The Batman, Halloween Kills, The Last Duel, and Peacemaker all come splashing down into the Mish-Mash Monday pool today!
People! This Thursday is the Halloween Horror Showdown deadline. If you have a horror script, make sure to enter it. It’s absolutely free and you can find out how to submit HERE. The winner will get a big Friday review next week. Don’t you dare miss out on this opportunity.
We had two major releases this weekend at the box office. The first was the Halloween sequel, Halloween Kills. That film finished with a surprising 50 million dollars at the box office, despite being available for free on the Peacock streaming service.
There’s been a lot of talk in the industry about how “simul-releases” doom a film’s box office, with the industry pointing to the simul-release of hopeful hit but ultimate dud, “The Suicide Squad” as an example. Meanwhile, movies like Shang-Chi and Venom, which only opened in theaters, do well. Throwing a wrench into that theory is that last week’s opening of Bond, which was a theaters-only release, did poorly.
The newest Halloween movie further throws that theory into flux, pulling in 50 million bucks for the weekend, which was only 5 million less than No Time To Die. To put that in perspective, “Die” cost 300 million to produce while “Kills” cost 20 million. Of course, Halloween Kills will not do anything close to No Time To Die’s international numbers. But it may actually end up turning a bigger profit than Bond, which reportedly needs to hit 800 million in revenue before it starts making money. And that’s a generous number. More realistically, it’s probably a billion.
Another layer to this drama is that Halloween Kills has a dreadfully awful screenplay. And I mean it’s REALLY bad. In retrospect, I probably should’ve given it a “what the hell did I just read?” Most people are confirming this as the film has a fast plummeting 39% Rotten Tomatoes score. But one of the most surefire bets at the box office is the direct sequel to a highly successful horror movie. And, look, it’s a movie called “Halloween Kills” coming out two weeks before Halloween. So people are going to go. I just hate when terrible screenplays are celebrated because it encourages the industry to remain lazy.
The other big release was Ridley Scott’s star-studded period piece, The Last Duel, which maybe should’ve been called The Last Time You’ll Ever See This In Theaters. There were a couple of issues with the project, the first being that period pieces haven’t done well recently, especially when the concept is small, like this one. Period pieces need that big hooky world to hang their hat on (Scott’s “Gladiator,” for example) and The Last Duel was a more personal story.
The bigger problem, though, was that the movie looked sad. And who wants to willingly be sad during a pandemic? It’s like, “Hey, Hollywood! I’m already sad! I don’t need you to make it worse.” I believe that when things are going badly in the world, people want happy movies (Shang-Chi). And when things are going well in the world, people are more open to sad movies (Titanic). The Last Duel was a big fat example of bad timing. I also think Adam Driver needs a new agent. He seems to be choosing projects solely based on the director without asking the obvious question of, “Is this a movie people actually want to see?” An actor of his caliber should not be in this many films that have bombed.
Two new big trailers hit the airwaves this weekend thanks to the DC Expo, the big one, of course, being The Batman. This movie looks DARK. And no, I’m not talking about the tone. I’m talking about the cinematography! I can barely see anything. I will say this about the movie. Batman is probably the trickiest property in Hollywood to direct at the moment because you’re coming off the most successful Batman films ever, which means you can’t copy them. However, if you go the opposite route and try to make Batman fun and playful, you look like you’re copying the Marvel format. So what do you do?
Matt Reeves’ solution was to one-down Christopher Nolan. Let’s not just go dark. Let’s go REALLY DARK. Based on how this movie looks, I’d say that was the right decision because the movie doesn’t look like anything else out there. That’s the hardest thing to do in the most over-saturated genre in history – come up with a film that doesn’t look like any other superhero film out there. Matt Reeves has done that.
The only thing I remain skeptical about is Robert Pattinson. It makes me nervous that he barely says anything in the trailer. And when he does say something, it’s usually voice over. That indicates that the director doesn’t love his star’s performance and he’s trying to hide it. I noticed the same thing in Tenet. Pattinson has very few lines in that movie and you get the sense that he, originally, had a much bigger role, which indicates that a large swath of his performance was left on the cutting room floor.
Then again, I may be overthinking this. The trailer could’ve easily been cut that way on purpose. And, look, I’m seeing more good in this trailer than bad. It looks like a cool Batman movie. The biggest thing of all is that it feels fresh. That’s all audiences want. They want something familiar but not too familiar. I really hope this is a good movie!
DC’s other big trailer release was James Gunn’s and John Cena’s “Peacemaker” show for HBO Max. This was quite the, um, trailer. I’m trying to think of a way to be respectful here because I like John Cena a lot. Let’s put it this way. James Gunn is an acquired taste. I think we all know that by now. And I would call this Peacemaker show the most James Gunny thing ever made. So if you love James Gunn, you’re going to love Peacemaker. If you’re like me, however, and approach every James Gunn project on the fence, willing to go one way or the other depending on the execution, you’re probably going to hate this. It just looks… juvenile is the best word to describe it.
It doesn’t help that nobody saw The Suicide Squad. They were expecting that film to be a big hit and for Peacemaker to be a breakout character. But that’s not what happened. You could make the argument that not a single character broke out from that movie. But, by that point, this show was already in the can so what can they do other than promote it like heck and pretend that everybody loved the film?
Next weekend we FINALLY get Dune. This will be a pivotal release for Denis Villeneuve. His big-budget Blade Runner film proved too “adult” for audiences and Dune looks to have gone down a similar path. They did a good job hedging their bets, however, with Chalamat and Zendaya, to pull in the younger crowd. But will that crowd be willing to sit through a 3 hour meditative piece on interplanetary politics? Boy oh boy am I curious to find out.
Now finish up those horror scripts and get them in by Thursday! No more procrastinating!
