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Did One Awful Line Cost “Dark Shadows” Millions of Ticket Sales?

May 14, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In its second weekend of release, Joss Whedon’s Marvel’s The Avengers raked in yet another $100 million at the US box office. By next Friday its grosses should surpass 2012’s previous champ, The Hunger Games. Running a distant second place, Tim Burton’s $150 million reboot of 1979’s Love at First Bite should be proud that it earned in a single weekend what Disney’s Chimpanzee has earned in four, but appears unlikely to catch up to Disney’s John Carter by the end of its run.

I’ve seen six of the seven previous collaborations between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd continues to elude me) and respect their general track record as a team despite my misgivings over Alice in Wonderland. However, this weekend’s performance implies I wasn’t alone in being repulsed by the trailers.

Strike One was the music selected from old K-Tel disco compliations. I’m not a big fan of trailers augmented with overplayed Top-40 oldies, which don’t score nostalgia points with me as they do my peers and elders. In my ’80s youth, we were used to the occasional ’60s hit here and there in our trailers, frequently even sung by the characters. In the grand scheme, a twenty-year-old song was forgivable. Whoever edited the Dark Shadows trailer was required by the setting to indulge in a musical generation gap twice as wide. This year Curtis Mayfield’s “Super Fly” will celebrate its 40th birthday, and the other tracks weren’t much newer. Disco would be the perfect bait if the film’s target audience were former polyester dance-floor kings over age 60.

I realize the filmmakers chose 1972 as their landing point for a specific purpose, but did the trailer need to sound like every other 1970s spoof ever made? Was disco the only genre of choice for musicians from 1970 to 1979 in the same way that the 1990-1999 Billboard charts were comprised entirely of sad-sack grunge acts? Somehow I don’t remember it that way.

Think about that number again: forty years. Perhaps rose-colored glasses have obscured my hindsight, but I don’t recall ads for the original Fright Night featuring much Bing Crosby, or the Jimmie Dorsey Orchestra luring the kids in to see Jim Carrey’s Once Bitten. I am similarly unconvinced that The Lost Boys would have doubled its grosses if the Saxophone Guy had been replaced by the Andrews Sisters belting out “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”.

Strike Two was Depp’s portrayal of Eddie Munster as an anachronistic stiff with the self-awareness of Michael Scott. I hope the actual film at least avoids the hackneyed man-out-of-time joke from other movies in which a displaced hero looks at a modern car and thinks it’s a dragon, despite having wheels just like any known wagon from any previous millennium.

Strike Three was this slow-paced exchange of comedy death:

“Are you stoned or something?”

“They tried stoning me, my dear. It did not work.”

This was the exact moment that certified the movie as unwatchable for me. I know from bad puns. This is not how you construct a good bad pun. This…is a bad bad pun. This is humor for viewers who still chortle anytime someone says, “Ya think?” Those same fans are probably skipping theaters and waiting for its release on DVD, which might have been a better first home for this flick. I have no intention of getting past the trailers and finding out objectively whether or not this “joke” is an isolated instance, either in theaters or months later at home.

When it comes to TV-show remakes as self-parody, that quota is already filled on my shelves by The Brady Bunch Movie. I’ll pass.

Countdown: Four Weeks Until US Release of Last Ten Unspoiled Minutes of “Prometheus”

May 11, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Ridley Scott’s newest science fiction milestone commands the cover of the May 18th issue of Entertainment Weekly, whose sidebars in previous issues about the Alien prequel/spinoff/homage/whatever may already have said too much. If the official American trailers, several international trailers, viral-marketing future DVD extras, epic-length WikiPedia entry, and half-baked rumor sites haven’t whetted your appetite for advance knowledge (true or false), EW’s article also reveals which character is not quite human, which ones are corporate toadies, and which one is our primary protagonist. Along with those Dell-logic-problem clues, factor in the Hollywood pecking order of Academy Award Winner Charlize Theron, Academy Award Nominee Young Magneto, Lisbeth Salander Prime, Stringer Bell, Leonard Shelby, two male unknowns, and one female unknown. Savvy viewers should be able to calculate their order of elimination in the finished product with a margin of error of ±1 corpse.

If you mean to save yourself for the American release date of June 8th, hiding from the Internet will not be enough. TV ads have now been unleashed to the networks so that the Midwest will finally get a look-see. Expect more magazines to follow in EW’s footsteps in the weeks ahead, including the inevitable TV Guide cover straining to cash in on the hype with the most tenuous of TV connections. I predict a showcase along the lines of “Twenty Best Movies Starring Actors from The Office: Prometheus, Bridesmaids, Get Smart, and More!” I won’t be surprised to see ancillary merchandise at the comic shop. The true danger zone begins June 1st when the movie opens early in England because of favoritism. Expect Internet hall monitors to place their sites futilely on emergency spoiler lockdown when waves of soccer-hooligan trolls begin tweeting drunken screen shots and plot-loophole complaints live from their theater seats.

I count myself among the wave of fans who saw James Cameron’s Aliens before seeing the original Alien and consequently have a hard time discussing contrary opinions with old-school fans who were marked for life when they saw the classic chest-bursting surprise on the big screen. I may rank the four films differently, but to this day I don’t hate any of them (the two crossovers are another story). I hope not to hate this one as well, but with so much time remaining for so much more to be ruined, I may need to play the hermit card and go underground like Newt till it’s safe. I can’t just nuke the Internet from orbit, so there’s no way to be sure.

My Geek Demerits #1: No Midnight Showings

May 3, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

As I write this, millions of hearty moviegoers in the EDT zone are high on anticipation of tonight’s midnight premieres of Marvel’s The Avengers. Part of me wishes I could join the party and stay ahead of the curve on the online chatter and spoilers. Unfortunately, the majority of me has a full-time day job and a finicky attitude toward use of my vacation time. I’m weak like that.

Even if I’d taken the time off, my family would also like to see it, but they aren’t in a position to drop everything and go nocturnal. Sure, I could hit a midnight showing solo and plan my second screening with them at a later, mundane hour. That would be a boon if I love it enough for multiple showings. That worked for Chronicle, but what if something goes wrong? What if the movie is constructed entirely within the framework of the common Joss Whedon motifs of All Fathers Are Monsters, All Corporations Are Evil, and Destroy All Couples, all of which set me on edge? What if I hate it and find myself forcibly sequestered at the shunned contrarian end of the Internet next to Armond White and Cole Smithey?

I shudder to imagine enduring an encore for the sake of family quality time under those circumstances. I’m reminded of my final theatrical viewing of The Phantom Menace, in which I slept through the entire Tatooine sequence, even the podrace, as a defense mechanism. Knowing that I blew actual money on an extra ticket for that avoidable privilege added insult to injury.

Most problematic for me: my body can no longer handle gallivanting around town till 3 a.m. anymore. In my youth, I knew the occasional evening that ended with bedtime after sunrise. Today, retiring at midnight is normal for me (if not for others my age), but if I push too far beyond, the following day is made of regret, stupor, and double the normal assault of old-man muscle aches. Braving those hours of discomfort is not as fun a dare as it used to be.

I’ve had to learn to be patient and resist the temptation. For the sake of recognizing my limitations, I accept my geek demerit and will bide my time till Saturday without grumbling. I wish all the best to those superfans lining up hours ahead of the rest of us to see the best Greatest Film of All Time of the year.

Before you exercise your bragging rights too brashly, keep in mind: if you were a true hardcore Marvel’s The Avengers fan, you would’ve arranged to catch it last week in Australia. Waiting till it’s cordially escorted to your spoiled American front doorstep is weak.