Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread [ARCHIVED] • Page 53

"Mr. Sandler, what you've just starred in is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever watched. At no point in your rambling, incoherent film were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having watched it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." - me after watching Adam Sandler's 2 hour 11 minute long movie probably

 

prolly belongs in the unpopular opinion thread but i think adam sandler is less harmful to cinema than star wars/superhero blockbusters

 

To be fair, you probably shouldn't have watched a 2 hour Sandler flick in the first place.

If a movie is good enough, which is case by case, it doesn't matter how long it is.

 

Agreed. There's a lot wrong with Hollywood but I wouldn't say Sandler is one of those things

 

yeah saying Sandler movies are bad is an easy target, like no one's gonna be all actually Jack and Jill was good

 

yeah saying Sandler movies are bad is an easy target

 

Yes, and by a wide margin. The blockbusters infantilize their audience and the entire industry.

 

It's actually pretty cool that Sandler has moved his stuff over to Netflix. I think that's a much better venue for his movies

 

Best move he could've made. He's not a commercial sure thing like he used to be

 

Trying to pick whether Sandler or superheroes are more detrimental to modern cinema is really, really difficult. Probably opt for the latter though. Sorry to, um, this entire forum

 

I don't think it's fair to group SW with superhero movies. The last two SW movies have been really good, and have introduced two great female protagonists. Not to mention really interesting characters like Kyle Ren.

 

I did not bother seeing the Death Star one, but the New Hope remake was very much the same kind of generic product that companies keep putting out. I enjoyed it more than the Dark Knight films, but a lot of that comes from nostalgia. Whether or not the protagonist is male or female says nothing about the quality of a film.

 

Disney actively buys out indie and art theaters to show Star Wars, so smaller/independent films do miss out on audiences directly because of Star Wars.

 

The Man From UNCLE Sequel Sequel Is Being Written

 

http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/lost...f-middle-class-films.html?mid=twitter_vulture

 

It is why so many young directors jump from one or two independent films to these major blockbusters. To them, why struggle to make art when there is no light at the end of the tunnel? A lot of times, you have to hope a major actor joins the project and does double duty as a producer, or a billionaire like Megan Ellison decides she does not mind investing in risky films.

A lot of people who stick to big-budget films choose not to take responsibility for this, and they will say things like "people can choose to watch whatever they want". However, the reality is different; these movies are shut out of cinemas for the vast majority of people. Every major theater chain plays the same four or five movies, even though they could make more money if they were the only theater within 100 miles playing the one movie that is different from the pack. Even if Fast and Furious 15 fails, it has a floor that still includes hundreds of millions of dollars. With independent film, you could make less than a million dollars or it could make more than 100 million. We are lucky that people even get a chance to see Manchester by the Sea or Moonlight. If you wait all the way until home releases, often people have already moved on.

 

Do the vast majority of people actually have an interest in these things though? And there's no way they'd make more money by showing an obscure film over a bigger blockbuster. Or even in addition to the blockbuster.

 

It isn't that they would make more money than the blockbuster, it is that an individual theater would make more money by having 1 or 2 screenings a day of an independent film instead of showing Fast and Furious 15 on four screens, just like every other theater in the same town.

 

The 4th theater showing FF8 will almost always make more money than any given indie film though. The monetary gain if anything is insignificant to big theater chains anyway.

 

Less people are going to movies, less and less mid level films are getting made, the smaller indie films aren't getting as much distribution, Disney buys out indie and art theaters when they have Star Wars movies and want them on every single screen. It's not an ideal landscape right now. And there is a market for smaller movies, for non-superhero/Star Wars/franchise films. There's a sect of audiences who actually do pick the movie they see by the Rotten Tomatoes score, which is why you get random people who don't know what they're getting into sitting down for Personal Shopper. But the climate is increasingly less diverse than it used to be.

 

At night and on the opening weekend, yes. A weekday matinee and a 9 o'clock showing is a different story. The Power Rangers movie still commanding so many screens instead of showing something like The Lost City of Z once a day is nonsensical.

 

I completely agree. The amount of films a theater offers in general is depressing. My only issue was the notion that they should do this because it'll be financially beneficial in a significant way. They should do it because they care about the industry. (Granted, this requires they care about the industry.)

 

since the article's about Lost City Of Z I'd say that's definitely a smaller movie that lots of people would be interested in

 

I looked at this weekend's box office numbers. The highest per-theater average was The Lost City of Z (28K), with Furious 8 at 23K. Some of that has to do with the density of New York and Los Angeles converging on these four theaters, but that is possible in any medium-sized area or city; my suburban county has more than half a million people, and there is an audience there somewhere.

Back when I had Netflix they used to have data about the most rented movies in your area. The big blockbusters were usually at the top, but you would see a lot of smaller movies hit the top ten or so. This tells you that there are people out there, but they are watching it on the much smaller profit-producing Netflix.

 

That's somewhat encouraging. I was wrong about that then, my bad.