Snake-Eyes Bombs. Not a Surprise.

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Endless Flight

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So I assume the earlier GI Joe movies weren't bombs? I see they cleared $300M even while practically no one who I know ever saw it. I caught I think it was the last one on cable but can barely remember it.
 
So I assume the earlier GI Joe movies weren't bombs?

They made enough money to be profitable, but not as much as expected, and fans and critics largely disavowed them.

This one doesn't look like it's going to make back it's budget even with international ticket sales.
 
You can tell how much faith the studio had in this film when the put they end scene of the movie AND the mid-credits sequence into the trailer, lol.
 
I’ve read that Hasbro did not want to make Snake-Eyes a mostly military movie. I have no idea why except to believe they think the US military being shown overseas in a movie is like having a case of the cooties. They don’t know how to market the franchise any longer.
 
I also notice something that I didn't figure on- the industry is blaming the positive numbers for the streaming market on the movies performing badly. I thought if streaming did bad they would say, no we shouldn't do this. But now they're saying no we shouldn't do this because it's cannibalizing the market, ignoring the statistics that show that bad movies without streaming... still do bad.
 
Meh. I saw a long trailer for it and it had looked kinda interesting to me. Then again, it was obvious that it was just the GI Joe brand slapped on and some franchise material and references shoehorned into an unrelated script. I figured it would piss the existing fans of the franchise off, but I'm sort of amazed that the wider audience didn't care for it.
 
I have always said that you could do issues 26-27 of the Marvel run in a two hour movie. They can be adapted for modern military if they need to be, but the basic beats should be there.
 
I also notice something that I didn't figure on- the industry is blaming the positive numbers for the streaming market on the movies performing badly. I thought if streaming did bad they would say, no we shouldn't do this. But now they're saying no we shouldn't do this because it's cannibalizing the market, ignoring the statistics that show that bad movies without streaming... still do bad.

The movie industry is pathologically averse to acknowledging there's such a thing as "good movies" or "bad movies", and that being good or bad has an influence on the profit margin, because those are factors outside of the suits' control-- they can't just pay filmmakers to make better films, or somehow hire the right combination of cast & crew for a given script. The factors that contribute to making a movie critically successful are anathema to the money-logic of the money-men.
 
Just to pour salt in the wound...



Honestly I have no feelings about GI Joe, never read the comics, didn't even realise it was such a thing until The Pub, so I had no particular expectations when I saw Rise of the Cobra. Personally I could just about give a pass were it not for the interminable flashback fight scenes between the ninja character's as kids. That scene just kills the movie for me.
 
Rise of Cobra was kind of like an 80's TV movie with a 200 million dollar budget. It wasn't offensively awful, there just wasn't anything especially good about it.

The sequel OTOH....oy vey. Show me someone willing to defend that and I'll show you someone who needs an enema.
 
Entertainment has been in a funk of hacks & flunkies since 2015 (predicted heavily in other undiscussable social corners I traveled by 2012-2014), and given how cultural decades tend to happen at the mid-point of decades I fully expect this trend to continue onto 2025.

If it isn't independent and a labor of love I only expect flagrant failure and public flagellation. Corporate rehashes are rarely excellent, but this decade has followed my prediction way back before 2015 and hasn't let up yet, nor do I expect it to change until maybe 2025. The more interesting development (to me) is the uniformity in professional critics toward shill sycophancy, which has made a fascinating sharp divide when using critical ratings as a tool over the ages.

Could've been an amazing story if they just copy pasta'ed the comic -- a loss but not a surprise.
 
I’d actually rather have no more movies at this point. Hasbro had this idea that they can do this huge shared universe with a G.I.Joe/Transformers crossover and a Micronauts movie and a M.A.S.K. movie and I guess they might all get together in Age of Unicron . Who knows. I heard the Micronauts has already been scrapped.
 
Entertainment has been in a funk of hacks & flunkies since 2015 (predicted heavily in other undiscussable social corners I traveled by 2012-2014), and given how cultural decades tend to happen at the mid-point of decades I fully expect this trend to continue onto 2025.

If it isn't independent and a labor of love I only expect flagrant failure and public flagellation. Corporate rehashes are rarely excellent, but this decade has followed my prediction way back before 2015 and hasn't let up yet, nor do I expect it to change until maybe 2025. The more interesting development (to me) is the uniformity in professional critics toward shill sycophancy, which has made a fascinating sharp divide when using critical ratings as a tool over the ages.

Could've been an amazing story if they just copy pasta'ed the comic -- a loss but not a surprise.
Movie Entertainment has been in a funk of hacks and flunkies since 1920…for every classic movie there were scores of junk
 
Rise of Cobra was kind of like an 80's TV movie with a 200 million dollar budget. It wasn't offensively awful, there just wasn't anything especially good about it.

The sequel OTOH....oy vey. Show me someone willing to defend that and I'll show you someone who needs an enema.

I think I saw the sequel? If I did, I don't recall anything about it at all. I know I saw Rise of Cobra. I don't recall anything about it either. I think they made the movie all about some kind of power suits and the Baroness was actually brainwashed and saved from the bad guys by the end of the film?
 
The Baroness and Cobra Commander were siblings and CC’s name was Rex. :quiet:
 
Movie Entertainment has been in a funk of hacks and flunkies since 1920…for every classic movie there were scores of junk

That is a defense, "in all ages bad quality can exist," that can be used from the beginning of human creations (even older if you are willing to expand it beyond humans to other creatures who 'create', like bowery birds and the like). It is a universal truth undebatable and thus typically not fruitful to add in a defense. :smile: But yes, as a horror movie fan I am intimately familiar with this. :smile:

My contestation, which can only be alluded to and not allowed to be debated in this forum due to its global rules, is this bad art comes from a place of malice in the name of vengeance and attempted horizontal capture through all layers of its production pipeline (that latter part's scale being a fascinating new development). And that's all I can state directly about that. :smile:
 
That is a defense, "in all ages bad quality can exist," that can be used from the beginning of human creations (even older if you are willing to expand it beyond humans to other creatures who 'create', like bowery birds and the like). It is a universal truth undebatable and thus typically not fruitful to add in a defense. :smile: But yes, as a horror movie fan I am intimately familiar with this. :smile:

My contestation, which can only be alluded to and not allowed to be debated in this forum due to its global rules, is this bad art comes from a place of malice in the name of vengeance and attempted horizontal capture through all layers of its production pipeline (that latter part's scale being a fascinating new development). And that's all I can state directly about that. :smile:

Sturgeon's law is a rough approximation that people apply like its an iron law. Plenty of eras of film have a notably higher quality of film than others.

The classic Hollywood studio era from the 30s to the early 50s produced far more quality films as a percentage of production than other eras, that is why it is considered the 'classic era' of Hollywood. I mean at one time we had the Marx Bros, Sturges, Lubitsch, Capra and a host of screwball classics produced within a 10 year period. And even 'minor' comedies (like, say, Double Wedding) from that period are significantly better than what you see today.

I just watched a 34' programmer Heat Lightning that was well directed, written and acted, concise and tightly plotted and there are many films of that calibre throughout those decades.

There is a notable dip in American films through the 50s/60s but then things came roaring back in the 70s and early 80s. After that it has been hit or miss but in general lots of good English language films were made throughout the 80s and 90s away from the blockbusters, you just had to seek them out. Even in more recent years Pixar and yes Disney ushered in a what will be seen as a new golden era of America animation.

How the dominant MCU films will be judged by history is hard to say, at first I thought they were a fine mix of the modern blockbuster that has dominated commercial film since the 80s but with some significant old school craft brought to bear. I've personally come to find them a bit exhausting, I'm ready for something new.

But I don't think the creative doldrums of the current blockbusters has anything to do with the provincial culture wars that you allude to, I think it is more the modern studios iron grip on production and distribution. Some think the streaming companies will break that up, I'm more skeptical as they seem more interested in TV than films per se and largely allergic to real risktaking.

And that's just taking into consideration US films, when you broaden it out to films from around the world (Asia, Iran, Europe) there are still more good films produced in a year than most people can find the time to watch.
 
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How the dominant MCU films will be judged by history is hard to say, at first I thought they were a fine mix of the modern blockbuster that has dominated commercial film since the 80s but with some significant old school craft brought to bear. I've personally come to find them a bit exhausting, I'm ready for something new.
Very well written post, though I wonder about this point, as I've seen it expressed by quite a few- there are all sorts of movies out other than MCU movies; if they're exhausting and you're ready for something new, their very existence doesn't have much bearing on that statement does it? Or is that what you're saying?
 
That is a defense, "in all ages bad quality can exist," that can be used from the beginning of human creations (even older if you are willing to expand it beyond humans to other creatures who 'create', like bowery birds and the like). It is a universal truth undebatable and thus typically not fruitful to add in a defense. :smile: But yes, as a horror movie fan I am intimately familiar with this. :smile:

My contestation, which can only be alluded to and not allowed to be debated in this forum due to its global rules, is this bad art comes from a place of malice in the name of vengeance and attempted horizontal capture through all layers of its production pipeline (that latter part's scale being a fascinating new development). And that's all I can state directly about that. :smile:
That... makes no sense, though? Sure, someone might write a fanfic or something cheap like a self-published work or even a book as a "take that!" against something, but no studio is going to blow a modern action movie budget on that. At some point, the adults in the room are going to step in and say "no, we are not burning that much money on your pettiness".
 
Micronauts would be an awesome movie if you could use the old Marvel comics material.

Oh well, GiJoe Rise of Cobra is a great premise but my own inclination is to dial back the silliness so I'm not sure I'm the guy to do it. But it'd be a movie about a disgruntled used car salesman who starts a self help group that radicalizes into something more. I'm thinking something almost more like Fight Club. All these angry, disaffected guys looking at the world and saying I want more. I think they'd set up a health and dental insurance plan. Because I always liked that bit from the cartoon, "Hey! They get dental insurance","I'll take that soldier!" The second movie would be GI Joe.

I'd call the first movie Rise of Cobra, no GI Joe in the title. I wouldn't make them morally ambiguous, they'd be a bunch of guys who have decided that the system isn't working for them and they want to overthrow it. Probably mid way through the movie they'd hook up with a European arms dealer and his kinky girl friend. Cobra Commander would always be a little guy with big anger issues, he'd try to rationalize his position and show himself as a sympathetic victim but there would be lots of times he could get off the ride and let it go and he'd always double down. I'd want you to see him growing into the role. Dr. Mindbender would be a court appointed Psychiatrist who's frustrated with the system and buys into Cobra Commander's vision after a couple sessions. The show would end with the first terrorist strike and the congress decision to form a special task force.

The second movie would take it's name from a line at the end of the first one.

We're not calling it GI Joe!
 
Very well written post, though I wonder about this point, as I've seen it expressed by quite a few- there are all sorts of movies out other than MCU movies; if they're exhausting and you're ready for something new, their very existence doesn't have much bearing on that statement does it? Or is that what you're saying?

No, I don't care if they keep making them till the cows come home I just won't be watching them as often as I did previously. I was a total Marvel comics kid so if the films are starting to pale for me I can't imagine what it must be like for other people.

I still haven't bothered with Joker or Wonderwoman 1984 for instance and I really liked the first Wonderwoman (mediocre villain aside).

Whether these films suck up all the theatrical space for different kinds of films...probably but the studios committed themselves to blockbusters over diverse, adult-oriented films a long, long time ago so I don't think that issue can be laid at the feet of the MCU alone.
 
Very well written post, though I wonder about this point, as I've seen it expressed by quite a few- there are all sorts of movies out other than MCU movies; if they're exhausting and you're ready for something new, their very existence doesn't have much bearing on that statement does it? Or is that what you're saying?
It does if that‘s all the studios focus on and are willing to pay A-List level salaries for.
 
It does if that‘s all the studios focus on and are willing to pay A-List level salaries for.
But that's not the case. I don't think it's ever been the case that studios focus themselves on one particular genre or type of movie.
 
They literally just have to fight Cobra. That's it. How do you screw it up?


This is what I've been saying. GI Joe has to be the easiest possible IP to adapt.

I think what it speaks to is how many grossly untalented people have managed to worm their way into studio jobs in Hollywood.
 
I remember thinking as a kid that the way they get around violence in a Saturday morning cartoons was to just make the Cobra soldiers robots (the B.A.T.s), then they could just shoot the shit out of them. That's what they did, ant that's what I would do, just make Cobra a legion of androids with the leaders being basically super powered villains.

Knowing is half the battle, Hollywood.
 
That... makes no sense, though? Sure, someone might write a fanfic or something cheap like a self-published work or even a book as a "take that!" against something, but no studio is going to blow a modern action movie budget on that. At some point, the adults in the room are going to step in and say "no, we are not burning that much money on your pettiness".

Of course they are. It was already done on several major properties within the past 5 years. In fact that has been the raison d'etre of propaganda since the beginning (of all arts, but we can stop at cinema), and one of the easiest examples found are especially in times of war. But to go into it dips ones toe further into politics past the first toe joint. :wink: By forum decorum this is an unarguable discussion, so pointless to continue beyond stating one's view and moving on.
 
That is what I thought about Underworld: I said to my wife 'vampires vs. werewolves, how can it miss?'

Then I watched it and discovered how.
At least Disney had Captain America fighting Hydra. LOL
 
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