Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
October 25, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Three Musketeers, the latest high profile 3D failure, opened to $8.7 million. What went wrong with this literary adaptation?
David Mumpower: Oddly, the same mistakes occurred here as was the case with the the last attempt at this story, 2001's The Musketeer. That title was basically an old school Hollywood stunt fest as choreographed in the style of industry legend Yuen Woo-ping, the flavor of the month at the time due to The Matrix. The Musketeer lacked heart, story or quality performances, a disappointing statement to make about a movie co-starring Stephen Rea and Tim Roth. The Three Musketeers was marketed as a special effects feast that effectively utilizes 3D technology and I'm willing to believe that is true given the presence of cinematographer Glen MacPherson, who did a phenomenal job with Resident Evil Afterlife. Still, the movie clearly isn't any good and the ads were a glorious mess of heaving bosoms, Bad Hair Club for Men, and random explosions from the Michael Bay School of Pointlessness. But hey, one out of three ain't bad. This film could prove to be profitable due to its solid overseas box office to date, but I had no interest in going to see it on opening weekend. Given how much I love this same crew when they make Resident Evil movies, that tells the entire story about how awful The Three Musketeers looks. Even if it weren't a totally pointless adaptation, it would still have no upside as a project. And seriously, find the person who authorized the hairstyles in this movie and gouge out their eyes.
Bruce Hall: I just don't know. Milla Jovovich seems to think it has something to do with Summit not putting enough marketing behind the film. I would have to disagree with that. I don't even HAVE television service, and I've seen the commercial spots and the trailers. This version of The Three Musketeers clearly has all of the machine guns, mad crazy explosions, bitchin' ninja stunts and flying CGI pirate ships I remember from the book. I guess nobody has any taste any more. I blame Facebook.
Brett Beach: Bruce, I second the WTF about Jovovich complaining about the lack of publicity for this film. It is apparently doing solid business overseas, and I feel as if I could not escape ads for the film, the last two months. If you adapt a story you supposedly love, only to "update" or "spruce" it up so that it really bears no resemblance to even the spirit of the original, you might as well go whole hog and cut all ties. I have no reverence for the Resident Evil films and in my mind PWSA peaked with Event Horizon.
Edwin Davies: I want to say "It looked really quite awful" and leave it at that, but a lot of terrible films make a hell of a lot of money, so there has to be something really special about this to make it fail so badly. I think that a large part of it is down to the same reason that horror remakes like The Thing have failed recently; it satisfies no potential audience. The changes alienate the people who might want to see a good adaptation of the source material, and the period setting and crazy outfits/hair alienate the people who don't know the book and just want to watch some 'splosions. It also didn't help that all anyone could really think of whilst watching this was "This reminds me of Wild Wild West. Gosh, Wild Wild West is a terrible film, best avoid anything the reminds me of it."
Reagen Sulewski: This will probably read like blasphemy to some of our old-school contributors but ... airships?! Are they screwing with us? Also, this feels like someone completely misread the appeal of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and then decided to wire-fu the crap out of it. It's not the sword-fights that people loved about those films, it was the comedy and sense of fun and adventure. This felt pretty tedious and pointless.
Most of us forgot he was alive in the first place.
Kim Hollis: Johnny English Reborn opened to $3.8 million, less than half of what the original earned in its North American debut. Do you believe this project was doomed from the start in North America? If not, what do you consider the project's fatal flaw to be?
David Mumpower: First of all, Johnny English Reborn was not made due to its North American appeal anyway. As much as I love Rowan Atkinson, his box office splits for his first three releases emphatically demonstrate that people on this continent do not love the Artist Formerly Known As Blackadder the way I do. Bean opened to $2.3 million on the way to a solid $45.3 domestic run while Mr. Bean's Holiday started with $9.9 million then ended up with $33.3 million. Johnny English slipped a bit with $9.8 million in its debut and only $28.0 million in total. With those three releases, Atkinson as the lead draw has returned $106.6 million in North America. Conversely, his international appeal is such that those same three titles have grossed $540 million overseas, meaning that 83% of his earnings have happened outside of North America. That's roughly five out of every six dollars earned. Given those parameters, a $3.8 million debut is the worst debut one of his films has had (Bean's $2.3 million was in only 242 locations) by a lot. Since it's already grossed over $100 million overseas, this will be the largest split to date between domestic and international takes. This is not unexpected but the fact that Johnny English Reborn may not earn $15 million domestically is.
Bruce Hall: My two cents would be that of all the things Rowan Atkinson is known for in the US, Johnny English is not foremost. Plus, the James Bond spoof has been kind of done to death, at least as American audiences are concerned. Austin Powers more or less wrung whatever juice was left out of that sub-genre by the turn of the century - again, at least for Americans. Rowan Atkinson is a rock star internationally, but in the US he doesn't have the same cachet.
Except of course, amongst the dedicated people who've gleefully followed his career since they were little kids, and know that "Kate" is short for "Bob". I don't know anyone like that. Not at all.
Samuel Hoelker: Has Rowan Atkinson been so bored that he makes sequels of his films wayyy after the first one has had any American relevance? Mr. Bean's Holiday came out ten years after Bean and this is eight years after the first Johnny English (and outside of a surprisingly good comedy/drama Keeping Mum, he's been absent from film). Domestically, these types of things rarely work out except with extremely high-profile franchises (which, like we learned last year, Cats and Dogs was not). Is it even worth it to bring these to America?
Edwin Davies: Yes, this was pretty much doomed in America since I doubt anyone involved ever gave the American market that much thought. This was made for an international audience first, and its performance in America was always going to be a distant afterthought. In terms of why it didn't do better, or at least fall in line with Atkinson's other film work, it's a sequel no one asked for to a film that hardly anyone remembers. In that context, the failure of the film in America is only logical, and the success of it abroad is simply staggering.
Pass the popcorn
Brett Beach: SPOILER I watched The American and enjoyed the slow pacing and divvying of the action scenes at the beginning end and precisely in the middle. The major problem I have with the lone assassin with a flaw storyline at this point in cinematic history is that a) the flaw is always falling in love with a beautiful woman and b) the assassin's boss is always the one who sets him up to be killed. I suppose this is akin to complaining about a slapstick comedy having too many pratfalls, but in a film where plot matters for little next to mood and tone, not having the same plot would have been a pleasant surprise. END
I also watched the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy (in case I decide to write on BHCII) and i found part III to be one of the worst experiences I have ever had watching a star-driven big-budget Hollywood film. John Landis directed like a man unsure of how exactly to juxtapose auto mechanics doing a Supremes singalong to them being machine gunned to death 30 seconds later. If there was supposed to be satire underneath it all, it was lost. Eddie Murphy was on autopilot, Judge Reinhold looked tired and sad, and the reprisal of Serge's cameo was one of the most awkward (and unnecessary) things I have seen committed to celluloid. The dregs.
Also, in brief, watched Vanilla Sky for the first time since 2001. Cameron Diaz's supporting role is still the best thing (she plays psychotic all dressed up as cute very well) but the Cruise-Cruz romance never works. Not that that hurts the film all that much, to be honest. This was to C. Crowe as Psycho was to G Van Sant and I am glad he got it out of his system. Grace is Gone with John Cusack - I focused on the fine performances (Alessandro Nivola and the girls who play Cusack's daughters) over the forced road movie nature of its premise.
Finally: Drive. Hard to capture in only a few words. I liked the non-violent meditative moments more than the graphic (but brief) violence. I loved watching Gosling and Mulligan smile at each other. Los Angeles has never looked more beautiful (not even in 500 Days of Summer). And Albert Brooks should get accolades for a transforming performance. He was fuckin scary!
Edwin Davies: I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsey's (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar) adaptation of Lionel Shriver's very popular novel. I hadn't read the book, so only knew the vaguest outline of the plot, but from what I've heard Ramsey captures the uncomfortable, disturbing feeling of the book brilliantly. The relationship between a mother (Tilda Swinton) and her son (Ezra Miller) who will grow up to commit a Columbine style massacre (that isn't a spoiler, since it's very obvious from early on what he has done) is played queasily well by both performers, and the film provides an interesting examination of the nature vs nurture debate, asking whether or not Kevin does the things he does because he is innately evil, or because of the bitterness and rage his mother displays towards him. My main problem with the film is that it starts out being abstract and impressionistic, jumping between different time periods and depicting the story in short, broken fragments in a way which is disorientating and exciting, then when it settles down in the second half it kind of feels a bit staid since all it is doing is retreading ground that had been strongly alluded to earlier on. It also doesn't help that Ezra Miller and the kid who plays young Kevin look so obviously evil that it skews the nature/nurture debate considerably. They're both good, but you wouldn't let either of them look after your plants for a weekend.
The other film of note that I watched was Tokyo Godfathers, an anime film from the late Satoshi Kon, whose work I only discovered this last year and who I now think is one of the great lost talents of cinema. He was a seriously amazing, visionary talent who died much too young at the age of 46. Anyway, the film itself is about a trio of homeless people who discover an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve, then set about trying to find the parents to try to understand why anyone would abandon a child. The film manages a great balance of bawdy humor, exhilaratingly kinetic action and a deep sense of melancholy that should not work but really does thanks to the stunning animation and the strength of the central story, which examines ideas of fate, coincidence, love, family and friendship in a way which is hugely entertaining. It's a really special film that I think that will appeal to any of the Studio Ghibli-loving* readers of this site (and writers, for that matter) would do well to check out.
*It isn't a Studio Ghibli film but there is a similar vibe to it and it's not for nothing that Satoshi Kon was cited as the next Hayao Miyazaki.
David Mumpower: My three most recent viewings are Fast Five, Speechless and Scream 4. Fast Five somehow outdoes The Expendables in the machismo category. Vin Diesel, perhaps threatened by the addition of Dwayne Johnson, is in pure cro-magnon mode. His acting bothered me more than Paul Walker, something I would not have believed possible since I love Diesel and consider him to be an underrated actor. No, really. Meanwhile, Walker is as much of an actor as I am a ballet dancer...and I'm a clumsy 6-4", 250 pound monster. Despite this, I have to say that the action sequences, the true draw of the franchise, are largely exceptional. The climactic heist in particular creates a singularly unique car chase, something I would not have believed possible for this particular franchise. I give Justin Lin a lot of credit for honing his ability to give the audience what it wants in these films...and I also think it's great that he keeps casting Sung Kang, his buddy from Better Luck Tomorrow. That's the type of loyalty that identifies he dances with who brought him. Fast Five is a strange franchise in that they tried to ruin it with a cash grab second movie, rebooted with a solid third movie that nobody watched and now it's bigger and better than ever before due to the return of Diesel and clever guest casting. In a way, Johnson was the perfect choice for this because he is someone who is used to take a dive in exchange for a paycheck. Bulking him up then feeding him to Diesel's character is a genius move. The news that Jason Statham could wind up in the next project is all the more enticing.
Speechless is a 1994 romantic comedy starring Michael Keaton and Geena Davis that you may not know. I maintain that Aaron Sorkin used it for inspiration not just with The American President but also at several points in The West Wing. Keaton and Davis portray speech writers for Republican and Democratic candidates in a New Mexican senatorial campaign. What is impressive about the movie is that other than some unavoidable stuff like telephony (the lack of cell phones/the design and size of cell phones dates movies and television in a remarkable way...watch The X-Files sometime if you don't believe me), Speechless is a movie that could be released this weekend and seem just as topical and fresh. The conservative writer just finished his run on a dull-witted sitcom that might as well be named Two and a Half Men while the liberal one is an idealist who struggles to find her place in a world that constantly disappoints her. Director Ron Underwood, the genius behind the original Tremors and City Slickers, has been reduced to television after a pair of high profile bombs in Mighty Joe Young and The Adventures of Pluto Nash, but he demonstrates the same talent in Speechless that has also imbued unheralded shows like Reaper and Eli Stone with a genial warmth/depth that is rare for the medium. Frankly, I had forgotten how good Speechless is and it makes me miss the long gone days of Michael Keaton as a funny man. Pixar seems to be the only operation that appreciates his unique skill set. And as an aside, there is such a disconcerting moment at the 30 minute mark of this movie when Christopher Reeve walks on the bus. I had forgotten what a powerful screen presence he was before the tragic accident.
Scream 4 is a movie I wanted to watch on opening night but I kept talking myself out of it for fear that it would break my heart. The original is one of my favorite films ever while Scream 2 is on the shortlist for best sequel ever. I even liked the third film, which puts me in the minority. Every instinct I had was that despite the stellar cast, this was a cash grab reboot that would leave me feeling disappointed. Those instincts eventually proved to be well founded but not before I got my hopes up a little bit. I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour of the film, as it had the right combination of new ideas and hat tips to the original. Even though the identity of the person/people responsible (no spoilers here) for the crimes were telegraphed, I completely agree with Edwin Davies' comment in his Things I Learned column on the subject (read it here but be warned that there are huge spoilers: http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=14295) that there was a choice available that would have made the movie legendary. It would have proven every bit as popular and buzzworthy as the original. Unfortunately, that was the not the case and I found myself cringing throughout the last 15 minutes. Scream has been a tremendous franchise full of sublime ideas. That climax was unworthy of Scream.