Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn)

[Dukefrukem]

It will do well, but not X-Men/Cap Am well. Prediction: around $200 million and in the top twenty B.O. for 2014. There's also competition down the road from Ninja Turtles (unless it really sucks), The Expendables 3, The Giver, and most esp. Sin City 2.

It's $1 million away from passing X-Men on domestic box office. Currently sits at #6 for 2014.

[Spun Lepton]

I have this habit of returning to comments I'd made earlier and being harshly critical of them. I didn't mean to imply I think women should be segregated from men when given their own comics. Just thought I'd clarify that.

[Watashi]

lol Pop Trash.

[Grouchy]

There is one blogger who did a post "correcting" Milo Manara's cover drawing lines over the image. Like, come on. You really think Manara doesn't know proper anatomy? That's either very naive or very offensive from an artistic perspective.

[Pop Trash]

This was OK. Too often it felt like Seth MacFarlane rewrote a dusty Star Trek script. I liked Groot and Drax. Rocket made me yearn for Howard the Duck. Pratt was OK.

[

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I second Bosco's note that Baby Groot doesn't become a thing. He would be the Scrappy Doo of this franchise and really sink it.

]

In sum: MacGruber is better.

[Henry Gale]

[

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I second Bosco's note that Baby Groot doesn't become a thing. He would be the Scrappy Doo of this franchise and really sink it.

]

I'll assume that's one element the new animated TV show is going to make the most of:

[Henry Gale]

And by the end of this week this will be the biggest movie of the year domestically.

I don't think I or anyone else expected this but I wouldn't have it any other way.

[Pop Trash]

And by the end of this week this will be the biggest movie of the year domestically.

I don't think I or anyone else expected this but I wouldn't have it any other way.

The kids in the audience seemed to love it. It does have a Ghostbusters vibe to it with Peter Quill being Peter Venkman. If I were a six-year-old boy I imagine I would think Pratt is "cool."

[Pop Trash]

Also, James Gunn's career just went into hyperspace and if Pratt gets less than $10 million for the sequel, he should fire his agent.

[Henry Gale]

Also, James Gunn's career just went into hyperspace and if Pratt gets less than $10 million for the sequel, he should fire his agent.

I think that's a big reason they decided to lock Gunn in for the next Guardians and announce it before this one even came out, they couldn't afford for him to realize just how many options he'd suddenly have if it did this well.

Also, for Pratt, Marvel often pays their actors so little for their movies upfront (with the exception of Downey, since he was the first to get his gross-point-heavy deal in before the studio exploded, managing something like $50 million for Avengers once its billion+ gross was all said and done) considering how big the budgets and grosses are. At one point they were offering Chris Evans and Hemsworth $700,000 each for Winter Solider and Thor 2, and an extra $500,000 if they hit $500 million at the worldwide box office. Once that got out, everyone outside the situation saw how insane that was (Hemsworth almost left since he got multiple millions for Huntsman) and it undoubtedly got upped, but otherwise, it's kinda insane how little money they're willing to shell out.

But that's the thing about signing six to nine movie contracts as an actor, you have very narrow negotiation leeway when its both your star-making role, but your face in that role is such a vital cash cow for them that they can't exactly replace you. Unless you're Norton or Howard and they'd just rather have someone else.

[Pop Trash]

I feel like Pratt's presence in GotG is felt even more than Hemsworth or Chris Evans. He's probably locked into the contract he signed but maybe Marvel will throw him a bone and give him a bonus if GotG2 reaches a certain box office benchmark. On the other hand, Marvel just handed him a movie star career on a silver platter. Also, Marvel gave zero fucks about firing Edgar Wright so they might be getting pretty arrogant at this point. I can't be the only person a little alarmed that four movies in the top ten of 2014 are Marvel including the top two movies.

[Henry Gale]

I feel like Pratt's presence in GotG is felt even more than Hemsworth or Chris Evans. He's probably locked into the contract he signed but maybe Marvel will throw him a bone and give him a bonus if GotG2 reaches a certain box office benchmark. On the other hand, Marvel just handed him a movie star career on a silver platter. Also, Marvel gave zero fucks about firing Edgar Wright so they might be getting pretty arrogant at this point. I can't be the only person a little alarmed that four movies in the top ten of 2014 are Marvel including the top two movies.

I weirdly almost forget that Spidey and X-Men are even "Marvel" at this point because they're developed so differently outside of the Marvel Studios super-brand. But yeah, with Cap and Guardians being the top two domestically, and Maleficent being #3 worldwide, the only outliers of Marvel and/or Disney are movies based on toys (Lego and Transformers). It is a bit worrying on paper, but at least four out of those I've seen are still really good pieces of mainstream entertainment despite those creatively-questionable all-encompassing corporation-heavy boundaries, and Guardians was by no means a safe bet, but it payed off beautifully.

Unconscious backlash might've already begun with this summer's domestic grosses being the way they are, but it still makes a movies like Gravity or Inception (based on no pre-existing property, critical and award adulation, make $717 / 825 million worldwide respectively) seem like they'll go down as an anomalies instead of incentive for studios to provide audiences with similar fare. [EDIT: Going by this logic though, Interstellar might just do a lot better than I thought. Give some credit to Guardians' spacey appeal, with McConaughey's first big film role since his Oscar (and likely Emmy tomorrow), people hopefully majorly catch up with Cosmos on Netflix too and BOOM: Nolan has the most zeitgeisty movie of the fall.]

[Pop Trash]

Going by this logic though, Interstellar might just do a lot better than I thought. Give some credit to Guardians' spacey appeal, with McConaughey's first big film role since his Oscar (and likely Emmy tomorrow), people hopefully majorly catch up with Cosmos on Netflix too and BOOM: Nolan has the most zeitgeisty movie of the fall.

Unless the reviews or w-o-m are toxic it should do just fine, but it's kind of sad when only one movie per year becomes a blockbuster w/o being attached to a franchise or toys.

[Henry Gale]

Unless the reviews or w-o-m are toxic it should do just fine, but it's kind of sad when only one movie per year becomes a blockbuster w/o being attached to a franchise or toys.

Yeah, even before thinking of it in the above terms I assumed it would be the biggest movie of the final quarter of the year for those that don't care about Hunger Games or Hobbit and think of themselves outside of the Big Hero 6 (Hey there, Disney/Marvel!) demographic. The last of those even opens the same weekend.

[Kurosawa Fan]

This was awesome. Not much more to add that hasn't been expressed repeatedly.

[Watashi]

The amount of money this is making is insane. It's likely to pass Cap 2 as the highest grossing film of the year (at least until Mockingjay comes out). This is also the first time the biggest movie of the summer came out in August. Who would thought GotG would do better than Spiderman, X-Men, and Transformers?

I love that this movie is doing great with critics and the masses. Hopefully this will lead Marvel to take more risks down the road with their properties.

[Dukefrukem]

Who would thought GotG would do better than Spiderman, X-Men, and Transformers?

Yeh no one. I think the audience is getting a little fatigued with the Spider-man and Transformers franchise. With Spider-man, they're thinking: "well, he will never be an Avenger but Spidey is our favorite Marvel character so I guess we'll go see the movie".

[number8]

It's turned into one of those groundswell moments where nobody wants to miss out on. A lot of people in my office who hasn't seen it yet has been talking about not having time to see it like they're missing out on something new in the culture. At this point no one would feel that way about those other franchises.

[Pop Trash]

It's turned into one of those groundswell moments where nobody wants to miss out on. A lot of people in my office who hasn't seen it yet has been talking about not having time to see it like they're missing out on something new in the culture. At this point no one would feel that way about those other franchises.

Right. Same thing happened with Avatar and Titanic.

[Sxottlan]

Has anybody written a piece about how you could look at the three Iron Man films acting as metaphors for Robert Downey, Jr's life and career once the movies came into them, making him who he now is?

I've always believed that when Tony Stark meets Trevor Slattery, RDJ is meeting himself. Heck, T.S. and T.S.

Oh man how I love that film. I should watch it again.

[Morris Schæffer]

A Breath of fresh air, I had a lot of fun with these fellas. They're cool, funny and a little bit certifiable. Still dissapointed it didn't offer a complete package, meaning the ending is yet another variation on [

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big city is attacked, baddies must be stopped

] without the least bit of tension. At times the interaction between the characters and little character moments is so good, that the action just gets in the way and veers all too close to noisy bombast.

Glad this got great reviews and did great at the BO.

[Spun Lepton]

Saw it again. So good.

[EyesWideOpen]

Hopefully this will lead Marvel to take more risks down the road with their properties.

I don't know. After Ant-Man bombs I'm sure they'll go back to being skittish.

[Pop Trash]

I don't know. After Ant-Man bombs I'm sure they'll go back to being skittish.

Or maybe they will say "gee we should have just let Edgar Wright and Paul Rudd do their thing and not intervene since that's the only reason anyone gives a shit about fuckin' Ant-Man. Oh and let's not try and link every goddamn movie into the tenuous MCU plot with orbs and shit especially when it's Ant-Man." Oh wait that will never happen.

[Watashi]

Edgar Wright wasn't going to make Ant-Man a hit. The marketing and how they sell the film to tie-in with other MCU movies will. I think Ant-Man could be a hit (maybe not GotG big), but I wonder how much their willing to spend on it considering how much has been already spent over the past few years getting it into development.