New Terminator from Cameron will ignore all but T1 and T2

[Dannyalcatraz]

It’s 2017. We have the internet, and Netflix, and iTunes, and IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes, and Facebook, and ... its decades since you had to go to Blockbusters and browse the shelves.

Not hard to find.

OK, I was ONLY thinking in terms of first run theatrical release, not in the post-theatrical market.

 

[ccs]

Problem is people dismiss the original stuff as pretentious without even seeing it.

Have you read the synopsis of the most recent Best Picture winner?

Now to be fair, I have seen most of the rest of the recent BP list.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. So you need to do a threequel to T2 20+ years after it came out. How about you say screw this 'save the world' stuff? It's been done. Skynet is beaten. You tried a few times to send Terminators back to prevent Judgment Day but it never worked, just rejiggered reality a bit. Now it's 20X6, and you're John Connor, hero of Mankind.

And you have a time machine.

Well, you've figured out you cannot alter history, but you want to fix the future, right, and allow Mankind to rebuild? Plus, just because the central computer running the Terminators is defeated, that doesn't mean all the free-roaming murderbots just shut down. You've still got to purge the world of these robots before they build a new manufacturing infrastructure and build a new Skynet.

Okay, how about you figure out where all the clusters of modern Terminators are, and then send a Terminator back to acquire some explosives, bury them in those locations, and set them to detonate today. You send another one to collect as much of humanity's knowledge as possible, store it in digital form, and then march to the top of Mount Everest until the machine war is over, then come down to deliver troves of lost knowledge. You send one to attend medical school, then hide itself in a cave for 30 years, then come out and teach a new generation of doctors.

And then, in the midst of rebuilding human civilization . . . a cyborg appears, from the future, sent back in time to stop you.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It’s 2017. We have the internet, and Netflix, and iTunes, and IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes, and Facebook, and ... its decades since you had to go to Blockbusters and browse the shelves.

Not hard to find.

Actually, that's the problem -- so much noise, so little actual signal in it. The things that get heard are those that are shouted loudest, and most of the shouting seems to be drivel. The real quality stuff is just drowned out.

 

[Morrus]

Actually, that's the problem -- so much noise, so little actual signal in it. The things that get heard are those that are shouted loudest, and most of the shouting seems to be drivel. The real quality stuff is just drowned out.

Summer blockbusters having high ad budgets is a far cry from your initial proposition that Hollywood simply isn't making original movies, though.

I agree, it would be nice if they advertised them a little more. I still dispute that they're hard to find in this day and age though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Summer blockbusters having high ad budgets is a far cry from your initial proposition that Hollywood simply isn't making original movies, though.

I agree, it would be nice if they advertised them a little more. I still dispute that they're hard to find in this day and age though.

And I'll still assert that it is the case on first theatrical runs.

 

[Morrus]

And I'll still assert that it is the case on first theatrical runs.

I’m sure your cinema has signs and a website telling you what’s on?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’m sure your cinema has signs and a website telling you what’s on?

I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this...

The small suburb in which I live has no movie theaters. The closest one in the suburb to my north is a "Dollar Theater", which shows secondary run movies only, for $1 admission.

The closest one to my south is a nice 10-screen one that used to be run by AMC. It is now owned by a local Indian family, and specializes in foreign- mostly Indian- films. No marquee.

There is a movie house to the north not much farther away than those that is kind of a "dinner theater" place. Younget restaurant food as opposed to typical movie fare, your seat has a foldaway tabletop, etc. Nice place. No marquee. And again, they skew towards the bigger films.

The closest 2 in Dallas are an IMAX- which shows primarily blockbusters and the odd left-field success like March of the Penguins- and a huge multiplex I used to go to a lot. (Saw The Avengers there.) But the area is isolated and crime ridden since many of the nearby restaurants closed down. Good place for a drug deal; bad place for an evening of film fun.

Now, as for me personally, I don't go looking for movie ads online. If I don't hear about a film via word of mouth, TV (or rarely) radio buys, or some kind of online ad banner, I don't hear about them. Why?

It isn't my job to do the movie studio's publicity arm's work for them.

And here's the thing: I'm the same way with music, but I have a 5000+ CD collection. I listen to and buy some pretty obscure stuff. And despite not being an active, website-scouring consumer, and with the decline of CDs in favor of downloaded media, I still manage to find and buy as many as 100 CDs per year. The music companies- and sometimes the artists themselves- simply do a much better job of promoting their less mainstream releases.

 

[Morrus]

It isn't my job to do the movie studio's publicity arm's work for them.

Well, OK then. I don’t know what to say to that. If I’m interested in something, I look for it. I don’t consider it a job. If I want Italian, I’ll google Italian restaurants. If I want a chair, I’ll look for one.

If you aren’t interested enough to look for a certain type of thing, that’s cool. I’m not sure why one would then complain that said type of thing isn’t there for your consumption, though. Seems kinda self-sabotaging.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Searching for commodities, foods, services, etc. is a little different.

Unlike the theaters around here, I can actually drive around and see find what I want from a moving car. Unlike the movies, those businesses- even the tiny ones- still put ads in media.

If I want Italian food, the signage is visible wherever I go. Every once in a while, I'll even go to one that is so small, the signs for it are barely noticeable.

But films? Unless I know what a studio is releasing via their advertising, its detective work to get that info. There are precious few pastimes I enjoy enough to work that hard for. RPG gaming is one. Guitar playing is another. Books are a third. Gems for jewelry design- simply by necessity- are a fourth. That's about it.

I don't have to work to hear about blockbusters. I see ads on TV and in print media, or hear them when I (rarely) listen to radio. I even get ads for them in pop ups on YouTube or in games which use ads to lower their prices or even make them free.

But no such effort is done for the "quality" films. They're pretty much left to fend for themselves. I'm not saying that merely as relative to their blockbuster studio mates. I'm saying that as someone who has actually looked at studio contracts, where you can see in black & white & $$$ what resources will be allocated to films at a certain level. Studios simply don't allocate the same resources to those projects, not even proportionally.

To clarify, if a $100M film gets a $10M promotions budget, that will be spread over all kinds of methods. If the same studio releases a $10M film, it won't have a $1M promo budget, and some resources will simply not be offered to promoting it.

There are valid business reasons for this.. That doesn't make it any easier for the film in question, though.