I think my only memory re this is going to see Fellowship with a bunch of my cousins and us all getting sears, whereas with the same group, ROTK, the younger of us had to sit on the floor at the front of the cinema, lol...

 

https://www.cnet.com/news/dune-becomes-warner-bros-biggest-opening-of-the-pandemic/

Good news for potential sequel

 

I'm.....not so sure. 40m opening weekend is high for pandemic, but horrific any other time.

We'll have to see how exactly they'll be judging its success. If they weigh heavily the streaming numbers, I doubt the director will be best pleased...

 

Covid changed how many people engage with new film releases. I'm certain many folks who just used to see everything new in the theater are now open to simply waiting till it hits whichever streaming service. Box office records just kept getting higher and fucking higer over the last few decades and then Covid popped that bubble. Studios need to adjust to the new reality and lower their expectations. 100mln opening weekends might now be reserved for decade-in-the-making events like Avengers Endgame. And home entertainment systems will only keep getting better. Watching at home has all the convenience, theaters have the advantage of a huge screen. With quality headphones, audio advantage may have disappeared already.

The difference in the quality of home watching between ~20 years ago when the first billion-dollar blockbusters started appearing like Titanic, LotR, HP and now is staggering. Now it's not unheard of to have a 60-inch smart tv with surround sound and at that point, what does the theater offer, really? Bigger screen, yes, but you sit further away from it and if you sit too close, that's 2 hours of straining you neck.

Nevermind that for me, with big vision impairment, a smaller screen closer to my face actually lets me appreciate the details more than a huge-ass theater screen.

 

Yeah I'll be shocked if we see theatre records hit a billion again

 

Even Shang Chi and Black Widow only drew in about 70 -80 mil on opening weekend. The former was theaters only, and the latter was Disney Priemier access for a 30 dollar charge, which raked in another 60 mil.

40 mil is pretty impressive for a title that has no additional surcharge for same day streaming beyond subscription cost.

I feel like DIsney's Premier access model is way healthier for movie box office revenue than HBO Max's model too.

 

Not analogous. Disney produced those things, they don't pay themselves the right to stream that content.

I assume HBO paid for the right? Or is HBOMax owned by whoever produced Dune?

 

Well, there is China that is close to become a market for a billion dollar movies. I agree that they won't be as common when it comes to US productions, but Spider-Man is pretty much sure to get billion, especially if rumors about who is in it are true. After that, Batman has a chance if he gets good reaction from the audience. I don't expect anything else from US to get more than around $800m worldwide in 2022.

I was pretty sure Dune is WB production, owners of HBO Max, but they only distribute. It's Legendary Entertainment's film and they're owned by Chinese firm since 2016.

 

WB (owns HBO) is the sole theatrical distributor, so they would have had a joint profits contract with Legendary for both theatrical and streaming revenue. Unlikely they "paid" in the traditional sense. The distributor is considered a production partner.

Edit: ninja'd

 

Dune Part 2 has been officially greenlit. October 2023.

 

I do not believe for a second it was ever in doubt. Not with that quick a confirmation and turnaround.

Wouldn't be surprised if they'd already started working on it ages ago and the 'ooh, we MIGHT make part 2' was just a marketing ploy.

 

They probably waited for a general audience's reactions. If it didn't make much money, it could be blamed on many factors that the sequel could avoid, but if it wasn't getting positive opinions then they would not bother with trying to make the next one better.

 

Just got back from seeing Dune. They knocked it out of the park. It'd be hard to imagine doing a better adaptation of the first half of Dune in the same amount of time. I thought the casting was very well done, though I am a bit disappointed that they seem to have combined Beast Rabban and Feyd-Rautha into the same character, but I get why. I think most of the cuts made a lot of sense when trying to fit the story into the runtime, and don't really hinder the plot. It does result in a simplified version of the tale, but I don't think you could do an adaptation of Dune that hit every depth and complexity to it short of 10 hour-long episodes of a miniseries.

Spoiler: My only real disappointments, spoilers for the book

I only have a couple real disappointments. The first is that Paul put on the Atreides signet ring, since one of my favorite scenes in the novel was Paul's response to the Fremen wanting him to fight Stilgar for Sietch Tabr: putting on the ring for the first time and claiming Arrakis as his rightful fiefdom. That scene will lack the power if they go that route. The other thing was that we didn't get a scene of Paul taking up the name of Muad'Dib (or Paul-Muad'Dib). I feel like it may happen in part two, because of the recurring visual motif in the movie of the small desert mouse, and that mouse is called Muad'Dib.

All in all, good movie. They did my favorite novel proud. Glad I went to the theater, which had about 15-20 people in it for a pandemic, 9:45pm showing on a Saturday which I think is rather good. I don't think a small screen would have been proper for a first viewing of a tale of such scope.

 

I did watch Dune a couple days ago. It was alright. All the various facets of it were expertly done; directing, audio, music, acting, pacing, visuals, etc. I wasn't bored at any point, I wasn't overwhelmed by the information and I was relatively invested in what was happening, even if things were a fair bit predictable.

Still, for all that these facets of the movie were expertly crafted, I do think that Dune is a little overhyped. I expected more from how everyone's been gushing about it. I wouldn't consider it wasted money for going to the cinema to see it, but as an experience it was a far, far cry from something like Fellowship that people compare it to.

There just wasn't all that much that actually happened in it.

2 gripes that I had:

Spoiler

The whole poison capsule that Leto did felt bizarre to me. It didn't actually do anything, so if it was meant to sort of salvage Leto as a character it failed, and otherwise it took a fair bit of screentime for not accomplishing anything.

Duncan's death. We knew he would die from the moment Paul said it, but it would have been a lot better, to me, if this vision didn't become reality until the second movie. Let us actually get invested in Duncan and almost forget the sword hanging over his head. But no.

 

Last Night in Soho is a very respectable slice of post-Halloween creepiness. The film flits between Eloise, a fashion student in present day London, and Sandie, the wannabe singer in the 60s that Eloise keeps having vision of at night, which seems delightful until Sandie gets embroiled in the darker underbelly of Soho...it's a bit of a change of pace for Edgar Wright, with barely a joke to be found, but it's very effective, and while on reflection some of the twists seem a bit predictable, I'd be lying if I said they hadn't fooled me when watching. Well worth a watch.

 

The Matrix trilogy did not need a sequel. Like it or not, Revolutions ended in a narratively satisfying place: the One made a harrowing journey and sacrificed himself to defeat a common enemy of the humans and the machines, purged the runaway rogue program from the system and gave both factions a chance for peace. If there was gonna be a sequel, I would expect from it something other than just a reheated love story between Neo and Trinity, retreading old tracks, playing on nostalgia, and shallow characters supporting even shallower themes. Oh, and a throwaway bit of dialogue about how easily the mass media outrage machine manipulates people so the new version of the Matrix is a metaphor for that. Or whatever, I guess.

I really shouldn't be surprised that the above is exactly what I got.

Spoiler

Keanu Reeves may be the darling of the Internet, but he is just not a good actor. In front of the camera, he's like a sort of sentient block of wood and there's no surprise here. He has the same expression on the entire movie, no matter what's happening.

Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris are terrible choices to play villains. I do not buy them as bad guys, not a single tiny bit. Kevin Hart would have made for a more threatening Smith than Jonathan Groff. They were both utterly wasted here, but the same could be said of the entire cast, really. No one was given anything interesting to work with. Meryl Streep could not have made this script engaging.

I was hoping for some sort of twist--maybe do a whoop-ass "reset" and imply that the entire original trilogy was part of the Matrix too, simulation inside a simulation. Matrix-inception. That would have been interesting though. That would have taken balls to do--basically what The Force Awakens did for the OT, but on purpose. No place here for that.

I want to say something nice, so... there were a few musical moments that had a nice punch. A montage towards the beginning of the movie, showing the miserable routine of Neo's Matrix life, was neatly edited and the song choice for it was on point.

The action was all too shaky-cam-like. The OG Matrix had some phenomenal camera work, wide, clean, stable shots allowing the viewer to appreciate the reality-bending feats Neo was capable of. There is none of that here. The last Michael Bay movie had better action scenes.

I think they tried to do something like a reverse of the first movie, where this time Neo was the one leading Trinity to "wake up" from the Matrix, but here they attempted an Ocean's Eleven style montage where one character explains what needs done and you get quick cuts of this being accomplished. Only, in the Ocean's movies, this was done to quickly get through the prep work for the main heist so the movie could then show you the big main heist in a big, fun, exciting setpiece. The follow-up in Matrix 4 is an action sequence that didn't even make me sit up in the chair.

The whole movie was really just kind of a waste of all the time and resources that went into making it. It brings nothing new to the table. It lacks any sort of depth. It has nothing interesting to say. It does nothing interesting visually. It did not need to exist.

garbage/10

 

on review for Matrix Resurrections, my only response is that there is no greater comfort to anxiety than nostalgia. Is it a narrative masterpiece? Well, no. Is it a reasonable, comfortable continuation of the Matrix universe? Yes. Is it also a return to a series that didn't need a sequel? Of course.

But you're missing the point. It was fun, it was interesting, it was nostalgia when some of us, maybe many of us during covid, needed it. The movie makes fun of itself many times. It does not take itself too seriously. Not in a haha look at me I'm cringe way, but in comfy feel good writing. The ending itself is not a question of the greatness of the One, it is not a metaphorical conundrum meant to shake our very lives and fuck our minds. It's just, we're gonna make rainbows in the sky. We're gonna live our life how we want, have fun how we want. It is, just, catharsis.

Anyway, I'm saying you're critically reviewing a movie that's not aiming to be critical. Yet we each want what we want, and if you expected... another Matrix on par with what the Matrix was 20 years ago. Well, fair.

 

If you want to make a fun, feel good movie, make one. Did it need to be a Matrix sequel though?

And please, don't try to sell me on this being a good mesh here. If they wanted to marry a lighthearted theme with the obviously serious aesthetic of the Matrix, they failed miserably.

I understood the jokes, mate. The only way Smith's line about how WB wanted a sequel and they were gonna make it one way or another could have been more obvious is if Deadpool was in that scene. Let WB make it then and get laughed at for their petty nostalgia cash grab. I suppose at least this way the Wachowskis got a piece of the cash grab pie.

And your view of a fun action movie is clearly different from mine, so let's agree to disagree there.

 

I didn't find it to be fun or comfortable at all? It wasn't even nostalgic, especially given how they spent a good chunk taking the shit out of nostalgia.

I will defend Keanu's acting though, in so much it was very much a put on role; the woodenness was a particular call back to the Matrix rather than him just acting normally. If it worked, eh, I think it still sucked, but they were doing it on purpose.

Also really was not a good action movie in the least, some of the more painful cuts and editing I've seen in a high budget film in a long time.

 

Just saw it. It felt like a student project, from themes to the camera work.
Disappointed/5