CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
SUMMER 2008 MOVIE PREDICTIONS PART 3!

Friday, May 09, 2008

this entry brought to you by the raconteurs, "consolers of the lonely"


July 4th

Hancock
Do you remember My Super Ex-Girlfriend? It wasn't the worst movie in the world, but the important part was that it promised to be a send-up of superhero movies, and it failed. Enter Hancock. Will Smith plays a washed-up hero who causes more trouble than he saves, and the public hates him. Jason Bateman plays a PR agent who wants to turn his career around and have people love him again. The trailers look fantastic. Will Smith has always played a rugged, bad-ass type guy, but he's ultimately represented the average American up to this point. Here he's definitely an anti-hero, and that is going to attract people-- he's a superhero, so it's not out of the realm of what people want to see Will Smith as in an action movie, but there's a twist that people will eat up. The humor seems black in the trailers (a good thing), but most importantly the action looks spot on. This is most definitely not going to get lost in the shuffle of the four other superhero movies this summer.
Prediction: Hit. People love Will Smith. He seems unsinkable. This is most definitely not going to be the vehicle to undo him. In fact, there's a chance this is going to upset my other predictions of the top of the list, simply because the trailers look absolutely spot on, and also, it's Will Smith. This will definitely be in the top 5 over all, and probably will end up at number three, behind Indiana Jones and one other movie.

July 11th

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
I had no idea, but apparently the original Hellboy didn't do very well at the box office, but went on to do reasonably good business on DVD. This news disappointed me, because I thought the first Hellboy was awesome. Fresh off his Oscar win, Guillermo Del Toro goes back to his baby: Hellboy, and this one looks absolutely awesome. There's an absolute shit-ton of creatures shown off in the trailers, making it seem like a gothic version of Men in Black, and they all seem to have that Del Toro feel, though most of them were probably originally designed by Mike Mignola, creator of the original comic book . The combination of humor and head-spinning pizazz are in full force in the trailers. I expect that I'm probably going to love this movie.
Prediction: Sleeper. It's not going to make money. I have absolutely no idea why it's being released when it is, one week between Hancock and Batman, despite being an unproven franchise. I expect the first weekend gross will be very healthy, because after the DVD's success, there's going to be a lot of fans that want to see this in its first weekend. But after that it'll plummet off the charts, to make up its money on DVD. Which is a shame, really, because I'm positive it'll be reviewed well.

Meet Dave
The movie is about a bunch of tiny aliens, one of them Eddie Murphy, using a robot Eddie Murphy as a vehicle to blend in and learn about humans. It sounds like a five minute subplot from Men in Black, all stretched out in one extremely unfunny looking movie, with a total lack of actual jokes (in the trailers at least). Worse, it's directed by the guy who did Norbit, which was generally regarded as the worst movie of 2007. Meet Dave is going to suck.
Prediction: I have absolutely no idea. Like Adam Sandler movies, there's an audience that will go and see Eddie Murphy movies, no matter what, no matter how awful they are. But then again, unlike Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy has had a few flops, notably The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and The Haunted Mansion. Meet Dave doesn't seem like as much of a broad family comedy as the hits he's had, so I'm going to go for Miss. I certainly hope it's a miss, anyway.

July 18th

The Dark Knight
Let's pretend that Heath Ledger never died. When the first teasers came out for The Dark Knight, people were freaked the fuck out about Heath Ledger's Joker. The buzz about Ledger's psychotic Joker was inescapable, and general, mainstream were already declaring The Dark Knight as being a must-see. The Joker's reveal was that kind of water-cooler buzz moments that you couldn't even pay for. Then, of course, there was Ledger's shocking death. I hate to seem like I'm making light of Ledger's death, but if he'd died after making any other movie, that movie's buzz for that movie would've jumped through the roof. People want to see his final performance. People that had no interest in Batman (which was a diminishingly small number after the first trailers) now have an interest in seeing this. Then there's the fact that Batman Begins is regarded as one of the best superhero movies of all time. Director Christopher Nolan went from making startlingly excellent small films (Memento, Insomnia) to taking the Batman franchise and turning it on its head, presenting the most realistic take on any superhero in cinema. Batman Begins didn't demolish the comepetition at the box office, but it had an extremely strong following and excellent legs, losing a surprisingly low amount of money with each week. The critics loved it. People loved it. This one looks to be even better, especially benefiting from the fact that we'll see Christian Bale's Batman immediately, rather than waiting the 40 minutes we had to wait in the original. And there's a good chance that Heath Ledger will be nominated for an Oscar (which is basically unheard of in an action movie, but posthumous Oscars aren't unheard of, especially for actors of Ledger's caliber), which will explode DVD sales. This movie is going to absolutely dominate.
Prediction: Mega-Hit. There is absolutely no way this movie isn't going to be absolutely enormous, and furthermore, I think it'll only gross less than Indiana Jones. The Dark Knight will be the number two movie of the summer, and it'll probably do even better than analysts are expecting. It's also a given that it'll review well on Rottentomatoes-- I predict it'll even have a higher rating than the previous Batman.

July 25th

Step Brothers
In what actually seems like a pretty damn funny movie, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40 year old losers who still live with their parents, when their respective parents get married, making them step brothers, who instantly hate one another. This one looks like it's actually got a plot, instead of like previous Ferrell movies, which were just excuses to improvise funniness. I'm also really happy that the type of humor doesn't seem as broad and semi-retarded as has in previous movies, such as Talledega Nights. Also, there's nothing in the trailer that implies the R rating is there for pure raunchiness, like Old School, meaning there looks to be some good dark humor here.
Prediction Miss. I'll bet it gets generally good reviews, but I have a feeling that people are getting sick of Will Ferrell (the poor performance of Semi-Pro hints at that) and John C. Reilly, the latter who seems to be in all sorts of things. It won't flop, but it won't be a runaway hit either, and it'll probably catch steam on DVD.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Nobody knows anything about this movie, other than the fact that it's directed by Chris Carter, and most importantly, Scully and Mulder star in it. Apparently it's not a direct sequel to their first movie, Fight the Future, which to me as a fan, was a bit disappointing. It was a good movie, but it also seemed much too watered down, and the "answers" we got were kind of anticlimactic. I'm a little annoyed that Chris Carter is directing this one-- Carter is an acceptable director, but certainly not the best the series had to offer. Still, there's nothing here anybody should worry about. The idea of this being a testing ground for future sequels seems promising, as X-Files should definitely be something to come back in our consciousness as a culture.
Prediction: Hit. Initially I was really, really worried about the next X-Files movie. Obviously fans are older, have more disposable income, and are going to flock to the theaters the first week. After that, it's difficult to tell if absolutely anybody else will care. Granted, X-Files was a phenomenon for a long time, and mainstream audiences definitely can tell you what it was about even if they'd never seen it. But 10 years later, will they care, especially after the post-Mulder seasons lost the interest of so many people? But then I saw that the reported budget for I Want to Believe is at 35 million, which it could easily make in its first weekend even if it comes in at number two its first weekend, so it really doesn't matter how quickly it falls out of the box office afterwards. This sounds like a pretty shrewd investment for its producers, and if that means we'll see more sequels, then all the better.
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with love from CRS @ 10:27 AM 

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