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It’s looking like the loss of Chadwick Boseman is affecting Wakanda’s homeland more than Disney was prepared for. Black Panther 2 finished with just 67 million dollars in its second weekend. For reference, the first film took in 111 million on weekend number two.
It’s an indication that word-of-mouth is, much like the film’s central villain, below sea level. In all fairness, it probably should be. The picture’s bite is more minnow than shark, even if its running time is more bloated than a blue whale.
They should’ve made the movie lean like a dolphin and mean like a piranna so that people didn’t have so much time to sit in the theater and think, “Why is this girl pretending to be Iron Man?” Or, “When did the world population become 97% women and 3% men?”
Hollywood is trying its best to ignore the negative outlook, flexing on the film’s half-a-billion dollar global box office. And I don’t blame them. As dysfunctional as the Marvel-audience relationship has become, Marvel is the only theatrical game left in town. If it sputters, what’s left? A Fast and Furious franchise led by a 60 year old? We don’t even have Star Wars movies anymore!
I’ll tell you the movie that’s going to temporarily take care of this issue. A little flick called, Avatar: The Way of Water! I honestly believe this film is going to make Hollywood rethink how they approach the theatrical movie business. James Cameron actually took the time necessary to make sure EVERY frame of his film looks perfect.
Marvel, meanwhile, employs the opposite approach. They film their movies on conveyer belts. Their action scenes are shot with second unit directors. Their special effects are farmed out to Thailand.
Cameron is there every day making sure he controls each aspect of his vision, even if that takes a lot more time. You can see the results in the trailer. It looks beautiful. The film is going to clean up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it challenged The Force Awakens for that 2 billion dollar global take.
Once that happens, Hollywood is going to have to really think about what it takes to bring audiences to the theater. Because the one adjustment that they haven’t made in this new “Giant Movies Only” theatrical era, is taking your time in order to create the best product possible. They’ve been pumping these things out like Big Macs. And audiences are starting to say, “We want sirloin. Not frozen beef.”
Another movie that isn’t doing so hot is She Said, the film about the two reporters who wrote a Harvey Weinstein expose that helped start the #MeToo movement. The film was released wide and took in only 2.3 million dollars.
I’m just going to say it. Nobody wants to watch movies like this. We have our real life in real life. We don’t need it in our movies. We don’t go to movies to be depressed, to be reminded of depressing things. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why anyone would’ve thought this movie was going to sell more than five tickets.
Universal is out there saying they “had” to make this movie cause it was the right thing to do, or some such nonsense. This new guilt-greenlighting that I see in Hollywood is one of the stranger developments in the market. I never thought I’d see the day when studios purposefully made movies they knew were going to bomb.
I suppose someone could’ve talked themselves into She Said making money via an Oscar run. But I don’t see it. It’s depressing subject matter. It’s stuff we’ve been bombarded with every day in the news for four years. Why would we then want to pay for it? “Oh man, 15 website articles touting #metoo wasn’t enough for me today. I need to pay 20 bucks to see more!”
It’s also confusing. When the Weinstein scandal broke, it was Ronan Farrow getting all the publicity. For the few people in middle America who might’ve been potential audience members here, they’re probably saying, “Who are these chicks?” They want to see the movie about the guy who *actually* broke the case.
If you’re going to shoot for an Oscar run, I suggest doing what The Menu did. The Menu is stylishly directed. It’s got great actors in it. It’s a sophisticated enough story to get Oscar voters intrigued. And, oh yeah, IT’S ALSO ENTERTAINING. The one ingredient Hollywood forgot when coming up with, “She Said.”
As you guys know, The Menu was a favorite script of mine. I’m happy to see it do fairly well this weekend. True, it only made 9 million bucks. But, honestly, I think that’s what you’re topping out at these days if you don’t have either a 200 million dollar budget or an easy-to-market horror film. Everything else seems to finish in the 8-12 million dollar opening range.
I’m not going to pretend that these types of movies aren’t 3 years away from debuting on streaming. But if you’re looking for a really fun story and a really well-written script, don’t go see Black Panther 2. Don’t go see She Said. See The Menu.
If you have no interest in going to the theater and just want to watch something good, I suggest firing up HBO Max and watching No Country For Old Men. I watched the film for dialogue tips (Yes, I’m STILL WORKING on the dialogue book – It’s coming! I promise!) and became so into the story, I ended up completely forgetting about dialogue.
The movie is the epitome of what I preach on the site – KEEP IT SIMPLE! It’s the simplest of simple stories, told with a likable protagonist, a super-compelling antagonist, and a bag of money. Sure, a couple of other people enter the story later on, but, at its heart, it’s two strong characters and a dramatic situation.
Something that struck me about the film was that, traditionally, the problem with this type of setup is that the villain has the primary goal (to catch the protagonist) leaving the protagonist with the weaker, more reactive, motivation (their job is to, essentially, wait and react to the antagonist). But Llewelyn’s character is written in a surprisingly active fashion. He knows he’s being chased by a de facto Terminator, so he’s always constructing plans to trick Anton (the bad guy) whenever Anton catches up to him.
For example, Llewelyn knows Anton will probably figure out what motel room he’s in and, therefore, buys the room next to his and sleeps there instead. He then waits for Anton to inevitably show up to his original room so he can figure out who’s chasing him and escape before this psycho can hurt him.
That’s a big part of what’s so fun about the script. It’s a chess match. But it’s an ACTUAL CHESS MATCH. So many writers don’t have the capability (or the discipline) to come up with genuinely clever moves from each character. This script is full of them.
One of my favorite moments is Llewelyn sitting in a dark hotel room in the middle of the night, terrified that Anton is coming. And then, finally, Llewelyn sees two dark shadows in the thin streak of light at the bottom of the door. But before he can do anything about it, the feet shadows disappear, and then, ten seconds later, the hall light goes dark. Anton went and turned it off specifically so that Llewelyn would not be able to see anything in that slit of light underneath his door. What other writer thinks of details like that??
But it really is amazing how captivating the movie is considering that it boils down to such a simple premise. I would love to have the Coen Brothers who made this movie return. They’re always at their best when there’s a bag of money involved. Although half the Coen team is coming out with a pretty good script himself, in Drive Away Dykes.
Did anybody see Black Panther, The Menu, or She Said this weekend? What did you think?
EDIT: QUICK THOUGHTS ON IGER RETURNING TO DISNEY – Since this just happened as I was about to go to bed. I never understood why Iger left in the first place. He was doing the best job leading the company since Disney himself. He was still young. Yet for some reason all Disney could talk about was replacing him. It didn’t make a lick of sense. So, in that sense, I’m not surprised he’s back.
The question is, what caused this dramatic change in leadership? No matter how many things you can knock Disney for, they have still done better than every other studio. They are still miles ahead of everyone else. And while Netflix is stagnant with their service, Disney Plus is still adding people. Didn’t they just add another 12 million subscribers last quarter?
I’m wondering if this is strictly a Marvel problem. Is it because all the Phase 4 movies were bad except for the one not made by them (Spider-Man)? Is it because Chapek allowed a group of people who hadn’t written anything to steer a 150 million dollar show in She-Hulk? Are those the reasons Chapek is out? I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming days. But wowzers, this is huge news.
