Speaking of movies.... The Ghost in the Shell...

[TBman]

Scarlett Johansson is in it.

Special effects rating - 8 and Scarlett Johansson is in it.

Plot.... Well, Scarlett Johansson is in it.

Rent, don't buy.

[Wade Hampton]

I saw it in IMAX 3D and liked it. I'm kind of surprised it flopped at the box office, frankly, because it was heavily promoted for months beforehand. Plus, I thought it was a good film.

But I'm not the target audience, I guess, because the target audience evidently didn't feel compelled to go see it.

Another film I saw and enjoyed, but which also flopped, is "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." Again, I saw it in 3D, and found it visually dazzling. I wednt to see it when it opened. Then a week or two later as I was at the theater to watch another film, I was waiting for my own film to start. So I slipped in and watched the first 20 or 30 minutes of "Valerian" again, through the entire Big Market sequence. Which has to be one of the greatest science fiction action set pieces ever filmed.

Possibly what helped sink "Valerian" is that the female lead, Cara Delevingne, appears to have only two facial expressions: annoyed and exasperated. She rolled her eyes in that movie so often I wanted to reach through the screen and smack her myself. It was kind of like being stuck in detention hall for two hours in an assigned seat next to the most popular girl in 7th Grade.

"Ghost In The Shell" had none of those problems with its female lead, though, so I'm a bit mystified why it wasn't a box office success. One possibility is that members of the most dedicated fan base of the anime series that inspired it, like my son and my nieces, simply aren't regular moviegoers. They tend to watch things online or on their phones, not in movie theaters.


whm

[Alex6strings]

Excellent review Barry. I hadn't thought about watching this before, because well, I didn't know Scarlett Johansson was in it.

[posternutbag]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

I saw it in IMAX 3D and liked it. I'm kind of surprised it flopped at the box office, frankly, because it was heavily promoted for months beforehand. Plus, I thought it was a good film.

But I'm not the target audience, I guess, because the target audience evidently didn't feel compelled to go see it.

Another film I saw and enjoyed, but which also flopped, is "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets." Again, I saw it in 3D, and found it visually dazzling. I wednt to see it when it opened. Then a week or two later as I was at the theater to watch another film, I was waiting for my own film to start. So I slipped in and watched the first 20 or 30 minutes of "Valerian" again, through the entire Big Market sequence. Which has to be one of the greatest science fiction action set pieces ever filmed.

Possibly what helped sink "Valerian" is that the female lead, Cara Delevingne, appears to have only two facial expressions: annoyed and exasperated. She rolled her eyes in that movie so often I wanted to reach through the screen and smack her myself. It was kind of like being stuck in detention hall for two hours in an assigned seat next to the most popular girl in 7th Grade.

"Ghost In The Shell" had none of those problems with its female lead, though, so I'm a bit mystified why it wasn't a box office success. One possibility is that members of the most dedicated fan base of the anime series that inspired it, like my son and my nieces, simply aren't regular moviegoers. They tend to watch things online or on their phones, not in movie theaters.


whm

Both of these movies suffer from the same problem, they have tiny built in audiences that have allegiance to the source material, but to sell millions of tickets they have to expand that audience, and the ad campaigns for both of these movies failed them dramatically. It isn't enough to sell the visual effects, you have to sell the story.

I think Americans are beginning to become fatigued by "visual assaults." Movies that sell nothing but spectacle have not faired well this summer at the domestic box office, Baywatch, Ghost in the Shell, King Arthur, all of these have recognizable source material, but couldn't sell the story. Transformers 5 and Pirates 5 weren't outright flops, but they underperformed.

Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, GotG vol 2, Spider Man, these are the top box office performers of 2017, and they all did a good job of telling a story, and that came through in advertising and in reviews.

[HHP]

You forgot to mention the part where Scarlet Johannson gets quasi-nekkid.

For sci-fi type stuff, liked "Lucy" much better.

I did watch "Alien Covenant" last night. Didn't get much notice in theaters but it was good enough as an on-demand movie.

[MikeBmusic]

These days, my usual thing is to wait a few weeks after the sci-fi movie is released. If its still in the theater at that point, I'll go see it.
Otherwise, I wait for Netflix or one of the cable networks to show it.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by MikeBmusic

These days, my usual thing is to wait a few weeks after the sci-fi movie is released. If its still in the theater at that point, I'll go see it.
Otherwise, I wait for Netflix or one of the cable networks to show it.

I rented it with my Verizon rewards.

I bought Lucy though, I have to watch that again.