Movies Talk! Talkin' about movies!

[RCBH928]

The movie. They’ve heard of the video games, but they’ve never played them.

Yes this is a good example. Making a movie based on a character usually has to be in parallel with its popularity climax. To clarify my point, imagine making a movie about ALF today. Yeah most people do not even remember him or if ever heard of him.

Going in the movie with your kids having no idea what they will see is equivalent to them liking Elsa from Frozen. Just saying, from my perspective , picking an older character way after its popularity heyday to make a multi-million movie on it is a little bit on the strange side of things. And the biggest question for me is, why now? CGI was great since like 2001/2 with LoTR , Spiderman, and the Marvel movies so that is not the excuse. Maybe someone finally saw a business opportunity and he was right.

The initial trailers were met with negative reactions. Sonic looked like something out of a nightmare and didn't look like the character from the games at all. After a lot of negative feedback, the studio redesigned him and ultimately tried to make a movie that fans of the games would be happy with, and it ended up being a big success. In fact, I think it destroyed that awful Birds of Prey movie at the box office
.

call me a conspiracy theorist, but I still think that was a publicity stunt and guerrilla advertising. I mean Gangster Paradise for a Sonic movie aimed at kids? really? I do not work in CGI but my understanding its very expensive to make those 3D models and takes a lot of time, they didn't have to recreate 1 scene they had to recreate the whole move! They also got it completely right in the "redraws" . Makes more sense that they botched a 2min trailer on purpose. From what I know about Hollywood, they would have released it as is and not risk spending more to correct it.

And I wouldn't compare Birds of Prey with Sonic, they are aimed at completely different audience. Its literally rated R which is a rarity now days

[prfsnl_gmr]

To clarify my point, imagine making a movie about ALF today.

A new Alf film would print money. I’m surprised no one’s done it yet.

[Limewater]

To clarify my point, imagine making a movie about ALF today.

A new Alf film would print money. I’m surprised no one’s done it yet.

I'd go to see Alf.

Mission:Impossible was an old TV show that had been off the air for years in 1996.
Batman was mostly associated with Adam West in 1989.
Transformers were mostly a nostalgia brand in 2007, though the late nineties Beast Wars show had been good.
G.I. Joe was mostly something people remembered from their childhood in 2009.
Iron Man was a B-tier Marvel property in 2008.
Captain Marvel was a novelty seventy years past his prime before they spent $100 million making the Shazam! movie.

[Ack]

I feel like it should be pointed out that while Alf was a television-only property for much of the world, the made-for-TV Alf movie that was meant to wrap up the series did actually get a theatrical release in Germany, so yeah, you could have seen Alf in theaters at one point.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I feel like it should be pointed out that while Alf was a television-only property for much of the world, the made-for-TV Alf movie that was meant to wrap up the series did actually get a theatrical release in Germany, so yeah, you could have seen Alf in theaters at one point.

So much regret. So, so much regret. I never got to see Alf in theaters? Why, God?! WHY?!

[RCBH928]

I'd go to see Alf.

Mission:Impossible was an old TV show that had been off the air for years in 1996.
Batman was mostly associated with Adam West in 1989.
Transformers were mostly a nostalgia brand in 2007, though the late nineties Beast Wars show had been good.
G.I. Joe was mostly something people remembered from their childhood in 2009.
Iron Man was a B-tier Marvel property in 2008.
Captain Marvel was a novelty seventy years past his prime before they spent $100 million making the Shazam! movie.

I see your point , but most of those movies are riding the wave of the super-hero movies that are printing money right now, while Sonic is a character from a videogame thats way past his prime of popularity. Surely its not selling as much as the Mario games, if anything we should have seen a Mario movie!?

you CAN make a movie from an older franchise, its that they usually do it in its peak of popularity. To illustrate my point, they should release a Fortnite, Roblox, or Minecraft movie now not in 2042. This is what I hear kids are into now.

I guess you could always re-ignite the popularity of a once popular franchise.

[Limewater]

I see your point , but most of those movies are riding the wave of the super-hero movies that are printing money right now, while Sonic is a character from a videogame thats way past his prime of popularity. Surely its not selling as much as the Mario games, if anything we should have seen a Mario movie!?

you CAN make a movie from an older franchise, its that they usually do it in its peak of popularity. To illustrate my point, they should release a Fortnite, Roblox, or Minecraft movie now not in 2042. This is what I hear kids are into now.

I guess you could always re-ignite the popularity of a once popular franchise.

They make plenty of movies about things at the peak of their popularity. My point was simply that it is not particularly unusual to take a neglected, past-its-prime property and spend a lot of money making a film adaptation.

More examples (no super hero movies this time, which exactly half (not most) of my previous examples were):

The A-Team (2010)
The Mod Squad (1999) (Only about $50 million budget, but it was the nineties...)
Rampage (2018)
Baywatch (2017)
21 Jump street (also only about $50 million budget. Maybe this doesn't count...)
Speed Racer (2008)
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
The Smurfs (2011)
Battleship (2012)

A common thread among all of these is nostalgia. Then again, it's quite possible that I only remember them because they are based upon properties that I remember from my own childhood.

Also, for what it's worth, it looks like there was an attempt to make an Alf movie about ten years ago, but things didn't come together.

[marurun]

My point was simply that it is not particularly unusual to take a neglected, past-its-prime property and spend a lot of money making a film adaptation... A common thread among all of these is nostalgia.

And not just nostalgia, but enough distance that people don't really remember all the things that really don't hold up these days (which is arguably part of nostalgia).

[RCBH928]

They make plenty of movies about things at the peak of their popularity. My point was simply that it is not particularly unusual to take a neglected, past-its-prime property and spend a lot of money making a film adaptation.

More examples (no super hero movies this time, which exactly half (not most) of my previous examples were):

The A-Team (2010)
The Mod Squad (1999) (Only about $50 million budget, but it was the nineties...)
Rampage (2018)
Baywatch (2017)
21 Jump street (also only about $50 million budget. Maybe this doesn't count...)
Speed Racer (2008)
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
The Smurfs (2011)
Battleship (2012)

A common thread among all of these is nostalgia. Then again, it's quite possible that I only remember them because they are based upon properties that I remember from my own childhood.

Also, for what it's worth, it looks like there was an attempt to make an Alf movie about ten years ago, but things didn't come together.

Yeah... I guess they do make movies based on franchises way past their prime although I do still think its not a correct business decision in most cases, at least surely if it was done during it prime it will make more money. Not a continuation of argument, just my comments about the list you made

The A Team
Mod Squad
Speed Racer
Battleship

all seem to have failed to make significant profit which aligns with my thoughts that movie based on a franchise after its prime of popularity is closer to failure. This can also be affected by the movie itself being a bad movie and nothing to do with the popularity of the franchise. I wonder if Speed Racer or Battleship was really popular enough to have its own movie any time in history.
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Some movies although based on a franchise you can go in without having any idea what franchise its about and still enjoy the show:

Sherlock Holmes
Smurfs
Rampage
21 Jump Street : I didn't even know this was based on an earlier franchise.

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You made one golden example, and that is Baywatch. It has to do everything with the Baywatch series that is waaay past its prime, in fact its iconic of the 90s era, yet it made a ton of money (3x budget, well Sonic is another one too). I guess these days just slap Dwayne Johnson's face on any movie and it will make a killing. This guy single handedly broke the idea that prowrestlers can't make it in the movie industry (I feel sorry for Hulk Hogan's attempt compared to Dwayne's).

Note: I took my numbers from the site: the-numbers.com

EDIT: This guy (Dwayne) is about to beat Vince McMahon in net worth! It is estimated he is worth any where from $300M-$1B ! Surprising compared to his other pro-wrestling colleagues that end up being broke. Another surprising one was Adam Sandler at $400M , although I like his movies, most of his movies is "straight to DVD" quality so thats surprising. I guess it has to do that he is not the actor but also the producer of his own movies.

[Raging Justice]

or the He-Man show from Kevin Smith, both of witch are almost universally hated because they both show zero respect for fans of these properties or the properties themselves.

Actually, the He-Man show was pretty well received in many corners. I grew up watching He-Man and the Filmation theme music is burned into my brain, as is the mellow voice of Prince Adam. And the only thing I actually didn't like about Revelations was that many of the voices just didn't match. If you look at the user review spread at places like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, the normal curve of reviews paired with the large number of 1* reviews is a clear indication of review-bombing, which is rarely, if ever, an indication of actual viewer reception. It speaks, instead, to the efforts of a motivated minority. And while Netflix doesn't release viewership numbers publicly, apparently inside baseball is that the show did great at grabbing eyeballs, which makes it a success by any metric. You've been spending too much time in the echo chamber.

I could say the same thing about you. Every place I follow hated it, which includes several popular youtube channels, the tons of subscribers commenting on them, and lots of people on social media...you know, ACTUAL EVERY DAY PEOPLE AND REAL FANS.

"Critics" and places like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes don't represent the general fan base. That's YOUR echo chamber And review bombing is what sites like rotten tomatoes say when they don't want to admit that fans disagree with them. That site actually has a history of messing around with user reviews and pushing certain critical reviews when they want to push certain movies.

But keep on drinking that media kool aid and let big sites like rotten tomatoes do your thinking for you