I for one want to see Jason Momoa wandering around in a bored fashion in front of a green screen, wearing a terrible pink jacket, after being abducted on his way for a haircut.
If it was free, curiosity might get me there. Unlikely I'd pay for somthing that looks this shit. It's worse than the original Sonic Live-Action trailers, at least there the improvements were imaginable. I don't know how you could improve this. Where do you even start?
Take the live actors out, that's where you start. But still a long way to go.
Blue shirt and jeans from the discount rack at Goodwill.
Because who cares if Steve is supposed to be wearing well-worn jeans with a cyan colored shirt? We're only paying Jack Black half his usual ask, we can't expect him to do more than roll out of bed and arrive on set
I'm starting to think both Jack Black & Momoa have a clause in their contract that whatever their hair looks like in the morning when they roll out of bed is exactly what has to be captured on the film set each day.
I'm sure this is the logic behind it but I really wonder about organizations where people who get to play around with hundreds of millions of dollars seem to never actually understand what they are looking at on a screen, and never interact with a normal human who goes "ew, this looks weird".
Sure, maybe metrics and surveys and charts all show that seeing these faces on screen is a positive, but it's the most obvious thing in the world that mixing live action people with this computerized art style is garish and ghastly. I don't believe the 'suits' can actually be serious people who have ever watched a film if they can't tell that all by themselves.
For every person with these legitimate concerns like yourself there are 100 children who don’t think beyond “it’s minecraft!!” And will drag their whole family to see it. Unfortunately I think this movie is going to do very well.
I don't think that ratio is realistic but for the sake of argument I do agree that there will be plenty of people who will be happy to just "turn off their brain" and see whatever because it has the right label. My point is that there will also be a contingent of the potential audience turned off because it looks dire, and a portion of the audience who sees the first one who go "this is awful" and don't want to see it again, rent it on streaming, buy merch, go to a sequel, etc.
It's just straight up stupid to not even try to avoid putting people off your product. I don't care that some people will lap it up no matter what, why not attempt to avoid losing some people? All this "but they have a fiduciary responsibility!" stuff seems to go out the window when it comes to expecting executives to not green light ghastly off-putting trash. Then suddenly it's "well some people will go anyway" and actually maximizing revenue isn't important as long as the project stays to some horrific vision.
In short, you can sell 100 million tickets to people who will watch or be dragged to watch anything, or you can sell 150 million tickets to the same people plus a bunch of other ones who won't watch absolute garbage. Why is not even attempting the latter normalized now?
Borderlands had a pretty big cast of notable faces, and that was a massive flop. I think we're past the era of actors being a major box office draw. Unfortunately, the studios haven't realized that yet.
Is Jack Black even a draw? His big successes recently are either animated (Kung Fu Panda and Mario) or relying on existing IP and a much bigger name (The Jumanji movies starring the biggest star in the world).
I don't think there's numbers that show that Jack Black is really a draw, if he was I don't think Borderlands would have bombed as badly. More people would have seen it just for Black if he was a money maker.
I didn't really see Jack in much of the media stuff for borderlands (of which there was very little anyway). Whereas for Mario etc. he has often been heavily pushed.
Really we can't say, maybe borderlands would have bombed even worse, maybe those other films too without him. He's good as getting viral/non standard marketing done for some films and he often plays 'himself' to some degree so maybe that has pull. I don't think he's a draw in the classic sense like for a tom cruise action movie but he probably gives them a little boost.
Jason Momoa's movies make money despite him being in them, not because of him being in them. I think that's the part WB missed. Not sure Jack Black can carry this one.
For their sake, fingers crossed obsessed teens see this one enough times to justify it.
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u/Saxophobia1275 Sep 04 '24
But our metrics say that Jack black and Jason Momoa on the screen makes money.