Monday Morning Quarterback Part III

By BOP Staff

August 22, 2013

Unbeatable.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
David Mumpower: If we take a step back and look at the meta aspect of this, Hollywood is notorious for taking the hot topic of the moment and producing a movie out of it. The buzz around Seal Team Six translated to solid box office for multiple movies. Why? The concepts promised action and real life events mirroring Call of Duty maps. That's marketable. The death of Jobs combined with the attention-grabbing Walter Isaacson biography regarding Jobs' behavior created similar fascination. The difference is that a guy being a jerk boss only works if he gets his comeuppance in the end, Horrible Bosses style. A biopic needs a hook, something Lincoln clearly had since it focused on a particular time during the life of our greatest President. Jobs bounces from era to era, which creates nightmares for the marketing team.

Kim Hollis: Paranoia, which featured Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and a bald Harrison Ford, earned only $3.5 million this weekend and finished in 13th place. Say something funny about Paranoia.

Jason Barney: Hhhhhmmmm….I am not sure I can say something funny about this opening. It isn’t funny…it is scary. This was another project I was surprised even reached the big screen. I suppose on some level there are people who may want to go see a film like this, perhaps because they follow Harrison Ford or Gary Oldman, but the trailer seemed convoluted and unappealing. Maybe the box office has changed too much, but I can’t believe this project took $35 million to make. It hasn’t been all downhill for Ford; he is still doing okay. Despite films like Extraordinary Measures, Cowboys and Aliens, and Paranoia, he was great in 42 earlier this year. Ender’s Game could be hit or miss, as Orson Scott Card sounds like he is trying to sabotage his own movie, but Ford just signed on for Expendables 3, which should do fine. There is talk about a fifth Indiana Jones film, although that may not happen. He’s already confirmed for the next Star Wars film, so it is not like he’s hurting for work.




Advertisement



Brett Ballard-Beach: Funniest thing I can say: Harrison Ford's buzz cut in Presumed Innocent or his "to-the-scalp-cut" here. Choose your favorite!

Also, was anybody really excited for "Indiana Jones vs. Sirius Black" when they could just rewatch **ing Air Force One? (Seriously, I rarely saw it mentioned that, you know, Ford and Oldman had already acted together!). That would be like, "Hey, you're gonna love Righteous Kill, because you've never seen DeNiro and Pacino together ..... (Heat) um, for an extended period of time (Heat) . . . in a shitty cop/serial killer film (okay, got me there)." And the punchline is that Paranoia is gonna throw under that film by about $40 million.

Max Braden: Firstly, there are plenty of men who do bald well. Harrison Ford is not one of those men. If you turn the sound down on the trailer you can imagine some Dirty Rotten Scoundrels scenario where Ford is pissed that Oldman did this to him while he was sleeping. Secondly, Hemsworth looks way out of his depth in this movie. He just looks too immature to be handle the plot or to lead this kind of movie. Charlie Sheen in Wall Street at least looked and sounded like he had the tiger-blood-fueled balls to demand respect from his costars, and he was two years younger while filming that than Hemsworth was filming this.

Edwin Davies: Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman all felt like they were being watched. Turns out that they were dead wrong.

Kim Hollis: Seriously, how do movies like this even get made? What producer or company looks at the generic story and decides to greenlight it? It just seems like a monumental waste of time, talent and effort for everyone involved.


Continued:       1       2

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Friday, April 26, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.