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After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer
- autokad 2y agokind of unfortunate, I heard Furiosa was actually a good movie. though, I personally haven't been to the movies in about 6 years or so.
- OskarS 2y agoGo see Furiosa! It's not quite as incredible as Fury Road, but it's pretty darn great, and it's the exact kind of movie you should see in the cinema. Feeling the rumble in the chair from the sound system while watching is honestly thrilling. I realize we all have excellent TVs and sound systems at home now, but the cinema is still worth it, and especially for movies like Furiosa that were just made to be experienced in one. Watching at home is definitely a much lesser experience.
- gwill 2y agoI actually liked it better than Fury Road. I think I didn't reflect enough during Fury Road to try and understand the world. I dismissed it as kinda silly and figured i should just suspend disbelief, but Furiosa does a bit more handholding and gives all the background and depth Fury Road hints toward. Rewatching Fury Road after Furiosa helped me appreciate it more. Watching at home is such a diminished experience compared to a theater.
- vundercind 2y agoFuriosa may be thematically stronger than Fury Road. I was about to write “the character work and character-writing might be better, too” but then I remembered Nux. It’s a close call.
- drcongo 2y agoI also liked it better than Fury Road. I thought the action sequences in Furiosa were easily the best choreographed large action I've ever seen, but it's also a much more rounded film with some absolutely masterful shot choices.
- david-gpu 2y ago> personally haven't been to the movies in about 6 years or so Why is that? Is it the outrageous ticket prices? The 20 minutes of commercials and trailers before the movie even starts? The people who not only don't turn off their phones but actively use them during the movie and even make phone calls? Or is it the loudness of the theater that tries to hide the noise made by inconsiderate people?
- tempnow987 2y agoI was a heavy movie goer (no TV at home!) and used to go to a ton of movies - sometimes more than one in a day. Some things that are tough Totally ignoring patron behavior A group of older teens comes in, phones on the entire movie on bright, talking, cursing, just making a ruckus (maybe on purpose even) a row or two in front. If you are trying to watch a movie with your 5 year old kid (what I loved as a kid) this is no good! Fights / robberies in the mall / shopping area itself. Again, not the right vibe for kids to be part of and again no consequence / action. I seriously remember going to packed theatres with a totally cool / fun vibe as a kid - everyone pretty pro-social in terms of behavior. My parents would buy the ticket and leave us there. The other folks were basically a positive to the shared experience. The only issue was sometimes talking and the ushers would walk you out if you talked too much. I wear earplugs for the loudness - which is ridiculous. We ended up getting a projector for home. We can curl up (with kids and family as relevant) and have a better experience? So question: When does it come out on streaming? Also a hack if you still love movies. Go on a total off-beat time if you can a few weeks after opening. The attendance falls off hugely. But can still be a tiny bit hit or miss.
- InvaderFizz 2y agoI just watched it this weekend on a whim at the end of an all day date. We both enjoyed it a lot, we went and watched Fury Road at home after as she had not seen that and was very excited for it. I think I still like Furiosa better, but my opinion of Fury Road has improved upon the second watching. The viewing experience was great. There were like 10 other people in the entire theater and we had prime center seats.
- vundercind 2y agoPrequel? Bad sign. Fleshing out a weird movie world we’ve already visited? Rarely a good idea. See: John Wick. … but it was pretty damn good anyway. I like it more the more I think about it.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoFifth entry in a movie franchise is not generally a sign of quality either. Nor is being directed by the same guy that made a film about dancing penguins and another about talking pigs. I'm looking forward to it though.
- kingofthehill98 2y agoMarvel forever ruined Hollywood.
- ramesh31 2y agoSo did streaming releases + sub $1k 80 inch 4k TVs. The value of going to a theater at this point is almost nonexistent for most people.
- finack 2y agoI love movie theatres. I hate stupidly expensive popcorn and people talking and using their phones the entire time.
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- lancebeet 2y agoI think a fair question then would be what you actually love about them. Theaters do boast large screens with high image quality, but compared to a large flat screen you can have at home (where you can select your own seat) the difference diminishes. They also boast high audio quality. But as we all know, the audio quality is only great at a few seats in the center. You can certainly create an audio setup at home for not that much money that rivals the actual experience at the average seat. There are other reasons people like movie theaters: the inability to pause the movie, nostalgia, the gathering of many people to engage in the same experience. Many of these are, to me, almost inseparable from expensive popcorn and inconsiderate behavior, which movie goers have been lamenting almost since the invention of the motion picture.
- finack 2y agoIt's just kind of the experience, I don't know. It has a certain familiarity, but there's also the shared experience aspect of it. I don't like to be cloistered more and more at home, despite that being the overwhelming arc of American culture. Sometimes it's nice to enjoy a shared, familiar experience (even if the popcorn costs too much).
- finack 2y agoThe solution is painfully obvious for anyone who isn't actually involved in milking every last red cent out of media: make movies people actually want to see, and not just shameless cash grabs recycling everything from 1980 onward. Of course, now every suit expects every movie to gross a billion dollars, so that's not going to happen. It's a fun dream, though.
- saintkaye 2y agoLiterally all the numbers say the opposite. There is a ton of ink on the topic, but the core problem is that executives get fired for failures more frequently than they get expanded upside for hits.
- ksenzee 2y ago“Executives get fired” makes it sound like being fired is a natural consequence of a box office failure. Who is firing the executives in such a way that they incentivize mediocre performance? Maybe they should quit doing that?
- saintkaye 2y agoThis should help: https://x.com/TheMonologist/status/1795505661591040064 https://x.com/TheMonologist/status/1795505661591040064
- tdeck 2y agoI can't remember where now, but I read that these reboot cash grabs are largely aimed at overseas markets like China which make up the majority of film earnings nowadays.
- actionfromafar 2y agoExcept if there’s Winnie the Pooh in them, it’s sort of a litmus test.
- ethbr1 2y ago
- brk 2y agoIt really does feel like there has been very little originality in movies in the last decade or so. Too many comic book movies, sequels/prequels, and remakes. Couple that with the price of movies going up, and many times audience annoyances with people on their phones or just being otherwise distracting and it makes the desire to go see a movie in a theater pretty low for me.
- lawn 2y agoIt does feel like TV series have capitalized on it. Fallout for example was truly excellent.
- dageshi 2y agoA variety of mediums replaced casual movie going for a portion of people who used to go. Now I think a movie has to particularly resonate with the wider audience in order to get people to go out at all. Even beyond that, I wonder if the current young generation even watches tv or movies at all? Or do they watch youtube/twitch and play video games instead?
- mgaunard 2y agoThey don't play video games, they watch people play video games.
- ethbr1 2y agoAs a 21 year old explained to me, "Playing video games is a lot of work."
- SeanAnderson 2y agoEh. It's more like watching sports vs playing sports. They're both enjoyable but entirely distinct categories even though there's overlap in what's occurring.
- mgaunard 2y agoTo be fair, I don't understand watching sports either.
- fasteddie31003 2y agoThe article compares The Little Mermaid with Furiosa. The two movies cannot be any more different. I saw Furiosa and enjoyed it a lot. It's not a kid's movie... I think a summer blockbuster needs to appeal to a wider crowd.
- ManuelKiessling 2y agoI know that‘s not what this topic is about at its core, but let me tell you: go watch Furiosa. Like, right now. It’s a symbiosis of most enjoyable craziness and excellent execution like nothing before it. The central street war / chase scene borders on life-altering.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 2y agoMost of these seem to be "retreads". I saw Dune II and I thought it was very good. Too bad Hollywood is too afraid to invest in movies with a real story. Seems to them, Action means Bullets and Car Chases, SF means Special Effects and Lasers with nothing to do with Science.
- DHPersonal 2y ago> Most of these seem to be "retreads". I saw Dune II… I know what you mean, but this still made me chuckle, because the recent Dune’s a retread, too.
- readthenotes1 2y agoI don't think of the recent Dune as a retread, I think of it as switching to rubber based tires instead of wagon wheels and putting an internal combustion engine inside instead of horses up front
- giantg2 2y agoWhat did we expect? With the rise in content creation its turned into a fast paced content mill. Most ideas are not really new. The ones that are, tend to be more niche. With increased content options, the share of consumer will be smaller for any given one.
- nicebyte 2y agoLet it burn. > If the summer blockbuster season is ever to recover, it's going to require some blue-sky thinking. Yeah, revolutionary thinking like: stop producing recycled content slop, lower the budgets, make original films not based on pre-existing IPs. Maybe even try some relatable human-scale stories instead of wannabe grandiose "save the galaxy" type stuff. I can't believe a human being with a pulse can sit through a superhero movie. The way those things are constructed, their "nutritional value", is worse than run-of-the-mill degenerate isekai harem anime, expect the latter costs a lot less to make and wastes less human potential.
- throwaway5959 2y agoWe saw Furiosa in IMAX. It was amazing. It was also $45 for two tickets. Concessions were a bit more than that. Hollywood: Most families don’t have $100-200 to throw down on a single movie.
- darth_avocado 2y agoI’ve seen a lot of explanations for this, but talking to most people my age, there’s only one that’s the real reason: the economics are terrible for watching a movie. The tickets are averaging $20-30 per person around where I live. In 2018, the same movies cost $7-13. Parking and food push the costs even higher. All for a couple of hours of entertainment. I can watch the same movie for $20 when it comes out on DVD. It simply doesn’t make sense to go to watch a movie in a theater, especially when everything else is eating up people’s budgets.
- 201984 2y agoIf you're a regular movie goer, you can get a monthly pass for a little over $20 at the big theater chains. It pays off if you see 2 movies a month, or just 1 if it's IMAX.
- grugagag 2y agoYeah, but how many people do that?
- darth_avocado 2y agoThat works well when you go to movies alone, for a family of 4, that cost starts going up to $100/month. And unfortunately, not enough good movies come up during the year to justify spending $1000+ every year on just movies. You’re better off watching a couple movies in theaters and then watching the rest on DVD.
- ProfessorLayton 2y agoThat's a bit of a blanket statement because it's highly location dependent. For example here in the Bay Area, there's a decent amount of Cinemark locations available, and a subscription costs $11/mo for 1 ticket per month with rollover — and those tickets can be used for non-subscibers. They also allow additional ticket purchases at the discounted subscription price. Even if one only goes to the movies a few times a year it's still a good deal over paying retail. A family of 4 can go to the movies 3x per year on $132 here in the SFBAY, which is a far cry from $1,000. Yes, AMC has a much pricier subscription but they also hand out waaay more tickets.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoThe Mad Max movies weren't really blockbuster movies. They kind of appeal to a niche and not a more general "Action"-enjoying movie crowd. can't wait for the articles about how the movie flopped only because of a female lead. /s
- lolive 2y agoWhat? Furiosa is a flop????
- gensym 2y agoIt's been open for 6 days. It's a bummer that movies need to make all their money right away. Same with Fall Guy. Everyone I've talked to who saw it loved it. My wife and I have wanted to see it since it opened, but life is busy and this week is our first opportunity to do so. We're going tomorrow, which is the last day before it gets pulled from theaters.
- ameister14 2y agoThere are a lot of reasons for this, but for me, a big thing is how absurdly long movies are now. I look at movies and at this point will reject some that just feel like they will take too much time. I saw Furiosa, it was fine, but it was about a half an hour longer than it should have been. It's 148 minutes long. For comparison, Mad Max was 93 minutes long, The Road Warrior was 96 minutes long, Beyond Thunderdome was 107 minutes long, and Fury Road was 120 minutes long.
- insickness 2y agoThat's why I didn't see Dune 2 in the theaters. No way I can sit for three hours straight. It's just not fun after two hours.
- thenoblesunfish 2y agoThere are some reasons to be interested, given how expensive they are to make (in some genres), but overall I am always surprised how much we all seem to care how much movies cost and earn. I don't ask that about books or musical recordings or even TV shows, yet somehow with movies I'm an investor?
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoYou can get an 85 inch television for $800 after tax at Best Buy today. Maybe the market for leaving the house to watch a big screen just isn't there anymore. People have their own big screens now.
- musha68k 2y agoI wonder if the new FLirt Covid strain also plays a role here to some extent. I see more people with masks again and lots of people calling in sick actually.
- SeanAnderson 2y agoThis just feels like poor marketing. I am not an avid movie goer. I saw Dune 2 this year and did Barbie/Oppenheimer last year. In both scenarios I attended due to viral, word-of-mouth marketing. I didn't see specific trailers that compelled me nor was I anxiously awaiting the releases. In contrast, I heard nothing about Furiosa prior to its release, but have read tons of content about its post-release failure.
- haunter 2y agoI still go to cinema like 2-3 times a week, sometimes even more. Local chain has an unlimited pass for ~100€ (1 year). As a single person it's my favorite pastime, and I just like films
- msplurgid 2y agoMy perspective is likely skewed on this because of an anxiety disorder I'm still learning to deal with properly. But I wonder how widespread this mechanism I'm dealing with is. It basically goes like this: The world is freaking terrifying. Social media makes you constantly aware of this from the minute you wake up to the minute you fall asleep. All other media channels (which seem to largely hang off of or reference social media trends anyhow) aren't much better. Its literally impossible to escape. Constant argument, aggression, threat, and doom. Some kinds of brains cope with this by diving headfirst into fantasy realms. Disconnecting from reality by attempting to swap it for a different one. Video games, movies, anime, rpgs etc. Huge with that crowd. Other kinds of brains like mine, simply shut everything the hell out. Scripted drama becomes an uncomfortable reminder of the impending doom that you're already drowning in. Alternate realities can become just another trigger. I hardly watch TV, or movies. I write code pretty much. That's my escape because while there may be frustration, there is no aggression, no conflict, no drama. I imagine less nerdy people probably take up other crafts or hobbies. granted. seeing through my own lens. But I also know I can't be the only one coping this way. I wonder if that also isn't part of a larger trend.
- gmuslera 2y agoSequels, prequels, adaptations from other media, known stories, that is most that have been produced in the last years or decades. With that there are no surprises, no new stories, not a lot of innovation, people get bored or not interested, specially after a few hopeful tries that ended in deception, specially after a big media push. Making movies are seen as an investment that must have a sure return, there is no risk taking, not a lot of new approaches, and they won't end in black swans but in some variant of diminishing returns. The most surprising thing is that they are getting surprised by the outcome of this kind of approach.
- Grimeton 2y agoHollywood is in a decline for years and pushing politics and ideology in each and every movie didn't help either. People are just fed up by this nonsense and don't watch it anymore. A similar thing is (finally) happening in the gaming space, too.
- krapp 2y agoNo. Most people don't care. The group that sees "politics and ideology" ruining everything everywhere are an insufferably loud minority. Which is ironic because minorities are usually what set them off.
- Grimeton 2y agoIt's been going on for so long that more and more people realize what is being played and they reject it because they don't want any ideology being pushed onto their plate by a movie or a game. It's similar to the espionage problem with TVs, phones and OSs. And btw: It's funny how you can always get at least one person to jump on a comment like that and tell me it's not true.
- nataliste 2y agoThis was my experience. Same thing happened to gaming for me at the same time. It was around 2015 that I burned out. The last film that I tried to watch was the Force Awakens. It was incoherent, frenetic, poorly acted, and filled with in-vogue nonsensical pandering. Any interest I had in cinema as a medium evaporated. There's nothing filmmakers can do to make me want to watch films, let alone pay for the privilege--even if they somehow pandered to all my weird whims. Megalopolis is honestly the first film that I've heard about in almost a decade that sounded even remotely interesting, but then I saw the trailer and all desire to see it disappeared.
- iceburgcrm 2y agoCould be as simple as the cost and lack of money. Weak content / weak promotions. Covid: packing into a small area with many strangers inside for hours seems risky now.
- jonheller 2y agoI know I'm a bit sensitive to this type of thing, going to the theater is such a roll of the dice: - Will I set in front of someone kicking my chair? - Will I sit next to someone eating candy from a crinkly bag for half the movie? - Will I sit behind someone on their phone the whole time? - Will I sit next to someone talking most of the time? I go to about two movies a year because of this, but I would easily go 5, maybe even 10 times as often if there was a way these issues could be addressed.
- xnx 2y agoThe average person's TV setup (what used to be called "home theater") now matches or exceeds the movie going experience: volume control, pause anytime, cheap food, private bathrooms, no-one talking ot eating next to you, etc. I saw Dune 2 in a nearly empty theater and it was still a terrible experience (good movie though).
- ofcourseyoudo 2y agoNone of the explanations in this topic are relevant if they don't address that "Barbie", "Oppenheimer" and "Super Mario Bros" were all hits last year. Ticket prices, concession prices, streaming, attention spans, originality (or lack of), home theater setups, length of films... all of these factors were in place last year. It's probably worth looking at specifically why the marketing for the hits from last year was effective (Barbie marketing particularly was both ubiquitous and highly inventive) versus "Furiosa" and "Fall Guy". Also note that Fall Guy's box office was relatively okay compared to something like "The Lost City" but it's budget was much higher, making it a much tougher financial proposition.
- more_corn 2y agoI can’t tell if this article is from 2024 or some previous year. Maybe that’s part of the problem.