SpaceBallz wrote: ↑August 6th, 2020, 3:05 pmJonXCTrack wrote: ↑August 6th, 2020, 7:37 am I will say that Mulan is a bit of a test case. If that film does really good numbers on a subscription service, then I could see studios adopting that strategy.
I still say that the movie theaters missed a golden opportunity to set up temporary drive-in theaters in their parking lots. While certain films likely would have been pushed back due to needing time for editing and scoring, etc., others could still have been shown.
The real test here will be Bill & Ted 3. Mulan was announced for VOD but (1.) You need Disney+ and (2). Its not a franchise.
Covid ain't going anywhere and the studios will be placing close attention on the 28th.
Mulan is actually much more of a test case than
Bill & Ted. All the studios care about is money.
Bill & Ted 3 cost $25m, so if this thing does $80m WW or something like that, it will be a huge success for Orion, especially given it sounds like they're doing the rental model and they can still look forward to people purchasing it digitally and physically later.
Mulan, on the other hand, cost $200m, and Disney already shelled out money for a ton of marketing, since it was about to open when the pandemic shut everything down (Remember when people were mad about Sony not springing for a Superbowl spot for
Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Who's laughing now?). It sounds like
GB: A cost around $90m, but that's enough that
Mulan would be a better measuring stick as to what Sony might do than
B&T will be. If it's really a big smash hit? I could see them considering it, especially if it falls into the same "PG-13 but very much for families" vein as
B&T3.
Here's an article in Variety that repeats a bunch of the information I've mentioned in terms of how unlikely it currently seems that a major movie could do major movie business at home:
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/mula ... 234727271/ As for
Ghostbusters II, I agree with those who say the ending is a major flaw. You look at the incredible temple set from the end of the first movie, and then the finale for the second movie is basically an empty room with some cardboard boxes in the corner. They get knocked over, they can't get back up, the things they do to Vigo barely have any internal logic or rules. I like the idea that positive energy helps the Ghostbusters break the window and weakens Vigo, but that's about the only element of the scene that makes any sense. What is the nature of what he's doing to the Ghostbusters to paralyze them (as in, is he actively holding them down with some unexplained ghost power, or is it more like a supernatural rope)? Why can Vigo come out of the painting without possessing the baby if he needs the baby to live again? Why doesn't he behave like a ghost when he's out of the painting? Why does blasting the painting with proton streams do anything? Why does Vigo explode when they defeat him? If the filmmakers were going to do the reveal of the painting underneath, why doesn't the positively-charged slime wipe the Vigo portrait away instead of it just magically appearing? So on and so forth.
I also think the film just needs more scenes where the characters are visibly bouncing off one another in the frame. I made this observation on this very board a long time ago (speaking of very old posts), but for instance, in a scene like the one where they're looking at the museum encased in slime, Reitman cuts back and forth between the characters. A scene like the toaster dancing actually has the four actors in the same frame bouncing off one another, and has a better comic dynamic.
Lowest on the list (but still relevant) is the classic "it's the same movie" argument. This bothers me most when it comes to Hardemeyer's role in the story, and the unnecessary inclusion of Louis beyond the courtroom scene, and the inclusion of Slimer at all, as well as certain structure beats, like the placement of the montage.