Initial Oz reviews are baaaaadddddd......

Originally Posted By leobloom

>> RW, Strangers on a Train, and even North by Northwest (not as "deep," I guess, but hugely entertaining) are all better than Vertigo. I mean Vertigo's good, but the critics love to go on about how it's all about "the filmmaker's eye" and "Hitchcock's obsessions fusing with his character's obsessions" and they make it all meta... but I find it all kind of obvious. <<

Vertigo's one of the darkest, most twisted movies in the Hitch canon, which is saying something. And Jimmy Stewart is the most twisted character by the end of the film. Good 'ol Mr. Smith Goes to San Francisco and loses his mind.

North by Northwest has one of the great scripts (and scores) of all time. Strangers is nice, but I'd rank it second-tier Hitch. Nice carnival set piece, but don't find myself wanting to revisit it much. Rear Window gives Vertigo a run for its money for being the best Hitchcock, but the Bernard Herrmann pushes Vertigo over the top for me. Amazing filmmaking.

But Jaws the Revenge is right up there, too.

 

Originally Posted By Dabob2

<Vertigo's one of the darkest, most twisted movies in the Hitch canon, which is saying something.>

Oh, I agree. But I think the critics have decided "it's the darkest and most twisted; therefore it's the best." They aren't the same thing. I find the psychology in Vertigo about as deep as a kiddie pool (same with Spellbound). I like it for other reasons, but it fails at one of the main things it tries to do, which Rear Window, Strangers, NBN, and others don't (Notorious, Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, and criminally underrated Hitch like Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur.)

 

Originally Posted By Manfried

<<But Jaws the Revenge is right up there, too.>>
leobloom, you will be getting a notice of revocation of corn dog and Dole Pineapple Whip privileges shortly...

 

Originally Posted By basil fan

>>Oh, I agree. But I think the critics have decided "it's the darkest and most twisted; therefore it's the best."

Wait, wait, wait. As I understand it, you can disagree with the critics, but they are right and you are wrong.

Which begs the question, why do we even have discussion boards?

No, I don't hate professional critics. I am just truly, truly astonished that anyone would take this stance.

The thing I hate is when someone gives his honest opinion, and he's told flatly that he's wrong. Not, "I disagree with you," but "you are wrong for enjoying or failing to enjoy that."

Why don't we just post a respected critic's review, and we can all chime in with "I agree."

 

Originally Posted By Manfried

Or just "I disagree."

 

Originally Posted By Dabob2

<Wait, wait, wait. As I understand it, you can disagree with the critics, but they are right and you are wrong.>

I didn't say that.

<The thing I hate is when someone gives his honest opinion, and he's told flatly that he's wrong. Not, "I disagree with you," but "you are wrong for enjoying or failing to enjoy that.">

I didn't say that either. I said I preferred other Hitchcock movies, and why. I said Vertigo tends to be the most critically acclaimed Hitchcock movie (which is true; one poll even had it as "best movie ever") and I said why I disagreed with that.

 

Originally Posted By ecdc

>>Not, "I disagree with you," but "you are wrong for enjoying or failing to enjoy that."<<

Strawman. No one has said that. All I've at least tried to do is point out the silliness of dismissing all critics as either Average Joes, no better equipped to judge a film than my grandma, or as cynical misanthropic party poopers trying to harsh everyone's cinema buzz.

I could care less what kinds of movies someone enjoys, what kinds of movies someone doesn't enjoy, etc. Where people fail is when they take their enjoyment one step further and say, "I enjoyed this, ergo, the critics who didn't like it don't know what they're talking about since my opinion is just as valid as theirs."

 

Originally Posted By mawnck

>>Not, "I disagree with you," but "you are wrong for enjoying or failing to enjoy that."<<

For the record, I haven't said that either (at least not seriously). What you enjoy is your business.

"You are wrong for thinking that's a good movie" - Now THAT I have said.

And +1 for ecdc's post 207.

 

Originally Posted By leemac

It seems the international box office is underwhelming. In its third weekend Oz fell over 53 percent to an estimated $21.7 million. To date, the movie has earned $178.8 million internationally.

Even with Easter this weekend and China to come it looks like $250m might be the best to expect. In contrast Alice did $690m internationally.

It looks like domestic box office will be in the $200-225m range which combined with the international grosses means that Disney will lose money on this feature. Incredible that it will still take c.$500m but won't make a cent in profit.

 

Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA

<Incredible that it will still take c.$500m but won't make a cent in profit.>

Incredible. And kind of stupid too.

 

Originally Posted By DDMAN26

200 million shouldn't be a problem. In fact it should have enough in the tank to get past 230 million. Watch when Iron Man 3 is released, Disney has been known to shave a few million off a new release and give it to one that's been in theaters so if Oz is around 229 it may get a boost.

And internationally we'll see what happens in China.

And with the upcoming home video release it remains to be seen whether or not it can make some money.

To be positive it could be worse it could be Jack the Giant Slayer

 

Originally Posted By ecdc

This may have already been posted in this thread, so I apologize, but what was the total cost of the film for production and marketing?

 

Originally Posted By DDMAN26

According to Box Office. 280 million

<a href="http://www.boxoffice.com/statistics/movies/oz-the-great-and-powerful-2013" target="_blank">http://www.boxoffice.com/stati...ful-2013</a>

 

Originally Posted By CuriousConstance

I can't imagine how they spend that kind of money on one movie.

 

Originally Posted By ecdc

It really is amazing how filmmaking has become one high stakes roll after another. I'd argue it's a terrible way to run a business, but I'm not a Hollywood executive, where the average churn is less than four years. Turns out, if you gamble in a 200 million movie and lose, you probably won't keep your job.

 

Originally Posted By leemac

<<This may have already been posted in this thread, so I apologize, but what was the total cost of the film for production and marketing?>>

Approaching $200m. The production cost including the reshoots allegedly is closer to $300m.

To make a profit on its initial run Oz would have needed to take nearly $1bn to make a cent in profit.

 

Originally Posted By leemac

<<And with the upcoming home video release it remains to be seen whether or not it can make some money.>>

The residuals business is still declining heavily. Blu-ray just hasn't been the silver bullet that everyone hoped.

 

Originally Posted By leemac

<<To be positive it could be worse it could be Jack the Giant Slayer>>

Ain't that the truth. The whole model of studio tentpoles is bust - it used to be just movies released in the Memorial Day - Independence Day run but now it seems a $200m-plus movie can be released at any time. This weekend's GI Joe sequel is meant to have been close to $200m too.

 

Originally Posted By leemac

<<Turns out, if you gamble in a 200 million movie and lose, you probably won't keep your job.>>

Unless your name is Robert Iger it seems. This is entirely his strategy and so far he hasn't had much success with it. The Studio would have lost money last year if it wasn't for The Avengers. It wasn't just John Carter - both Brave and Wreck It Ralph lost money on their initial runs. Madness.

 

Originally Posted By FerretAfros

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but I think that Iger is running TWDC into the ground. Having already announced his departure from the company years in advance, he sees that he can milk the existing properties for all they're worth, and leave right around the time that they dry up, without having created any noteworthy content legacy of his own. It seems that investors love him, but I can't see how TWDC can continue on its current trajectory for another 5+ years. Hopefully whoever replaces him has a strong and swift plan of attack for how to overhaul the studios (among other things).

I recently watched a couple old Disney Channel Original Movies that I DVRed, and it really worked as a symbol for me of how bad things have gotten. These aren't great films by any stretch of the imagination, but they've got a lot of charm and heart to them, and were never meant to be blockbusters. And since they released a new one every month, nobody had super high expectations for them, so they were all generally well recieved (heck, they still stand up pretty well over a decade later). Ever since the huge success of High School Musical, they've tried to make the DCOMs into big lavish events, and they mostly had a tepid-to-lukewarm response.

In general, it seems that the made-for-TV-movie has all but gone extinct (Lifetime and Hallmark excluded), and I think it's a result of the focus on big-budget features; I also think that very same shift in focus is a big part of why we've seen so many big-budget features that are just kind of crummy in recent years.

>>Blu-ray just hasn't been the silver bullet that everyone hoped<<

Perhaps it's because they keep releasing the films closer and closer to the theatrical release. I understand that their logic was to "get it while it's hot", but if I just spent money to see a movie a couple months ago, I doubt I'll spend money to see it again for a while. That's just not how my personal budget works. In 9-12 months (the old model), sure I might be interested. But it seems that those types of films are tough to find on the shelves any more. Just another incident of Iger's policy gone awry.