Unfairness
A week ago trailers for Premium Rush were being laughed at by audiences and Sony wasn’t expecting much of a reception. Then the critics weighed in and the majority liked it — a Road Runner movie, etc. So how did it play with ticket buyers this weekend? How did the rooms feel? And why has it died so decisively (an estimated $6,300,000 in 2255 screens) with the word-of-mouth being rather good?
It sounds like a premise from a 70′s suspense, and sort of makes me think of Man on a Ledge, both premises which were gangbusters cool 3 decades ago.Both are bombs.
Nowadays, people are too techno hip to be interested in a movie about delivery guys on bicycles being chased by bad guys, too simple. Personally I think that it has a story and that is a good thing. Perhaps the mass aud is not interested in story. The bicycle aspect is a certain ding against it for most poeple. JG – Levitt, while a good actor, is also not the right kind. They needed someone more conventionally good looking and brooding type.
1) There is a three to four week period in late August and early September that is the only true dead period left in mainstream theatrical distribution outside of the first weekend in December. There may be good numbers for limited art-house releases, but this is most definitely a studio dumping ground time.
2) Joseph Gordon-Levitt is still not a movie star.Good actor. Small following. Not a movie star.
3) This was supposed to open last fall. Those who wanted to see it then remembered “Hey, wasn’t that supposed to open a year ago? I’ll wait for it to pop up on Netflix.”
4) Bike messengers. Really? The failure of Quicksilver, from the same studio if I recall correctly and with a far more known actor in the lead, should have reminded everyone involved that ALMOST NO ONE wants to see a movie about bike messengers.
There was good news, the Total Recall is out of the top ten after its 3rd week of release, take that Hollywood for shitting on property that was better served left alone as a piece of transitional nostalgia.
For the most part it’s an enjoyable B which is elevated big time by a manic, bonkers, gloriously insane performance by Michael Shannon. There wasn’t much of a crowd early yesterday at Arclight Hollywood (in theater 10, one of the big ones) but I was with it all the way. Seriously, see it if only for Shannon.
They must have spent all the marketing budget around the time of its original release, because it was one of the least promoted mainstream releases I’ve seen in recent years. Seemed like you’d see pretty regular trailers for it around Spring, and basically nothing since.
JGL ain’t a draw, plain and simple. He got lucky with 500 Days of Summer, but that had more to do with the rom-com angle than him personally. Plus, Premium Rush’s low take could also be due to a backlash against his unnecessary appearance in TDKR. Also, generally speaking, bicyclists are self-absorbed assholes who like to block drivers in a hurry-not to mention people using the subways-so no one really thinks of them as heroic-even if they are helping reduce emissions in the air. So I guess if Looper makes money, it’ll probably be due to the Willis factor more than him.
D.Z. says…
Bicycles only have two wheels also, and the box office take for Fast Five shows that audiences clearly prefer four wheels, as also evidenced by Battleship bombing due to its primary vehicles having no wheels at all.
DZ’s opinion: “Premium Rush’s low take could also be due to a backlash against his unnecessary appearance in TDKR.”
The truth: Levitt is, in fact, very memorable in TDKR and his performance was singled out by many critics as being the best thing about the film. Far from being unnecessary to the film, Levitt’s everyman cop character is the most relatable character in the film and is very important to keeping the audience emotionally vested in the film’s plot.
Please. He drags down the story, and barely does anything important in the film.
It’s slickly done and with touches that actually give it more verve and fun than you’d think. Shannon is worth the price of admission alone — one of those performances where he’s both a credible nutbar threat and the best comic relief in the film. I wouldn’t lay this at JGL’s feet but at the fact it’s a lightweight premise to start with, and though I wanted to like it, Koepp defaulted to cliche a LOT on the story side.
Though the “now I’ve seen it all” scene still has me laughing. Shannon’s a hoot.
“Please. He drags down the story, and barely does anything important in the film.”
Wow. That deep, sophisticated analysis of his performance in the film really put me in my place.
Here’s my thought: word of mouth doesn’t really work the way most of you think it works. Most people are not waiting with baited breath to hear the Tomatometer score (nor should they, really; have critics you like and are interested in; don’t study semi-meaningless numbers as a consumer guide); most people do not see movies, even, because their friends tell them to or tell them they heard it was great (and if they did, that wouldn’t affect the first night a movie comes out).
Obviously word of mouth can help stabilize drops and turn a well-liked and decently sampled movie into a real hit. But this idea that Joe Moviegoer is listening carefully to various opinions prescribing whether he should go see a particular movie, and not just pretty much deciding based on trailers and ads, seems unquantifiable at best, and absurd at worst. You know what? Premium Rush will probably drop at least 45% next weekend and it won’t be because “word of mouth wasn’t good.” It’ll be because not that many people were interested in seeing it.
As for the actual reasons, then, I’d say the scale. The kind of small-scale B-movie thrillers that a lot of us appreciate for their economy, slickness, and unpretentious lack of bombast aren’t really in vogue and haven’t been for awhile. Hit & Run has a similar vibe: fun movie, small-scale half-rom-com, half-car-chase thriller (albeit a lot less exciting than Premium Rush), a nicely done small-scale good time at the movies, and my guess is that it’s not really BIG enough for people looking to spend $12-14 on a movie ticket.
FWIW, I saw Premium Rush with half a dozen people on Friday and we all had a great time. JGL is charismatic, Shannon is a blast, the movie isn’t a total goof but also has plenty of comic moments… really nice late-August genre movie, especially compared to the Bourne/Total Recall well-crafted-at-their-chosen-level-of-boringness double feature.
Also, I don’t mean to engage D.Z. or make the cheap shot this will inevitably turn into but… buddy, if you talk to gals between the ages of 20 and 35, you’ll find a lot of people who like him a lot.
He may not be a draw in the sense that hardly anyone is a 100% foolproof movie-star draw right now outside of Will Smith… and Premium Rush is obviously not something a lot of audiences found super intriguing… and his fanbase may well not be enough to make a movie a hit. But it does exist.
Word-of-mouth helps if it’s for a film which really could use a boost, and has just been mismarketed. But Premium Rush was sold as a must-see film. However, with the exception of Skyfall, there aren’t a lot of movies left in ’012 which most people will perceive as “must-sees” after Expendables 2.
Maybe Resident Evil 5, but I can’t really tell it apart from the last movie, though that could be said for the series as a whole, and that rarely stopped the Fast and Furious films. Though I’m kinda curious how Dredd will do. Paranormal 4 will no doubt be like the Saw stuff, where it makes money because it’s shot on the cheap, and it’s a sequel to a familiar franchise, rather than being in-demand. So until Skyfall, I don’t think we’ll see another major hit this year until Twilight 5. The Hobbit’s kind of a wild card, because it doesn’t seem to have the epic action angle going for it, like LOTR. And at this point, it’s essentially competing for audience share with the Game of Thrones crowd.
Movies are expensive. I liked it, but I wouldn’t have paid ten or twelve dollars to see some dudes on bikes.
Michael Shannon, though… his every scene is like he just had bad milk before they said action, and he’s pissed at the supermarket. A hilarious performance.
Eloi, pick up your prizes at the door.
Musta been everyone was seeing “2016″ instead.
I saw it tonight and loved it. It catches you right away, and just keeps moving. The audience (about 15 people besides myself) laughed out loud together a couple of times, including one big laugh having to do with Michael Shannon. Great death scene at the end, and great opening scored to a classic Who song. The other music in the film was great, as well.
Guess even the Joe Porcorn masses don’t dig the name ‘Premium Rush’…
Popcorn
Saw Premium Rush yesterday, enjoyed it a lot, but already forgotten it.
Reading comments above, I’m foggy about what the “now I’ve seen it all” or the Michael Shannon big laugh scenes are.
DZ said: ‘The Hobbit’s kind of a wild card, because it doesn’t seem to have the epic action angle going for it, like LOTR. And at this point, it’s essentially competing for audience share with the Game of Thrones crowd.’
How is The Hobbit competing for audience share with Game of Thrones? Let’s all remember this one. It’s right up there with DZ’s famous prediction of how Sherlock Holmes was going to annihilate Avatar at the BO.
MarkJ: They’re both popular fantasy adaptations currently getting a lot of exposure..
Er, adaptations of popular fantasy novels.
“Movies are expensive. I liked it, but I wouldn’t have paid ten or twelve dollars to see some dudes on bikes.”
Amen.
This is the reality of the world we live in. I realize that many of the commenters here are “insiders”, and some of you get paid to see movies and write about them. More power to you, but normal folks A) don’t have as much extra money to spend on frivolous stuff these days and B) have way more entertainment options than troglodyte masses of years past.
I can only speak for myself, but if this were 1990, I’d have paid my money to see all 3 wide release films in the theaters this past weekend. That ain’t happenin’ now. And that’s not because I’ve lost interest. I’ve got a pretty nice front projection system at home, great surround sound that is equivalent to the better theaters (and way better than the average poopy-theater chain). The only films I go see in the theater are movies that satisfy 2 categories, okay 3 if I’m being honest:
1) Hugely expensive visual spectacle with a hook, ie filmed in IMAX, native 3D, shit blows up REAL good.
2) (More important than 1) A premise and story that does not completely insult my intelligence. This is the reason that despite meeting criteria (1), I won’t waste my money or time seeing Transformers films, Battleship, etc.
3) Shitty kids films. I have kids, so unfortunately, I have to sit through some films that do not meet criteria (1) or (2), like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid flick, for example. At least Brave was pretty to look at.
Another type of film that keeps me away from a theater is the “wannabe” blockbuster film.
Here are some handy examples for people playing along at home:
- X-Men films (cheap cheap cheap looking- fuck you, Fox)
- All reboots (Spiderman again? Total Recall? See you on Redbox for $1.50)
- Movies with Kristen Stewart
- Minor/ cheap looking superhero films (Green Lantern? Captain America? GTFOOH)
And lastly, I never watch Oscar bait/ independent/ arthouse/ foreign films on anything other than Netflix at this point. I can wait, especially since the proportion of great to shitty indy/art/foreign films is roughly equivalent as it is for mainstream Hollywood films.
It takes a lot to get a person like me that cares about film (but isn’t getting paid to watch) into a movie theater. The masses? They be fickle.
P.S. 1990 Padre was watching every single independent/ foreign film out every single week when he lived in NYC (born and raised there), along with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the rest of the shit at the multiplex, but that was before internet porn, my friends.
Well said, Padre. I would add one other criterion: Time. When I was younger, I used to have a lot more of it. Now, it’s rare I can afford the 2 hours plus the 40 minutes round-trip to the theater. And with “spectacle bloat” it’s much, much worse. The Dark Knght Rises killed off almost 3 1/2 precious hours on one of my weekends. It was a decent enough movie, but not worth that much time. Any more, it’s a rare film indeed that is, particularly since firing up a streaming film at home takes seconds.
@DZ: Yeah, but one is a TV show and the other is an adaptation of the most popular childrens book of all time an prequel to three of the most successful films ever made. Again, what’s the conflict here?! That’s like saying Looper will flop because some of its potential audience might be watching Doctor Who!
I got email about a sneak the day of the sneak a day before it came out, I knew the flick was trouble at that point. I like JGL, he’s super talented but it wasn’t an interesting premise.
MarkJ: That’s kind of the point. The Hobbit is for children, and you can get tits on Game of Thrones.
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