Weekend boxoffice report July 25-27

[bob_barron 0]

I would never walk out of a movie.

 

I considered walking out of The Love Guru, but you gotta stay till the end. That's the only recent movie I'd walk out of horrible, the other reasons would just me being anal about audience behaviour and technical problems

 

[At Home 0]

You actually paid money to go see The Love Guru?

[Mik 0]

Well, I didn't go home. I made the snap judgment to forsake the last 40 minutes or so and catch The Dark Knight in full for a second time. I think I made the right decision because I honestly did not laugh once the entire movie.

[bob_barron 0]

You actually paid money to go see The Love Guru?

 

Saw it opening night.

 

I'll see any movie involving the Leafs

[DarKnight 0]

Well, I didn't go home. I made the snap judgment to forsake the last 40 minutes or so and catch The Dark Knight in full for a second time. I think I made the right decision because I honestly did not laugh once the entire movie.

 

Did you think the Joker was funnier than anything you saw in Step Brothers? Because that would be ironic. A movie thats meant to be a comedy isn't funny, and a movie that is disturbing and psychological is. Thats what I loved about Ledger's performance, he was very funny at times and also very disturbing.

[Jingus 0]

Yikes. Looks like I was completely wrong about X-Files. I'd expected there would still be more fans of the show than that. Doesn't help that from what I've heard about the flick, it sounds like a rather boring and very unsatisfying movie anyway.

[DarKnight 0]

Well, I questioned about a week ago about why there was another X-Files movie, and judging from those numbers, it looks like everyone else agreed with me. I mean the last movie was 10 years ago, who would have thought anyone still cared about the X-Files?

[Hawk 34 0]

It was a long running television show with an once dedicated fanbase. 10 years between movies wasn't the cause of the extreme disinterest in the second film, it was the apparent disappointment in how the series ended (I never watched but that seems to be the consensus from those who did) and really negative reviews. It might have fared better in a softer part of the movie season, such as a mid-October release.

 

Luckily, Duchovny is doing better things these days. I don't know about Anderson, though.

[RedJed 0]

It was a long running television show with an once dedicated fanbase. 10 years between movies wasn't the cause of the extreme disinterest in the second film, it was the apparent disappointment in how the series ended (I never watched but that seems to be the consensus from those who did) and really negative reviews. It might have fared better in a softer part of the movie season, such as a mid-October release.

 

Luckily, Duchovny is doing better things these days. I don't know about Anderson, though.

 

Yeah, I think once the old fans of the series saw the trailer (which is less than great), read up on the plot, etc, they more than likely didn't feel the need to even see it, since it's just another dissapointment after the last few seasons of little to no answers relating to alot of the backstory/mythology of the series, and then this film didn't even touch anything with it other than the human dymanics between Mulder and Scully. Bottom line....the film just didn't play to the strengths of the series at all (and at least the first movie did that). They, in the least, should have just done a bang up job tying in the old series stuff into this film, but then again I understand why they didn't....since the fanbase died out so much near the end. So they felt they had to do a standalone film that would cater to all audiences, but it ended up just being a no win situation for this one. At least the budget wasn't very high, thats the only thing I can say about it at this point. Oh and since I had a free ticket, I can't complain that much about wasting my time actually checking it out.

 

On a total side note, Gillian Anderson looks like Julianne Moore's twin in this film.

[Jingus 0]

I mean the last movie was 10 years ago, who would have thought anyone still cared about the X-Files?

You made the "10 years!" comment last time. I will reiterate: the time elapsed does not matter. Look at your own favorite franchise: eight long years between Batman & Robin and Batman Beings. What apparently sunk X-Files was a lingering resentment over how bad the show got combined with an iffy marketing campaign and crappy advance word on a movie which apparently didn't right any of the wrongs.

[At Home 0]

Me and Czech had a discussion about this a little while back; he asked, "Where was the demand for this X-Files movie?"

[Jingus 0]

It's not a matter of demand. Where was the demand for another Transformers motion picture, or for most of the endless remakes and sequels which make up half the movies these days? It's about being able to make a movie which you can sell people into watching. There are movies which can entirely base their success on really well-crafted marketing: Borat is a great example, a "surprise" hit that didn't surprise me at all after I'd seen the commercials. Sometimes a movie is so crappy that even the Best Of looks horrible (Love Guru) or seems to be bringing back stuff which people have gotten repeatedly burned with in the past (Meet Dave). But most of the time you can still make a hell of a trailer for a bad movie. Although I ended up hating the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, the trailer looked so great that I was indeed conned out of my eight bucks to see it on the big screen. Now, ask yourself: did anyone see the ads for The X-Files and go "man I GOTTA see that!"?

[Dandy 0]

Are you seriously questioning if anyone would ever want to see a live-action Transformers movie? I'm pretty sure there was a demand for it.

[Youth N Asia 0]

Only a kinda spoiler, but from what I heard about the X-Files movie

 

There's no UFO involvement or anything of that nature

 

seriously...what else do you want from this movie if not that

[Jingus 0]

Are you seriously questioning if anyone would ever want to see a live-action Transformers movie? I'm pretty sure there was a demand for it.

After I saw it, I sure as hell questioned myself. But that's not the point. It wasn't just because of the fanbase; I'd wager that at its peak, the X-Files had better ratings than any Transformers cartoon ever. The point is that movie was easily marketable, and was handled well in the advertisements. An X-Files sequel could have certainly been made in a way that people would have wanted to see. But doing a standalone story which has basically nothing to do with the alien/government conspiracy which was the central focus of the show, putting out a bunch of crappy ads which didn't compel any non-fans to want to see the movie, and then deciding to release it in the middle of blockbuster season against too much strong competition? It wouldn't matter if this movie was the best detective thriller since Silence of the Lambs, it wouldn't have made much difference.

[RedJed 0]

Now, ask yourself: did anyone see the ads for The X-Files and go "man I GOTTA see that!"?

 

Yeah the trailer was horrible, didn't impress me at all when I first saw it, and this is coming from an XFiles fan from the past.

 

But at least with the trailer they suggested the idea of supernatural villains. There wasn't any of those in the film, the main villian was just some screwed up whack-job who kidnapped people and used them for his "research" (don't want to spoil the movie for anyone who actually is still going to see it.....yeah, doubtful I know). That's probably the biggest letdown of the movie, the idea that the characters they cast as the villians were just so uninteresting and unrelated to the X File universe. At least they had some goofy psychic as a character (who was able to essentially see through the killer's eyes) which was a subtle homage to Brad Dourif's character (Boggs) so many years ago as a convict who was seeing visions of kidnapped people. But the whole reasoning WHY the FBI needs Mulder and Scully didn't make sense in the first place since it was a typical Law and Order: SVU type of criminal and nothing more. If Skinner would have been able to pull some strings and re-open the X Files so to speak (even as some sort of independant agency away from the feds) and they would have brought back Mulder and Scully that way (trying one last time to "fight the future" and prevent the invasion of 2012 to occur - that is how the last X Files episode concluded) I thought it would have played alot better, even if you had to catch people unfamiliar with the X Files up on things related to the series and previous film by just a quick narration at the beginning of the film.

 

Hence, to answer the question on if there is

UFO involvement, or anything else really relating to the X-Files main story arcs, the definitive answer is no. Other than the re-examining of the history of Scully and Mulders characters througout the film (such as Mulder's failure to let go the death of his sister, Scully's inability to move on from losing a baby, as examples) there is nothing connecting to anything relating to UFOs, aliens, creatures, "black oil", or even a mention of the 2012 stuff. Mulder is in hiding from the FBI in the beginning of the movie, and Scully is a doctor in a special care ward of a hospital for sick children, and the only pseudo-interesting part of the film was trying to figure out if the two were together or not, even though they lived together and everything. Hard to explain but it played upon that vagueness of the relationship between those two into the film, just as it did throughout most of the series.

[Dandy 0]

I'd wager that at its peak, the X-Files had better ratings than any Transformers cartoon ever.

I'd counter that with a wager that the sun will rise at some point during the next week.

[bob_barron 0]

The big problem is that the ads didn't say what the movie was even about, which made it impossible to attract non-fans

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I am as big a Batman fan as I know...and I never thought it would make this much. If you'd have held a gun to my head before it opened...I would have been hard pressed to say it would make more than Iron Man. Which it's about to pass already. Crazy. And...awesome.

[At Home 0]

Being that TDK is thrice the movie that Iron Man was, I'm not surprised.

[Youth N Asia 0]

Being that TDK is thrice the movie that Iron Man was, I'm not surprised.

 

Slightly better at best

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I really liked Iron Man. Alot. I thought that it was more kinda...I don't want to say kid friendly...but definitely more of a mass apeal movie than TDK. When the positive reviews and buzz started to surround Iron Man I thought that it was going to make a ton. Which it did.

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that TDK beat it (since it also had overwhelmingly positive buzz and reviews) but it's just such a different movie. I half expected a lot of casual viewers to be kind of turned off by it since it wasn't anything like your Spidermans or Iron Man which have been the proven money makers.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

Being that TDK is thrice the movie that Iron Man was, I'm not surprised.

 

Slightly better at best

 

I liked Iron Man more than Dark Knight. Iron Man was more fun, something I could watch again. I'm pretty surprised people are re-watching Dark Knight...what's there to rewatch? The Pencil Trick? I don't get it.

 

Then again, I never got Titanic either. Kudos to DK for bringing people back for multiple viewings.

[bob_barron 0]

What's there to re-watch in Iron Man? Him flying around and then crashing into the house?

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I only saw Iron Man once. But I've seen the Dark Knight...a few times already. I don't know why I keep going back. I mean...I know I love the movie...but I don't have any real reason. I just wanted to keep watching it I guess.

[At Home 0]

I thought that Iron Man was just kind of a fluff movie. High budget, but not really anything there in terms of content. Well, there was Tony Snow, who's character didn't amount to anything besides snappy one-liners, and then the almost instantaneous creation of the supervillain. The movie was all over the place and the plot development was about as formulaic as you can get. More than half the movie was inconsequential and served only to help Tony Snow better his ass-kicking machine. Did you see it had fucking rockets and shit? Woah.

 

None of the characters, for that matter, really made the movie memorable. I saw it in the same vein as Transformers, just a really fucking loud movie made to make 15 year olds pump their fists in the air.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

Are you kidding? There's plenty to rewatch in TDK. Nolan and co. packed that movie with so much going on, so many layers from just about every line of dialogue... its one of those movies that only get better each viewing as there's more to look at. I know a friend who's seen it six times (lucky bitch that she is).

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I bet I end up seeing it about that by the time I'm done.

 

Different people keep wanting to go...and I'm always in. I saw it on Imax for the second time today...and I've seen it twice on a regular screen. Today's showing came out of nowhere as a friend called me out of the blue to see if I'd go with him. I think I already had plans to see it with someone else on Tuesday.

 

...maybe I keep going because I have nothing better to do.

[At Home 0]

What's there to re-watch in Iron Man? Him flying around and then crashing into the house?

 

 

[LaParkaMarka 0]

Iron Man was rewatchable because it was a lighthearded, fun fluff movie. I'm not saying it was a better film that Dark Knight, obviously Dark Knight had a lot more going on. But for me, if I'm going to rewatch a movie I prefer fun fluff movies versus some layered dramatic action movie.

 

I could see 40 Year Old Virgin a bunch of times and still enjoy it. Something like No Country for Old Men, which was a far better film artistically than Virgin, not so much.