Good ones

Apes and GxK didn't even get close to $500m, Dune finished at $711m. Even last year those numbers were considered flops. Fury Road made more in 2015 dollars than Apes in 2024 dollars, and the internet talking point is that FR was a flop that didn't warrant a sequel. The evidence says that theaters are a hard sell right now, no matter what's playing

@@gc3k Bro, what?

I'm just saying the 2024 box office is 40% lower than 2023, despite "successful" movies like GxK Kong Dune

@@gc3k You know this kind of thinking is the reason why AAA game development is hell.

Well, that problem you describe is nothing new. There's a reason so many theaters still play those "please silence your phones" clips at every showing, and it's not because the etiquette is common practice. Heck, it's been an issue since the days of live theatre. I imagine many a performer in ancient Greece got fed up with some jerk in the audience talking to his friends instead of watching the show. I agree that sharing a theater with disrespectful people is annoying as heck. Unfortunately, it's one of the risks we take for the experience.

Yes. It may as well be an original IP for most people though.

Ah, but I specified the nostalgia-baiting variety. Those are the kind that rely heavily on "Hey, remember this thing with all the moments you love? Here they are repackaged!" to get by. KOTPOTA, by contrast, presented itself more as continuation of a story people are already invested in. The trailers present a few familiar scenes, it's true, but they don't lean on them. It also helps that the POTA prequels still have a good reputation with audiences compared to other franchises, so audiences are more likely to give the latest entry a chance.

Having looked it up, a movie ticket in 2024 costs an average of $11.75, with some variation up or down depending on chain/region/type of showing (IMAX, 3D, etc.). Expensive? Yes, I don't deny that. As for streaming, let's break it down. Some services, like Tubi , PlutoTV, and FreeVee don't cost anything and have fairly large selections, but there are two caveats. First, they don't have everything, especially not from major studios with their own platforms (more on them later). Ergo, someone in the mood for a major blockbuster is generally going to be out of luck. You can't watch any of the Jurassic Park/World movies on these free platforms, nor any Pixar movies, nor the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Maybe you can find a classic DC Batman or the first Sonic the Hedgehog film, but their presence is not guaranteed to be permanent. Second, these free platforms sustain themselves with ads, something a lot of people aren't overly fond of. Many times have I seen the complaints about streaming having ads when one of the initial attractors was the lack thereof. For the major subscription-based platforms, sure, you have tiers, and some of those tiers are very cheap (for now). Those cheap tiers, however, once again come with ads, and some even limit the amount of content you can get. This is done specifically to discourage people from picking the lower subscription tiers; the more you pay, the more content you get, and ad-free to boot. The problem then becomes that each subscription-based platform only carries the content from the studio that owns it. Max only carries Warner Bros., Discovery, and HBO content (and not even all of it). Disney+ only carries Disney and Fox content (and some stuff has already been deleted or altered). Amazon Prime carries just about everything, but a lot of it requires an additional fee on top of the monthly subscription. Even Netflix now wants people to pay more to avoid getting ads. You get the idea, I'm sure. Therefore, someone who wants the widest variety of content without ads - either for themselves or their families - will have to subscribe to the more expensive tiers of multiple streaming platforms. That can total well over $50 a month on average. That doesn't even take into account that subscription fees are always increasing because, as stated, these platforms are not doing as well as predicted. They couldn't even do that well during the lockdown when people literally could not go anywhere. Oh, and after the lockdown ended, one of the first things people did was go back to watch movies in theaters, but that probably doesn't mean anything, right? "But you can access hundreds of movies as opposed to just one!" you say. Well, sure, but how many of those hundreds are you realistically going to watch? How much time does the average person have to spend on such an activity? How many nights have you spent scrolling through those hundreds of movies and shows looking for something to watch, only to give up because nothing is grabbing you? Or perhaps you found something, but it's already late and you need to be up early tomorrow, so you decide to watch it some other time? How often have you started something only to turn it off because it was bad? How often have you said you wanted to watch something that's streaming only for it to be taken down? How many times has the convenience of streaming been outweighed by the simple desire to just get out of the house for a change? To be blunt, the arguments that streaming will kill theaters were made decades ago when television was first invented. Then they were made again when home video became its own industry. Then they were made *again* when the internet came into its own as a new media platform. Everything the pro-streaming side says has been said before, yet each time, theaters didn't go anywhere. There were periods of adjustment, sure, but the theater apocalypse always proved to be a dud. And each time, the false prophets quietly stepped back and waited for the next new thing so they could start the process anew. All I see is history repeating itself for the umpteenth time. "Spoken like a single person that doesn't take kids to the movies." First and foremost, I used to be a kid who liked going to the movies, and not every screening was accompanied by popcorn and drinks. Frequently, we were there just to watch the movie. Sometimes we snuck our own candy in, but even that wasn't a common practice. Children or no children, buying concessions is a choice, not an obligation. Second, I've heard this same argument made by people who are either single or childless, yet they still lament the price of concessions as though getting them is mandatory. It's just an excuse that falls apart if you take a few seconds to think about it. I understand the allure of snacks during a movie, and I understand wanting the full theatrical experience, but acting like it's not optional is absurd. Frankly, if a person can't tell their kids that they don't need popcorn every time they go to the movies, that's a completely separate issue with ramifications beyond the price of a snack. The Kindle did not mark the end of physical books. iTunes did not mark the end of records and CDs. TV, home video, and the internet did not mark the end of movie theaters. Movie theaters did not mark the end of live theater. With a trach record like that, why should I believe this time will be any different?

Wonka was enjoyable, but it seemed to rely really heavily on a lot of contrivances. I thought there were multiple instances where Wonka should have lost his luggage (down the chute into slavery and on the exploding ship) as well as the elevator to the chocolate vault taking inconsistent amounts of time (takes about the time you'd expect for an elevator until the end when Hugh Grant has to basically teleport to save Wonka and Noodle or else the movie would end with death if I recall). The antagonists that enslave Wonka seem inconsistent in their intelligence to where I'm still not sure half of their actions work with the other half. And the reason I think those are issues is that if those issues were fixed, the movie would be very different. I could be wrong on those and would invite clarification if any of those aren't as contrived as I thought