What is it with these Disney blockbusters?

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I literally finished watching Moviebob's review of The Lone Ranger less than a minute ago, and now I feel almost obligated to make this thread. This has been bothering me for quite a while and I'd like to know if someone else's thought the same:

What is really the deal with Disney's summer blockbuster attempts?

Prince of Persia, Tron Legacy, Hidalgo, John Carter, The Lone Ranger, the list doesn't seem to be stopping from growing. Big, massively marketed action movies with huge budgets behind them, none of which have been either commercially or critically very succesful. John Carter is apparently still the most money-losing film of all time. Why can't the biggest Skynet-to-be candidate right after Google seem to be able to make a, if not good, at least succesful summer blockbuster?

They had a good run with Pirates of the Caribbean, but even those petered out eventually (I'm not sure if On Stranger Tides was a huge success or not). The Avengers was Marvel's own thing which they'd been building up for years before being bought by Disney. You'd think that after so many misfires the company would at least try to take a hint and attempt to do something different than "amped-up adaptation/sequel of old property that's not that big anymore", try to bring some talent into the mix, something. Michael Bay might be making another movie equivalent of the ebola virus year after year, but at least his movies make money. Disney has a far better track record and basically entire continents worth of money to do basically whatever they want, so why do they attempt to get the Pirates lightning to strike twice with these not apparently very good movies (haven't watched any of the myself, so can't comment on that).

Anyways, thoughts?

 

[ItouKaiji]

I think they're stuck in a creative rut. As you said they struck gold with Pirates and now they think that's the kind of big spectacle they need to produce to be successful. It's the summer time and everyone wants to have their slice of the blockbuster movie pie, Disney is no different.

 

[Soulrender95]

You forgot national treasure 1 and 2, which along with PotC: Black pearl, John Carter and Prince of persia I enjoyed as solid popcorn flicks.

I think the real problem is when we get down to it Curse of the black pearl is actually a fairly terrible movie script saved by Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp just really enjoying it for the fun nonsense it was, that just happened to hit at the right time to ignite the public's imagination.

right place right time, they've been trying to recapture the "magic" so to speak without understanding why the first pirates worked at all, It was something we hadn't seen in ages and was wildly different than anything else in ages and well... Johnny Depp who wasn't a pop culture icon at the time so his quirkiness was fresh and exciting, not boring and predictable and exactly like you'd expect Johnny Depp to act.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

John Carter was actually a good movie. Pirates was good...the 3rd one took a while for me to appreciate it.
Tron Legacy was also good. Prince of Persia was forgettable. I don't have any interest in seeing any of the other movies.

To me, Disney fell off after Aladin, or The Lion King (whichever was the latest one). Pixar usually delivers the goods, but I think the Disney paradigm for developing characters isn't clicking with this generation.

I thought "How To Train Your Dragon" was the first movie that actually showed some possible consequences of being a hero, and it was believable. Brave was a good flick too, but for some reason Disney hasn't learned from Pixar or Marvel about characters. It's really weird. There's a part of me that wants to hurl when you mention "Disney". I can't even play any of the Kingdom Hearts games b/c of that false happy vibe they create.

The old Disney will always be the better version - Bambi, Snow White, 101 Dalmations, Jungle Book, etc because the good and the bad characters were believable.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Eh...I actually don't think most of them are that bad.

Prince of Persia was pretty good for a videogame movie. In fact, I would even go as far as to say it was the best videogame to movie adaptation released up to that point.

Tron Legacy was pretty good, but with kind of a niche audience to appreciate it. It's hard to find someone from the audience the film was marketed to who had actually watched the original Tron movie, or even knew what the hell it was. That was really a misstep on the part of the marketing itself though, not the fault of the movie.

Hidalgo was pretty alright from what I remember of it (which actually isn't very much).

John Carter was pretty much crap.

Haven't seen The Lone Ranger.

I think the problem with a lot of the Disney Blockbuster movies is that they are made based on properties that are only really well known by a small group of people. I mean, all of us know what The Lone Ranger is, but how many of us are actually old enough to have ever watched the TV show, or listened to the radio broadcast? There's no reason to adapt these properties because there really isn't a massive install base of views lining up to see them specifically because of the name of the property itself. This isn't really a problem with the movies themselves which tend to be fine, even above average, movies. The problem is that Disney keeps trying to bank on names which aren't big names anymore, and really haven't been in decades, and which don't even have the pull of nostalgia in their favor.

These movies keep failing not because they're bad movies, but because they aren't movies that anyone asked for. No one has been dreaming of seeing the John Carter books on the big screen, or a sequel to Tron, because most of the people who spend money to go to the movies have never seen heard of these properties.

 

[Albino Boo]

I literally finished watching Moviebob's review of The Lone Ranger less than a minute ago, and now I feel almost obligated to make this thread. This has been bothering me for quite a while and I'd like to know if someone else's thought the same:

What is really the deal with Disney's summer blockbuster attempts?

Prince of Persia, Tron Legacy, Hidalgo, John Carter, The Lone Ranger, the list doesn't seem to be stopping from growing. Big, massively marketed action movies with huge budgets behind them, none of which have been either commercially or critically very succesful. John Carter is apparently still the most money-losing film of all time. Why can't the biggest Skynet-to-be candidate right after Google seem to be able to make a, if not good, at least succesful summer blockbuster?

They had a good run with Pirates of the Caribbean, but even those petered out eventually (I'm not sure if On Stranger Tides was a huge success or not). The Avengers was Marvel's own thing which they'd been building up for years before being bought by Disney. You'd think that after so many misfires the company would at least try to take a hint and attempt to do something different than "amped-up adaptation/sequel of old property that's not that big anymore", try to bring some talent into the mix, something. Michael Bay might be making another movie equivalent of the ebola virus year after year, but at least his movies make money. Disney has a far better track record and basically entire continents worth of money to do basically whatever they want, so why do they attempt to get the Pirates lightning to strike twice with these not apparently very good movies (haven't watched any of the myself, so can't comment on that).

Anyways, thoughts?

John Carter made a profit of $30 million, mostly from China. Disney keep it simple and don't aim for the moon and make films that are accessible to non western markets and get a high chance of a small profit. If they hit the big time and rake in the cash like they did with Pirates thats a bonus. The films are made to formula and it works.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

snip

John Carter made a profit of $30 million, mostly from China. Disney keep it simple and don't aim for the moon and make films that are accessible to non western markets and get a high chance of a small profit. If they hit the big time and rake in the cash like they did with Pirates thats a bonus. The films are made to formula and it works.

If you're referring to it taking about $282 million at the box office compared to its $250 million budget (taken from Wikipedia), it still lost money. A general rule for movies (of that size at least) is that they have to make about 2,5 times their money back in box office sales before they break even. Film budgets don't include, for example, advertising, which is a huge chunk of the movie's overall cost.

 

[Dangit2019]

horse fucking bronys

Welcome to the Escapist! You probably should've read the forum rules before posting as you are just asking for mod wrath with that post, but welcome anyway!

OT: They just throw their money at guaranteed profits and safe-bet cash cows. The good ones are only good and the bad ones are only bad because of the creative talent, not the financiers.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

horse fucking bronys

Welcome to the Escapist! You probably should've read the forum rules before posting as you are just asking for mod wrath with that post, but welcome anyway!

OT: They just throw their money at guaranteed profits and safe-bet cash cows. The good ones are only good and the bad ones are only bad because of the creative talent, not the financiers.

But there's the thing: the films aren't even safe cash cows. If we follow the "2,5x budget at box office" rule, Tron: Legacy is the only one of the films I mentioned that actually made profit (not counting Lone Ranger, since it's only just come out).

Prince of Persia: budget around $150-200,000,000 took $335,154,643
John Carter: budget $250 mil., took $282 mil.
Hidalgo: budget about $100 mil., took $108 mil.
Tron: Legacy: budget $170 mil., took about $400 mil.

But it's Disney's money, so they can waste it as much as they want.

 

[Dangit2019]

But there's the thing: the films aren't even safe cash cows. If we follow the "2,5x budget at box office" rule, Tron: Legacy is the only one of the films I mentioned that actually made profit (not counting Lone Ranger, since it's only just come out).

Prince of Persia: budget around $150-200,000,000 took $335,154,643
John Carter: budget $250 mil., took $282 mil.
Hidalgo: budget about $100 mil., took $108 mil.
Tron: Legacy: budget $170 mil., took about $400 mil.

But it's Disney's money, so they can waste it as much as they want.

It's hard to predict how much money a movie will take in, and distributors usually don't examine too closely to reality, for the most part they carry a big, flawed checklist to determine blockbusters. For example, all those movies:

1. Are based on established stories or franchises

2. Have big-name, bankable actors

3. Are all expensive. Believe it or not, expensive movies usually (not always) sell easier than lower-budget movies. You'd think that it'd be easier to sell a small, $1 million romantic drama, but Average Joe is going to want to spend money on the movie that has its poster projected on Times Square.

So, why do these movies fail to make a billion dollars each like Marvel Studio movies? Well, for this I'm going to have to go to Jim Sterling's pasta sauce analogy: Disney keeps trying to make the be-all, end-all blockbuster that can relate to literally anybody with enough income to buy a movie ticket when they should be making much more movies geared towards a single, profitable audience that at the same time will entertain people outside the market.

I mean, Avengers is the 3rd biggest film in history, and it's the story of a bunch of superheroes fighting off aliens at the culmination of many pre-established continuity threads. If it wasn't a pre-established franchise with bankable actors and a huge budget, I assure you Disney would've bailed in an instant.

So that's why we get the Lone Ranger: Pre-established franchise, bankable actors, expensive production. It could've actually been a huge movie instead of a movie making its money back, and I believe all it would've had to do was be a love letter to the Western serial instead of a being a dark and edgy "reimagining" trying to entertain every single audience possible. The irony is that the only thing holding it back from profit on a huge scale is the producers own fear of not marketing to EVERYONE.

 

[ImSkeletor]

I literally finished watching Moviebob's review of The Lone Ranger less than a minute ago, and now I feel almost obligated to make this thread. This has been bothering me for quite a while and I'd like to know if someone else's thought the same:

What is really the deal with Disney's summer blockbuster attempts?

Anyways, thoughts?

Tron legacy was plain and simply a hit and they are working on a sequel and they made a spinoff cartoon. It came out at an off time and had a relatitively small marketing budget. The others, were pretty major flops and the main problem is their budgeting. A Lone Ranger adaption should NEVER have took more than 100,000,000 million to produce and even that would be exorbenant. It's a western. The point of the genre from a production stand point is its cheapness.

 

[Angie7F]

I agree. They are in a serious rut.
Why would you choose to make Lone Rangers of all things. lol

 

[gamernerdtg2]

I agree. They are in a serious rut.
Why would you choose to make Lone Rangers of all things. lol

B/c they have J. Depp playing Tonto and he's always doing something eccentric with his characters. I'm mildly curious about Depp's take, but not curious enough to see the movie.

 

[Lilani]

Anyways, thoughts?

Well, the one thing Pirates really did for them was get their foot in the door for the young boy's market again. For a while there, they mostly had the princess set to market, which was fine for little girls but they were losing the boys. So first they changed the Toon Disney channel to Disney XD, and made that cater to young boys. Then they ramped up their marketing of Pirates to a whole new level. In the Disney parks, they have the Bibbidy Boppidy Boutiques where girls can get dressed up as princesses. However, they now have places where boys can get dressed up as pirates. So now with Disney, princesses are ubiquitous with girls and pirates are ubiquitous with boys. So naturally they want to keep this relevant as long as they can, so making new Pirate movies keeps that marketing angle alive.

But other than that, I think it's been pretty evident for a while that Disney is getting back on its feet with its animation department, but with their live-action movies they've still got a ways to go. Princess and the Frog was a great change of pace, Tangled was great, the new Pooh movie was a great reboot/reintroduction, Wreck it Ralph was a successful enough risk, Phineas and Ferb is awesome, Gravity Falls is another great change of pace...they're really getting themselves back into the market as far as that's concerned. But it seems they haven't quite recaptured their old magic in live-action movies yet. The first Pirates was great, but it seems they're pulling a Michael Eisner and are trying to pull as many sequels out as possible because they're afraid they won't make lightning strike twice with a new franchise.

So that's my take on it, anyway. Their animation department is starting to thrive again, but they still can't find their place again in the world of live-action films. Though I will say Oz was great, hopefully that gives them a bit more bravery going forward.

 

[HardkorSB]

Why can't the biggest Skynet-to-be candidate right after Google seem to be able to make a, if not good, at least succesful summer blockbuster?

Erm... what?

2010 - Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Tangled, Tron Legacy, Prince of Persia - around 3,5 billion $
2011 - Pirates 4, Cars 2 , The Help, Gnomeo and Juliet - over 2 billion $
2012 - The Avengers, Brave, Wreck It Ralph, Lincoln - almost 3 billion $
2013 - Iron Man 3, Oz, Monsters university - over 2 billion $

These all seem pretty commercially successful to me.

The reason why Disney is trying to start so many new franchises is because it's a company that relies on franchises to survive.
If they'll have a lot of popular franchises, they won't have to think "What are we going to release this year?", they'll just go "This year we're making another one of this and the next year another one of that".

I think they're stuck in a creative rut.

No, they're not.
I'm willing to bet that they (and all the other big companies) have people throwing fresh and interesting ideas at them everyday.
The thing is, Disney is a business and in business you need to worry about profits before anything else. Fresh and interesting doesn't necessarily mean a hit.

 

[Albino Boo]

snip

John Carter made a profit of $30 million, mostly from China. Disney keep it simple and don't aim for the moon and make films that are accessible to non western markets and get a high chance of a small profit. If they hit the big time and rake in the cash like they did with Pirates thats a bonus. The films are made to formula and it works.

If you're referring to it taking about $282 million at the box office compared to its $250 million budget (taken from Wikipedia), it still lost money. A general rule for movies (of that size at least) is that they have to make about 2,5 times their money back in box office sales before they break even. Film budgets don't include, for example, advertising, which is a huge chunk of the movie's overall cost.

I have included the $100 million promotion budget in the $30 million profit. The initial projected $150 million loss was based on the opening weekend figures, which as time went dropped to projected loss of $50 and eventually a small profit of $30 million. John Carter did good business outside of the traditional blockbuster markets mainly in China, as I said in the original post, so the money came in slower than its rivals. Disney are not running the sprint strategy that their rivals are doing but running a marathon and picking up money in markets that the name avengers brings blank looks. This means that the opening weekend box office figures look bad in comparison but they pick up the money in Brazil, Nigeria or China. That money takes longer to come in and isn't covered by the usual market surveys which provided the data about takings.

 

[Phrostbit3n]

They should just start remaking old movies with Robert Downey Jr. in them. Instant Blockbuster.

 

[themyrmidon]

Very few live-action Disney blockbusters are truly bad. I count John Carter, Prince of Persia, both National Treasure, Pirates 1, 2 & 4, and TRON Legacy as some of my favorite movies in recent years. Heck, I even enjoyed The Sorcerer's Apprentice (in a completely different sort of way). They might not be hits, but I like them. The only downside is that, other than TRON, none of them are getting sequels.

 

[Legion]

Right place right time, they've been trying to recapture the "magic" so to speak without understanding why the first pirates worked at all, It was something we hadn't seen in ages and was wildly different than anything else in ages and well...

This sums up blockbuster of all kinds really. People look at something that is wildly successful, think "I want some of that", but don't stop to think about what actually made people like it in the first place. They then tend to keep on trying to do the same thing over and over in the hope that gold will be struck twice.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Very few live-action Disney blockbusters are truly bad. I count John Carter, Prince of Persia, both National Treasure, Pirates 1, 2 & 4, and TRON Legacy as some of my favorite movies in recent years. Heck, I even enjoyed The Sorcerer's Apprentice (in a completely different sort of way). They might not be hits, but I like them. The only downside is that, other than TRON, none of them are getting sequels.

Nation Treasure got a sequel, and it's getting a second one as we speak.