Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble? 448
brumgrunt writes "Friday marks the 50th day on general release for what was the long-awaited Watchmen movie. But how much money has it made, and how has it measured up to Warner Bros' expectations? Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Interesting)
I am one who rarely buys a DVD and even rare-er buys a bluray.
I will in fact be buying Watchmen. and a LOT of others I know will be as well.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah - I'm glad they made it and I'm glad I saw it. But I'm also glad that I didn't have a stake in it - It had to be an unsettling investment for those who did. It's got to feel good to have participated, but it was obviously a gamble from the beginning. Watchmen is definitely aimed at a niche market.
Still - I'll bet that DVD sales are good. TPB be damned, I'll have a boxed copy here.
The author nailed it on this one. (Score:3, Interesting)
This movie is going to shine on the home movie market â" for one really good reason. It's a move a lot of us geek men love but not really one to take a date to. (sure, some of you have that type of woman, but face it, those are a rare type) The guys who had to miss the theatrical release because they didn't want to go to the movies alone because that's just lame are going to buy the DVD, because you can watch that alone, and you have have your to cheap to buy a movie ticket friends watch it with you. (BTW â" I watched it alone, after work, I got off of work at 11:00 PM)
The theatre I usually go to in Baton Rouge had a sign clearly displayed saying have your ID ready for Watchmen, we will be checking. I don't know how many theaters checked ID's nation wide, but face it, it's easier for under aged comic fans to buy a DVD than it is to get into an R-rated movie in some places. Granted in some other places it's the opposite, but never mind that.
Let's not forget, some movies just shine on DVD anyways. Who here honestly watched Office Space in the theatre when it premiered? Everyone saw the home release! (I think it went back to the theaters once, but I'm not certain) Tarintino movies, how many did you see in the box office? Probably more at home than in a theatre seat. I wouldn't be surprised if the home release take rivals the theatrical take.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ... so what is the problem exactly?
The problem is that Hollywood Execs are not looking to be successful on a scale of 'job well done', and nor should they, from their paradigm. Their paradigm is manufacturing success, through advertising, TV spots, trailers, awareness campaigns, viral marketing, celebrity whoring, and as many other nefarious tactics as they can get away with, in order to absolutely 100% guarantee a certain level of success.
Just doing alright is a failure, from that paradigm.
A success would be the biggest opening weekend of all time. And that's what we see, again and again. Look, and you will see that this record is broken by every other truly triple-A blockbuster, probably happens a couple of times a year or more.
The real sign of failure is that video games now have even bigger opening weekends - Halo 3, followed hotly by GTA 4, really showed Holywood what an opening weekend could be.
Let the whoring begin!
Character development needed (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a significant amount of back story missing from the movie. I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories. While most things were answered in some way eventually, the flow was still more confusing than it needed to be and they should have realized that prior to opening day. It wasn't just another "super hero" movie.
What SHOULD they have done? Easy -- release and play some mini episodes that show off the characters in their glory days while promoting the movie itself. This would have built more enthusiasm for the movie and would have given viewers who would not have otherwise been familiar with the characters a greater level of comfort and more ease getting into the story. This could also have resulted in better story development without having to flash back too much.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Interesting)
You think that's bad? Lucasarts is still telling David Prowse (the guy who wore the Vader suit) that Return of the Jedi still hasn't turned a profit.
I loved it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Made my wife sick to her stomach.
I loved it. I'll catch it on HBO like 6 times...
Re:Character development needed (Score:5, Interesting)
I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories.
While reading the graphic novel... it takes a long time to truly figure out who the characters are and what their motivations are. The story benefits by keeping you guessing while they investigate and dig deeper into the crime. I imagine introducing Rorsach as the "just-the-fact idealistic investigator" and Dr. Manhattan as the "emotionless super genius" would have taken something away from the story.
Caveat emptor... I read the novel and still haven't seen the movie.
Re:Meh I say! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I loved the hell out of that movie, but using it to predict Watchmen's performance is a little fallacious...
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Interesting)
Worst case, a film might need to make 50% over its production cost in box office revenue to turn a profit, but usually it's more like 20% over production cost.
Re: Absolutely Worth It (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't disagree more.
An hour too long, dull and unsympathetic characters, suspension of belief overchallenged, lame ending. I don't see how anyone who wasn't already a fan could have possibly enjoyed it.
I have a number of friends that never read the book, didn't know anything about the story, and loved the movie. Their responses? They liked the character interactions, the reality of the characters themselves, and the involvement in important events in recent history (Vietnam, Cold War, shaking hands with JFK, JFK assassination, etc...).
Bottom line, if you are the type of person that enjoys having the plot front and center, like the Spiderman movies, then this isn't the movie for you. However, if you actually go and read the book, you might actually find some of the little intricacies that had to be left out of the story. A lot of the character development had to be imposed in the movie simply because there wasn't enough time to keep everything in.
Re:Who the **** is Watchmen? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good and bad (Score:3, Interesting)
They made a better action-adventure story, but a worse work of literature.
I re-read the book right after I saw the movie, and I hadn't realized how many character details they had cut.
They left in visual details, plot details... I honestly thought the plot adjustments were fine. But they skipped on so many of the little character lines that made them people with depth.
I will probably be buying the ultra-extended black freighter dvd anyway, though, just to see what they managed to add back in.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Interesting)
So the cited budget includes what exactly?
It doesn't work like that: the studios don't hand out "cuts" like thugs after robbing a bank. Profits of the marketers, distributors, cinameas, etc. are included in the budget, because all those people don't get "cuts" - they offer services and the studio buys them. It is not the job of the studio to ensure they get profit.
Sorry, but this sort of talk is just a weak attempt to cover up the fact that big studios are literally wading through cash, and their arguments about piracy hurting them stem from pathological greed.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, if David Prowse is looking for money from Lucasarts then he's knocking on the wrong door. And by the way all Star Wars Cast members were well taken care of from Star Wars. The leads have all said so.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:2, Interesting)
Notes from a "crank." (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, I'm one of those "cranks" who remembers how moviegoing USED to be, and considers the current "experience" extremely inferior.
It used to be, you'd go to a big, beautiful PALACE with thousands of seats and a gorgeous environment. Even if you lived in a small town, the local movie theatre was a glamorous, special place.
This was before mobile phones. And there would be a special room for mothers to take squalling babies or toddlers having a tantrum, called the "women's lounge."
In the 1960s, theatre owners, in an industry maybe didn't DIE because of TV but took a big, big hit, came up with the concept of the "cinemaplex." More choice! More people can go see movies suiting THEIR taste, not the programmer at the local movie palace. I live near where one of the first American multiplex theatres, The Americana 5 [cinematreasures.org] in Panorama City, CA, was built in 1964. It had one "big room" for what was then known as "road show" releases, the big movie expected to be the blockbuster of the moment. It also had four smaller rooms...and I really mean smaller. 200 seat shoeboxes as opposed to the 1,000 seat "big room." People went anyway, and the theatre chains realized they could make more money because they'd go to the movies regardless of the amenities or lack of them. They didn't really have a choice in the pre-home video and pre-HBO/Showtime days. You either saw the movie in the theatre or you waited for it to come on TV, and that wait would be literally years.
Eventually the "big room" was subdivided in two in the mid '70s, and the Americana 5 became, for a time, the Americana 6. It was only due to the decline of the neighborhood and the competition of cable and home video that the Pacific Theatres knocked down the thin subdivision barrier and turned the two theatres back into "the big room" again. Amazingly enough, the Pacific Americana underwent a bit of a renaissance for a while. They would have events, geared towards the local predominantly Latino populace, where Spanish-language movies, free concerts after the movie and appearances by local Spanish-language radio personalities would be part of the fun. Selena did one event and the immediate area surrounding the Americana was mobbed. The LAPD had to be called in to do crowd control.
Eventually the Mann Theatres chain put in the Mann's Plant 16 a couple of miles down the road at the big-box mall that replaced the long shuttered GM assembly plant. This was what killed the Americana. The Pacific Theatre Group unloaded it on a couple of locals who went indie. It got more and more run down, started playing second-run movies in both English and Spanish for bargain prices, and when things broke, they stayed broke. The last movie I saw in the "big room" there was Prince of Egypt. The movie theatre that every year around Easter would play "The Ten Commandments" had its swan-song with another retelling of the Moses myth. It was sad to see the place go. The area where the four small theatres stood is now a school of cosmetology. The old "big room" was once an indoor futbol arena where people would play pickup soccer games, and is now a banquet hall which, ironically, boasts a nice big movie screen. It is also more ornate than the "big room" at the Americana ever was.
Anyway, huge digression. The multiplex movie theatre encouraged a degradation of movie theatre etiquette. Going to a little shoebox theatre was less special than going to the community movie palace. People didn't have the same sense of "occasion" going to the movies. In a lot of respects, the experience of going to one of these theatres was like the drive-in experience. Often a theatre chain would knock down a drive-in and replace it with a mega multiplex. They could show more movies to more people and it was a more intelligent use of land. And with the competition of cable, home video, "sell-through" home video, and finally the DVD, there were now real choices about how to see a movie.
So yeah, theatres are not exactly
Re:Absolutely! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is a penis obnoxious? Inwhat way does it make it not PG-13? Does it work like nipples?
Maybe the rating system is broken? Or viewers are idiots?
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:4, Interesting)
I was most pleased to watch the Lord Of The Rings extended DVD editions, because, unlike the theatrical cuts, they had enough of the plot to actually make sense.
(I am likely an outlier, as I loved the LOTR movies but have read the books precisely once and never plan to again.)
The horse, not the horse shit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not read the comic, so will not comment on that.
But the best part, for me, was the parents storming out with their pack of 8-15yr olds from the film and screaming (you could hear them over the cinema sound, so they were loud) at the ticket clerk for their money back, just after the rape scene.
Seriously, why the fuck would you take children to an R rated movie, regardless if the source was "a comic"?