Weekend Box Office Report 6-2-2013: The Smith Family crashes and burns in After Earth, then repeats the feat at the Box Office. Wrapping up May, the month of the blockbusters.

I spent most of the weekend prior to this one at the movie theaters in Bakersfield.  Instead of writing about Box Office Receipts, I was contributing to them in a big way, doing my part to help the economy and all of that patriotic stuff. 

I saw three of the blockbusters:  Iron Man 3, Fast & Furious 6, and Star Trek Into Darkness.  I skipped The Hangover III, as I had  no real interest in that, not having met Mr. Hangovers I & II, and having  banished my last hangover some thirty years ago I could not relate.  I would have dearly loved to have gotten to know The Great Gatsby though, but the show times at the local multiplex didn’t jive with my scheduling. 

The week before that, Audrey and I  were at Pismo Beach out here in California.  I wasn’t able to do much in the way of motorvating, and didn’t even attempt to walk towards the end of the pier.  But we did find one great little place to eat and seeing how I haven’t done one of those Food essays in a while, I may have to just do one soon and start giving Guy Fieri a run for his money.


Why didn’t I just do the box office columns during the week?  As I keep saying, I have this real world job that keeps me run down because of real world health problems that happen in the real world outside of Hollywood world.  Some day (maybe in five or six years), if I manage to retire before the Grim Weeper comes a calling, I’ll be able to sit here and write crap that nobody reads or wants to read to my hearts content, and filling that stuff with even more Amazon and Google ads that nobody uses to buy shit.  Yeah, I know.  Life’s a bitch. 

I’m left to roll three weeks of statistics into one overly long article so that when somebody passes by they can at least say, “Boy, that’s a lot of words” before skedaddling over to Twitter where the requirement is to print what you have to say in 140 characters or less. 

Or maybe they’ll head over to Facebook where with a simple mouse click one can prove they have a strong belief in Jesus, support the separation of church and state, believe we should all be Christians, support of the Military/Veterans, their love of Barack Obama, gay marriage, support for finding a cure for cancer, fighting breast cancer, fighting child abuse,  their hatred for Obama, fighting spousal abuse, oppose gay marriage, fight animal cruelty, support of the Affordable Care Act, denouncing the ACA, trickle down economics, lower student loan rates, support executing Jodi Arias, in favor of not cutting Social Security, save Social Security, and do this all in fifteen minutes or less before going on to play Candy Crush Saga which seems to be the newest Facebook game craze of the moment since it’s the one I get asked to join more often than any others.

I have a Facebook page as well.  It has all of 33 followers, so where are you people?  I promise, I’ll never make you click on anything to prove you support whatever.  Share, don’t share, just read, leave a comment, or do absolutely nothing to your heart’s content.  

I did twitter for a while.  Still do on occasion.  But it can become very repetitious unless you have a lot of followers who are actually interested in what you have to say instead of just regurgitating what everybody else has already said.  There’s nothing worse than being on Twitter and feel like you’re talking to dead air. 

So unless you’re someone like Miley Cyrus or part of a very large clique, I’ve yet to see that it holds any great purpose for me but that may change.  I just can’t hang on there 24/7.  So, now that I’ve made it necessary to add the tag “A Day In The Life” to this post, and/or “Random Thoughts”, let’s move on to why we came here in the first place.

If you look at the chart for the week ending 5/19, you’ll see that Star Trek’s take for the three day weekend was $70 million.  And those newspaper and entertainment rags that tend to dwell on failures reported that this was a weak opening as compared to the original.

In order to arrive at this dreary headline, it was necessary for them to completely ignore the fact that on Thursday, Star Trek Into Darkness scored a whopping $13.5 million dollars in limited showings.  In a Washington Post article that I read, the Thursday evening gross wasn’t even mentioned as if it hadn’t taken place at all.  (Checking back a couple of weeks later though, that article has been removed and replaced with one that did mention it).

Worse was an idiotic article for Forbes written by some bozo named John Gaudiosi who did include the Thursday gross, in a half ass sorry attempt  to equate a poor Star Trek video game by connecting it directly to the gross of the movie and reporting that Into Darkness debut was a total failure.  Everybody on this planet knows that the quality of a film has very little to do with a related video game.  Just ask E.T.  He’ll tell you.

This guy may have super knowledge regarding the video game market.  I have no way of knowing that one way or the other.  But he  doesn’t know shit about the cinema.  I’ll give him some kind of a runner-up award for the absolute worst, most misleading headline of the year so far.

Star Trek’s debut weekend was $83.7 million, thus toppling the debut of its predecessor which also debuted on a Thursday by some $5 million dollars.  In essence, when you talk about box office take these days, you simply manipulate the numbers to whatever fits any asinine story you want to dream up. 

When you get right down to it, it’s all rather pathetic.  These days a film lives and dies by it’s opening weekend, and by whatever tale some young whippersnapper entertainment reporter out to make a name for himself wants to create.  Let’s not forget that Star Trek Into Darkness was released against some much stiffer competition then it’s original predecessor.


And while it remains to be seen as to whether or not Into Darkness will top the previous film in total gross, it’s overseas take is eclipsing Star Trek by a few light years and then some.

Another notable entry over the past three weeks is The Great Gatsby, which has proved its opening weekend was no fluke.  It took in another $23.9 million during it’s second  weekend, and so far has taken in over $128 million in the states.  Stir in another $120 million from overseas and the film that many predicted wouldn’t even take in half that is a genuine hit.

Whomever decided that it was a great idea to open The Hangover Part III on the same weekend as the juggernaut Fast & Furious 6 should just resign now before he’s forced out.  The final chapter in this trilogy will be lucky to make half the amount of Part II.  It is a popular franchise overseas which may or may not resuscitate it into profitability. 

Fast & Furious 6 originally looked ready to eclipse all the Fast Films that came before it. This is one of the few series that just gets stronger with each new entry. Despite having dropped 63 per cent from the opening weekend it still held onto the number one spot in week two. 

The previous Vin Diesel Hot Wheels commercial, Fast Five, also experienced a large drop off from an opening of 86.2 million down to 32.5 in it’s second week.  By comparison, number six dipped from 97.8 million simoleons down to 35.1 million which  means all things being equal, Fast 6 should still top its predecessor overall depending on how it does in week three.  And in week three, there doesn’t appear to be much out there.

Many of these films have something going for them that wasn’t available or should I say exploited until recently.  That’s the China Market, where Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Duane the Rock should clean up handily.  The gang has already raked in $310 million across the Atlantic & Pacific in just two weeks while Fast Five managed $416 million total.

The biggest loser of all came this past weekend and it turned out to be The Will Smith Family Movie Making Nepotism Machine which also  had M. Night Shyamalan hitch his wagon to their cart and come along for the ride.  Of course, I’m talking about the Sci-fi epic, After Earth which only managed to come in at number three with a paltry $27.5 million dollar intake.  What this proves is that money can’t buy you love nor can it buy your kid instant stardom and acting ability to go along with it.




 
There’s one clown in the circus who simply had to try and make a name for himself and give this futuristic turkey a rave review to the point where he called After Earth the right film at the right time for M. Night Shamalama Ding Dong.  He may be right.  Maybe it will put Shyamalan’s now lackluster career in the shitter once and for all and he can go do TV commercials or something along the lines of M. Night brings you Flo, The Progressive Girl.  Never has such a promising director fallen so far so fast.

Just about every other critic blasted After Earth, and as word of mouth spread you could watch the audience ratings for the film plummet on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB like a futuristic space ship crashing into a futuristic planet.  Maybe if upon crash landing on earth they had found Charlton Heston, one fourth of the Statue of Liberty, and some talking apes everything would have worked out for Papa Will and his spawn called Jaden.

The film that benefitted the most from that disaster was the independent Now You See Me which came in at number two with 29.3 million dollars.  And it did this on 500 less screens, on a budget half the size of After Earth, which made for a per screen average of $10000 compared to Shamalamadingdong’s $8,000 per screen.  I just love a good underdog story, don’t you?  Add to that the fact that magician type movies don’t generally do well in theaters, and Lionsgate/Summit has to be pleased.

|
But Columbia/Sony’s biggest mistake may have been to not open their After the Disaster Earth film wide overseas simultaneously with its domestic release.  They are counting on it to recover  in the International market, and considering Will Smith’s popularity it’s always a possibility.  It’s probably a good thing that they didn’t let the budget ($130 million) soar into John Carter territory though.  But now there is also time for word of mouth passed over the internet to help convince many to spend their Euros elsewhere.

Fast Five was always going to finish on top in it’s second week.  That was a no brainer.  But After Earth was supposed to  challenge it.   It wasn’t that long ago that the soothsayers were predicting a $40 to $50 million opening.

As for the rest of the films, Iron Man and Star Trek keep hovering around the top ten.  The Hangover is still in free fall mode, dropping 60 per cent from it’s poor opening weekend showing and coming in at number six in week two.  Wish it a quick goodbye as it sails out of site and into your nearest Redbox.  Gatsby is still plugging along in the top ten, more power to it.

Mud  is the little film that could.  It keeps hanging in the top ten week after week on just five hundred or so screens.  It’s been on the chart for six weeks now, and it’s another film I hope to catch soon if it isn’t too late.

Iron Man 3 is now the the 5th biggest money maker of all time.  Adjusted for inflation though, and it doesn’t make the top 100.  Robert Downey Jr. no longer just places his money in the bank, he owns the damn thing.

 
Looking ahead to next week, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson try to conjure up memories of Wedding Crashers with The Internship.  Wedding Crashers ended up scoring $209 million total at the box office, but finished second to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory for two weeks before taking over the number one spot in week three.  It’s been almost eight years since Wedding Crashers, so I’m not sure if that success will even bleed over to this one.  Let me put it this way.  The Internship had better be pretty darn funny.

Here are the numbers for the past three weekends for you to compare, decipher, and decide for yourself whether or not I know what I’m talking about.
 




   






 

Random Thoughts: Apple’s New Patent, Pre-order Your GalaxyS4, and Why is Buffy Here?

So I’m reading several tech web sites today and the news is that Apple has applied for a patent on a phone with a wraparound screen.  And after reading about it, I’m left scratching my head.  This is not a new idea.  Other’s have gone into this territory before.  But I’ve always held to the firm belief that most of Apple’s ideas aren’t really new.  For all their belly aching about others stealing their patents, practically everything Apple puts into their products came from somewhere else.  But I’m not about to get into that long long history.

You can read it and see for yourself here.  I’ve studied the drawings and designs, but as far as I’m concerned, it could just as well be a new muffler for the next generation Toyota Prius.  That’s how tech savvy I am.

It may all be much ado about nothing.  Just because you apply for a patent does not mean you are ever going to be bringing the thing to market.  Besides, I’m saving my money for a Deluxe Hover Board due out in a couple of years.  Not to mention that running my new Buick Hover Automobile after I have it converted is going to cost me a pretty penny as well.

Speaking of the company whose name comes from the Forbidden Fruit, there’s also a report that Apple is working on a dedicated game controller.  Has there ever a been a day that went by without an Apple rumor?  I didn’t think so.  And has ever a company’s product been speculated about more than Apple.  I can’t think of any.  You can put the controller up there with the ongoing Apple Television rumors that have proliferated forever.  Me?  I don’t care.  I just need something to write about for the massive swarm of people visiting my blog who also don’t give a crap.

So what mobile phone does the great and powerful Clyde use?  The GalaxySIII (see expertly photo shop illustration).  I’m just not an Apple fan although I did have an Apple 3GS phone for a short while.   I really didn’t have much of a choice due to some major fail on Best Buy’s part.  I even started writing a long article at the time but I think that’s about when my health problems took control of my life.  Now that those seem to be working out, if I could just find a way to retire I could write this crap all day long.  As for the 3GS, I still have it although it’s not the original  3GS I had.  (Do you want to see that too?  Okay.  More Buffy.  See the other inspirational graphic) That one went berserk and Best Buy had to replace it with a model that had been rehabilitated in reform school.  One of the few times I’m glad I paid for a warranty.

Mentioning my own Galaxy SIII is my sneaky way of bringing up the fact that the S4 will be out soon.  AT&T will be taking preorders beginning April 15.  But instead of the usual $199 with a two year contract, it will run you $249 to sign your cell phone life away for two years.  I can’t get a new phone for at least a year but I won’t need one before then either.   Hell, I’m not even getting full use out of the one I have now.  If you want to preorder one unlocked, it’ll cost you $725.99 on up.  A grand bargain I say, and just think of my commission I’d get from Amazon!  Why, I bet it would be at least $1.30.  Maybe even $1.50!  One can really rake in the dough with those Amazon ads.  To be honest, the most I’ve made is about $70 bucks total in the three or four years I’ve had them up.  Most of that came when I could write on a regular basis and about 90 percent of that came from family members I bamboozled into buying shit.  What I’m saying is, if you think you can retire by writing a blog,  you better have one hell of a huge family!

Before next year comes around, I’m seriously going to consider getting out from under this cell phone contract nonsense.  It’s nice to have a new model cell phone every couple of years, but I think T-Mobile may be on to something with this plan.  But oh wait, isn’t Straight Talk the same thing?  Just some things for me to consider over the next year.  I’ll let you know what happens if you and I are still around.   More stuff later.  We’re on a roll this week.

7 Worst Product Flops of 2012 as told by Huffington Post

Yes boys and girls and mommies and dads.  It’s that time of year when every web site and magazine has a best and worst list for just about every category imaginable.  Huffington Post has come up with it’s list of biggest flops of the past twelve months.

They are:

1.  Apple Maps
2.  Dodge Dart
3.  John Carter
4.  Sony Tablet
5.  Nokia Lumina 900
6.  Pan Am
7.  Ultrabook
8.  Playstation Vita

Now, I may disagree with at least one of these.  John Carter’s ranking comes from the fact that some people still of are the mindset that North American Gross is the only thing that counts.  In fact, according to Box Office Mojo, while Carter only made $73,000,000 domestically, it made over $209,700,000 in foreign theaters for a total of over $282 million dollars on a $250 million dollar budget.  That doesn’t even include movie tie ins.  DVD/Blu-ray sales, digital sales, pay per view or anything else.  Granted, the film may have been a flop and may never turn a profit but this idea of it being the biggest flop of all time falls into the Waterworld category, a film that fell into that mythical chamber of money making disasters when it in fact, turned a profit.  Blame Disney who took a $200 million dollar write of for letting production and marketing costs spiral out of control.  Then again, for the studio that showered George Lucas with $4 billion dollars for Lucasfilms, this is all chump change.

My son was one of those who bought a Playstation Vita.  He sent it back.  And with two products on this list is it any wonder that Sony is losing money hands over fists?

I didn’t even know that Chrysler had reassembled the Dodge Dart.  I owned one once – back in the 70’s. 

I intended to check in on Pan Am but the show was gone before I ever got around to it.  That happens to me a lot.  Is it on Netflix or Amazon Prime?   (Neither.  As it turns out the series won’t be released on DVD until the middle of January but you can preorder it.  You can put it in your saved queue on Netflix but that doesn’t mean anything as it’s never a guarantee they’ll stock it.  Especially these days.)

As for the Nokia Lumina, I upgraded my phone this year.  I went with the Galaxy SIII, the larger screen winning me over because when you get to be my age, the eyesight is the first thing to go.   I previously had the Apple 3GS and was conflicted about it.  I hate Apple, and I hate Apple fanboys even more.  And the Google maps app. on the Galaxy works great and the GPS locator has saved me a couple of times already.

Maybe I can come up with some kind of a list of my own over the next week or so.  We’ll see.

This blog has 12,976,432 views. Actually, no it doesn’t but then a lot of those Youtube numbers are as phony as hell. But nobody’s going to take down my phony number until they pry it from my cold dead hand.

The Daily Dot has the story:

Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.

Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.

Inflating view numbers or ratings is nothing new.  I actually did find a way to hack a site’s rating system once.  It was a matter of survival.  Something I was writing was getting a lot of attention and very favorable ratings.  I actually found some of my stories at the top of the heap a few times, something not easily achieved when there were about  300,000 other stories being told. 

Then for no reason the ratings on those stories began dropping like turkeys being thrown out of a helicopter in a Thanksgiving Day Promotion.  Mathematically, there was no way that the ratings could drop as fast as they were which was literally in a matter of minutes. 

It always troubled me that the same authors on this particular site were always very highly rated although much of their stuff was pure crapola.  So I worked on figuring out how it was being done. 

I actually watched the ratings of some of my output drop several points in just seconds of real time.  After having discovered the secret forumla, I  would raise the ratings right back up.  Not just of my stuff either.  I did it for other writers I knew were being given the shaft as well.

I knew who was doing it.  I even wrote some mods of the site to let them know it was being done and how it was being done especially since many users had long suspected something was dead fish rotten.  This particular company had always denied  that ratings manipulation was taking place.  Did they fix the problem?  Not really, so I left and took my wares elsewhere.  But not until after I raised the rating of one of my stories to over six points.  That got some attention.  Why?  Because the highest possible rating was only supposed to be 5 points and if everything were on the up and up, that could not have happened.  After that, they finally changed the system, but I didn’t hang around.  Nor was I ever acknowledged for spilling the beans.  Not so much as even a kiss my ass from them, or a kiss your ass, or kiss anybody’s ass..  

Want to know the complete story and what company it was?  It’s really quite a bit more involved and only worthwhile to tell if enough people ask.  So maybe someday.

Random Thoughts: No nomination for Harry Potter? Really Hollywood?

Let me make one thing perfectly clear.  I'm not a big Harry Potter fan, although at least two of my sons are not to mention various other family members.  But I have seen all of the Harry films, found some of them just so so, others pretty good, and still others a total bore (Deathly Hallows Part One).  Yet, I found Deathly Hallows Part Two to easily be the best of the bunch, a damn good film, and a really terrific sendoff for the series.

It would seem that most people are in agreement with me as the film garnered a 96 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes making it one of the most well received films of the year.

Yet, even though there were nine best film nominees this year, the Hollywood elite decided Harry and the gang didn't deserve so much as a nomination.  Frankly, accomplishing what this series did, how many tickets the series sold, and how many people were employed on the films, you would have thought they'd be a little more grateful than that. 

But instead we get the usual oddball conglomerate of Best Picture Nominees,  a list that as usual has no real rhyme or reason for it’s existence.  It’s not like I’m saying HP & The Gang should win the award, but to not even nominate it is more than just an oversight.  It’s just another example of Hollywood elite snobbery that does nothing more than turn the general public off.

Oh sure, we get something like The Tree of Life as a nominee so all the elitists of film land can prove to us once again that the ones who buy most of the tickets don't know art when they see it, or squat about films in general.  Sure I do.  If it bores your ass off, and doesn't make a lick of sense, it's art.  And the consensus of opinion of the average moviegoer and even some critics  is that The Tree of Life is a crushing bore.  I guess that means we’re all just low brow dim wits who don’t know artsy fartsy when we see artsy fartsy.  And even Sean Penn doesn’t think the film was that great and he starred in the damn thing.  And if you can’t please Sean Penn with artsy fartsy, then we know you’re just blowing smoke up our ass.

Then there's the case of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close which scored a paltry 48 per cent on the Rotten Meter.  But it's this year's 9/11 movie and I guess there's something in the rules that says if it's a 9/11 movie, it gets a guaranteed nomination.  It’s the only explanation I and even most critics can come up with as to explaining it’s listing in the Best Picture category.  

I could also make the case that Potter was at least as good as The Help (76 per cent), or is certainly equal to Woody Allen's latest self-indulgent shlubfest, Midnight in Paris.  And of course, let's not forget this year's big gimmick film, The Artist, which somehow won a best screenplay nomination despite the fact that there's not one word of dialogue spoken in the whole damn thing.  The next time someone tells me Titanic didn't deserve a best picture because of the clunky dialog in Cameron's script, I think I'll tell them to shove a copy of The Artist screenplay up their ass. 

Two years ago the gimmick film was The Hurt Locker, the gimmick being that it had a woman director and the ladies had yet to win one despite the fact that they have directed way more deserving films than this one note Johnny.  It’s already been forgotten by most people, and a high percentage of those forgot about it before the credits finished rolling.  Then there was Slumdog Millionaire the previous film, which was entertaining enough, but was totally ridiculous in it's premise of learning everything you need to know to win Who Wants to be A Millionaire in the slums and that you can get all hot and bothered over a girl at a very young age and stalk her until you are well in your teens.  Hadn’t Anakin Skywalker covered that eternal love stuff territory once before?  Use the force Jamal!  .And they consider Harry Potter movies fantasy? 

Don't even get me started on the ridiculous win of Crash over Brokeback Mountain, which proved despite it's supposedly liberal leanings, Homophobia still wins out in good old Hollywood.  And yes, this year’s racism is a very bad thing movie is The Help, a theme which also seems to be a big boost for squeezing your film into the Best picture category.  But like I said, just don’t make a movie about gays or lesbians because then your goose is cooked before it even gets basted.  Just ask Ang Lee.  Hollywood has to keep the right wing nutcases happy somehow.   

Let’s be real.  The Oscars are not really much of an indicator of anything anymore.   At least not for me and a whole lot of other people.  Once upon a time I did think it was a big deal, but not any more.  

When they finally got around to acknowledging the Lord of the Rings Trilogy,  the Oscar TV ratings went up just as they did during Titanic’s big year.  Since then, as one film after another joins in the race to be the film the general public cares least about, the ratings have once again begun to slide.  It only took about one year for the viewing audience to figure out that nominating ten films was simply another dog and pony sleight of hand trick, and I'm sure we'll once again be able to pretty much guess the Best Picture Winner before the end of February (The Artist, what a shock!).  And before long, even The Miss America pageant will be more relevant then this yearly self congratulatory “let’s drool all over one another” crappy crap  fest.  

And that thing they used to call an Oscar bounce where winning Best Picture added gazillions to a film’s gross?  It appears that has pretty much passed into the annals of history as well.  Just ask the producers of Hurt Locker about that piece of fiction.

I should point out some other snubs as well although I really don’t want to spend too much time on this nonsense.  Look at the animation feature category.  What’s up with the two obscure films nobody’s ever heard of and that nobody is never really going to give a damn about?  Chiquita Bananas and the Lovely Rita Meter Maid?  Top Cat Does Paris?  What the hell is that crap?   They’re the Herman Cain and Michelle Bachman of the Academy awards.  Nobody cared when they came out and no number of nominations is going to get most viewers to give a rat’s ass .  Hell, the DVD’s and Blu-rays weren’t even released in this country.  Left out of the animation category were Cars 2, Spielberg’s Adventures of TinTin, Rio, or even Winnie The Pooh which had a whopping 91 percent on the Tomato meter.   

People are so excited in regards to TC does Paris that the IMDB message board is just brimming with excitement over it.  There are exactly three posts.  The enthusiasm is just overwhelming.  And according to this damn thing, the movie came out in 2010.  I thought these films were supposed to be released in 2011?

Then there’s the fact that only two songs were nominated (two songs?  really?) because they have a real quirky half assed nominating system for best song.  Look at the bright side.  At least you won’t have to watch all five of them being performed with some overdone overblown stage productions.   The two songs that did get nominated aren’t exactly going to be getting heavy rotation in anybody’s house anytime soon.  I love and adore The Muppets, but that song Man or Muppet will never be another Rainbow Connection. 

I could go on and on, but the fact is that like most people these days I just don't care enough, and I don't even make it a point to watch the thing which is a far cry from way back when I live blogged the event.  Hmmm…maybe I’ll do that this year for the purpose of poking a little fun.  Oh wait, I forgot.  I’m having an operation on the sixth of February so I doubt I’ll be up for that.  Maybe next year we’ll do it when Hollywood’s Elite shits on the ticket buyers once again.

Random Thoughts Special Edition: Prequels, Sequels, and Reboots! Oh my!!

 

For all the bitching one hears about the over abundant proliferation of sequels and super hero rip-offs that fill the screens at the Big Ass Studio 64 Screen Cinema Multiplex out by your local mall, pub, or health spa, on a daily basis, movie fans still flock to them as if they’re a wily nilly herd of Republican sheep trying to decipher the latest ranting's and ravings of Michelle Bachman because she’s too deep for their thought processes.   Yet, the same crowd will leave the film, jump on the Internet and proclaim that as far as originality is concerned, Hollywood is bankrupt. They’ve run out of ideas. It’s time to fold the tent and go home. Yeah, right.

The average movie patron, for all their bitching, gets what they ask for, what they put their good money down for, and what they buy their $15 Popcorn and $10 soft drink for. No more, no less. Hey, it’s not your billions some studio nincompoop is investing, or even your Monopoly Money they’re playing with so quit your complaining or just stay home so they can feed it to you on the TV at sixty bucks a pop.

Sequels have always been around forever and I guess they always will be. Even back in the 30’s movies had sequels. 

King Kong had a Son , even though we never were an eyewitness to him dilly dallying with a Mrs. Kong, although such a scene would have probably boosted the movie grosses by a factor of ten, and our knowledge of Simian reproduction by 20.   Still, such a plot twist would have left Ms. Fay Wray, Ms. Lange, and Ms. Naomi Watts extremely jealous, but they would have been no match for Mrs.  It would be tantamount to pitting Don Knotts up against Muhammad Ali in his prime.   The more time that has passed since the film editor spliced together the last strips of film, the more opportunities there are for some studio big wig to take another stab at it.

 

 

In Kong’s case, Dino DeLaurentiis sent him up the WTC in 1976, and in 2005 Peter Jackson finally brought fulfillment to his personal long passionate unrequited love affair with New York’s biggest citizen. In the sixties, the Japanese shipped a gangly and mangy looking Kong in for a WWE grudge Match against their very own radioactive giant Lizard Gojira, so that they could party all night long in downtown Tokyo.

But being the generous nation that we are, Hiroshima and Nagasaki not withstanding, we returned the favor by flying Godzilla into downtown Manhattan, because Roland Emmerich swore that Size Does Matter, although he wasn’t talking about his overinflated ego or budget.

It pissed rain for most of the two and a half hour running time proving once gain that size does matter when you have to cover up your not quite ready for prime time CGI Lizard with more running water than Noah saw in 40 days and nights, plenty of dark scenes, and then have Mr. Zilla dart in and out of and in between skyscrapers so you never really see him up close and personal. Talk about laying a giant egg or should I say a truckload full of giant eggs. But if you cross your fingers extremely hard and say you do believe in monsters fifty times, Godzilla may roam the planet in 3d in 2014. So get your asses busy now.

Tarzan has been swinging on a vine since the first tree sprouted up in the rain forest. And even Jane and Boy, who dropped in from the sky, hung around for quite a while with him.

The Thin Man drank enough hard liquor solving mysteries with Mrs. Thin Man to keep his most favored distillery in business for years. Now, Johnny Depp says he want’s a shot at that liquor cabinet. No word on who’s playing the dog yet.

Andy Hardy kept looking for his love life for 20 years until he finally came home in 1958 carrying a passel full of mealy mouth brats and a wife with him, apparently having found amore without us. In other words, he got screwed and we got screwed over after putting up with him all those years.

I personally want to know what ever happened to my favorite funny guy, Henry Aldrich and his pal Dizzy? Bet you don’t remember those two. They made a bunch of movies. About eight of them. Funny ones. Can’t find the movies unless I want to order from some offbeat company I never heard of. Then again, they do sound legitimate.  What have you got for me?  They’ve got the BBB thing going on and everything.  Hey, send me a few and I’ll stick an ad up for you.  You know the old saying, early to bed, early to rise, advertise, advertise, advertise.  But I guess I’ll settle for a couple of clips on YouTube for now.

Henry Aldrich seems to be available legitimately from a web site called Nostalgia Merchant. We dealt with them for VHS products back in the 80’s. Don’t know how they are now who owns it.

Bonita Granville wasn't totally clueless as Nancy Drew, the teen sleuth, through four films until she met and married Jack Wrather who had this Lone Ranger gig of his own going. They then found out that old dogs never die, they just have puppies and carry on forever. It seems you can make more money with a cross dressing collie than solving the Mystery of the The Hidden Staircase.

But have no fear, all you amateur female detectives. Nancy has been around forever and always will be. Pamela Sue Martin climbed out of The USS Poseidon to pick up the clue book in the 70’s. Recently, Emma Roberts, brought Ms. Drew back to the big screen, but a once planned sequel seems to be kaput. And then there’s another one, one I didn’t even know about until recently. All I know is that it was broadcast on the TV in the 1990’s but I don’t know where, filmed in Canada and France, starred someone named Tracy Ryan as a 20 something Drew, and this curiosity piece is now showing on Netflix. Have at it.

I will when if and I do find the time and then I’ll report back. And if watching isn’t your cup of tea, thanks to the wonders of computer gaming, you can now be Nancy Drew to your hearts content, be you male, female, young, old, or anything in between.

And look, let’s be honest, wasn’t everybody clamoring for another Indiana Jones film until there finally was one? But after all was said and done fans everywhere decided to get all pissy about it because it wasn’t what they thought it should be? Now all they do is whine, “They should have left well enough alone!” Audiences are just plain fickle, and in the case of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull they were fickle to the tune of $786 million worldwide.

It’s the same thing with Star Wars. If people hadn’t been clamoring for sequels and prequels then maybe George would have retired with his billions instead of foisting the abysmal Haydn Christianson on us and stinking up the joint. NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!

Hell, I’ve wanted Willow II since 1988, but George and Ronnie can’t seem to get their act together. If Harrison Ford can put on that fedora at age 67 or so and crack his whip as Jones, then certainly Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan, at age 52, ought to be able to still swing a hefty sword with authority. So what if Ron Howard has won an Oscar since then? It won’t soil him to do just a little slumming. And one thing Ron, you should have talked your daughter out of being in that crappy M. Night Salami movie. It didn’t do squat for her career.

Theres been talk of a Goonies II, but having a bunch of middle age men dragging ass in the sewers of Seattle looking for a pirate booty doesn’t have the same appeal that it did when the journey was made by a motley group of up and coming teensters and tweensters. Then again, what kind of booty would we be talking about here?

If some of the sequels turn out bad, you pretend they don’t exist anymore and pick up wherever you damn well want to.

That’s why Superman Returned after Superman II, and numbers III and IV never really happened. It’s sort of like Pam Ewing waking up and finding Bobby in the shower after dreaming a whole television season up in Dallas for all the suckers who tuned in once a week. And Richard Pryor is no longer around to attest in the first person that there was a Super 3, although for all I know he may have been the one that wished it away.

Superman Returns to only $400 million dollars worldwide, and that wasn’t enough for the WB. No sir. Casting call. Time for the Superman reboot. New director. New Super duper. Bye bye Kate “Lois Lane” Bosworth, hello Amy "Lois Lane" Adams. Then to get everybody really confused, you take the Superman out of the title and slap the Man of Steel label on it. Crap, for all we know this could be a sequel to the 2011 October flavor of the month called “Real Steel” which is not about Superman at all. I think it has something to do with Rocky Balboa and Robots . Haven’t seen it, I’m not sure, let’s move on.

But that’s a way better fate that than being done in by what happened to poor Supergirl! Talk about a one shot deal! One movie, you’re done, and take Mommie Dearest with you, bitch. To punish you for failing, they stick you in some movie where you’re running around trying to get your kid brother’s stupid scooter back and have you cut off all your beautiful blonde hair in the process while your little friend discovers she’s a woman.



Talk about a career wipe out! But at least there was that nifty Pat Benatar song to cheer you on and regale MTV viewers across the nation for a time.

The best thing about The Legend of Billie Jean is this song. Then again, I think the movie was very underrated.

Let’s not forget the dreaded prequels. I’ve already mentioned George Lucas’s batch of bologna, but there have been others. Hell, Indiana Jones went back in time for one year to his younger self for Temple of Doom. I’m still trying to figure that one out.  He not only traveled through the time space continuum for Doomsville, he resided there  long enough to do a whole damn TV series. And he did it without a DeLorean.  I don’t think Lucas knows for sure why Indiana II  took place a year earlier than Indiana I.  I guess it fit the timeline he made up on the spur of the moment.  But at least we knew for sure Indy would survive the damn thing.

Sometimes your two heroes end up pretty much dead at the end of your hit film, thus really leaving you with a big prequel or sequel problem. The Sundance Kid aka Robert Redford and Butch Cassidy aka Paul Newman morph into William Katt and Tom Berenger for Butch and Sundance,The Early Days. Hey, I liked Katt as the hapless super duper klutz of the Greatest American Hero on the TV, and even more so as Carrie's hot date at the prom. But he is no Robert Redford. And if Paul Newman were the bright center of the universe, Tom Berenger would be the planet that it’s farthest from.

And nobody morphed better than Newman and Redford, who also reappeared in The Sting II as Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis. Either that or Newman was really chowing down in between films and Redford took some time to tune up his vocal chords for a few hit songs. 

If your super hero franchise lays a real big turd such as George Clooney's Batman did with Robin and The Governator back in 1997, you simply wait eight years, and then call your film Batman Begins, as if you were just kidding around the first time down the pike with Mr.’s Keaton , Kilmer, Clooney, O'Donnell, Nicholson, DeVito, Jones, Carrey, Schwarzenegger, Pfeiffer, Ms. Silverstone, and Ms. Thurman. You hire a director that made a film nobody understood because he goofed and ran it through the projector backwards, but  made movie critics get all misty eyed anyway. That way if he turns the caped crusader into a confused schizophrenic nit wit you can claim, “But it’s art.”

By starting all over again you also have the benefit of that new breed of internet species unavailable to you ten years ago who will proclaim your greatness from sea to shining sea. Yes, we do have the fan boys forever and ever amen.  And nothing, absolutely not one thing, will ever deter them, stand in their way, or hold them at bay through ice, wind, snow, rain, sleet, hail, or a massive power failure from coast to coast.

Absolutely none of this even remotely begins to explain why Spider-man is being sent back to relive his high school days when he hasn’t even been out of there long enough for a class reunion.   We’re starting over from square one,  becoming not just Spider-man, but The Amazing Spider-man because he wasn’t quite amazing enough to bear that adjective when he was just some damn overpriced American Colonist.  So riddle me this, why is the new Spidey better than the old Spidey, when new Spidey has to use mechanical gunk to spin his webs while old Spidey was making it natural?   Answer me that, Sony?   Screw you.

And what the hell is Sally Field going to do as Aunt May?  Give the kid a box of chocolates and yell, “Run, Spidey, Run!” 

I can see it now:

Peter Parker:  What is my destiny, mama?
Aunt May:  You’re a freakin’ spider mutant person, what the hell do you think your destiny is?

Screw you again.

Now, we get a new cup of Tassimo Tea, whereas the old Maxwell House Home Grown Coffee had yet to finish brewing to the last drop. But hey, this is Sony we’re talking about. Sony’s a corporation, and your measly 3 Spider-Man films grossing $2.5 billion (yes, billion) just isn’t enough moulah for you and your shareholders. So what do you do?

You get out your slide rule, figure out that the director and cast that helped you gather in all that loot in the first place should be kicked out the door because if they were in one of your sweat shop assembly line factories pumping out your PlayStation 3's or blu-ray players you’d do the same damn thing. Then you find some cheap replacement parts, a no-name director with no hits, an unknown obscure actor, and start dreaming of a Happy Fourth of July because the bean counters have convinced you that the movie going public is too stupid to see through your charade.

They are sure we will want to watch this low-budgeted rehashed instant replay even if your star won’t be celebrating Independence Day with us when the movie premieres because he probably doesn’t even know that his country lost the war almost 250 years ago. The worst part of it is that those bean counters are probably right. They know fan boys as well as I do and they are already beginning to wrap their arms around this imported pile of steaming sheep dung.   Me, I’ll stop in to see The Avengers, but screw your Spidey when I’m still waiting for him to join Mary Jane in holy deadlock. And I mean that. I won’t go. Period. I hate corporate b.s.

Just one thing sir, when do tickets go on sale?  Honorable number 3 son would like to know.

I could go on for days with this sequels, series, and prequels, stuff.   And I certainly may do so again if I sit down to write a review and that Drew Baylor came up with when his own dear old dad was dead as a doornail comes upon me again. You know the one. Whimsical.

Remember, none of this sequelitis rebooting rehashing recooking and refrying gets done if you don’t go. But for all your complaining about idea bankrupt Hollywood, going out to the theater will always be infinitely more entertaining than sitting in front of the tube, eating your cheeseburger, and having your brain cells killed off one at a time by Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, X-Factor, So You Thought You Could Dance, Dummass, America Ain’t Got No Talent, and American Idol. I’m proof of that. Two years of writing about Idol several years ago, and I’m still in recovery. But the doctor’s say there is hope for me. You on the other hand, maybe not. You have to read this crap. Now I do have a movie review to write.

Amazon Tags: Movies, Films, Sequels, Reboots, Prequels, Movie Series, Batman, Superman, Nancy Drew, Spider-man, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, King Kong, The Dark Knight

Technorati Tags: Movies,Films,Series,Reboots,Remakes,Sequels,Prequels,Spider-man,Batman,Nancy Drew,Paul Newman,Robert Redford,Jackie Gleason,Mac Davis,Tarzan,Godzilla,King Kong,Superman,The Man of Steel