Ready Player One

[EricJ]

Huge hit in china. Opened with $60m!
https://twitter.com/weier1231997/status ... 84320?s=19

Are we still excited about that, after Transformers 5 and Pirates 5?
Followed by next week's headline about how it dropped catastrophically the next week, because Chinese audiences didn't "get it", as happened to Justice League and Spiderman:Homecoming?

I remember last summer when Paramount got a little TOO happy, went the whole nine yards and started ranting "Well, who cares what America thinks about Transformers 5, what makes us such a big deal, anyway??"...And then Wolf Warrior II came out, proved that Chinese audiences still prefer their own movies, and scared the crap out of Paramount, Disney and Universal. And that was before the whole Emperor-Xi thing made export markets shakier.

(Oh well, maybe like Warcraft, they'll all respond to the "Isn't it neat to use computers and the Internet now?" aspect of the movie, even if they haven't the faintest clue who Tracer or the Iron Giant are.)

[gaastra]

Pirates 5 and transformers 5 wasn't the second highest opening ever for a wb movie in china.

[EricJ]

Pirates 5 and transformers 5 wasn't the second highest opening ever for a wb movie in china.

Only because Warcraft wasn't a WB movie, either.

(I think we're missing the key point here, which I remember blogging about in a moment of passion after the named event:
http://movieactivist.blogspot.com/2017/ ... about.html )

[gaastra]

American box office is good but not great. Did wonderful overseas but just ok in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfLPUfJrKV8

[Ben]

It hit Warners' projections, though, and they’ll be happy with that, especially with the good cinemascores it’s getting, which they hope will translate to a longer run (ironically, its next big threat is another Warners title, Rampage. That wasn’t terrific thinking on their part, huh).

[ShyViolet]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/fi ... -cultural/

Oh you have got to be kidding me. I simply cannot believe how many reviewers out there so completely missed the message of this wondrous film...

One critic actually seems to think that this film discourages people from reading and seeking fulfillment from the world outside our own “OASIS” technology/fantasy world we’ve built up and now live with every day, when Spielberg is stating the exact opposite! Even some of the more positive reviews take note of his underlying motif but dismiss it as shallow and unconvincing, claiming that the film lacks real drama/emotion above all the references/CGI.

The characters are anything but shallow, but people desperately trying to dig their way out from the shriveled, sugary place that their society has become. They are basically trying to be “real people” who are uniquely themselves and not because they can name every 80s horror film and make it to the highest level of Pac-Man. That’s only one layer of this movie however, which is part deconstruction, part satire and part genuine coming-of-age story. The eventually wearying effect of all the CGI/references is intentional...hence our relief at the natural light/color/shadows of our eventual glimpse of Halliday’s childhood bedroom, where he retreated into Atari rather than take the risk of bonding with actual human beings. An extremely relevant, timeless, almost “uncomfortable” penultimate scene which will resonate with the audience long after they have seen the film.

(By the way, I definitely got a WALL-E vibe, and I mean that as a very high compliment. Maybe the players of the OASIS don’t sit on floating chairs but they might as well...considering how much they’re missing out on by sequestering themselves inside what is essentially a dream world. Remember the Axiom captain’s words? “I don’t want to survive! I want to live.”)

[EricJ]

(ironically, its next big threat is another Warners title, Rampage. That wasn’t terrific thinking on their part, huh).

Oh, they knew what they were doing:
RP1 was designed to be the Big Easter Spring-Break Geek Title, but if a not-too-looked-forward-to title opens in the second half of April, it's called "Cannon fodder"--DESIGNED to clean out a few dusty December plex screens before being crushed to make room for the big May Marvel opening, in the hopes either no one will notice, or get impatient and go out to see any least-objectionable movie a week or two before, where the reviews don't have time to do any damage.
(And it doesn't help that Avengers: Infinity War decided to bump its Big May opening up a week and open on Apr. 27.)

That would pretty well describe Warner's attitude toward Rampage at the moment.
Usually around this April cannon-fodder time, aren't we also supposed to get some third-party indie CGI film to be disposed of quickly? What, no "Little Foot" or "Ratchet & Clank"?

[gaastra]

What, no "Little Foot" or "Ratchet & Clank"?

This ones coming out.


WB you have to wait for the teen titans go movie.

[gaastra]

https://www.comicbookmovie.com/sci-fi/r ... de-a159371

$300m worldwide! It's americas highest grossing movie in china this year so far.

Japan posters.

[Ben]

Spoiler alert!

The DeLorean has its hover conversion intact! Kinda which that had remained a surprise.

[EricJ]

$300m worldwide! It's americas highest grossing movie in china this year so far.

Whereas Tom Cruise in "The Mummy" had the underpants beaten off of it, and finally persuaded Universal to give up their evil insane dream. (Much like Sony had to when "Ghostbusters" was banned.)
Sorry, Universal, "When even China doesn't like it", there's nowhere to run.

And, of course, there are the occasional reminders of Why China is a Strange Foreign Country:
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg ... story.html
(Note that this was back when prime minister Xi was still "Building support" for his political base...)

[gaastra]

Spoiler alert!

The DeLorean has its hover conversion intact! Kinda which that had remained a surprise.

Not much of a surprise when they showed it in one of the trailers.

[Ben]

I did not know that.

[gaastra]

Looks like word of mouth is helping the film in it's second release. Film is killing it overseas.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4386&p=.htm

Finishing in second is Warner Bros.'s Ready Player One with an estimated $25 million, dropping just 40% in its second weekend as the film's domestic gross now stands just shy of $97 million. The performance signals solid word of mouth, particularly considering the film opened over four days last weekend, which can often dampen a film's second weekend, but this one has clearly impressed audiences, encouraging others to see it.
Ready Player One's international roll-out held on strong as well, dropping ~35% in holdover markets (-39% excluding China) and generating an estimated $81.7 million this weekend from 65 territories. The film's international cume now totals nearly $295 million, pushing the worldwide tally to $391.3 million. The last key market the film has yet to open in is Japan, where it will debut on April 20.

[EricJ]

Not bad for a country that never saw The Shining.

Japan posters.

Have to love the Warriors of the Wind quality of Japan's posters:
The T-rex is in only one scene, Harley, Deadpool and Ryu are almost invisible, Batman and Freddy last about three seconds each, the henchman-doodster is drawn as Darth Vader, Kong is apparently climbing Big Ben, Lara Croft apparently has shootouts in the big video-arcade room, and I'd had have to still-frame the Blu-ray to even find Chun-Li or E.T.

Seems the less countries actually know about the pop-references in it, the more they're excited that Western Hollywood Stuff is IN it. It's sorta like that over here, too.