THE BATMAN - March 2022 - Andy's Review

[John Johnson]

DARKER and EDGIER trailer -- but Catwoman has little charisma I can detect. Fanboys seem very excited!

Darker and edgier are two words to describe Liverpool LOL

[Monterey Jack]

Purportedly a 2:55 running time.

[AndyDursin]

Lol. HBO Max will be just fine with me.

I remember when you used to complain when perfectly reasonable movies had 2:20 run times. Now we have 3 hour Batman and James Bond films

After the last 2 years this "even darker and edgier Batman!" take is literally the last thing I want to spend 3 hours of my life watching. Not one frame of this movie appeals to me from what I've seen. The comic book faithful will show up because there will literally be not another movie playing in theaters for 2 months after it so success is ensured, for what little that means today.

[Monterey Jack]

Lol. HBO Max will be just fine with me.

WB's done with "day & date" theater/HBO Max releases, which, considering the miserable performance of 90% of their 2021 slate, is long overdue. The Batman will be theaters-only.

[AndyDursin]

It will be on a 45 day window at that point. I don't care about seeing this in a theater so that's fine for me.

Most of these recent WB things would have bombed anyway, HBO Max or not. WW1984 was godawful. Conjuring 3 stank. The Matrix was a dumpster fire, I had to turn it off. Godzilla Kong was silly but for what it was, it made out fine because it's a brand. So is this. But the large amount of those WB films were just bad. In the old box-office marketplace all of them wouldve been big disappointments.

If they have a big movie that's going to play for weeks with no competition like Spider-Man, it will still make money and people will go, "see people still want to go to theaters!' The problem is theaters cannot sustain themselves on a single movie at a time.

[Monterey Jack]

Most of these recent WB things would have bombed anyway, HBO Max or not. WW1984 was godawful. Conjuring 3 stank. The Matrix was a dumpster fire, I had to turn it off. Godzilla Kong was silly but for what it was, it made out fine because it's a brand. So is this. But the large amount of those WB films were just bad. In the old box-office marketplace all of them would've been big disappointments.

It's still wild to me that one of WB's few money-makers last year was...Dune. Even pre-Pandemic, I had that pegged as another Blade Runner 2049, that would have received good reviews and anemic box office. Aside from that, Godzilla vs. Kong and Conjuring 3 (which quietly made $200 million worldwide on a modest budget), WB was bombing left and right, even for well-reviewed movies like In The Heights.

[AndyDursin]

I had that pegged as another Blade Runner 2049

But you weren't far off. DUNE barely did $100 mil in the U.S., BLADE RUNNER 2049 nearly did $200 mil in the U.S. By any usual box-office metric it was a similar type of performance (we used to call it a failure but times have changed lol). Cost was high, most of its money was made overseas -- actually more of it, meaning they took in less profit. In an ordinary time DUNE's sub-$400 mil worldwide gross would've been an even bigger let down than BLADE RUNNER 2049. Plus it was, again, playing clear of heavy competition, which has created this weird situation where you can have a shrunken box-office marketplace at the same time inflated grosses for certain movies since there's no counter-programming.

But it's also a different kind of movie: a PG-13 rated sci-fi franchise now aimed at Marvel fanboys. It should've been able to have a wider commercial appeal than the R-rated BLADE RUNNER 2049 ever would have.

It's funny though -- when we talk about BR2049, we also saw how the R-rated THING revival with MEW performed -- nobody cared about that at all. You want to talk anemic... In the grand scheme of things BR2049 did pretty well for an R-rated sci-fi blockbuster outside of the fact it cost so much. Some of these cult movies may have rabid fan bases but it doesn't mean they have wide commercial appeal to the masses, even today. Or at least fanbases who want to show up for a "revival".

At this point any future DUNE sequels are going to be made less because it was so profitable, but more because Warner wants to save face, seeing as the first movie didn't even tell an actual story and stopped dead in the middle of the first book.

Conjuring 3 (which quietly made $200 million worldwide on a modest budget),

This is true. The film however was an unqualified drop in quality across every facet, scarcely better than any of their endless CONJURING spinoffs. They had something special going for 2 movies there, which is a huge disappointment.

[jkholm]

Purportedly a 2:55 running time.

Further proof of the blurring of the line between a movie and a TV show. A 3 hour superhero movie is indistinguishable from watching 3 or 4 episodes in a row of a Netflix series. Eventually Disney will just make a six-hour Avengers/X-Men/Fantastic Four epic, split it into two parts and sell tickets to fans as part of a double feature event.

[AndyDursin]

Purportedly a 2:55 running time.

Further proof of the blurring of the line between a movie and a TV show. A 3 hour superhero movie is indistinguishable from watching 3 or 4 episodes in a row of a Netflix series. Eventually Disney will just make a six-hour Avengers/X-Men/Fantastic Four epic, split it into two parts and sell tickets to fans as part of a double feature event.

Please don't give them any ideas! Really though, for me, they're already there. They plant the seeds for future movies in every one of these films, none of them feel self-contained -- Marvel is like a big branded TV show for all intents and purposes. I mean it's one thing to plant seeds for a sequel in a movie but it's another to stop, say, a CAPTAIN AMERICA titled movie dead for a 30-minute advertisement for the next SPIDER-MAN -- when Cap doesn't even show up on-screen during that section!

One other thing while I'm on the soap box (this is more Marvel centric and really doesn't pertain to Batman admittedly): I remember reading comic books growing up and can count on one or two hands the amount of times Spider-Man's storylines, or even MOST story lines, were about SAVING THE WORLD FROM APOCALYPSE. The problem with the Marvel movies is EVERY MOVIE basically ends up there. There's increasingly little nuance or anything else going on in these movies, the last 20 minutes of every single one of them is exactly the same as they devolve into a computerized bath of repetitive special effects with climaxes interchangeable, and also indistinguishable, from one to the other. I understand it -- it sells internationally and brings them profits, whereas a more character-driven film -- like a story arc you'd see in an actual comic book -- wouldn't. I just don't like it.

[Monterey Jack]

But you weren't far off. DUNE barely did $100 mil in the U.S., BLADE RUNNER 2049 nearly did $200 mil in the U.S.

$92 million in the U.S. according to Wikipedia. And without Covid to contend with and a much more marketable actor. (albeit one who doesn't show up until the last third)

[Monterey Jack]

One other thing while I'm on the soap box (this is more Marvel centric and really doesn't pertain to Batman admittedly): I remember reading comic books growing up and can count on one or two hands the amount of times Spider-Man's storylines, or even MOST story lines, were about SAVING THE WORLD FROM APOCALYPSE. The problem with the Marvel movies is EVERY MOVIE basically ends up there.

I'm with you, there...it's like movie studios think, "We're spending $200 million on this, so the stakes have to be every bit as EPIC as our financial investment!"

I just started re-watching the wonderful Superman animated series from the 90s on the recently released Blu-Ray set, and there was a show that occasionally had Metropolis or even world-threatening events, but more often than not would have a silly, low-stakes plot with Mr. Mxyzptlk or the Parasite, or whoever. Same thing with Batman: TAS, where Bats should spend an entire comedic episode trying to keep Harley Quinn for having to go back to jail or whatever. And they'd do in in 20 minutes flat! Now we need a movie as long as NINE episodes of one of those 90s cartoon shows to tell a plot that's lumbering, distended and jammed with gratuitous commercials for future DCU/MCU products, instead of just concentrating on the movie you're watching. Imagine Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom having to take time out to set up plot points for The Last Crusade, which wouldn't come out for another five years.

[mkaroly]

I think I am pretty much in the minority with this, but I feel the makers of DUNE did the right thing in splitting up the movie into two parts, and I felt the "halfway point" they selected on which to stop the first film was appropriate. DUNE is too epic of a story to tell it in one 2 or 3 hour movie; part of the thrill of reading the 800+ page book (and the rest of the books which are all pretty much around 600+ pages each except for DUNE MESSIAH which is short) is that it takes time. You get to soak in the characters and the universe, and I don't mind doing so with a film as long as it is well made and engaging (which DUNE was for me). I hope that the second half of DUNE delivers as well as the first half did. All of this is, of course, in my opinion. I just got the Blu-Ray the other day and am looking forward to watching it again!

As far as THE BATMAN goes, as long as the story is engaging and interesting I am fine with a close to 3 hour running time. I am interested in seeing the film as I prefer a darker Batman character.

[AndyDursin]

One element where the 3 hour run time won't matter is because they are going to have 4500-5000 screens all to their lonesome. It's kind of like the new, post-COVID movie-going paradigm in motion: "the Blockbuster of the Month". People are going to "oooh and aaaah" over the box-office grosses when in fact they don't mean what they used to -- there will be virtually 0 other movies out for 6 weeks once it opens, so it's free and clear to generate revenue with no competition except itself.

That's the way it's mostly going to be from now on. Everyone else can steer clear if you don't want to watch more comic book crap aimed at 15 year olds.

[AndyDursin]

OK well I'm going -- mostly as an excuse to check out this theater's top of the line 4K screen, which renovated and moved into a complex that Showcase closed during COVID. Recliners too. I hope I chose an aisle seat because of the run time!

[Monterey Jack]

^ Sounds great!