Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Nonsense

Going out to watch a highly-anticipated tent-pole, and maybe even on something like IMAX, with the family would be similar to buying a new hard drive.

Add to that the point that even the theater owners in several cases earn more from the concessionaires than from showing movies, especially during the dump months.

So, how does CGI make movies look expensive? Compare Star Trek the original series with Discovery. Notice the difference? And wait till you find out how much it cost them to make each episode of the latter.

BTW, don't confuse making a movie look expensive and making it more expensive.

Given that, if CGI is supposed to make movies cheaper to make, then why does it still cost a lot to make tent-poles?

Given that, why do you think they add not only more CGI but more spectacle using CGI?

Basically it's limited thinking to believe you need "More" up there for it to be worth your time. It's like buying a record (you know, when people actually understood they should probably pay for products people put money into producing) and complaining it wasn't worth the money unless there are the most instruments on it.

"I spent twenty bucks on the newest Paul Simon record....and it's just him and a guitar!!??!! Ripofff!!!"

You pay for the experience of watching a movie, and a movie can be a good movie no matter what they spend on it. Some movies need more money to realize themselves, others need considerably considerably less. And they can be equally good.

They are probably too expensive. We'll agree there. But that is mostly because they have to recoup the costs of unneccessarily stupidly large budgets. You know, the kind that you're demanding above anything else.

I got a solution. Don't buy concessions. If you can't get through a movie without eating a twenty dollar bag of popcorn, that's on you.

Of course I notice the difference. One has more CGI in it. Who cares? Even if I assume that means it's more expensive, I'd still prefer to watch the original (or frankly, neither)

Why would I confuse this? I simply couldn't care less if one looks more expensive because I'm capable of looking past that to see which one is actually better and more worth my time. And it has nothing to do with CGI. It has nothing to do with cost.

And do you think when they used to do practical effects it was an affordable thign? Or that it was done by one person and not entire teams of people who had to co-ordinate these stunts in real time?

Do you understand all of the other costs that get bundled into doing a practical effect as opposed to generating something on a computer? And as a result of this, do you not understand this is actually frequently more expensive than CGI?

Or how about whether or not you understand that most of the cost of an entire films production has very little to do with the special effects anyways and has to do with advertising and actors salaries?

But sure, it's all that money up on the screen that's dazzling you and making you think you and your family spent a well earned night out. I'm glad CGI has made you a believer in this total nonsense. Studio executives are currently rubbing their hands greedily together, happy that there are still others out there like you not onto the game they are playing.

Because it's the easier and cheaper way for them to dupe people into thinking they got their moneys worth?

Don't confuse them with tent-poles.

It's not "limited thinking" but "business". It's only in your imaginary world that your arguments stand.

Again, that's a niche market. Look up "streaming."

I didn't argue that a movie has to cost more in order to be good. The word you're looking for is "profitability," and the franchise to consider when it comes to low costs is obviously not Mad Max but Paranormal. Guess which parts of the year those are shown. Look up "dump months."

We don't have to agree. Either you know the facts or you don't, and it looks like you don't. You live in a world where movies don't need "stupidly large budgets," and still can't live with the fact that you do live in such a world. Stop fantasizing.

First, you argue that what I was sharing doesn't take place. Then, you think it doesn't have to take place. Now, you're implying that it does take place and there's a solution to it. Worse, the solution is akin to "Don't watch these expensive movies."

You need to think before you post again.

Right. First, you argue that they don't don't that. Then they don't have to do that. Then you don't have to watch them. Now, "who cares?" It's as if your flailing your arms wildly, hitting your head accidentally, and hoping that you'll hit the mark.

Right. You don't care about something that you argue has nothing to do with the reason why you don't care.


To argue that you're confused would be an understatement.





No, it was because using computers was too expensive.





Right, which is why they use CGI. In which case, the costs should be lower, but it's not. So, how do you explain that?


BTW, that's a rhetorical question because I already explained that to you earlier, but your reading comprehension is that bad.





Right, all those animators listed in the credits are ghost employees. The CGI appeared miraculously.





It's not dazzling me. Rather, it explains why you are wrong in arguing that CGI would make movies cheaper.





Bingo.

Forty-five years after George Miller introduced audiences to Mad Max, the auteur may have finally hit the end of the road through the postapocalyptic wasteland unless he finds some high-octane gasoline soon.

The revered filmmaker’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga bowed to a disappointing $32 million domestically for the four-day Memorial Day weekend and $36.5 million overseas, diminishing hopes for Mad Max: The Wasteland, another Max installment Miller has been toying with for years.

Miller and Nico Lathouris wrote the scripts for both The Wasteland and Furiosa as part of the development process of Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 Warner Bros. film that became a surprise awards season juggernaut, winning six Oscars, and which became an instant action classic. The Wasteland would follow Max Rockatansky in the year before Fury Road, and is said to involve a young mother — and (naturally) include plenty of action.

In recent weeks, Miller has acknowledged much was hinging on Furiosa in terms of the possibility of The Wasteland. “I’ll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it,” Miller told journalists May 16, the morning after the dystopian action-adventure played at the Cannes Film Festival to a seven-minute standing ovation. Sources agree that Wasteland’s fate is complicated by Furiosa‘s box office, but stress it wasn’t even in development. For its part, Warners — where Miller is a beloved figure — says it is incredibly proud of Furiosa.

The reaction from moviegoers is likely as positive as Miller hoped; it boasts a 90 percent positive audience score rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned a B+ Cinemascore. But in a troubling and unexpected twist, far fewer females and younger male adults showed up than came out for Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road nine years ago.

On Fury Road’s opening weekend, the split was 60 percent male to 40 percent, according to sources with access to exit surveys conducted by PostTrak. But Furiosa’s audience was 71 percent male and 29 percent female, a worrisome decline and a startling number for a feature marketed as a female-driven vehicle. And the 18-24 age group, who are the most frequent moviegoers, plummeted from 31 percent for Fury Road to 21 percent for Furiosa.

Observers note that Fury Road aside, the male-fueled Mad Max series has always catered to a somewhat niche audience. The first three films, starring Mel Gibson, grossed less than $70 million combined domestically.

“IP like Mad Max and Ghostbusters is old, and they have the fans they’re going to have,” says one theater chain executive. “If studios can budget to that, they might make some decent money.”

Talk of making Miller’s next Mad Max film could resurface if Furiosa gets a major tune up and enjoys a road trip down the box office highway, as Fury Road did thanks to a strong multiplier. But many veteran box office pundits are doubtful whether such a recovery is possible, with one rival studio saying it could have a hard time getting past $90 million domestically.

Fury Road, which successfully rebooted the franchise by recasting Gibson with Tom Hardy and introducing Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, opened to $45.3 million domestically on its way to grossing $379.4 million worldwide — a juggernaut by the standards of the franchise, and a modest hit by Hollywood standards considering it had a net budget of at least $157 million before marketing. Still, it had an outsized cultural impact, enough for the previous regime at Warner Bros. to greenlight Furiosa, as it seemed the studio had a revitalized franchise on its hands, and it would be a way of honoring Miller and the 45-year anniversary of Mad Max. Miller, who remains a beloved figure within the studio, prefers to shoot practically as much as possible before having visual effects supplement the rest, which pushes up production costs.

Miller opted not to bring back Theron, as he felt that de-aging technology used in films such as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was distracting to audiences. (Theron, for her part, said she was sad not to return, despite her grueling experience shooting the first one.) Instead, Miller cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Theron’s titular character and added Chris Hemsworth as a warlord. Furiosa is also a Mad Max movie without Mad Max (save for a small cameo).

“I think Furiosa suffered without Charlize. People who see the movie love it. The problem is getting them into theaters. She would have been able to do that,” says one studio insider.

Adds a veteran Hollywood executive, “Fury Road was an outlier in the series. It also had a hot young star and a huge female star. Nine years later, it had neither.”

Furiosa caps a May that will go down in infamy in box office lore. Due to the strikes, mega-tentpoles that have come to define summer were delayed, prompting moviegoing overall to plummet and theater chains hoping for a better 2025 (“Just survive til ’25” has become a mantra for studios and theater owners). Miller’s film was never intended to be an all-audience tentpole that anchors Memorial Day — last year, The Little Mermaid debuted to $118 million — but like other recent titles, it still came in well behind tracking predictions of $40 to $45 million.

Wall Street and Hollywood knew this year was going to be tough, and say declarations that theatrical is over are overblown.

“Let’s see what happens next year with Mission: Impossible and in 2026 with the next Star Wars movie,” says box office analyst Eric Handler of Roth Capital.

All eyes are now on June’s Inside Out 2 and July’s Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine to energize the marketplace and help other films in the process.

“This fever will hopefully break in June and July with an overperformance by at least one of the high-profile films to get the wind back in the sails of the box office,” says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore.

As for Furiosa, it has the upcoming weekend to itself and will still be playing in Imax and premium large-format screens, which ponied up a significant portion of the opening weekend gross. Then, it will have to contend with another vehicle and gun-heavy feature, Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

You're switching back and forth between arguing from the perspective of the viewer, which is how this started, and arguing from the perspective of the producer, which has no relevance to the original question.

"The producer wants to make money" and "expensive films need to sell a lot of tickets" are obviously true, but have no relationship to the idea that a viewer should therefore want to see something expensive on the screen ("I want to get my money's worth"), which is the statement under dispute. The exchange in watching a film is money for some kind of rewarding experience, not the viewer attempting to extract the most money from the producer.

Huh? The thing you were responding to doesn't say anything like this. It says this:

most of the cost of an entire films production has very little to do with the special effects

The word "most" does not mean "none." So this response makes no sense. Now, you can perhaps disagree about whether it is "most" or not, but you can't just pretend someone said something else in order to make it easier to mock. That's not how arguments work.