First Sci-Fi thriller of the year

Well, Oblivion, the new Tom Cruise/Morgan Freeman movie is being released on April 19th starring Olga Kurylenko (from James Bond film)


It is supposed to be an homage to the 1970's era sc-fi films.

Between April 10th and the 19th, “Oblivion” will hit screens in roughly 35 countries. They include Belgium, France and Sweden, Argentina, Australia, and South Korea all the others through the 18th. Then finally, after doing as little press as possible, Cruise will open “Oblivion” in the US.

Tom Cruise remains as steadily popular overseas as he initially was in the USA. In some of these countrie no one cares if an action movie makes sense just so long as it has a star. The following is the list of Tom Cruise movies where the domestic boxoffice was about the same or larger than the international boxoffice. The only movie in the last 17 years was generally considered a flop.

Cruise married actress Mimi Rogers in 1987. It was through Rogers that the actor became a student of Scientology. Rogers and Cruise divorced in 1990.
On Christmas Eve in 1990, after a brief courtship, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman married in Telluride, Colorado. At some point in the 1990's, Tom Cruise began to seriously alienate his female fans in the USA.

Rock of Ages 2012
Jerry Maguire 1996
The Firm 1993
A Few Good Men 1992
Days of Thunder 1990
Rain Man 1988
Top Gun 1986
Endless Love 1981

The first 29 reviews from overseas are published on rotten tomatoes. The main gist of the reviews is becoming depressingly familiar.

Visually stunning, the story is disjointed and slightly incoherent.

As recently as 1999, the industry was radically different. The top 10 movies collectively earned 3.5 times their production budget in domestic box office while Tarzan only earned 130% of it's budget. The movies clearly aimed at children all had large budgets, but children's movies make a ton of money from product tie-ins, amusement rides, book sales, action figures, record sales, sale of DVD's, etc.

$million
Production budget - Name - Domestic Boxoffice
$115 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace $431
$40 The Sixth Sense $294
$90 Toy Story 2 $246
$33 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me $206
$63 The Matrix $171
$130 Tarzan $171
$34 Big Daddy $163
$80 The Mummy $155
$70 Runaway Bride $152
$0.06 The Blair Witch Project $141
$655 Total $2,131

While the movies aimed at an older audience were not generally brilliant writing, they at least were stories and or comedies. The sixth sense was almost entirely driven by plot. And Blair Witch project proved once and for all that you could tell a ghost story with no special effects and still captivate an audience.

Of all 10 movies from 1999, the only one that I would describe as incoherent was "Star Wars". But "dull beyond belief" would be my first description, while "incoherent" was a lesser crime.

How in the world does Tarzan cost twice as much as The Matrix? Perhaps the catering for Rosie O'Donnell's recording sessions?

The other day I saw "The Mask." Now, that's one good commedy which takes full advantage of visual effects. Sure, it looks a bit dated by now, but it still works.

You may need to like cartoons, though.

Quote: Ayecarumba

How in the world does Tarzan cost twice as much as The Matrix? Perhaps the catering for Rosie O'Donnell's recording sessions?

I am not sure what goes into the budget for animated films. Voice acting usually doesn't command as much salary as live action. Exceptions of course for multiple sequels of successful franchises. Reese Witherspoon made a lot of money because she took a percentage and the film did much better than anticipated.

Tom Hanks: Toy Story series Est. “$15 million: Toy Story 3
Reese Witherspoon: Monsters vs Aliens Est. “$10 million: Monsters vs. Aliens
Cameron Diaz: Shrek series Est. “$10 million: Shrek Forever After
Johnny Depp: voice in upcoming Rango animated feature Est. “$7.5 million: Rango
Ben Stiller: Madagascar film series: Estimated “$5 million: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Brad Pitt: voice in Megamind feature film: Est. “$5 million: Megamind

Well known actors in new franchises.

Adam Sandler: voices in 8 Crazy Nights and upcoming Zookeeper Est. “$2 million: Zookeeper
Nicolas Cage: G-Force : Est. “$2 million: G-Force
Owen Wilson: voices in Cars and upcoming Cars 2 sequel and Marmaduke Est. “$1 million: Marmaduke
Steve Carell: voices in Over the Hedge and Despicable Me Est. “$500,000: Despicable Me

Sample Production Budgets
Toy Story 3: $200 million in 2010
Toy Story 2: $90 million in 1999
Tarzan: $130 million in 1999
Brave: $185 million in 2012

Voice Actors in Brave were: Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, and Craig Ferguson. I can't imagine any of them commanding Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt type salaries. I should think you could get all six of them for $15 million. So who knows what goes into the $185 million budget.

I think the only live action films with a bigger budget than the animated Brave were:
Marvel's The Avengers
The Dark Knight Rises
Skyfall
The Amazing Spider-Man
Men in Black 3
John Carter
Battleship
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (unpublished budget)

The only thing I can figure out, is that animated films are less of a financial risk than live action films. If you look at the above list you see some real bombs among expensive live action. So possibly the animators and writers are much better paid.

Quote: Nareed

The other day I saw "The Mask." Now, that's one good commedy which takes full advantage of visual effects. Sure, it looks a bit dated by now, but it still works. You may need to like cartoons, though.

There was the most incredibly profitable film. Only five months earlier, Jim Carrey's first big film, "Pet Detective" was released. He still wasn't a major star, and Cameron Diaz has never acted before. "The Mask" had a production budget only slightly larger than "Pet Detective". Carrey himself was paid $350K for Pet Detective and $540K for "The Mask". With no big salaries and no expensive special effects the movie made a fortune. Carrey's salary would jump to $20 million in two films.

I saw Oblivion today. Visually amazing, perhaps even Oscar-worthy for special FX and cinematography. Without giving away any spoilers, there was a twist ending that had me replaying it in my head for the rest of the day. Oblivion begs for a prequel, maybe even two.

All reviews I've read tell of the first half of the movie only, which starts abruptly in 2077, after Earth's moon was destroyed in an alien invasion 60 years before in 2017. All this is narrated in the opening scene, we see the remnants of the destroyed moon in the sky, which is a lot closer to us now due to its decaying orbit, which in turn cause devastating quakes and tidal waves on Earth. In the 70 years hence, we apparently beat the aliens, but lost the Earth; all humanity has been relocated to Titan, leaving Tom Cruise and his redhead assistant behind to tidy up loose ends before joining mankind. All the scenes of barren wasteland of America was nicely done, like an updated homage to the old Planet of the Apes movies 40 years ago. The house Tom and Victoria live in is friggin' awesome with its heli-pad for the ultracool helicopter out front.



After seeing the ending twist, I'd love to see prequels showing this attack and subsequent exodus; I think there'd be a market for it, just like Prometheus was for the Alien films. I saw it Sunday at 10:30am and theater was 25% full. Not a peep from anyone during the entire movie as everyone was in rapt attention.

Anyone else see it? What'd ya think? If you want to discuss fully, please hide comments within spoiler tags if appropriate.

Quote: zippyboy

all humanity has been relocated to Titan

Titan is minus 290 Fahrenheit , which makes water as hard as rocks and allows methane to be found in its liquid form. How do they generate the kind of energy required to live there in large numbers?

Quote: Pacomartin

Titan is minus 290 Fahrenheit , which makes water as hard as rocks and allows methane to be found in its liquid form. How do they generate the kind of energy required to live there in large numbers?

The beauty of this movie is that things aren't revealed to the viewer in obvious ways. Except for the narration in the beginning (which was repeated later when Jack [Tom Cruise] gave a history of the war to a new character, which rendered the beginning narration unnecessary and therefore a mistake IMO), all info was given in dribs and drabs in the form of character development. This was an adult film for smart audience with no humor or Transformers-ish silliness. To tell anything about the Titan decision would be a spoiler. Perhaps a prequel would reveal that choice.

Spoilers? Prequels? .... If its utter nonsense... who quite cares?

Quote: Fleastiff

Spoilers? Prequels? .... If its utter nonsense... who quite cares?

Twilight Series. heh.

Actually never seen them. But I know being nonsense isn't necessarily a serial killer if you can sell something else about it.