge, besting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II by $38 million.  But the total weekend number only tells part of the story.  Arguably as important as the massive three-day figure is the manner in which it was earned.  First of all, The Avengers is the first film in modern times (going back to Batman 23 years ago) to break the opening weekend record without shattering the opening day record.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II still holds the record for the biggest single day, biggest opening day, and biggest Friday with $91 million.  The Avengers earned a massive $80 million on its first Friday, good for the second-highest single day of all time.  But for the last several years, massive opening weekends of this nature have been predicated on overly front-loaded opening days, in turn predicated on frontloaded midnight showings.  Harry Potter 7.2 made $43 million at midnight alone, or 25% of its $169 weekend total.  The Hunger Games did 12% of its $152 million debut at midnight.  Twilight Saga: New Moon did 18% of its $142 million debut at midnight alone.  The Avengers did just 9% of its gross, or $18.7 million, at midnight. This means that the film played obscenely well all weekend, not just on opening day for frenzied fans.

Friday box office: The Avengers grosses $80 million on Friday. Why we may be looking at a $200 million opening weekend!

Ten years ago we had the first $100 million opening weekend.  Five years ago we had the first $150 million opening weekend.  This weekend, we may be looking at the first $200 million Fri-Sun opening weekend.  The Avengers followed up its $18.7 million midnight haul with a $80.5 million gross for its first full day.  That's the  second-biggest single day on record, behind the $92 million opening sprint for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II.  It's also by far the largest single-day gross not counting midnight screenings.  Even if you negate the midnight haul, The Avengers still grossed $61 million during 'regular business hours'.  For example, The Dark Knight earned $18.5 million at midnight and $67 million for its first full Friday, giving it a $49 million 'normal day' Friday figure.  Among the various single day champions in recent years: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($92m - $43m = $49 million), Spider-Man 3 ($59m - $10m = $48m), The Hunger Games ($67m - $19.75m = $48m), and The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($72m - $26m = $46m).  As you can see, The Avengers is so-far actually far less front-loaded than all of them, meaning it is playing less like a heavily-anticipated geek-centric smash and more like a general audiences mega-hit. Point being, the three-day opening weekend record ($169 million for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II) is still very much in jeopardy.

God I love these things...

I really should do a better job keeping up with these videos, and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I first posted the 'Iron Man vs. The Dark Knight' which pretty accurately summed up the DC/Marvel war of summer 2008.  Anyway, this clip, aside from being funny (because it actually pays attention to movie news), points out pretty succinctly why The Amazing Spider-Man is in a little bit of trouble.

Scott Mendelson  

Midnight box office math: The Avengers earns $18.7m at 12:01am. Weekend gross between $93m and $283m!

The unofficial midnight gross for Marvel's The Avengers is $18.7 million.  That's the eighth-biggest such midnight haul on record.  The seven ahead of it are The Hunger Games ($19.7 million), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($22 million), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I ($24 million), The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26 million), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($30 million), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part I ($30 million), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($43 million).  Obviously The Avengers was never going to top the midnight-grossers list, and its worth noting that the film earned more on its midnight debut that pretty much every prior Marvel Studios movie combined (Offhand, Thor earned $3.5 million, Captain America earned $4 million, and Iron Man 2 earned $7.5 million in their respective midnight debuts).  It's a larger midnight, just barely and likely due to inflation and the 3D-price bump, then The Dark Knight, which broke a midnight record four years ago with $18.5 million on its way to a $67 million opening day and a $158 million opening weekend (both records at the time).  Unless the film is front-loaded on the level of a Harry Potter sequel or a Twilight sequel, we're looking at a $140-160 million debut here.  But is the three-day record still in play?  Let's whip out the calculator!

For those who wish to rant: The Avengers spoilers thread...

It's just about 11:00pm, meaning that folks on the east coast will soon be getting out of the midnight screenings of The Avengers.  Anyway, I've never done this before, but I'm officially opening the floor to those who comment regularly.  I'm guessing 90% of my readers will have seen The Avengers by Sunday evening, so this is the spot to discuss the film in all its spoiler-filled glory over what may be a record-setting weekend.  I may come back in the morning and add a few spoiler-y thoughts, but for now, it's your turn.  Obviously if nobody comments I won't do this kind of thing again, so please don't be shy.  What worked, what didn't?  How was the theatrical experience, in terms of projection quality and the crowds?  Anyone in costume?  Any anecdotes?  You get the idea.  And with that, I hope you all had a good time and I'm off to bed...

Scott Mendelson

Review: So close yet so far, Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) is an often soaring but occasionally frustrating B-movie with several A+ ingredients.

The Avengers

2012
142 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

In a film like The Avengers, which brings together strands of several prior pictures into a mostly cohesive whole, it is arguably inevitable that individual pieces will end up working better than the sum of its parts. That the film works at all is almost a miracle, and it's so purely entertaining and contains so much that works like gangbusters that it's tempting to ignore what doesn't work and merely salute the enterprise. It is a relentlessly engaging and confident motion picture, boasting a cast that in a more respected genre would make it an Oscar-bait film. But the film comes so close to out-and-out greatness that it's almost disheartening to point out the core issues at fault, both because it feels petty and because it's almost a genre masterpiece. Still, there is much to like and quite a bit to love about Joss Whedon's The Avengers. On a pure popcorn spectacle scale I can't imagine anyone feeling that they didn't get their money's worth. As a piece of art however, it's a trickier proposition.

The not-so subtle negative messaging in Jessica Chastain's Iron Man 3 character description.

The big casting news from yesterday was the announcement that Jessica Chastain is being sought for a major role in Iron Man 3, joining Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, and (allegedly) Andy Lau alongside the various returning cast members (basically every surviving character from the first two films save for Sam Rockwell).  The cast listing for the other *male* actors primarily described their occupations and/or role in the story (Kingsley is the villain, Pearce is a 'sinister scientist', Lau is 'a scientist').   But the actress is being touted not just as a scientist but as "a sexy scientist every bit as smart as Tony Stark".  Because despite winning raves in seven films last year, with countless award nominations to go along with it, Ms. Chastain can't just be described as a scientist.  Oh no, she has to be a hot piece of ass who despite being (gasp!) a girl is as intelligent as Mr. Stark.