X-Men Movies Thread

[Dacey]

Alice in Wonderland's domestic gross: $334 million

X-Men: Days of Future Past's domestic gross: $233 million (actually lower than The Last Stand)

Alice in Wonderland's worldwide gross: $1 billion, 25 million

X-Men: Days of Future Pasts' worldwide gross: $747 million

Also, keep in mind that Alice will now face a benefit the original didn't, which is a much more powerful Chinese market. In other words, the numbers kind of speak for themselves here.

And the most likely reason Fox is pushing a sequel is the same reason they're always pushing a sequel lately: to keep the live-action movie rights away from Disney. As for Sad Megamind, yes, that's how he's going to look in the movie, considering that was an image the studio specifically chose to show off on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

[ShyViolet]

I get what you're saying about "Sad Megamind" lol but I did read in several places that there will be special effects added to his costume.

Also: hope it's ok for me to write this now that the trailer is being released: I saw a leaked image of him some months ago and he looked nothing like the way he did in EW! Much scarier.
That's all I'm going to say.

Edit: Also, Alice came out in March, DOFP in May. I realize that March is also a pretty competitive time when it comes to box office gross, but May is even more. Alice may not be able to go head to head with Apocalypse if they're actually being released at the same time.
May is a crazy month when it comes to blockbusters, particularly action/sci fi ones. I really don't see a long awaited sequel that is the eighth film of a fifteen year old franchise giving way to what is essentially a family film based on a classic book. I could very well be wrong, but I just don't see it happening.

[EricJ]

Alice in Wonderland's domestic gross: $334 million

X-Men: Days of Future Past's domestic gross: $233 million (actually lower than The Last Stand)

Alice in Wonderland's worldwide gross: $1 billion, 25 million

X-Men: Days of Future Pasts' worldwide gross: $747 million

Alice in Wonderland: Released during March HS/College vacation "Geek Week" to a strategically targeted crazed cult of Tim-boiz, promising it would be as "weird" and visually stylized as Nightmare Before Christmas (the one they all judge his entire career by)

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Still suffering the stigma of X-Men: Wolverine, but enjoying a bit of restored audience goodwill from First Class turning out to be not so bad, as well as the growing fan division over Bryan Singer directing.

Alice 2: Released five years after we all gleefully jabbed a fork again and again savagely into Alice 1--which had caused most casual fans to finally epiphany that Tim's movies really did look alike--and after Burton's career had already dropped off a cliff with Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie '12 and Big Eyes, now hoping for the exact same cult-audience mania by recycling the first movie's exact same running franchise jokes with the last remaining TNBC-loyal fanboys, who are perfectly aware that Tim didn't direct this one.

X-Men: Apocalypse: Some division between x-treme comic fans who think the Blue Peter Boyle Frankenstein isn't the Apocalypse they were picturing, and other casual comic-movie fans willing to give anything Marvel a shot, although Ant-Man vs. Fantastic Four may have started them pondering that not all Marvel movies come from the same studio, and that Fox might need to wrap up the franchise soon.

(The devil's in the details, when you start attaching the numbers to something.)

[Dacey]

You don't make it to $1 billion on "cult audience mania."

Big Eyes got solid-to-great reviews and Frankenweenie was nominated for an Oscar, so I'd say Burton's career is pretty safe.

There's more to say, of course, but probably no point in actually saying it. It seems Burton can never be brought up here (even though he wasn't in this case) without you making some extended post about what idiots he and his fans are.

[EricJ]

You don't make it to $1 billion on "cult audience mania."

The Hunger Games franchise says hi.
And Pirates 4 says Bonjour, Guten Morgen and Nihau.

It seems Burton can never be brought up here (even though he wasn't in this case) without you making some extended post about what idiots he and his fans are.

I didn't say they were idiots, I said, why do both they and him want his entire career to revolve around the movie he didn't direct?
(But then, if that little factoid escaped them, they probably won't have any problem with his not directing the new one, either.)

Well, actually, the comment was to try and clarify the box-office mania over '10's "The MAD HATTER! and Alice, in Wonderland", with Johnny Depp's big over-madeup closeup on the poster, which caused every fangirl to go out and try to buy that same ratty-goth hat to show their devotion to the Holy Weirdly Church of BurtonDepp.
If we're judging the "competition" for X-M:A, it would be best to take into account why Disney has never had much luck trying to run live-action sequels into the ground.

[ShyViolet]

Ummm...only TNBC? What about Pee wee's Big Adventure, Batman and Edward Scissorhands? Those all came out before Xmas. Burton already had fans when it came out, why else would Disney had titled it: "Tim Burton's" Xmas??

[Vernadyn]

I think Henry Selick's track record has been much rockier than Burton's. I didn't really like Coraline, though to be fair to Selick, I haven't really connected with any of Laika's output (technically marvelous as their movies are).

Anyway, regarding Apocalypse, I know Singer has a working relationship with John Ottman, but I sure wish that John Powell were scoring the X-Men movies again. Henry Jackman would have been great too. As for the movie itself, I'm undecided; I've been snookered by so many great trailers (Man of Steel) and misled by so many bad ones (Kick-Ass), but I'll try to go into the film with an open mind.

[Ben]

I love Monkeybone. It's disjointed, schizophrenic, crude and really a bit of a mess...but it's still funny as heck.

[ShyViolet]

Saw bits of it a long time ago and found it pretty gross...definitely a guy movie. But maybe someday I'll give it another try and actually see the whole thing! Lol.

[EricJ]

Henry Selick is good when he has someone else's PLOT to rein him in heavily, which made Coraline as much a Neil Gaiman movie as anything. (Selick also contributed some of his weird artsy "puppet proscenium" touches as consultant to "Nutcracker: the Motion Picture", which was more Caroll Ballard and Maurice Sendak's picture.) But at least it's good that his name finally gets mentioned now whenever TNBC comes up.
And as for Alice 2, its April date will have to compete for moved-on fangirls with "The Huntsman: Winter War" for wondering why they couldn't get the same pubescent squeals of demographic fantasy a second time.

As for X-M:A, I keep putting it in the same sentence with "Spectre" for a good explanation metaphor:
A movie that we all stoked ourselves for hearing it described on paper, but seeing it made us realize just how good the previous film wrapped everything up, and following it up with a straight faithful genre entry seems like kind of an anticlimax.

[Dacey]

Except that...Alice isn't coming out in April. It's opening on Memorial Day weekend (the same day as X-Men).

[ShyViolet]

Trailer debuting tomorrow on-line, although reports say it's just a slicker version of the comic con one. New poster too!

http://www.superherohype.com/news/36064 ... w#/slide/1

[ShyViolet]

Well, here it is, finally:



Fainted several times after watching it. (ok, not really lol ) Some scenes from the Comic-Con presentation but a lot of new stuff too! Awesome
Awesome
Awesome
Awesome
Awesommmmmmmmmmmmeeeeee!

(BTW that opening song by Snow Ghosts is incredible.)

[Ben]

So, no reason to go see Star Wars now.



Seriously, for such a devastating character, Apocalypse still looks really, really, stupid.

[EricJ]

Okay, so he turns "big" in the climax, but he doesn't have that big basso mad-god VOICE that the 90's TAS version cemented him with in our minds...
He's more like that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy, whatever the heck his name was.