Seeking Upside
A just-posted tracking report says that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Paramount, 8.7) has an average first-choice rating of 17 among all ages and quadrants. That’ll rise a bit between now and next Friday but for a film that has cost a huge amount to make and market, even a first-choice rating in the low 20s isn’t too good. The likelihood is for an opening somewhere around $25 million — perhaps a bit higher or lower. A mega-budgeter like G.I. Joe would need to take in at least $35 or $40 million the first weekend to look respectable, no?.
I think it cost $170 Mil.
Probably a weekend gross of less than 40 would be considered an embarrassment.
They hired Stephen Sommers. They knew what they were getting into.
I say, let ‘em crash.
Capone over at Aint it Cool and Devin over at Chud both liked the film quite a bit. Devin who gave Transformers Revenge of the Fallen 1out of 10 gave G.I Joe 8.5 out of 10. The latest trailers are much better than the earlier ones.
Since Devin rated Transformers 2 a perfect film with a 10 out of 10 then he MUST be right about this one.
He gave Transformers 2 a one out of ten.
G.I. Joe apparently is 1000 times better than Transformers 2.
Not that this would be difficult of course.
“Praising” Joe as an epic version of Van Damme’s Street Fighter is like admiring the prestigious Broadway stars of Megaforce.
geek buzz (Devin uses “class” and Channing Tatum in the same sentence) admits Joe’s idiotic w/ no spark among personalities (the cast is either wooden or campy) and cheap CG despite the vast budget.
Starting Aug 14th geeks will be buying tix for District 9 (voting for Halo rewards) and sneaking into Joe after.
If Paramount doesn’t lose a fortune next month, it would only be thanks to a softer rating than Punisher (which Devin praised equally) allowing young boys an extra dose of violence before school starts.
Sommers is a 2nd rate Bay. GI Joe MIGHT provide some decent action thrills, but as far as spectacle goes, GI Joe won’t be able to hold TF2′s jock-strap. Only Cameron has a shot at matching Bay’s magnum opus, but even then, Avatar won’t be able to be judged on the same terms, because so much of it (and probably too much of it) will be overly computer synthetic. Say what you want about Bay, but his ability (and overall vision) with blending CGI characters with real photography is fucking insane. Only Fincher does it better (because it’s more subtle).
The spectacle of TF2 in a museum style IMAX theater was breathtaking.
Alas, I must agree with actionman. No one outside of maybe Fincher and Robert Zemeckis does seamless CGI better than Bay. My issues with Transformers 1 and 2 weren’t the ‘Bay’ elements (action, explosions, cars, women, etc) but his insistence on adding tons and tons of failed plot and character interaction. What little IMAX footage there was in Transformers 2 just highlighted how few truly memorable set pieces that 149 minute movie contained (you have the curtain raiser, the forest fight, and then NOTHING until the climax in Egypt). But yes, those five or ten minutes of IMAX footage was absolutely breathtaking. Almost made the horrible movie worth sitting through (well that, and the terrific new restaurant I discovered pre-show).
“No one outside of maybe Fincher and Robert Zemeckis does seamless CGI better than Bay.”
Chris Nolan? James Cameron? Steven Spielberg?
I think Bay makes *very pretty* CGI, but not necessarily seamless– you always know you’re watching something fake. Not because of the generally superb CGI quality, but because he has to make everything move in such a ridiculous, physically impossible way. It’s like the Spiderman rule– I don’t care how good the CGI is, if it moves like a cartoon, it’s a cartoon. And if it moves too fast, then you’re not creating “kinetic excitement,” you’re pulling a fast one on your audience by not lingering on what should be an impressive effects shot.
Zemeckis, Spielberg and Cameron linger. Bay and Raimi *edit*. The former brand of CGI will always be more impressive to me, because it’s not an obvious attempt at trickery, but something used to tell a story.
actionman
“Say what you want about Bay, but his ability (and overall vision) with blending CGI characters with real photography is fucking insane. Only Fincher does it better (because it’s more subtle).”
I’d agree, but that only highlights the general problem of Bay’s whole existance: Technical proficiency without any actual filmmaking talent. The two are not interchangeable.
The CGI characters in “Transformers” are integrated into the live-action almost seamlessly, this is true. Problem is, it’s seamless integration of horribly-designed creatures and terribly-acted human characters (speaking cringe-inducing dialogue to one-another) into incoherent action scenes taking place in a humorless, nonexistant storyline. He builds perfectly-functioning MACHINES… but all they’re capable of doing is producing shit.
By contrast, Sommers best ‘big’ movie, “The Mummy,” didn’t even have cutting-edge FX by the standards of 1999. BUT it’s actually fun, the monsters and the magic-powers stuff is all cool-looking and imaginatively designed, you can see who’s doing what to who during the action scenes and it’s cast mostly with good actors having fun with their parts.
The one shot of the giant underwater Cobra base (or whatever the hell it is) in the GI Joe trailer looks basically like a high-end XBox cutscene… but it’s niftily designed and filmmed in a manner to accenuate the “wow, that’s cool!” factor. The two or three clips of the two ninjas going at it are better than any action/fight scene Bay has ever executed. Ever.
The Transformers in Bay’s movies have no souls. Their faces articulate no emotion. They have no eyes and the voice acting is wooden. Shia was just charming enough for me to enjoy the first one but I couldn’t get on board for a second.