Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
May 27, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com

The third trophy is the cuddliest.

He's done with us. Professionally.

Kim Hollis: How big a setback is the performance of Terminator Salvation to Christian Bale's career as an A-list actor?

David Mumpower: He just absorbed a deathblow. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but what he has just become is the latest Batman to fail completely in other mainstream roles. Michael Keaton struggled at the box office from the moment he put on the cape all the way up until the release of White Noise. Val Kilmer has become the master of the sub-$10 million earner (unfortunate since so many of his post-Batman films are exceptional) and now Bale has just returned a worst case scenario result with Terminator 4. Clooney, whose Batman movie bombed, is the only one to have post-cowl success. I expect that everyone involved with Public Enemies got a chill when Friday box office numbers came in. The hope/expectation is that Depp+Bale is a much stronger selling point, but Bale wouldn't be selling anything on his own any time soon. The interesting question is whether this winds up costing him any money when the next Batman rolls around. He had earned a significant raise. I wonder if he just gave a lot of it back. He needs the costume more than the costume needs him.

Tim Briody: Ask the majority of people who Christian Bale is, and they probably would need a couple minutes to figure it out if they get it at all. He's freaking Batman, The Dark Knight made $500 million and most people don't care enough to go see him in something else.

Pete Kilmer: Bale has become the guy that, while on the A List, really needs another A Lister for a huge movie. But he still has plenty of small movie leading man cred. He'll be fine.

Scott Lumley: I think we need to acknowledge that Bale was the third most important person involved in the Dark Knight. It's Nolan's world, accompanied by an insane Oscar level performance from Heath Ledger.... and Christian Bale as Batman. So while I don't think his career just took a Deathblow, it might have just received an overdue market correction.

That's good for us, though, because I think somebody just got a lot more eager to do a Dark Knight sequel. Hey Nolan! How about Paul Giamatti as the Penguin? Clive Owen as Deadshot? Maybe Kat Dennings as Catwoman?

Max Braden: He just doesn't come across as a nice guy or even a real badass you want to cheer for. The reverse hasn't made Hugh Jackman into King Midas, but if you're going to rasp and grumble you have to give something more to the audience. Even when Russell Crowe was seen as a jerk I think you still got the impression that he could impress. That said, I'll still watch everything Bale is in.

Brandon Scott: It depends on the context of the question. If you are asking whether it means he is not as big a star or as big a lead as he thought he was or rather Hollywood thought he was, then it's a setback. But it's not all-encompassing damage. Bale has always been an indie type of guy, and I don't know that he particularly cares about being a star in the public eye (he clearly hasn't handled it too well so far). So, the result might mean that he is not at the top of the A list of film stars; instead he is like just about every other actor on earth - he needs to be in the right film/vehicle to pull in a huge audience. I would still say he is in a lower tier of stars but not on the A+ list where we have generally put names like Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Will SMith, etc. There is nothing wrong with where he is, other than his general attitude towards having to deal with being where he is.

Reagen Sulewski: Part of the problem seems to be that he keeps landing the least interesting roles in his big budget films. If he just wants to take the paydays so he can pursue other stuff like Rescue Dawn and The Machinist, that's one thing, but if he legitimately wants to be a big budget draw, he's got to start having a better radar on what people care about in films. In the end, John Connor is such a cypher that it's impossible to worry about his future incarnation.

Jim Van Nest: I think Scott hit the nail on the head. Sure, Bale is Batman. Sure, the Dark Knight is the #2 movie ever...but I really don't think that made Bale A-List. I think the weak showing for Salvation will simply adjust Bale back to where he really was in the first place. I mean, seriously...who went to see Dark Knight for Christian Bale? They see the Batman movies for the costume and the Dark Knight in particular for Heath Ledger's Joker.

Come back, Mr. Governor

Kim Hollis: Which do you think hurt the film more, the lack of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a star or the diluting of the brand with the unsuccessful Terminator television show?

Dan Krovich: I think the absence of Schwarzenegger was a big hit to this sequel in retrospect. He has been the face of the franchise for 25 years now. I'm not sure that the audience has ever been all that interested in John Connor. He's been played by a different actor in each iteration of the series he's appeared and it hasn't mattered. The one constant until now has been Arnold.

David Mumpower: I was one of the few but passionate supporters of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, an inconsistent but occasionally brilliant television version of the Terminator franchise. One of the reasons I clung to hope about the show's renewal was the fact that a presumed juggernaut movie release would build renewed interest in the television series. In hindsight, I now see that the reverse is true. A complex, intellectually challenging science fiction program that examined several simultaneous alternate futures clearly soured some fans on the franchise. The Terminator television series was heavily advertised on Fox prior to its debut and the casual people who didn't stay with it are probably the same group who were less inclined to give the new movie a chance. I also agree with Dan in that I would have expected Terminator to go on with Schwarzenegger without any real hiccups. He matters much more than I had thought probable.

Tim Briody: The lack of Governator had the biggest impact on the Terminator Salvation performance. As Dano said, I think the appeal is in the machines and not John Connor.

Pete Kilmer: Ultimately neither. While I think it would have worked to have the T-800 (Arnie) in there, it would have been extremely expensive to have CGI Arnie all over the place. I think the TV Show had zero impact on the movie as only three million or so people were watching it in the first place. I think the TV show could have really been a nice complement to the movie franchise. It was ballsy, told some really good stories and kept the name recognition out there for the movie. With the lack of massive budget for a ton of Terminators tearing up LA, that kind of hurt the show and people left it.

Scott Lumley: Well, the show never had a ton of support to begin with (which may have something to do with a truncated first season and the network changing the showtime every 15 minutes...), so I think this comes down to lack of Arnold and bad word-of-mouth.

Max Braden: I've only heard positive things about the series from people who've watched it, but the watchers clearly weren't a large enough group to make a difference. I think that had Schwarzenegger just pushed on the marketing side even without being the film's star, that could have bumped up the box office. (If he appeared on any late night shows in the last two weeks, I missed it.)

David Mumpower: The debut of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles had 11.4 million viewers. That's the equivalent of an $82 million opening weekend. If they'd ignored it, that would have been one thing. Instead, they watched it and weren't impressed. That's much worse...and more than a little depressing.

Brandon Scott: I think the series probably hurt it, but I suspect most people view the TV show as a knock-off of sorts, rather than a legitimate entity that supports what the film franchise has been (at least the first two films). The lack of the Pumping Iron star hurt a lot to fans of the original films. To new fans, it's just another action movie, no different than a Chronicles of Riddick or the like. In the end, I say Arnie is the bigger issue for this question, but ultimately, it sounds as if they just blew the product.

Reagen Sulewski: Lets not forget that it's been 25 years since the first Terminator film. While there's been valiant (and in my eyes, successful) efforts towards keeping the franchise fresh, people are smelling a whiff of mold on it. Look at Die Hard, which tried a fourth film 20 years after the first, with much of the same result.

Jim Van Nest: I'm thinking it could also be the timeframe of the new film. Maybe people just liked the idea of going back into the past trying to change the future. But the way Rise of the Machines ended, they basically let us know that there was no way to avoid the inevitable. And I'm thinking people really don't care what happened after Judgment Day. Especially considering they weren't all that impressed with the Matrix's version of "after judgment day."

You can dance if you want to. People just might not want to see it.

Kim Hollis: Dance Flick opened to $13.1 million over four days. Are North American audiences officially on the outs with spoof films?

Dan Krovich: What genre is left to spoof at this point? Of course, the budgets for these movies are pretty low so it's not like they have to make a lot to keep getting made.

David Mumpower: This is significantly more than tracking had indicated, so I would call it a (very) minor win. The phenomenon that is becoming fun to study is how much more quickly word-of-mouth travels in the social media era. Anyone who has been to a critics' screening lately will acknowledge that studios are giving very stern warnings about the entire process. They're (rightfully) freaked out about how quickly word gets out. Dance Flick appears to have gotten the benefit of some quick thumbs up on Twitter, Facebook and the like, which is a bit shocking given the reviews and the early Yahoo/IMDb comments.

Tim Briody: Dan, we're inching closer to Movie Movie, in which the film viewers are watching is immediately subjected to a spoof version in the scene immediately following.

Scott Lumley: Wasn't that already done in Spaceballs?

Max Braden: If audiences didn't learn their lesson half a dozen movies ago...

Brandon Scott: I loathe these films in general (as an aside, wasn't there a Sci-Fi Movie that is supposed to come out?), but in this case, I think the "dance" portion of this is probably a year to a year and a half late - at least. I mean, they are spoofing Save the Last Dance in this, which is eight years old. It makes no sense, but the Wayans family is a Hollywood factory that will never really go away. Gags will always find a way to scare up a few bucks, just like another torture porn flick will.

Reagen Sulewski: After the damage done by the non-Wayansed Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie, I think they actually felt it was their duty to reclaim their good name. No, really. I mean, even though these spoofs have near uniformly been terrible, there are levels of suck. That this rose a little above the mire isn't entirely unexpected given the practice this family has had at making these movies.

Jim Van Nest: I'm trying to figure out who still goes to see spoof movies. While I'll admit to liking a couple of them (Airplane, Top Secret, Naked Gun), it's been 2 decades since there's been a decent one made. They ran out of jokes years ago, so who keeps showing up?