Friday Estimates by Sabertooth Klady

it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to put the Ice Age 4 opening into perspective based on Friday’s number. It’s about average, domestically, for the series, not scaling the highest level of the series, the $68m March opening of Ice Age 2 in 2006, but still slightly better than the original. Think is, best or worst opening, this very successful series has never cracked $200m domestic. Ever. Yet Ice Age 3 is the #4 all-time biggest animated grosser worldwide.

Why did Ice Age 2 grow by $250m from the original internationally alone… and Ice Age 3 another $230m? Hard to say. Many sequels grow more overseas than at home. But these numbers are pretty exceptional. Ice Age 3’s 77.8% of total gross coming from international is the highest percentage of any film grossing over $775m worldwide.

Fox reported a $148m international 5-day opening last time out. This time, the film’s opening dates are scattered anywhere between 10 days and 3 days in the reporting of a $240m number for international, making this the third, second, and in some territories first weekend. There is one early outlier – the only release before June – and that’s Cyprus, where the film opened in April. And on the other hand, the film won’t open until next week or the week after in a bunch of markets (like Ireland, India, South Korea) and the outlier there is Italy, where the movie opens in September.

it doesn’t look like this one will be the top mastodon in the series, but $500m – $600m worldwide is realistic, making it 2nd best and another big success for Fox (especially International).

Speaking of Fox, Prometheus is lingering just under $300m worldwide, which is a bit of a disappointment. There are a handful of big markets set to open throughout August, so the number could go as high as “near $400m,” but that’s about the cap. Is that enough for the sequels to go forward? That’s the $60,000 question. I would bet on “yes,” just because of how franchises now play out financially. But we shall see…

The Amazing Spider-Man hit $400m worldwide on Thursday, according to Sony. It should get to $200m domestic by Monday or Tuesday and the worldwide cume should be over $475 by Sunday. It will pass Madagascar 3, which, by the way, has a long way to go internationally. The story of that film is over in the US – biggest of the trio – but there is still a chance of the film being the biggest of the 3 worldwide as well. (Yes… original not in 3D… inflation… yadda yadda yadda)

Ted and Magic Mike continue to be great stories this summer. Mike will be Soderbergh’s sixth $100m domestic movie – 3 Ocean’s, Brockovich, Traffic – and the first without Pitt, Clooney, and/or a Best Picture nomination. For me, that makes it his most impressive achievement and with it, Warner Bros best magic trick of the year. This is the 300 of disconcerted male stripper movies.

And Ted is just an out and out smash. The film will pass Bridesmaids domestically next weekend and should easily crack $200m and take down Wedding Crashers as the #4 all-time R-rated comedy. It has an outside shot of catching Beverly Hills Cop at $235m. But I suspect that both Hangover movies are out of range. Still… pretty amazing… especially since it is playing as an even harder R than the Hangover films, almost exclusively on language and ideas. This will likely be Universal’s fourth $300m worldwide grosser this year and its third of the summer. (Ted is just beginning its international roll-out. $100m should be no problem.) The problem is the price of some of the films.

Like the stupid whining about ticket sales, there is an audience, studios are finding them, and the “problem” on the business side is not audience disinterest or distraction, but, simply, extravagant, uncontrolled spending. There have been twenty-five wide releases this summer… and ten of them are at or heading quickly to $100m domestic. Eight, maybe nine are at or on their way to $300m worldwide.

I know it’s easier to scream about people staying away from the movies – people over 30 have increasingly done so since VHS and teen boys are still going in droves, thanks – but the more complex reality makes a less pretty headline. Work harder, journalists.

My MacBook Pro Problem

This feels like a sequel to the @johnaugust piece on his Mac Pro tower. My story is a little more immediately frustrating, I think.

I produce over 100 hours of video a year. And for about 45 of those days, I am producing segments on the road. This has been a very time-intensive proposition, as waiting on HD video to process on a laptop can be an all-day activity. But it has steadily gotten better over the years.

My 5-year-old laptop became a relic in the last year or so, now too old to have the newest Mac operating systems and thus, to old for Final Cut Pro X, on which I am now cutting.

So I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro in Salt Lake City on my way to Sundance and used it for a few days. It felt small, not terribly fast, and generally “meh.” I could have juiced the ram, etc, but I didn’t really want to… the rumors about a new MacBook Pro that was expected to land in March and change the direction of the earth’s rotation had started in earnest. So I returned it.

In March, there were still rumors an April release of the new MacBook Pro… but no announced release date. I waited.

In April, there were rumors of an early May release of the new MacBook Pro… but no announced release date. People started attaching the announcement to the Mac conference in June. I waited.

I was heading to Cannes and needed to cut. I was looking at the daily ebb & flow of rumors, but none of those rumors could edit an interview clip. This time, I bought another 17″ MacBook Pro, pretty sure that it was going back to the store on the day after I returned. I secretly hoped that the big machine, now being phased out (according to rumors), would feel solid and classic and worth keeping in spite of the extra weight. I had/have no intention of throwing the thing on my shoulder each day. I just had to get it through a trip and place it on a table for the couple of weeks.

I also bought 2 new FireWire 800 1TB portable drives for video output, figuring that I would be able to use them with the new laptop or any older equipment.

I put nothing on the machine except for Final Cut. It worked fine, though in the back of my head, I think I felt the couple of pounds.

I returned the machine when I got back, the new MacBook Pro still a rumor, but said to be readying for release in mid-June… tiny, powerful, and life-changing.

I started looking for Thunderbolt external hard drives then. There were a couple of 4TB and 6TB G-Tech (my preferred brand) machines at the Apple Store and on Amazon. But I had just bought new FireWire 800 drives early in the year and didn’t need big storage. You see, my 18-month-old iMac, which is where I do most of my work, is not Thunderbolt compatible. I just needed portable drives that were compatible with my current FireWire drives AND the coming MacBook Pro Thunderbolt ports (which are much faster, which is very important for video editing).

No luck.

There was, literally, one product on the market. And it involved a Seagate drive and a Seagate-only converter. $250 for the pair.

I bought my new MacBook Pro within 5 days of the release. I couldn’t buy right off the shelf for two reasons. One, the stores were sold out. And two, the retail stores had either the lightest powered version of the machine or the heaviest. Everything else had to be ordered online. And 5 days in, the wait was already projected at 4 weeks. Another trip was coming – not a shooting trip – and I was faced with spending an extra $1000 for more stuff than I needed or waiting. And by the way, the biggest on-board “hard drive” available was 512g. The cheaper one was 256g, which given that 512g didn’t do much for me, clearly requiring an external drive, I went for the cheaper one.

So, I waited.

Still no external hard drives available at that time. But the Apple Store offered a Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt converter, as seen in the original presentation of the new machine. I was already waiting a month or so, so what harm could that do.

The computer arrived. No converter. 6 weeks after the announcement, still no hard drives. So I have a great machine that can barely do any of the work I bought it for.

Apple says they have no idea when the converters will land… or when more external storage options will land. Carrying a 3 pound external drive on trips kinda misses the point.

It feels a lot like the rug that Apple has pulled out from under customers before. Great new products, but little help with the basic tools we need to make them work.

I suspect that I will spend the next 4 years loving this MacBook Pro… once the kinks are worked out. But in the meanwhile, I am worrying about the Toronto International Film Festival and whether I will be at full speed when it lands.

These are high class problems and, I guess, shame on me for being an early converter. But I need to do the work and Apple has made it an App-driven world. No one wants to own last year’s model a month before the new models land… at least not in computers or without a big discount.

So there you go… my fine whine…

State of The ComicCon (from a distance): 2012

So while I was traveling (and when I say “traveling,” it means I was actually traveling), THB reg Luke Y Thompson, who will once again cover ComicCon for Deadline, referenced my annual “Why ComicCon is meaningless” screed.

I don’t actually think that ComicCon is meaningless. I think it is a good marketing opportunity to reach out to the core of the geek audience. What was “The Geek 8” years back is probably “The Geek 15” these days, referring to the amount they can deliver at the box office on an opening weekend. After that, you need to find other groups to show interest. And just because they are the core certainly doesn’t mean they are coming out for everything.

However…

They are going to show up for 98% or better of what is being sold in Hall H in San Diego. A “bad showing” by a big studio release is not death for a movie, at the box office or anywhere else. And conversely, a love fest should scare the shit out of studio execs who aren’t marketers, for fear that the marketing team will believe what is bouncing around that very large room.

The basics of ComicCon for the major studios have been the same for almost a decade now. A $500k spend at ComicCon to feed the base – including media, which as usual, has shown up in greater numbers as the event’s authenticity has waned – is just another media spend… an elaborate red carpet event with a desperately hungry audience for a specific niche. What has changed is that there is a tighter rein on marketing spends going on right now and some of those $50m domestic spends – of which ComicCon was a minor 1% and an even more minor amount spread across 3 or 4 titles spending 3 or 4 times that – are now (trying to be) $35m spends, making the cost of ComicCon a more serious consideration. (The biggest drain of ComicCon on studios, in my view, is actually the manpower drain, not the $s. The opportunity costs are not inconsequential… at least for movies that are already being actively marketed.)

Now, there is also the real question of whether ComicCon has ever sold a single movie ticket. And I say… well, maybe the media coverage is good for 1% of opening weekend on a movie or two, now and again, up to, say $1 million on a $100m movie. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that this measure is impossible, as media tone for months and months before a big opener is hard to measure in actual box office sales. Good will is also hard to measure in hard dollars. Any Twilight movie not showing up would be an insult. But is a single – yes, in this case, single – person going to buy or not buy a ticket to the last Twilight film based on ComicCon this year? No. Not a single ticket gained or lost. But for a studio like SummitsGate, relatively cheap, focused publicity is of greater value than to a major studio.

Matthew Vaughn has become the patron saint of claims that ComicCon can sell a movie. And Matthew (and his team) made the very smart choice to leverage Kick-Ass at The ‘Con in the process of selling the movie. And Lionsgate bought it… and will eventually break even on the overpriced buy because the movie is a legitimate perennial and has produced spin-off product and may produce sequels.

But the list of movies that seemed to earn wings at ComicCon only to be grounded by reality – of the limitations of The Geek 15 – is long… and most would include the theatrical release of Kick-Ass. The excuse is always that “for a movie like Serenity, that was a great number.” And indeed, maybe it was. But Universal didn’t make a $40m Firefly movie to gross $25m domestic and $39m worldwide. About double that – or half of what the first X-Files film, seen as a bit of a commercial disappointment – would have been the low-end of the hope. Let’s not even get started on Scott Pilgrim.

The biggest success that really launched at ComicCon was District 9. But the trip to The ‘Con was a well-timed, convenient, smart was to launch what was already a massive studio commercial push. But Tron Legacy and Avatar were really the big stories that year. Plus Johnny Depp showed up with Tim Burton or Alice in Wonderland too. But a high percentage of the District 9 ink was about Peter Jackson’s first ‘Con appearance.

Anyway…

The other side of this is that the “civilians” at ComicCon are in hog heaven. And none of my dismissals of the marketing value of the event have anything to do with mocking or denying that pleasure.

I do think that the event, long past the point of needing people lined up for days to prove its own value, needs to find a proper solution to the lines. My suggestion would be “Qs”… probably digitized Qs. The idea is that you get on line and at some point, you get these numbered pieces of paper. The event surely has stats on how big the lines get and when they get that way. So give out Qs – probably with digital sign-in by handheld device while in line, perhaps offering a gift in return for personal information that would be valuable to the marketers paying for/putting on the events – in groups of 500. Figure out how many get given out before opening day… how many on the ‘Con days before an event, etc. And lose the long lines more than a couple of hours before an event.

None of this would necessarily keep a tragedy like the one earlier this week – a woman being killed by a car after slipping in the street on her way to or from a Twilight line – but an event this mature and established should treat its guests better. Moreover, if they aren’t standing on line, maybe they are buying stuff on the ‘Con floor. But mostly, this is not Woodstock and there is nothing cool about a bunch of teens being forced to stand on lines for days to look at the hem of the garment. Accepting limits is something that comes with maturity and The ‘Con is an adult.

Anyway…

I guess ComicCon works as a preview instrument for the media… though there is almost nothing that will happen there that will not be on line officially within a couple of weeks or would not have been online officially now or even before ComicCon, were the marketers not holding out for The “Con.

Is there going to be much more of The Hobbit that the non-3D trailer that will go on the non-3D TDKR next week? Yeah. Peter. Some images. Some footage that won’t feel very connected. In other words, not really good marketing material. It’s all about that frickin’ trailer. And that’s not about however many people there are in San Diego, that’s about EVERYONE.

And that’s really my final point. The pleasant nugget in all of this is that ComicCon, if it survives its role as Marketer To The Geeks, is ready to go back to being what it once was… a joyous celebration where people of like minds in a very specific niche can go and share and hang out. I’d love that. I’d go to that.

ComicCon is a proven failure as a nationalized/internationalized marketing event for movies. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that Mitt Romney might have had a great appearance at the NAACP event. (Ironically, I think Romney had to go, even if he was inevitably going to be booed, just as some films NEED to be at ComicCon at this point.) It is 100% marketing to the base. Yes, you get some nice photos from Entertainment Weekly… all of which you would get at some other point and will do all over again if you get a cover story.

And you do, with smaller films, have a real chance of alienating the base – or just boring them – and hurting your movie. As much as there is not a single major studio movie that has benefiting significantly from ComicCon, none has really been hurt either. Looking back over 10 years of comic book adaptations, I see Catwoman being released soon after The ‘Con… maybe they got negativity… don’t remember. But that movie was already the walking dead. And bringing this full circle, Luke Y. Thompson reported last year of Cowboys & Aliens, “Massive cheers at the end, though. Whatever the faults, the highlights seem to outweigh any misgivings in the fans’ minds.”

Like I said…

Love ComicCon for what it is, what it was, and what it can be. But don’t give me the bullshit lines that it matters. Fans get what the want. About 20 media outlets get very valuable content at the event. And like Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto, the buzz is lovely, but when push comes to shove, marketers have to market their movies regardless of these festivals and that marketing, not the buzz, will control the success or failure of the projects at hand.

BYOB: Back in LA

Is Viacom/DirecTV Where The Rubber Meets The Road?

We are still early in the era of pay everything to watch everywhere. As a consumer, you aren’t feeling it yet, but the trend is away from you paying all the freight by watching commercials – hence the maxim that television’s main job is selling eyeballs to advertisers, not programs to consumers – and to the producer/owners being paid a little less at every step, but being paid at EVERY step in some way.

Extrapolating from figures reported by the LA Times, DirecTV is now paying Viacom over $2 billion a year for the right to “rebroadcast” its networks. This deal is probably 3 years old. Viacom now wants another chunk. DirecTV says it’s a 30% bump equalling $1 billion. Viacom says that it’s pennies a day for each of DirecTV’s 20 million subscribers. Let’s be conservative and put the bump request at 25% and $750 million. That’s $37.50 per DirecTV subscriber per year or 10.3 pennies a day. This is on top of another, say, $112.50 a year that Viacom is already getting. So now we’re up to $150 a year per DirecTV subscriber or $12.50 a month or 42 pennies a day.

Viacom is a very valuable series of cable networks. My child lives on Nick JR shows. My wife watches those teen pregnancy shows. I watch The Daily Show 4 days a week (that’s all it’s on new).

On the other hand, I can get The Daily Show on Hulu Plus the next day. My so can watch the entire history of those Nick shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime, where I a, already dropping $15 a month between them. And my wife shouldn’t be watching that garbage anyway. (ha ha)

Viacom has been having a rough time with its ad sales for those cable nets. That is the nature of these changes. It’s horrifyingly like newspapers and the web, where the impact of print ads has diminished, but the more impactful web ads are still way underpriced by the ad buying community. The bar was set low and is not rising fast enough to make up for the print losses, in that example, or the on-air ad sales losses in this example. And that’s for the big guys. Imagine the pain of owning a local channel in this ad economy.

But how much is enough? How much is too much?

At some point, providers like DirecTV and Kabletown are going to have to really get ahead of each individual contract and set the ground for a clear future. Right now, it’s constant turmoil. There are only a half dozen or so major content dealers, so it’s not chaos, but the consumer is feeling the pain more and more, which eventually starts to eat away at an industry. (see: studio distributors and exhibition). AMC is off of Dish for now. Viacom off of DirecTV. Battles that go against the clock of major sporting events have become a regular feature of urban life. None of this – especially the consumer being aware of it – is good for business.

But DirecTV and the others face the same problem Netflix is in – and many are still in deep denial about – which is being forced by the economics to change business models.

I am paying someone, in this case, other than DirecTV, to bring Comedy Central into my home. And that provider is playing fewer commercials than DirecTV. Viacom is making its aging children’s programming available without commercials via other outlets that I am willing to pay for as well. And of course, Viacom’s getting paid by those outlets too. At some point, it just becomes math.

Viacom needs DirecTV every bit as much as DirecTV needs Viacom in this scenario. Viacom has already learned that outlets like and including DirecTV feel okay about refusing to add EPIX – Viacom/Paramount’s pay movie outlet, in spite of it meaning the loss of one of six studio’s recent movie outputs. But that’s not like taking away something viewers already have as “basic cable” and are sued to having readily available.

On the other hand, DirecTV is already kicking in approximately $2 billion a year to run those channels. That money and those eyeballs can’t be replaced anytime soon… even if as much as 25%of DirecTV subscribers moved to have access to the Viacom channels cabled/satellites in.

But if DirecTV pays Viacom more – not just paying, paying a lot more – than other equal cable groups and the more important ones will surely be back for more soon.

DirecTV’s total annual revenue is under $30 billion. If Viacom is already getting 6% -8%, can DirecTV afford to give them, say, 10% without Viacom’s cable nets offering any hope of growth?

Maybe they can. I don’t know the detailed math. But at some point, the answer will be, “no.”

And then what?

Weekend Estimates by Len The Lizard

So… the ASM worldwide cume is now estimated by Sony at $341.2m. That’s about $140m domestic, $150m international from 70 territories on the last week, and $50m from 13 territories that were open last weekend.

Assuming that ASM will double that number – a very safe, even modest assumption – it will be the #2 grosser of the year worldwide (all that really counts) behind only The Avengers and with TDKR on the way.

The will be lots of parsing to come, some surely by yours truly… but for a reboot that cost significantly less than a fourth film by the last team and with the promise of sequels, this is a big win for Sony. Sorry of you wish to believe that I am being too generous, but I think that’s, simply, silliness.

A bit lost behind Spidey Redux are solid continuing runs for Ted and Brave and the surprising opening of Oliver Stone’s Savages. Aside from the Wall Street sequel and World Trade Center, this is the best launch of his career. And given the presold element of both of those films, this is more impressive to me. This is another string showing from Universal’s marketing team, with Ted now looking bigger than Bridesmaids was last summer. Brave won’t be the biggest Pixar movie domestically, but it won’t be the smallest by a long shot, likely to pass $200m by this time next weekend.

Magic Mike has a bit of a holiday – and probably a switcheroo – hangover. But as families get back to their normal schedules, I’d expect a strong hold next weekend.

I was wrong, it seems, about Moonrise Kingdom, which is continuing to play strong and not play out.

Beasts‘ expansion went well… but is probably being overestimated by its media fanbase. We shall see.

And Katy Perry opened part of her to strong doc numbers, but not Bieberesque numbers. Good for her. Word from critics is good enough that I may even watch the film.

Review: The Amazing Spiderman (very light on spoilers)

The Amazing Spiderman is the Casino Royale of comic-based movies.

And now, I shall explain myself…

I went into The Amazing Spiderman with little info. I’d seen trailers. I knew the director and cast. I knew there was negativity in the online community. I read one review, Manohla Dargis’ mixed NYT notice. And I knew that Sony had screwed the pooch with the media in general by premiering the film in England while refusing to show it stateside, even under strict embargo.

So I went into a Glasgow multiplex, 5 days into the film’s run. 1:30p 3D show. RealD glasses at the cost of 80p (about $1.25) to the ticket buyer. The theater promoted “permanent” glasses one could purchase. The 3D bump was £2.10 (about $3.25), making the price £10.80 or with glasses about $18 US. The theater was about 85% full. The chain offered a 10% discount for buying online and also, a £14.99 ($23.25) a month (3D costs extra) all-you-can-watch pass.

Anyway…

I found the movie to be a revelation. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Raimi’s movies, mostly because of the villains (all lame and under motivated for my tastes) and the endless vamping around the central relationship. What I loved and respected about Raimi’s films is that he embraced the comic book completely. Raimi’s vision was more loyal to the books than any comic book based movie until that time. The great Tobey Maguire was perfect for Raimi’s Spidey vision. Maguire had played a lot of teens and brought an edge to them that added a layer. In Spider-Man, he was stripped down to being more vulnerable than we’d seen him… earnest. And Kirsten Dunst was a lovely object of his passion… unobtainable blonde Hitchcock girl trying to be an adult as Peter Parker tried to hang onto his inner teen. She was hot for the guy in the suit with the codpiece and the power.

Marc Webb didn’t “reboot” Spiderman. He reconsidered Spiderman the way a theater director reconsiders Shakespeare. From the evidence of the film itself, it seems that Webb and writers James Vanderbilt/Alvin Sargent/Steve Kloves looked at the idea of Spiderman – teenager of the moment gains power, gains ego, loses loved ones, falls in love, commits to doing good even at personal expense – and didn’t get caught up in the history of the book or movies… kinda like Frank Miller reconsidered Batman.

The Amazing Spider-Man’s Peter Parker is a nerd. But he has the natural anger of a whip smart kid in 2012. He isn’t a wallflower. He rides a skateboard because he does, not to be cool or to offer a plot point. He has a gift for science. And without making it into a Feminist Plotpoint, so does Gwen Stacy.

The casting of the actors in these two roles is perfect. Andrew Garfield looks like the Peter Parker of the original books, all neck and expressive hair. Add intense eyes and a lot of emotional acting skill in between and in spite of being too old for the role, he’s perfect. I hated the idea of Emma Stone wasting her time in this film… I guess because I thought to would be a dead end that she had to recover from, as Kirsten Dunst is still escaping Mary Jane. But Gwen is not just an object here. She has the blonde hair and I have never seen Ms Stone dressed to accentuate her height, legs, and comfortable sexuality as she is here. But she is also more than capable of keeping up with Peter on an intellectual level while being far more sophisticated on an emotional level. He grunts a lot when faced with emotional expression… like all teen boys and the vast majority of grown men.

Choosing Sally Field and Martin Sheen as Aunt May and Uncle Ben was another stroke of genius, though the script made the casting, that seemed off, make perfect sense. Sheen plays yet another version of his character from Wall Street… but he’s just so good at it. Yes, they have dumped “With great power comes great responsibility.” And they replaced it with actual scenes with Uncle Ben trying to teach Peter what that means, starting with having great responsibility if you have no power at all. I know some underpants have bunched up over this kind of thing, but Peter Parker isn’t Superman… he’s a young man figuring out his limited powers.

This is at the crux, I think, of whether you buy into this new version of onscreen Spidey or not. I don’t want oversimplify either side of the argument, but for me, this film’s relationship between Uncle Ben and Peter is the most real and emotional it has ever been. He is Uncle and father. His arguments to Peter are clear and not cluttered by some new power. There is something iconic and cool about “With great power…” But when Uncle Ben dies here, the message is stronger and the emotion is also.

Aunt May, like Gwen, is not a female who needs her hand held. She is a 60ish woman who works, who might not be safe on the subway at 9p at night, but who has enough of a brain in her head to figure things out as they connect to the real world, of which she is an active and conscious member.

I loved PP’s coming to understand his new powers. It was as good as Raimi’s and like the whole film, less cute/kitsch. The suit makes perfect sense to me. The mechanical web shooters fit the vision of Parker here and I like that the chance if scientific/mechanical failure opens dramatic/action doors.

Shall I state the obvious here? I don’t care about the tradition so much as I care about the movie. I don’t care whether Peter’s parents ever showed up in the comic. I don’t care about this like or that line. I don’t care if it takes an hour to get to the suit. Am I involved in this story? Do I care? Answer here: YES!

While most comic-based movies are about big action beats, the action on ASM is clearly the secondary consideration. A basis in real emotion always comes first. The best comparison, to me, is Bond. That series evolved from the straight-forward Connery films to an increasingly comic Roger Moore to a very serious Timothy Dalton to an oddly familiar but not overly exciting Pierce Brosnan. And then, they broke the mold with Casino Royale and a real actor in Daniel Craig. (God knows, Brosnan would have loved to play the Bond they wrote for Craig and might have been great.)

I can’t really think of a comic-based movie that has leapt so dramatically from obsessing on the original text… to make it better, decades later. The stupidest notion I have heard, now that I have seen the film, is that they didn’t need to do the origin story again. Well.. this is a more radical leap than Burton/Schumacher to Nolan. It clearly needs this version of the origin story to move forward. Nolan’s Batman also demanded a reboot, though less radically because the idea of Dark Knight was already so well defined by the books.

But the idea that a franchise needs to die (see: Batman & Robin) before being reconsidered is a bit of self- loathing from geeks. I think of all stories more like I do theater. There are too many Shakespeare rethinks, ultimately. Most are shite. But a good one is a glorious thing. And so, I am willing to wade through the others to get there. I don’t think Webb and Co consciously said, “Fuck the prior series,” holding out some of the classic notions in an act of arrogant petulance. None of the Spider-man dialogue was Shakespeare. ASM is as different from the Raimi films as Zeffirelli’s Hamlet with Mel Gibson was from Olivier’s… or Branagh’s Henry V from Olivier’s revered classic. Those films kept Shakespeare’s poetry, but did edit substantially… And changed meaning and subtext.

When Amazing Spiderman asks the basic questions, like how would a man behave after Spiderman saved his 4-year-old from a blazing car that’s been thrown off of the Williamsburg bridge by a giant lizardman, the writers didn’t look to old comics for answers. They sought a realistic emotional truth. And when they expand that particular bit, it speaks to the audience’s greater truth, that defeating evil is more compelling when we all reach for our best selves together, not just relying on one guy in a suit with special powers. This is radical for a superhero movie. It’s as though Hawkeye and Black Widow actually had something to do in the third act.

The movie is filled with these moments of unexpected true emotion. From Captain Stacy obsessing on what little he knows and refusing to show any imagination then figuring things out, to Flash being a human who understands loss, to C. Thomas Howell, to Rhys Ifans, whose serious performance here could change the rest of his career. (I hated the CG lizard at first… but thought it got to be quite strong in the last reel.). Gwen’s dramatic side was beautifully written and performed.

This isn’t Dark Knight at all. Batman is a much darker, much more adult character. But what does reflect Nolan is that the villain in the next ASM movie won’t – if things continue in this vein – be about spectacle, but character. Whatever the costume, the motivation will not be – mwah ha ha – killing everyone in midtown Manhattan for no real reason, but something personal… even intimate. You know, like desperately wanting your arm back but the cure making you insane or like how being a vampire gives you everlasting life, but you need to kill humans to sustain yourself.

I am truly shocked by what this movie is and how gutsy the choice by Sony and Marvel was. I am somewhat embarrassed by the knee jerk reaction of some who constantly scream about originality being dead, yet seem to want this film dead for being too original… or not seeing the originality for the history, the budget, expectations, and god knows what other distractions.

I am not saying you need to love ASM or that you are a misguided fool if you don’t. Reasonable, intelligent people can disagree about all art. But I was really moved by this film, more so than by any other comic-based film I’ve ever seen. (This doesn’t include graphic novel films like A History of Violence.) I was very, very impressed. And I love that it’s not like any other superhero film. I went down that road with Peter Parker. I believed him.

I like this Spiderman better than Raimi’s… Much as I prefer Indy 2 to the rest But one doesn’t have to choose. They are two different visions and you can care about both on their own scale. Embrace you truest, best feeling and embrace it. Don’t react because you expected this or that and feel like you gave to take sides. That’s what Uncle Ben would tell you… even if neither you nor I have great power or responsibility for the future of this series. And don’t be surprised if I hug you even if you just threw a basketball at my head… or this review.

Friday Estimates by Spider-Len

DP/30: Lawless, director John Hillcoat, screenwriter Nick Cave

Reboot

(photo array from themovieblog.com)

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BYOB: From Edinburgh to Ullapool

DP/30 Emmywatch ’12: Community/Mad Men, actor Alison Brie

Weekend Estimates by Magic Len

So Ted is “only” the #6 opening of the summer, though it could move to #4 based on Sunday’s performance. Magic Mike is about $15m behind, though that still delivers the #8 opening (of 19 wide openings). What really distinguishes both of these movies, as well as the newest Madea film aka the #10 opener of the summer, is that they are by far the cheapest films of those 10 top openers (especially MM and Madea). And those are the numbers that really matter.

It’s one of those weird moments of happenstance that three relatively modestly budgeted films open so well after the summer has been so unforgiving to some others… like People Like Us, which didn’t have any muscle to help it find a better place in this weekend’s group of openers.

With a holiday approaching, Ted could be up near $100 million by next Monday. (Or it could be closer to $80… don’t want to be overly enthusiastic and set it to up to be perceived as underperforming in the face of being a big hit.)

Part of what’s interesting about the more modest films delivering this weekend is that it’s not like previous similar efforts this summer failed. Studios hadn’t really had these kinds of films on their schedule. Do you see Johnny Depp and Sacha Baron Cohen films as being in the same category? Mark Wahlberg can open, but not like this. Not on his own.

This weekend is the lesson of the summer so far. Even with MiB3 just under $600m worldwide, the only big killer app this summer so far has been Avengers. Studios have both lost money and left money on the table with tentpole chasing. Disney is the only studio this summer so far with a movie that will be as profitable as either of this weekend’s 2 big openers (aside, perhaps, for Searchlight and Exotic Marigold… not sure of their international investment.)