The Best (and Worst) Fassbender Movies of 2013

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by trackercowe

I think the series might be dead in the water though, unless they can find a way to produce a cheaper movie. Star Trek just doesn't have the same fanbase as Star Wars, Marvel, DC, or even franchises like Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Pirates.

Both new Star Trek movies were promoted heavily and had massive budgets. They also brought in one of the "hottest" actors at the moment to play the only villain in the Star Trek universe everyone generally knows. Sure people know who the Klingons and Borg are, but not enough to care about them. They obviously believed they needed to use Khan's name to do well at the box office, but even that didn't work.

Paramount and Abrams did all they could to make Star Trek a success imo, and yet Into Darkness made less domestically than the first one, and was only the 14th highest grossing movie of the year. The problem is that young people today just don't care about Star Trek. It's generally for an older crowd, who was there for the television series. It's pretty much a stagnated franchise at this point; I am sure there will be more movies eventually, but I foresee massive changes for the series.

I don't really agree with this.

A really good comparable would be the James Bond series in recent years. A basically dead, yet long running film franchise rejuvenated by a good, critically, and commercially well received reboot(Casino Royale, Trek '09). Most people thought the follow up to each would be huge hits, but they actually under performed against expectations due to just not being very good movies (Quantum of Solace, Into Darkness).

Now it'll be up to Paramount to see if they can leverage Trek's fiftieth anniversary and make a really good film that will become a huge hit,,like Sony did with James Bond's fiftieth and Skyfall. The quality of the movie dictates whether it'll be a hit.

[trackercowe]

Debate all you want on whether or not Into Darkness is a good movie, but it reviewed well (87% on Rottentomatoes), got an A Cinemascore rating, and a 7.9 on IMDB (a higher rating than Wrath of Khan). To reviewers and the general audience Into Darkness was a good movie, but under-performed at the box office because the demand for Star Trek movies is just not there.

The only movie that received generally better reviews was the 2009 Star Trek movie, which also didn't meet the studio expectations. The same goes with the final few Next Generation movies, they all failed at the box office, which is why it took so long to reboot the franchise. It just doesn't work with a massive budget. It works fine on television or with smaller movies, but just not for 200 million dollar projects. The highest grossing Star Trek movie previously was actually A Voyage Home back in 1986, when Star Trek was actually popular, it's become less popular since then which is why the box office take has declined over time.

[Tinordi]

Rotten Tomatoes review aggregates are worthless. The quality of most film reviewers, as paid shills for Hollywood, is about as good as my step dad giving his opinion on politics six lagers into a Tuesday night.

[Jake]

My favorites of 2013:

Pacific Rim
Catching Fire
The Worlds End
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
American Hustle
Prisoners

Biggest disappointments:

World War Z
Iron Man 3
Elysium (after District 9, this was such a let down)
Gangster Squad (great cast, bad story)

Some of the biggest grossers of the year like Superman, Thor, Gravity, Anchorman, This is the End, 2 Guns, Don Jon, and Star Trek fall into the "meh" category for me. They were worth the time, but nothing spectacular. Wasn't a fan of the Wolf of Wall Street or Enders Game.

[trackercowe]

Yeah Gangster Squad was pretty forgettable, it was such a waste considering the cast and plot. A good example of how style over substance often fails. LA Confidential had tons of both, and it was a spectacular movie, with an even better all-star cast. If they had just molded the movie in a similar template it would have been a success, but instead they gave us something you forget an hour after the credits roll.

[Jason14h]

Am i missing something about the new Star Trek Movie:


It grossed 467 million worldwide. It is the 100th all time domestic movie and 138 worldwide grossing movie.

I wish I could fail like that!

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=startrek12.htm

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Am i missing something about the new Star Trek Movie:


It grossed 467 million worldwide. It is the 100th all time domestic movie and 138 worldwide grossing movie.

I wish I could fail like that!

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=startrek12.htm

It grossed 467 million, but the distributor and theatres take a huge chunk of that, possibly half of the total. Add marketing to the 190 million production budget and you can see that it probably made very little, if anything.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

It grossed 467 million, but the distributor and theatres take a huge chunk of that, possibly half of the total. Add marketing to the 190 million production budget and you can see that it probably made very little, if anything.

Theaters don't make much off movies. The movies are a very small margin of their profit. You spending 10 dollars for a popcorn and a drink that costs them about 50 cents is where they make their coin.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Theaters don't make much off movies. The movies are a very small margin of their profit. You spending 10 dollars for a popcorn and a drink that costs them about 50 cents is where they make their coin.

That's true, especially in the first week or two when they usually lose money. It's more the distributor who takes a cut.

Studio accounting is vague so it's tough to know when a movie really makes money. This is by design because they allegedly fudge the numbers to screw people who have "backend" deals.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Rotten Tomatoes review aggregates are worthless. The quality of most film reviewers, as paid shills for Hollywood, is about as good as my step dad giving his opinion on politics six lagers into a Tuesday night.

Name one top critic that is paid by Hollywood.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by troutman

Name one top critic that is paid by Hollywood.

Not sure, but I remember Peter Travers from Rolling Stone had a tendency to give out some very generous reviews.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by troutman

Name one top critic that is paid by Hollywood.

Well until his death in 2007, Joel Siegel would give a positive review to any turd that came across his desk, though I'm unsure whether he was a shill or just a really happy dude.

[Tinordi]

They may not be directly on the payroll, but how do you make sense of a moving as bad as Into Darkness getting such high reviews? It was objectively bad. Clearly there's some type of arrangement bread buttering that's going on between the review industry to be totally uncritical of huge expensive Hollywood franchises or the idiotic masses will punish reviewers for reviewing movies the *want* to like badly. Either way, don't go trotting out Rotten Tomatoes aggregates as any type of indication on the quality of a movie It's laughable.

[trackercowe]

OK and what about the high scores on IMDB and Cinemascore? Guess you shouldn't use those either, since most people are idiots according to Tinordi. Although the same idiots are the ones buying tickets, which was the argument I was trying to make. I wasn't arguing the quality of the movie, but the fact that the movie did not do well despite the fact both critics and moviegoers seemed to enjoy it. That's two Star Trek movies that everyone seemed to like, and yet neither of them were massive successes. It just goes to show that the Star Trek universe just isn't popular at the same level as top movie franchises.

As for it making money, it definitely made some money, but not nearly what they expected. With franchises such as Star Trek studios expect huge winfalls, especially with sequel money on the line. Sequels typically make more than first movies in the series, but Star Trek ID barely made more than the first. If they made a third based on the trend it could even make less than the second. It's just not worth the risk throwing 200 million at a movie that doesn't guarantee a massive return (and now they know it won't). Although Star Trek isn't necessarily a series that needs a massive budget, so it should be fine if they find a different director and change things up and make a smaller movie.

[Inglewood Jack]

STID's take was $467,365,246, a 21% improvement over the $385,494,555 that ST2009 pulled, which itself was a massive leap from the preceding NextGen movies. perhaps there is a bit of truth to the "limited" appeal of Star Trek, but in my opinion they squeezed as much as they could from the masses with the reboot, dumbing all the nerdy inverse tachyon phase pulse stuff into "red matter" and "FIRE EVERYTHING!!"

I think the bigger problem is just effing blockbuster overload. they just keep cramming more and more of these giant event movies with budgets the size of small country GDPs into the spring/summer window and they're just cannibalizing each other. is it a coincidence that the 2 biggest movies of all time, Titanic and Avatar, were December releases that didn't get lost in the summer orgy? I've seen a couple of articles predicting a Hollywood crash in the next few years due to the over-reliance on the blockbuster tent pole...if it does happen it might not be such a bad thing.

[Inglewood Jack]

Originally Posted by trackercowe

Although Star Trek isn't necessarily a series that needs a massive budget, so it should be fine if they find a different director and change things up and make a smaller movie.

Star Trek shines brightest when it relies on excellent writing and human drama. the best TV episodes often had almost no phaser pew pew action to speak of. but if you think they're gonna try to do that on the big screen, in place of the typical Universal Studios movie ride, you're kidding yourself. can you imagine how Star Trek I (the one where you literally spend a half hour staring at the crew's faces while they fly into V'ger) would be received if they were to release it today? this generation's ADHD movie crowd would be asleep/texting before Kirk even got on board the Enterprise.

[RogerWilco]

Originally Posted by kootenayguy9

Just finished watching Don Jon..............not sure what to make of it.

I just watched that last night, odd but very good movie. I just would suggest that any of you with new girlfriends may not want to rent that one on date night. Could be a little awkward.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

They may not be directly on the payroll, but how do you make sense of a moving as bad as Into Darkness getting such high reviews? It was objectively bad. Clearly there's some type of arrangement bread buttering that's going on between the review industry to be totally uncritical of huge expensive Hollywood franchises or the idiotic masses will punish reviewers for reviewing movies the *want* to like badly. Either way, don't go trotting out Rotten Tomatoes aggregates as any type of indication on the quality of a movie It's laughable.

And you explain the massive critical disasters, such as John Carter or Mars needs Moms causing huge write downs for the studios, how?

The shills, as call them, should have been out in force to support these. But let's not get facts confused with your opinion.

[Coach]

I liked Into Darkness. Never seen a Star Trek episode or any of the older movies. But I like both the new ones. I don't have anything to compare Cumberbatch to but I thought he did well and the twist with him being Khan actually did take me by surprise. Maybe there were easter eggs for the older fans that gave it away earlier but I didn't notice them. Either way, I think it gets some harsh critizism from fans that were expecting the Khan from Star Trek II. People going into movies based on old material that are hoping to see exactly what they envisioned for their beloved characters are always going to be disappointed. Not because one is worse than the other, its just because it isn't what YOU wanted/remember. The new Khan was going to be different than the old Khan. If people can't understand that going in I don't know what to say.

Originally Posted by RogerWilco

I just watched that last night, odd but very good movie. I just would suggest that any of you with new girlfriends may not want to rent that one on date night. Could be a little awkward.

Rent?.... What is this word?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Rent?.... What is this word?

Date? .... what is this word?