Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
August 26, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Brett Ballard-Beach: For a film to open nearly 80% lower than its original with nine years of ticket inflation and being in 3D is catastrophically embarrassing. I know everyone is rightfully addressing the fact that "it took almost 10 years to do a sequel" but as 300: Rise of an Empire showed earlier this year that years of distance won't kill a project. I have read some analysis that a sequel in 2006-2007 could have opened to nearly twice what Sin City did, but I think that is mistaken. I think Sin City was an (admittedly rare) example of a film that had novelty appeal the first time around, did well at the box office, and became a cult film in the interim, but neither the original audience nor those who discovered it from 2005 on were itching to see more of it. (The weekend audience, what there was of it, was comprised mostly of males under the age of 25, so those who caught it in the theater the first time around were definitely missing en masse.) Robert Rodriguez has not had a film crack $40 million domestic since Sin City. The only films in his arsenal he has not made/been involved with that have had sequels of some kind or another are: The Faculty, Sharkboy and LavaGirl, Planet Terror, and Shorts. I think he needs to recharge his creativity, or work with more collaborators.
Matthew Huntley: Brett touched on the lack of "novelty appeal" factor as it relates to Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and I think that essentially says it all, although who could have foreseen it would have had such a detrimental effect to its numbers. The 2005 film was obviously more about style than narrative, which is fine because its style was so original, but a sequel has to expand upon that and actually be about something and I think audiences saw this latest incarnation of Frank Miller's graphic novels wasn't about enough to justify a trip to the theater.
Don't get me wrong: I saw A Dame to Kill For this weekend and enjoyed it, but its stories simply weren't as involving as they should be. The movie is still great to look at and there's plenty of atmosphere to absorb, but if I wanted that kind of effect, I could simply re-watch the original. That seemed to be most peoples' feeling. Still, like most people in the country who follow Hollywood box-office data, I'm completely shocked by how much this movie was ignored. It kind of doesn't make sense, no matter how much we criticize it for it retreading the same material.
Reagen Sulewski: The more insane comparison to me is that this earned less during its opening weekend than The Spirit, that horrifically conceived comic strip adaptation that used the same tech and was laughed out of theaters. It's almost certainly going to earn less in final box office, which means less than $20 million, an inconceivably low number a week ago. We can talk about the lack of plot or the ratio of style to substance all we want (it was in fact, the best reviewed film of all the wide releases this weekend), but this is just a total failure to judge the audience.
I expect a lot of this is that comic movies have "grown up," so to speak, in the proceeding nine years since the first Sin City, and audiences no longer need a gimmick to be drawn into them. But really, I think Frank Miller is going to have a lot of trouble getting his phone calls returned for the next forever.
Jason Barney: This is an AWFUL result and will go down as one of the biggest bombs of the summer, if not the year. I did a little research on the budget required to bring this to theaters, and it looks like it was somewhere in the $60 million range. That isn't too bad, except this opening is scary bad. It is almost incomprehensible that a film that cost so much could fall so far short of expectations out of the gate. This is a really bad opening.
Edwin Davies: I thought going into the weekend that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For would do badly for a lot of the reasons mentioned - the long gap between sequels, the lack of novelty in the visuals - and others that haven't - namely that it got horrendous reviews, whereas the original was pretty well received - but not THIS badly. This is really staggering, especially when you consider what a hit the first film was both in theaters and on home media.
I think the long wait between sequels was the main problem here, as it was for Rodriguez's previous attempt to prolong the Spy Kids franchise with a too-late fourth film, though not merely because it took so long. I do think that the sequel would have done much better if it had come out in 2006 or 2007, not merely because it would have capitalized on the goodwill of the original, but also because it would have got ahead of the dozens of stylish comic book adaptations that emerged in Sin City's wake. The visuals of Sin City are still striking, but they're no longer unique, and the marketing never found a strong hook to build the trailers on in the way that the original's advertising was able to focus on the Marv character and his hunt for Goldie's killer.
To compare it to the similarly delayed 300: Rise of an Empire, the latter film had the benefit of being the follow-up to a considerably bigger hit and of being a prequel, which allowed it to tell a similar but distinctly different story. A Dame to Kill For seemed like more of the same, particularly since it brought back characters who had been killed off in the first one, and the anthology structure made it hard to easily distill the plot into the ads.
Felix Quinonez: I think the biggest problem was the ridiculously long time they took to make it. Nine years is a long time for audiences to wait. Realistically, I think they could have actually rebooted the series after such a long break. But also, a lot has changed since the first Sin City hit theaters in 2005. I remember liking that movie a lot and even for me the biggest appeal was the unique visuals. Those visuals are completely tired now. What once felt fresh is now boring and played out. And the marketing effort made it seem like even the studio didn't care about the movie. And when you take the terrible reviews into account, there is pretty much no reason to see this movie.
Bruce Hall: I do think that waiting so long between sequels was a bad idea - in this case. Sin City was a novelty concept that while financially very successful, was quite not the runaway international hit a lot of people assume it was. It might have been best to strike while the iron was hot.
I've always felt Sin City was overrated. This is not a franchise blessed with the sort of passionate universal appeal the marketing materials seemed to believe. Stunning visuals aside, a needlessly convoluted story and ear-shredding dialogue give the original film a pretty low level of re-watchability, in my opinion.
The marketing had a distinct air of assumption, as though someone believed Robert Rodriguez fanboys to be the largest demographic in entertainment. Meanwhile, I believe casual moviegoers saw a lot of sameness. Vast, grainy black and white vistas punctuated by pretty girls with shimmering, colorized eyes. Gruff looking people laying down the thousand-yard stare, hunched over a steering wheel on a dark, rainy night. Jessica Alba dressed like a renegade Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader...
To many people, this must have looked like the exact same movie. And to someone like me, who is usually considerably more invested in this kind of material, the thought might have been "If I wanted to see the same movie again, I could just go downstairs and see the same movie again." No, that's not fair. But the purpose of a marketing campaign is to give people a reason to see your movie instead of someone else's - and that simply didn't happen.
I'm not surprised to see Sin City 2 not doing well, but I can't say I expected Freddy Got Fingered numbers. This is as resounding a rejection as audiences can possibly give you.
David Mumpower: People have mentioned their issues with the ads. My answer is simpler. What ads? The Weinstein Co. seemed to recognize early that they had a disastrous film on their hands. Their options were to push hard anyway and try to make something out of nothing, the strategy perfectly employed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or cut ties completely. They clearly did the latter, which was probably the right call even if it cost the distributor a few million in terms of overall box office.
The problem with a bomb is that it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy in the social media era. Films die quicker and more dramatically as the gravity of the downward spiral takes hold. Whether that lost revenue is more or less than what the additional advertising would have cost is up for conjecture. I am inclined to believe that abandoning Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was the correct determination. It's a shame that the sequel to one of highest rated movies on IMDb is historically terrible. I really liked Sin City, and I hate that the mere existence of the sequel reduces it now.
Kim Hollis: I think that yes, the time between films meant that audiences had enough distance from Sin City to be cynical about it today. Not only is the stylized look past its prime, but it also doesn't feel unique or interesting. Another problem it faces is that most comic book films have at least some degree of interest for kids, but this is just far too adult and humorless.
Probably the worst issue is that the whole campaign around Sin City 2's release felt lifeless and lost. There was absolutely no energy around its debut in theaters. Audiences can sense that kind of lethargy, I think. I'd agree with Reagen that Frank Miller is probably persona non grata in Hollywood circles.