Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
July 25, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Captain America: The First Avenger opened to $65 million. What do you think of this result?
Edwin Davies: This is an immensely solid result, but not much more. I'm intrigued by how weirdly identical it is to Thor's opening weekend total. Not a great result, but by no means a bad one, so I imagine we'll see this one fall just short of $200 million when all is said and done.
Brett Beach: Edwin, I would take "weirdly identical" and change it to "slight over-exaggeration - wink wink - in the estimate [editor's note: the film was estimated at $65.8 million] to allow for the Captain to claim, even for a day, the title of Best Opening Weekend for a Comic Book Film of Summer 2011" (whew!). And that's fine because I was blown away, expecting superhero fatigue to set in at this point even as I was thinking that Timberlake-Kunis might ride the R-rated wave and beat out Kutcher-Portman. I have been following along year-to-date the comments on this movie's commercial viability from my more comic book knowledgeable fellow BOP'ers (i.e. all of you) and wondering if they would hold water. Hats off, gents and ladies. True, these aren't Iron Man numbers, but they ended Marvel's summer with a solid win.
Bruce Hall: I'm mildly surprised, especially now that I've seen the film. Not only are these not Iron Man numbers, but quality wise this movie was no Iron Man either, despite the good will it's getting from audiences. But when you consider the fact that we've just about exhausted the A, B and C list of super hero titles, this is more than enough to justify Marvel's recent cross pollination strategy. A few months ago I wouldn't have been surprised if you visited me from the future to tell me that Captain America opened to $40 million. But after seeing some promising trailers and hearing some positive advance feedback, it looked like Marvel might have another solid winner on their hands. And sure enough, they did. Reports of the death of the comic book movie have been slightly, if not greatly exaggerated.
Shalimar Sahota: I personally don't see Captain America as that strong of a comic book character. Also, those underwhelming trailers don't really help, though going with the Spider-Man approach of a scrawny kid becoming a hero is still a good way to sell it. Also, being the final comic book movie of the summer comes the thought that maybe audiences have had enough already. So to earn $65 million is, to me, a tremendous result. That they were able to take down Harry Potter as well is just the icing on the low fat cake for Marvel Studios.
David Mumpower: Brett was exactly right about the exaggerated estimate. The actual has the movie with $700,000 less, meaning that Thor wins modest bragging rights here. I want to circle back to Shalimar's statement in just a moment, but what I would note first is this. Marvel has taken a pair of relatively one-dimensional characters in Thor and Captain American and translated them into $130 million worth of opening weekend box office. Last week, BOP debated the upside of The Avengers in terms of whether it could break Harry Potter's record. I believe this is unlikely yet I have to acknowledge Marvel movies have almost universally opened better than they should. Punisher is the only character excluded from this list although X-Men: First Class may qualify as well.
Thor and Captain America have name recognition yet there is a limitation to their overall awareness. Captain America is obviously a military icon while Thor is crazy, fun cheesecake as a protagonist. They each have more negatives than positives, though, and this is why I give Marvel a tremendous amount of credit for pulling off what they have accomplished this summer. Their *least* popular movie is a stronger performer than DC's only major release, Green Lantern, and by over $30 million.
With regards to what Shalimar states, I fully agree that the trailers never really built to anything. I liked the teaser quite a bit but then it became clear that this was the gist of the film. It's a period piece with an American icon fighting against Nazis...and they didn't even do the more marketable Space Nazi aspect as I had hoped/expected. I do feel that Captain America is a strong comic book character, however, and I am not just saying that because I grew up reading The Invaders. There is something about that iconic shield that resonates with American males, a key ingredient in the popularity of the movie since the primary movie-going demographic remains males under 30. Whenever we play Marvel Ultimate Alliance as a group (and several BOP staff members and I have done this over the years), there is a fight to play as Cappy, because that shield is such an awesome weapon. In point of fact, this is something I believe is crucial to the box office triumph of Thor and Cappy. People know their weapons every bit as much as the characters themselves, and I think that earned each character the benefit of the doubt in a way that Green Lantern wasn't given.
Booster Gold!
Kim Hollis: With the release of Captain America, does this mark the end of high-profile comic book character adaptations? If not, which heroes remain "un-moviefied"?
Edwin Davies: The only superhero that I'm interested in seeing brought to the big screen at this point is Ant-Man, and even then that is solely because it is being scripted by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (who already worked together on the terrific Attack the Block and Spielberg's forthcoming Tintin movie, which is to say nothing of Wright's own great work as a director apart from Cornish). Otherwise, I think all of the biggies have been tapped at this point and we are firmly into reboot territory.
Bruce Hall: No matter how many times I continue to see proof that they're working on an Ant-Man flick, I will not truly believe it until I see a trailer. When it comes to the subject of "comic book movie fatigue", I don't think we've even scratched the surface yet. To my knowledge, adaptations currently in development include Luke Cage (obscure), The Flash (who runs so fast you almost can't see how silly his costume looks), Deadpool (obscure), Ant-Man (yeah, right), Doctor Strange (obscure but possibly cool), Iron Fist (okay...), Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson fatigue is something we may be talking about soon), Silver Surfer and Sub-Mariner - who walks around in a green metallic Speedo and has wings on his ankles. I'm just not ready to look at that for two hours. And I haven't even mentioned the Spider-Man reboot, the Conan reboot, or the Judge Dredd reboot. If you think they did Westerns to death back in the day, just wait. Even the most devoted and fanatical comic book geek is going to have his patience tested over the coming years. If you want to talk about comic book fatigue, let's bring it up again this time in 2013. We may have to devote a whole section of the site to it.
Jim Van Nest - As a non-comic book reader who knows everything he knows about super heroes from TV and movies...really, there's only 1 major super hero (and by major, I mean "known to people outside of of comic shops") and that's Wonder Woman. You might be able to throw someone like Aquaman in there, but after Entourage, maybe not so much anymore.
Brett Beach: As a major comic book reader many many moons ago - and never really since - I am going to go '80s retro (and group mentality over individual mentality) and say Power Pack or The New Mutants. Truth be told, I think I liked those a little more than X-Men at the time I was reading them. And since Secret Wars and Secret Wars II have also been in my conscious mind, the Beyonder would make a great character for a writer and/director up for the challenge. I have now exhausted my patter on this topic.
David Mumpower: Bruce mentions Deadpool and I want to examine that for just a moment. When I was playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 last year, I finally "got" Deadpool. There was a sequence in a train station and a random piece of dialogue was Deadpool offering this non sequitur: "Sure, Villain X is a bad guy but at least he keeps the train running on time." I busted up at that and ever since then, I've appreciated just how much fun that character is. I was disappointed how poorly used he was in the disastrous Wolverine movie but if Ryan Reynolds gets to make that movie, I'm there on opening night.
With regards to everyone else in DC and Marvel, we have reached a point of diminishing returns. Wonder Woman has failed to get off the ground as a movie and a television show. The problem the character has is that there isn't that one memorable villain in the rogues gallery that jumps off the page, leaving us with a super-hot, semi-invincible Amazon warrior. And Xena already knocked that story out of the park. I cannot take Ant-Man as a movie seriously as it fails the laugh test. While I would personally enjoy an Iron Fist/Luke Cage buddy flick, it wouldn't have a lot of mainstream appeal and with a Jessica Jones television show in development, I would imagine all three characters have their rights locked up anyway. Martian Manhunter is the most powerful DC superhero yet to get a movie but given the stifled yawn directed at Green Lantern, I don't see that project getting off the ground any time soon.
Looking over the options, I think DC has a lot of trouble in this regard. Ignoring the latest Superman reboot for a moment and laughing away the very thought of Aquaman, the most established remaining icon is Green Arrow. Even if there were a way to distinguish the character away from its Smallville implementation, the perception among fanboys is that Hawkeye, soon to be featured in The Avengers, is the much better character. I disagree with this assertion, but I don't have a lot of hope for a Green Arrow project in the short term. Similarly, if a Justice League movie cannot get off the ground, I would suggest moving toward a Justice Society film (they're entirely different in spite of the similar names if you didn't know), but people will continue to tilt windmills at Justice League instead.
The one character with a huge reputation that I think could star in a popular film is Batgirl. While everyone remembers Birds of Prey as a huge failure as a television series, the initial ratings for it were *massive* and it wound up averaging about 7.6 million viewers per episode. That's a solid hit these days rather than a canceled series. With the era of chicks who kick ass in full bloom, this is an idea that needs reexamining although the disaster that was Catwoman makes it unlikely. This leaves us with outsider projects such as Sandman/Death from Neil Gaiman or Y the Last Man as the titles with the best combination of fertile ideas and awareness. We're also about due for another Spawn reboot as well. In fact, with Walking Dead so popular right now, Image Comics is probably the best place to look for the next major comic movie adaptation. I would also love to see Irredeemable and Incorruptible get adapted at some point, but I'm not sure the Boom! Studios releases have enough familiarity quite yet.