There is a scene from the new movie The Flash, in which Barry Allen has to save a bunch of babies falling from a collapsing building. I've only seen versions of it on YouTube, which are not of the highest quality, but I immediately knew what they were trying (and failing) to reproduce. There are 2 scenes from the X-Men franchise that do everything Warner Bros. tried to do in The Flash, but the X-Men actually succeeded. (Links were getting taken down or reduced in quality, so you will have to search for yourself.)
First, the scene we will look at is from X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) in which Quicksilver saves everyone from an exploding mansion. The action is better. The music is better. The comedy is better. Even the dog is better.
Second, the scene from X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) in which Quicksilver, Wolverine, Dr. Xavier, and Magneto are escaping from the Pentagon by way of the kitchen. Again, it is a scene in which Quicksilver saves the day. This movie came before X-Men: Apocalypse, and while it is good, they learned from this movie and set out to make the other scene better. And that other scene IS better.
But with these 2 examples to copy, DC still couldn't get it right. Are we shocked that The Flash looks like it will lose $150 million or more at the box office?
Further, the saving of a bunch of babies in The Flash, seems like it is only there to be a set piece. They probably shot that sequence before they knew what the script was going to look like. To be fair, it sounds like the movie was in post production before they knew what the script would look like. And while the exploding mansion scene from X-Men is a similar set piece it isn't a completely random bit stuck into the movie. And the kitchen scene fits nicely into the escape-from-the-Pentagon section of that movie.
I haven't seen The Flash, and I probably won't. There have been a few clips online, but they were being taken down - or severely reduced in quality - with regularity. (One clip was listed as "Full 1080 HD," and by the time I saw it, it had been limited to 320p.) Given that DC is still trying to get back some of its production costs, I guess I can give DC and Warner Bros. the benefit of the doubt on that. Here is Critical Drinker's take on the movie, and everything wrong with DC/Warner Bros. films today.
OK, Disney/Marvel is also failing, Warner Bros. is not alone in that, but in 2014 and 2016 they were not failing. It's almost as if something in Hollywood changed between 2016 and 2019, making them incapable (almost) of producing a movie that people actually want to see. There are a few successes, but many more failures.
Consider the top 50 movies that came out in 1984 (also see the image below) - a year not selected at random. The list includes Sci-Fi blockbusters like The Terminator and 2010: The Year We Make Contact to more typical Hollywood dramas like The Natural and the biopic The Killing Fields. I've seen most a lot of those movies more than once. Two cult classics were produced that year, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension and Repo Man.
Firestarter was based on Steven King novel, and The Killing Fields was based on a true story, and a few others, like Dune, were also adaptations, but the rest were written to be original movie scripts. What can you say that about today? (And in case anyone is keeping track, Gremlins IS a Christmas movie, just like Die Hard.)
Oh, and Dune (1984) is almost a textbook example of how NOT to do an adaptation. I know some people like that movie, but I am not among them.
Of course in 1984 it wasn't uncommon to go to see a movie every week, especially if you were dating. The theaters themselves had gone thru that horrible period where they subdivided big rooms into smaller rooms to make "multiplexes", sometimes not even changing the seating so that there were theaters where the seats didn't quite face the screen. They were worried that VCRs would kill movie theaters when instead they reinforced peoples' love of movies and the value of the big screen and shared experience.
ReplyDeleteWe got some really nice theaters after that... too bad the films weren't as good.
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(BB and Repo Man are two of my favorites. Gremlins held up well, watched it with my 13yo daughter last year and she liked it. She really liked BB. We haven't watched Repo Man yet but we will. "Ordinary f#cking people, I hate 'em." is one of my favorite lines of all time.)
You also went to the movies all the time, because there were always good movies to go to. One year. Ghostbusters, Terminator, Amadeus, The Natural, Karate Kid, ... There was always something good to go see. We will be lucky if there are 4 movies released this year worth seeing. And they weren't all superhero movies - though we have a couple this year - Sound of Freedom and Oppenheimer - that are real movies.
DeleteAnd you can't afford to go, even if you want to. How much for dinner and a movie today? It is nearly 30 bucks for 2 people to sit down, before you buy overpriced soda and popcorn. If you go to dinner before the movie ... Movies were what we did in high school because they were cheap, and we had no (or very little) money.
You used to be able to buy books of discount tickets too. Movies were one-offs and self contained stories, without sequels or prequels, and remakes were rare. Lots of fun, cheesy movies, made cheaply, with a cast drawn from the pool of working actors (B actors) who treated it as a job to do well, then go home. No one expected huge returns from most of the movies, only the summer "blockbusters". When less is on the line it's easier to take chances.
ReplyDeletenick
Oh, the theater I was thinking specifically about that had been divided by putting walls down the aisles of the big room was on Halsted just south of 80/294 in Homewood near the quarry. Had to look on the map and figure it out, because I couldn't remember and it was bugging me. I guess it's long gone, from the streetview...