Hollywood’s Box Office Conundrum

Are They Losing Touch with a More Sophisticated and Savvy Audience?

The summer movie season has begun. This marks the time where Hollywood is supposed to make its money back from all of the blockbuster films they plan on rolling out for the season. But if what we are seeing is an early indicator of what the season will bring, well, Hollywood is in a world of hurt. Is what we are seeing a “one-off” or has Hollywood has reached a saturation point within its products. There have been so many major films that have failed to live up to the analytical financial projections they implore. It’s not just one or two films that have been missing the target projections, it’s a lot of them that have totally not even come close to the territory and have missed the target completely.

Recent films like Dark Phoenix, Shaft, Men In Black: International, Godzilla: King of The Monsters, and The Secret Life of Pets 2 have not been succeeding at the box office. These films are, for the most part, classified as franchise films. They are supposed to have a built-in core audience who will always attend the showing of these films. Analysts will base their projections on these core fans live by the numbers for that film’s projected weekend box office numbers. But that isn’t happening, much like the poll numbers during the 2016 presidential campaign where Hillary Clinton was projected to take it all. No, we’re not getting it.

Dark Phoenix, the X-Men film, took in approximately $33 million dollars, a staggeringly low number for an X-Men film. If you are to believe the rumors, it was plagued with delays and reshoots and a revamped script that was needed to revamp the ending because it was alleged that the ending was similar to another film. This was also the second telling of the Dark Phoenix character that many fans still recalled as being more gratifying than this version. But let’s dig deep into this version of The x-Men. There have been two versions of characters in The X-Men universe in the 19 year run of the franchise. Unlike the Avengers where they have been consistent with the character development, The X-Men changed all of the characters with the exception of Logan/Wolverine.

The newer/younger version of the X-Men had not earned the or perhaps wasn’t embraced with acceptance to an audience looking for some familiarity with the characters. Gone were Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique, a lean, statuette, and calculating nemesis who was much smarter than everyone gave her credit. She was replaced by Jennifer Lawrence, a much more rounded figure who’s color had shifted from dark blue to sea blue and whose character was more motherly than vindictive. The only good character that came out of these revamped X-Men was Even Peters as Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past. In Dark Phoenix, he was rarely used.

But why are all of these films failing? Some could point to the fact that they have been infected with a virus of social justice warrior malaise. Ghostbusters 2016, as it is most identified to distinguish itself from the original Ghostbusters, was the film that had the all-female cast in the lead role. Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon re-imagined the characters. These were established comedic talents and I watched these talents go through a horrific script that they tried to defend. As I watched it, I gave them 15 minutes in hopes of seeing the comedy becoming active. That 15 minutes past and no comedy evolved. What surprised me the most was seeing the Bill Murray character get killed in their version of Ghostbuster 2016.

The film was not well received and was eviscerated and excoriated for depicting Chris Hemsworth as a dumber than dumb human version of a sex Popsicle. The aftermath was met with lines being drawn on one side defending the film against so-called misogynists, trolls, man-babies, and haters and on the opposite side of people who just didn’t find the film entertaining or remotely funny. The director of the film, Paul Feig, chose to go down the path an attack the fans, a practice an option that other directors and film companies have chosen to take with other high profile films that have been lackluster at the box office.

Rian Johnson went after the fan base after ill-received comments were made from fans following the showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Ron Howard went after fans following the dismal return on Solo: A Star Wars Story after it failed to live up to expectations. The Solo film had its troubles in the beginning plus it was difficult to see another actor play the role because we already had seen a younger Han Solo, the real Han Solo, at the very beginning of the Star Wars franchise. So the investment with a new Solo character coupled with the bad story premise did not go over favorably with the fans. And then came Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel made money but the money made and who contributed to the coffers is a question mark. Captain Marvel also started off with controversy following remarks made by its star, Brie Larson, surrounding the film, A Wrinkle in Time, and whether 40-year-old white dudes should be reviewing it. Captain Marvel was not a good film but the controversy that was created put Disney in a bad light. Captain Marvel was shoehorned between Disney’s most profitable franchise, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Before Captain Marvel’s release, it was being hammered by down votes on the film aggregate website, Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes suspended the ‘not wanting to see’ feature and revised its policy based on the negative feedback it was getting. The negative feedback was attributed to trolls and the narrative had been established even though no trolling had been taken place.

As each new film kept being pumped out, a new trend was being taken notice in the form of identity politics, SJW, virtue signaling, etc. If you haven’t heard the phrase, ‘get woke and go broke’, it is based on the ideology that if a film is pandering to the social justice crowd, your film will not do well. Dark Phoenix had Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Mystique, made the statement that maybe X-Men should be called X-Women, a cringe-worthy moment. It didn’t help the fact that a Marvel producer, Victoria Alonso, made the statement, “It’s funny that people call it the X-Men. There’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated.” The Batwoman trailer on YouTube has 75,000 likes to 390,000 dislikes from 5,5 million views following several cringe-worthy comments from Ruby Rose, it's the lead star, as she continues to appropriate Batman’s costume and belongings and becomes a squatter on his property.

Shaft, the iconic detective from the ’70s, made its second sequel incarnation over the weekend with a take of $8.3 million dollars, a haul that was severely much lower than analysts had predicted. Normally, this film should have generated around $22 million dollars in a much different climate. But Shaft fell prey to virtue signaling and compromising its core principles. It’s not about punches to the gut anymore, it’s about feelings. Feelings won’t stop a .45 slug coming your way. The OG Shaft has a grandson whose values are nowhere remotely plausible in the real world. It is purely Hollywood fiction. The OG Shaft dealt with racism and injustice while this Shaft deals with lattes and Lululemon’s.

Films are no longer relegated to the mainstream media for review. There are now more outlets and individuals with independent voices on different social platforms giving a more in-depth and critical analysis of films. There are some who even go into full breakdown analysis of the box office revenue and what it means. Mainstream media has started to lose its importance when it comes to being the only source for film reviews. Some of these mainstream media types have gone on record as to schilling for the major studios in order to maintain a good favor status so that they can still receive many of the perks and gifts from being a part of a much larger conspiracy.

The smaller film review bloggers like Grace Randolph, Anna from That Star Wars Girl, Jeremy from Geeks and Gamers, Eric from YoungRippa59, Gary from Nerdrotics, and MechaRandom42 are the new independent voices that do not follow the party lines. Some of them are the most in-depth well-spoken commentators to the film industry and to comic books that will not just follow some cardboard cutout talking points from some studio. For some reason, they believe that their voices have value and won’t be compromised. Hmm, imagine that.

So what is the solution to this problem? Maybe the answer lies in the history of these films. Surely, we can’t remain still without moving forward. At the same time, we can’t force an agenda down peoples throats. Right now, it’s all faddish behavior. Like all fads, they eventually will die out said the bell bottom pants to the hammer pants. Let’s go back to being entertained, to watching movies for the escapism not to being forced fed someone’s ideology. We got enough of that from the last election, from fake news and now it’s all about to start up again. Hollywood needs to stop second-guessing its audience while relying on outdated notions of what the viewing public will accept. Hire better writers who have more life experience. The original Star Trek never talked about inclusiveness, they did it organically. Please, can we put that word and diversity on the back burner and just watch the original Star Trek show us how it's done. Live long and prosper.

Dark Phoenix: A Film Review

Closing the Book and Wondering What Could Have Been

Cast:

James McAvoy … Professor Charles Xavier

Michael Fassbender … Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto

Jennifer Lawrence … Raven / Mystique

Nicholas Hoult … Hank McCoy / Beast

Sophie Turner … Jean Grey / Phoenix

Tye Sheridan … Scott Summers / Cyclops

Alexandra Shipp … Ororo Munroe / Storm

Evan Peters … Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver

Kodi Smit-McPhee … Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler

Jessica Chastain … Vuk

When I was just a young lad, I discovered the X-Men comic book and it quickly became my favorite comic book. Even among my friends, X-Men held high over Superman and Batman. Two of my favorite characters were The Angel because I envisioned me having the ability to fly with those wings and Colossus, with his ability to turn his skin into armor coupled with his super strength. When X-Men came to the big screen, The Angel was not a central character in the development of characters. He was only seen as a secondary character in X-Men: The Last Stand in a bit part and again in the dreadful X-Men: Apocalypse where his character is portrayed as a self-pitying drunk with low self-esteem.

Colossus came to the big screen in the much better X-Men: Days of Future Past and it too was in a bit role. His status improved much better with his appearance in Deadpool and Deadpool 2 that gave him more visibility as the comic foil to Deadpool. But neither of these two characters show up in what is considered the last X-Men movie in this long-running franchise. Dark Phoenix is the name of the latest film. Gone is the title, X-Men. I don’t know if that was by design or by opposition or was it a foretelling to a line that Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique character says within the film?

The time stamp on this latest X-Men adventure states that it’s 1992. You wouldn’t think much of it except the time stamp plays a significant plot point throughout the duration of this film but not in a good way. There is an immediate crisis that has unfolded. The space shuttle is in trouble and the President has called on the X-Men to attempt a rescue of the shuttle crew. As quick as you can say cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, the X-Men are on the ship and in space. In this iteration, the X-Men are not the ostracized children of society and are looked on in great favor. So, they forge ahead and come upon the shuttle.

Nightcrawler and Quicksilver pop over and retrieves the crew sans the commander. Jean pops back over with them but calamity ensues and boom, Jean absorbs the energy that was headed towards the shuttle. Of course, leading up to this is the worst dialogue among the X-Men that was the typical hackneyed drivel spoken when a person is left behind and there are imminent danger seconds away. Jean capitulates and finds her life in danger. We’ve seen this too many times and they dip back in the well for this tired trope. The crew is rescued and they return to a hero’s welcome.

Back at the school, Professor X and Mystique are having a heated conversation about the role they are playing with Mystique taking the position that their time with the humans is only short-lived depending on the weather. Charles disagrees and wants to maintain and cultivate the school as a benevolent entity. Mystique makes a comment that has no bearing on what they are discussing and feels like a total SJW comment pulled out of 2019. She makes the claim that the women have been saving the men more these days and that X-Men should be called X-Women. One, in the history of this franchise, the men and women have fought equally. Two, X-Men is the name of the franchise. Three, the comment takes you out of the movie and becomes a red flag issue of the specter of identity politics rearing its head.

There is also Mystique herself in that Mystique is not the Mystique of old. Mystique was or is a villain. She’s not as blue as she once was. This Mystique is a negotiator. She’s not the antagonist but instead, she’s a nurturer, a passive resistor. You don’t even recognize her anymore. She’s not the Mystique Rebecca Romijn established in the original film portrayal. This Mystique has subjugated herself into wearing a uniform. She even realizes this as she has expressed to Hank her reservation about her continued role at the school. For us, the viewers, we’ve seen the neutering of Mystique approaching this path for a while now and a lot has been lost in terms of strength of character and having a formidable foe with Mystique. Even seeing Magneto relegated to a safe haven caretaker didn’t make it any better.

I would like to discuss the Jessica Chastain character. Why was she there? Some alien entity takes over her body and she turns in Edgar and Johnny Winter’s kid brother. Of course, this takes place in the dark of night, another overused trope where you never really get to see what is going on. You’re left with guessing. No explanation is given on the aftermath of the dinner party. She just goes outside, goes all ‘Invasion of The Body Snatchers’ on us, goes back in and kills her significant other. Now she must locate Jean Grey and she does without the aid of a GPS smartphone because as you know, this is 1992. How are they finding each other in record time?

And speaking of Jean, she has believed that she had killed her parents when she was eight-years-old. She was half right. She killed her mother but her father survived the auto crash. Jean discovers that her father is alive through her newly enhanced powers. She goes back to her childhood home and finds him still in terror over the incident. Like that eight-year-old girls, Jean reverts to throwing a tantrum. The X-Men has strangely found Jean at her childhood home as they confront her. Now here is the odd thing. The police show up to the home in force in under five minutes. One, who called the police? Two, was the police station right around the corner? Three, what crime was she committing? These are legitimate questions to some gaping plot holes.

Jean has a dust-up with her team and in the process, she kills Mystique. It wasn’t shocking, at least, not to me. Hank is upset and so is Scott. The chemistry between Scott and Jean is muted. There is none that is on display. A team of bloodhounds wouldn’t be able to find any chemistry between these two. Even the original Scott and Jean didn’t have any. I guess they at least made this aspect of Dark Phoenix consistent with the previous X-Men.

Professor X is also facing some character issues. He has never been known to seek any glory with the good deeds the X-Men have done. Now he seeks recognition and the accolades that come with rescuing people. Of course, the premise is short lived and at the same time, you already knew that this concept was on borrowed time set to expire when a mutant goes against the normals. This is not the Xavier we have come to know. In Logan, we saw a broken, tired and resigned old man who no longer saw a future anymore. A younger version of him once cried out to Logan, “I don’t want your future!” Perhaps he didn’t know that it isn’t the future that you inherit, it is the future that you make. He has made his.

The third act turns this floundering script around a bit. It is the action scenes that are the staple to X-Men films. Sometimes it’s innovative and sometimes it’s just the paint by numbers routine rock-em, sock-em events. I think every action type movie should take a page from John Wick and steal their formula of not repeating the same stunts.

This, unfortunately, is not a repeat business movie. It is a one and done and closed the books on this movie franchise type movie. There is no sense of nostalgia like in Avengers: Endgame or Logan. You get no sense of being invested with these characters as they were introduced midway through the franchise. With Logan, we did get to say goodbye to the Professor and Logan after a solid run through some stellar and not so stellar films. Now if there ever will be a movie where Rogue steals the powers from Captain Marvel, I’ll be there.

Dark Phoenix was beset with production delays, re-shoots and bad word of mouth from the pre-screenings. I don’t get the sense of immediacy with this film. There is no clamoring of wanting to see this film. Wolverine isn’t in it. Will Disney pull a Captain Marvel and salt the box-office numbers and inflate the figures?  We don’t know what the future will hold in this film franchise as Disney holds all the cards now. Can it or will it be rebooted in five or ten years? In these immortal words from a once and future soldier, “Thank you for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.” Goodbye X-Men, farewell Logan.

Always Be My Maybe: A Netflix Film Review

Netflix’s New Approach to the Rom-Com

Cast:

Ali Wong … Sasha Tran

Randall Park … Marcus Kim

James Saito … Harry

Michelle Buteau … Veronica

Vivian Bang … Jenny

Keanu Reeves … Keanu Reeves

Susan Park … Judy

Daniel Dae Kim … Brandon Choi

Karan Soni … Tony

Run time: 1 hour 41 minutes

Do you ever wonder some times that your brain gets filled up with toxins after watching comic book movies and the dopamine levels are off the charts and your serotonin and endorphin levels are out of balance because you just one through a tunnel and emerged on the other side of the planet and somehow you survived it but now you need something to get your brain back to some respectable harmony? Your prescription then is to watch Always Be My Maybe, a romantic comedy penned by its costars, Ali Wong and Randall Park.

Now, who is Ali Wong and Randall Park? Ali Wong has been around for a while now and who is finally getting recognition for her work as a comedienne and writer for the show, Fresh Off the Boat. She is part of this cluster of Asian American actors who have been showcasing their talents to a more consciously aware audience. Randall Park has that familiar face that you’ve seen somewhere but can’t quite put your finger on it. You see him and you wonder, “Is that my gynecologist?” Randall’s face has appeared in many production houses and is a ready utility player to just about anything. He did play an Ophthalmologist in The Mindy Project thus the confusion of him being your gynecologist.

Always Be My Maybe was a delight to watch and see it unfold. The two main characters, Sasha Tran (Ali Wong) of Vietnamese descent and Marcus Kim (Randall Park) of Korean descent, are childhood friends who grew up next door to each other. Sasha was a latchkey kid growing up. Whenever she came home from school, she relied on herself to take care of her needs as her parents were busy with their family business. But she had a safety net in the Kim family. Marcus always invited her over to enjoy a family meal that was attentively cooked by his mother, Judy Kim. Somewhere in Sasha’s mind, a template was formed because Sasha grew up to be a world known celebrity chef.

Marcus, on the other hand, did not meet the stereotypical Asian goals and instead opted to work with his father following the untimely and surprising death of his mother during his late teen years. We watched, as Sasha to is affected by the death of Judy because Judy was by default, Sasha’s second mother. They both grief and agonized over Judy’s death but Sasha recognizes that she must do whatever she can to end Marcus grief, even for a moment. In an uncomfortable moment that takes place in his old Toyota Corolla, they have sex. The Toyota Corolla place a secondary role in this film later. The after sex conversation is more than a little awkward but in the hands of its costars writers, they turned awkward into some comedy gems.

Fast forward and we are firmly into adulthood. Sasha in enjoying her celebrity status as a restaurant scion while Marcus is a dope smoking musician air conditioner apprentice who has a goal in life to smoke weed every day. He has grown comfortable with having low ambitions. No need to rock the boat just keep the volume at a nice comfortable level. Our couple is reunited by chance when they get a house call for some air conditioner work at Sasha’s home. They are met at the door by Sasha’s second in command from her restaurant. We get no sense of lost tie between these two as time and distance just erases at that moment. If you are not subconsciously rooting for them, you know that somewhere in this story they will get back together but where exactly will that moment happen. Well, you can thank Keanu Reeves for that transition.

As we open the floor into their adult lives, Sasha has a fiance, Brandon Choi, played by Daniel Dae Kim, a self-important venture capitalist who markets his penis as a goodwill ambassador to the wealthy. He’s morbidly obtuse to other people feelings and lives a life of grandiose exceptionalism as he removes himself from the day to day drudges of a trivial existence that just about every American is experiencing. I must say the Daniel Dae did a very good job playing an asshole. If there ever was a Golden Globe for playing an asshole, I’d give it to Daniel Dae Kim. The best asshole category for the Golden Globes is Brie Larson for Captain Marvel, Daniel Dae Kim for Always Be My Maybe, Liam Neeson for Cold Pursuit and Brie Larson for Avengers: Endgame and the winner is… Sasha ends her relationship after he postpones their engagement and puts off the marriage after coming to a self-important revelation that only assholes are known to have. It’s ass-holy.

Marcus has a girlfriend named Jenny. She’s a living cloud. She lives with no drama and I suppose that is a good thing, to live a life void of any conflict.

Now I mentioned Keanu Reeves. He has a part in this that was a pure joy to watch and something we hadn’t seen in a long time, the comedic side to Keanu Reeves. Keanu plays himself as the rebound boyfriend to Sasha. In a bit of counter-programming, Keanu plays a pompous blowhard of an actor. He pulls out some of his old movies and current movie to let you know how pompous he is. He leaves everything on the table. He is the ultimate boyfriend, good at everything, sex, food, wine, martial arts, if it's doable, Keanu will make it very special and you’d want to have sex with it afterward. The restaurant dining scene is just stupid fun. What Marcus says after eating at this very expensive establishment was just hilarious. But Keanu serves as the catalyst for our main protagonists to get back together.

It starts off rough then smooth then really really rough until it becomes smooth again. This is the staple of the journey to romantic comedies. Netflix has another solid winner on its hands as this film joins, To All The Boys I Loved Before that starred Lana Condor, as the go-to streaming service that has found the formula for making good watchable rom-com. What made this particular iteration of a rom-com viable was that it didn’t shy away from the conversation of facing what was awkward in areas where awkwardness could have ruled in silence. Instead, it was addressed and it was allowed to move forward as a badge of honor. Score one for Ali Wong and Randall Park and score two for Netflix.

Ratings: 4 out of 5 stars