This weekend’s box office is one of the few in recent years that Hollywood can get excited about. Sinners only slipped a tiny bit in its second weekend (45 million) which is unheard of in this day and age. Outside of tiny Oscar-hopeful films in November, no movies have that kind of hold these days. So good for Ryan Coogler.
And freaking Revenge of the Sith (!!!) somehow tallied up 25 million bucks in its re-release! I celebrated by re-watching my preferred Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and what a fun experience that was. The quality on display in that film – writing, directing, special effects, production design, score – is on another level. It still transports me to a different galaxy all these years later.
But that was pretty much the only piece of entertainment this week that I liked. Well, there was one more that I liked. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. As you know, I’m working through some eyesight issues and while I think I’m getting better, I’m still not good enough to spend endless hours on my computer. Which has left me desperately searching for content to watch on the good old TV! And boy, are the pickings slim.
How slim?
I actually tried to watch The White House Plumbers last night. A zany period piece comedy about Watergate. Yeah, it’s gotten ugly. I even spent 20 bucks renting Mickey 17, a novel that I hated and that I begged Warner Brothers not to make. But they went ahead and made it anyway. Oh my God Heavens to Mary. It is ten times worse as a movie than it was as a novel. And it was a really bad novel. I would go so far as to say that every worst creative decision that could’ve been made regarding any element in the movie was made.
It dies within 60 seconds of watching it, no pun intended. But the biggest issue – and one that no writer can recover from – was how freaking depressing it was. It was sooo soooo soooo sooooooo sad. They leaned into this sad person who sadly dies all the time and he’s always sad and his backstory is sad and his voice over is sad. Why would anyone expect anybody to enjoy that?? It was baffling. I never had to think about creating a rating less than “what the hell did I just watch.” But if I did, this would be the first movie I’d make it for.
I then tried to watch Havoc, which I was hoping would be my review today, but the movie feels like it was made by a malfunctioning AI. I started Thursday night (after midnight, when it appeared on Netflix). I barely made it through 20 minutes. Then I tried again on Friday. I made it 15 minutes. I tried again yesterday – barely made it through ten minutes.
I couldn’t tell you what the plot of that movie was if you made me watch it 100 times in a row. At one point, Tom Hardy is coming home to his apartment and he runs into a young female cop on the stairway who’s just busted someone in the building, and the two just… BECOME PARTNERS. There’s no explanation as to how they became partners or why they needed to bump into each other on a random stairway to become partners, but that was the extent of how much effort was put into the screenplay.
And then you had these weird city scenes where the entire city and the cars seem to be generated in a computer. And then, even though they shot digital, they added this lazy “film” filter over the footage so it would look like it was shot on film. It’s really hard to watch. If both your script and your production are sloppy, you’ve got no shot at making a good movie.
At that point, I was so desperate that I was willing to try anything. Which is why I made the fatal error of watching the first episode of the second season of Andor. If there is a more boring space show ever made than Andor, please tell me what it is. Cause I don’t think it exists. There is a 10 minute scene in the first episode where people sit around a table and watch a documentary about mining. It’s bad, folks. It’s insanely boring. They spent three-quarters of a billion dollars on this show and I would literally rather watch paint dry.
For those lucky enough to say they haven’t watched it, let me give you a window into the latest Star Wars controversy. Gilroy adds a sexual assault scene to the show. This has gotten the Star Wars fandom up in a tizzy, something that, admittedly, isn’t difficult to do and the argument *for* the scene seems to be that, this is the Empire. They’ve killed children before. Of course there’s going to be sexual assault. Yeah, but, there are probably orgies in the Star Wars universe as well. That doesn’t mean you have to show them. As the writer, you get to choose what you show and don’t show and just because you *can* show something, doesn’t mean you should. So, no more Andor for me.
The lone surprise for me this week was Babygirl, the Nicole Kidman sex movie. I thought it was just going to be mommy porn, a la 50 Shades of Gray. But it’s actually an interesting character study. Nicole Kidman’s character has a serious sex addiction and, unlike movies from the past, where you’d never show a married woman with children having an all-out affair, this movie isn’t afraid to go there. And it’s an A24 film, so it’s got some artsiness to it. It caught me by surprise. I still have a little bit left but I’ll definitely finish it tonight.
The box office is going to try and up its game next weekend when Thunderbolts shows up. I’ve been thinking a lot about Marvel movies because they face the same issue your average screenwriter faces – which is that we’re all tasked with finding new ways into old ideas. That’s the big trick. If you find a new way into a Western or a new way into a slasher flick, and it’s fresh and exciting, that’s a meal ticket you can ride all the way to a produced film.
And I’m realizing that while Marvel is trying to do that, they’re not doing it enough. Because if you asked Kevin Feige, “What’s new and different about Thunderbolts?” He would have an answer for you. He would say, this is the first Marvel movie where the superhero team are the underdogs. And if you really think about that answer, you’d have to agree with him.
But that’s the funny thing about the “fresh but different” formula. You can logically make the argument why your take on a genre is fresh, but unless it FEELS fresh to the audience, the logic won’t matter. I don’t think anyone is looking at Thunderbolts and thinking, “This looks different from other superhero movies.” And that’s the problem.
With Marvel, and superhero movies in general, the amount of “different” that needs to be applied must be bigger than the typical “different” that you apply to an average genre. We have to truly feel like we haven’t seen something before to come to a superhero movie.
I’m on the fence about whether to go. If it’s above 90% Rotten Tomatoes, I’ll definitely go. But I just don’t think it has enough firepower. I love Florence Pugh. And I love David Harbour’s Red Guardian character. But everyone else on that team – both actors and superheroes – sucks.
How bout you? Are you going?
