Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 9058943" data-attributes="member: 6988941">I guess you took my saying it "suffered" from Cannes to refer to it's box office. I was just talking about why the critical reception was so oddly negative.On the financial point, I think the value of the franchise in the 1980s really has only tangential weight on the value as a nostalgic property in the 2020s. It's simply not the same people seeing movies. The value of an 80s franchise today is about what cultural resonance it had in the intervening years, not what numbers it did 30-40 years ago. There were seven Police Academy movies from 1984-94, with a combined gross of over a half-billion dollars before inflation, but nobody's betting on that franchise for a nostalgia cash grab (I have only ever heard it mentioned to marvel at how many entries there somehow were). Meanwhile 1987's The Princess Bride was barely a success (the financially disappointing sixth most successful Police Academy movie did somewhat better numbers) but has continuously maintained or gained popularity in the intervening years and would almost certainly be the more valuable "franchise" if someone could figure out a way to monetize it.An unusually large number of big movies seem to be financial disappointments this year. I think the basic issue is that a lot of people who rarely went to the movies pre-pandemic transitioned into being people who never go to the movies at all post-pandemic. At this point they probably get a better viewing experience at home, the waiting period to a streaming launch is pretty negligible, and costs of tickets feel truly obscene to anyone who already felt they were overpriced years ago and then wasn't around for several rounds of price hikes. Also, when the D&D movie got me to make my first multiplex visit since 2019 that it was just no longer a familiar process in my comfort zone. I had gone all touch screen ticket purchasing, had adopted assigned seats, and seemed to primarily be geared towards holders of unlimited passes. I got the hang of things quickly enough, but if I was a bit older, a bit more curmugeonly, and a bit more ambivalent about the thing I was going to see I probably would have just walked away.</blockquote>

Verification