Stuff…

Updated on July 6, 2007 By Ken Begg 26 Comments

MEG bites…the dust:  The long-gestating giant shark project Meg, to which director Jon De Bont has long been attached, has finally been aborted like Orca’s baby by New Line.  This is the second time the kabosh has been put on this film.  Each time it was in the production line, there was an upcoming major Giant Monster movie due.  In 1998 it was TriStar’s Godzilla, and recently it was Peter Jackson’s King Kong.  Both times the films underperformed, and both times a studio (previously Disney) dropped Meg. 

I have argued in the past, to my vast regret, that there really is not a mass audience for giant monster movies.  Certainly not of the size required to justify the huge budget this sort of thing seems to demand.  Steve Alten, the writer of the simply hideous series of novels the movie was to be taken from (but then, Jaws was a pretty bad novel too), continues to tell fans that someday his baby will make it to cinema screens.  Perhaps he’s right, and perhaps the movie will actually be good, and moreover perhaps it will make buttloads of money.

I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

Transformers, More Cash Than Meets the Eye:  On the other hand, giant robots seem to be doing just fine, so maybe we will see a sucessful giant monster movie someday.  In any case, Transformers is raking in the coin, having made nearly $66 million dollars in the first two days (including the holiday).   With soft competition–Licence to Wed (ugh!) is the other ‘big’ movie due out this week, Transformers looks like a franchise in the making.

You know that Underdog movie where Underdog is played by a real dog?  It’s really not doing it for me.

Spike Lee is making a film about black American soldiers in World War II.  This is potentially a very interesting topic.  I hope he doesn’t mess it up.

I’ve been generally really down on the whole idea of another Indiana Jones film.  (And frankly, I wasn’t that big on the last two.)  Primarily, I wonder how Spielberg can at this point in his ‘artistic evolution’ make a film with fun violence.  Because if he can’t, he can’t make an Indy film.   Even so, word is that the new movie will be very light on the CG (none, maybe?), which is the first promising thing I’ve heard about it.

Marvel Comics president Kevin Feige speaks of the in-the-works Captain America movie, and notes, “we’ll certainly have to play with that and play with Captain America being this patriotic propaganda machine.”  Why does being a symbol of what is great and good about this country have to be viewed inherently as “propoganda.”  It’s like when you see people shouting “USA! USA!” and you know that they couldn’t even concieve of doing so in an unironic sense.  Making fun of unreflexive patriotism is one thing.  Making fun of patriotism in itself is another.   Still, the fact that the first half of the film would follow Cap in WWII is very cool indeed.  Again, though, don’t mess that up by foisting a political message on it.

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  • Ed Richardson

    I never read Meg but I believe Ken wrote a mini-review of the book that exposed the utterly retarded syntax of the author. I can’t speak for the novel Meg, but giant monster movies are lucrative, and plainly so. Remember that Jurassic Park was the biggest grossing movie of all time (yes, that’s all time) for a while after its release. It’s number six now. We’re talking about a movie that has grossed over $1 billion.

    Case in point: Peter Jackson’s King Kong; worldwide box office take – half a billion dollars. It’s Universal’s 4th highest grossing picture.

    Even the HORRENDOUS 1998 Godzilla grossed $380 million worldwide (it was shot for less than half that. Does anyone realize how utterly FUBAR that movie is? I remember exiting the cinema with a very silent, disappointed crowd. Godzilla making babies? Shades of Aliens in NYC subway stations? Godzilla tricking a torpedo into hitting the sub that launched it? Godzilla lured by a pile a fish? Godzilla taken out by some puny missiles fired from a couple of F-18s (WTF?????)? If that heresy can make money, any big monster movie can.

    I predict Transformers will pull in $95 million this weekend. That will recoup the cost of the film and everything from that point forward is gravy. Your basic male filmgoer can’t not like this movie. Positive word of mouth will probably get it a good half-billion dollars worldwide.

    Ergo, the question is not whether big monster/robot movies (what the Japanese call “kaiju” movies) are lucrative, the question is: what’s the next bix monster/robot movie? I noticed some buzz about a remake of Them! a while back. A Land that Time Forgot remake might work. So would a Shogun Warriors movie (Gawd, did anyone here but me read that fantastic Marvel series?).

    Big monster movies have been lucrative for nearly a century now – from King Kong to 20 million Miles to Earth and Gojira to Jurassic Park and now to Transformers.

  • Actually, that was of a novel from the ’70s called Megalodon. There are a bunch of mostly hopelessly obscure and generally awful giant shark books (and one pretty good one), and I once mulled reviewing them serially, but never got around to it.

    http://www.jabootu.com/vcjuneohfour.htm#nr

    As for Alten, his first book is…OK. It’s basically a string of ‘cool’ giant shark scenes, and reads like the result of him compiling a list of such for a year or two and then writing a book that strung them together. Sort of like the Ghost Rider movie; pretty bad, really, but it pays off on the action stuff, so you ignore the rest.

    After that, though, Alten had clearly blown his wad and the result was a second book that is downright hilariously bad. He’s written a few more since then, but I haven’t read those. The second, though, The Trench, is just hideous.

  • As for the point of giant monster movies making money, fair enough, but you have to look at the ratio of total box office take to production budget. (Remember the studios typically get back about half, maybe a little more, of the full box office take.)

    For instance, Superman Returns made about $400 million worldwide, but cost nearly $300 million to make. That’s right, $300 million. Result: Profits tepid and mostly from commercial tie-ins and home video, cable, etc. The remakes of King Kong and Godzilla did better than Superman Returns, ratio wise, but not nearly enough to make the studios happy with the result.

    Contrast that to Pirates 3, which also cost about about $300 million, but has made over $900 million at the box office. With the latter studio pulling in $450-500 million, even before home video etc., that’s a nice piece of change.

    I have to admit, I don’t think of Jurassic Park as as a giant monster movie, per se, because they spend too much effort to treat them only as animals rather than monsters. I realize that’s a narrow view not shared by many, though.

    Theatrical giant monster movies might become lucrative again, but this will have to wait for the day when computer special effects costs become far cheaper. The almost entirely computer-generated 300 cost only $65 million. If you make a giant monster movie for that amount, it could actually turn enough profit to inspire theatrical knock-offs and sequels. But you really need a multiple of 3 to 1 or more (box office take to production cost) to begin to make this gamble worth while.

  • Back to Transformers, it cost (officially) $150 million, and so won’t break even for the studio until it pulls in $300 or over. It certainly looks like it will do that, but whether it ends up being a very modest profit generator, like Godzilla or King Kong or Superman Returns, or a big one, like the Pirates or Spider-Man movies, remains to be seen.

  • Ed Richardson

    Excellent point about the differences in profit ratios. However, with Spiderman and Pirates, one is speaking of franchises. Kong is not (yet) a franchise and neither is Transformers, so I think a more apt comparison would be with Spiderman ($114 million opening weekend) and the first Pirates ($47 million opening weekend). Transformers will at least tie the former and it’s already blitzed the latter.

    A caveat about a sequel though. When Transformers ends, it really does end. You get no sense of a pending sequel whatsoever. Now I realize that won’t stop Hollywood from firing off a sequel if producers get dollar signs in their eyes, but the movie does give one a sense of finality, of closure. If they do make a sequel I doubt Bay will helm it.

    Agree that Jurassic Park does not classify as a giant monster movie. Regardless of the T-Rex and Spinosaurus being the crown jewels of that franchise, they really do get far less screen time than the raptors and overall they’re just one of many dinosaurs in the films. However, in the second one, Spielberg clearly did a homage to King Kong (Dracula actually) with the T-Rex on the decimated ship making landfall w/ California. Remember when it drank out of the pool and ate the dog? I think the movie would’ve have been far better were it just focused on a T-Rex loose in suburbia.

    If I remember, Megalodon is about a prehistoric giant shark (or sharks) lingering down at crushing depths minding their own business and only coming to the surface to wreck havoc when they’re disturbed by a deep sea submersible. That might be a good flick if done right. The special effects would have to be utterly realistic. I like the notion of the giant shark feeding on a blue whale or showing up in the harbor of some major city. I just don’t know the plot of Megalodon and therefore am unaware of whether the story holds in drama for me.

  • Ken HPoJ

    For what it’s worth, the best of the Megalodon books I read (by various authors) was easily Charles Wilson’s Extinct. Of course, given how poorly written the rest of them are, that’s faint praise, but I do remember honestly enjoying that one.

    Alten’s Meg is not very good from a writing standpoint, but it could be adapted into a pretty decent film, just like Benchley’s Jaws was. Not that good, of course, but as a blueprint for a movie it could function better than as a novel.

  • Ed Richardson

    Transformers is now at the $101 million dollar mark (domestic and international). It holds the record for biggest July 4th opening ever – a record previously held by Spiderman 2.

    They’re certainly on track but I think the clincher will not be this weekend, but the following one.

    Although I’m convinced it will outperform Spiderman and Pirates, I just don’t see it being a franchise. I think it’s a strong movie, but there are no recognizable actors (Turturro, sure, but so what) in it, nothing left open for a sequel, and unlike Spiderman and Pirates, you would be hard pressed to take your date to Transformers. Giant robots do not draw female audiences. As much as I enjoyed this strong movie, I hope they leave it alone.

    But whatever. Go see this thing on the biggest, loudest screen you can. Relieve yourself beforehand (it’s 148 minutes I think), get a giant popcorn and coke, and settle into your favorite seat. You’re in for a ride.

  • Ed Richardson

    Yeah, the tough thing about a shark movie is that it will always, always fall in the shadow of Jaws. No shark movie will ever tough the characterization, the story, or the lean and perfect running time of Jaws. If I were shooting Meg or Extinct, I would shoot it not as a big shark movie, but as a dinosaur flick. I would have the creature look distinctly different from a shark and behave differently. Nothing that huge would give a damn about feeding on humans, it would be tackling whales, giant squid, etc. It would not go into crowded beaches a’la Jaws because the waters are too shallow and it’s food source is in the deep ocean. Therefore, the drama of a prehistoric shark creature feature would be less in it destroying humans, more in the risk to a few humans who are fascinated by it (think Jurassic Park). I can see it eating humans en masse, but again, they would have to be far out. Megalodons are thought to have been about 60 feet long and weight in excess of 60 tons. They would not be hunting food within sight of a lifeguard in the Hamptons.

  • hk6909

    I have a few Shogun Warriors comics somewhere…

  • Ed Richardson

    The comics are great. I had a large Mazinga figure as a kid and it got into several battles w/ my fist-firing Godzilla (you guys remember that one?).

    Raydeen was my favorite Shogun Warrior and in the comics he had the coolest operater. Can’t remember the character’s name but he was the rebel of the group.

  • El Santo

    I’m waiting for my free tickets to kick in before I see Transformers. (They have this silly rule that they cannot be used until 12 days after a movie is released.) Anyway, the funny thing is my girlfriend is the one that’s been pushing me to see it. She’s not a Transformers fan herself, but she was quite the “Voltes 5” groupie back in the day.

    Anyway, that’s why I think this could be a franchise. Dontcha remember the lyrics to Megas XL? “Chicks dig giant robots.”

  • Ed Richardson

    Speaking of chicks and giant robots, here’s a little treat for my fellow Jabootu-ites:

    http://waynelaynes.com/default_files/autobot.avi

    You may want to make yourself a cup of coffee while it downloads. It’s quite the shot.

  • Patrick Coyle

    Coop and Jamie may think that chicks dig giant robots, but I can think of a couple episodes where the girls they run into are scared out of their wits more than anything. :)

    The first Pirates of the Caribbean felt like a closed-ended story, but that didn’t stop anybody from managing to churn out some sequels. Meanwhile, I thought that Transformers was deliberately dangling some loose threads there at the end… Optimus’ call to reunite the displaced Autobots is a perfect excuse to swell the roster with new characters in a sequel, and one last shot of Starscream rocketing into space practically shouts “we’ll be back!” On top of that, there are one or two Decepticons alive on Earth that ultimately aren’t accounted for at the end.

    Not that I have any idea what they’ll fight about in a sequel, but that won’t stop anybody from making it.

  • Dillon

    I want to see Tansformers, but I’ve seen the designs of the titular machines, and I’m less than impressed. They’re so overdesigned and over-rendered, that their shapes are largely indefinite. There’ll never be anything Iconic about that…
    There’s also a third faction, and they’re the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in my life.

  • If you’re looking for another monster movie, the title-less trailer that ran with Transformers might be one.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield

  • Hasimir Fenring

    If that heresy can make money,

    …but enough about Transformers.

    Relieve yourself beforehand (it’s 148 minutes I think),

    No need. Bored as we were by the ponderous length of this ‘action’ film M*ch**l B*y delivered, the editor thoughtfully included a good half-dozen worthless scenes of non-essential characters having conversations that don’t interact with anything else in the movie to give you time to do your business at your convenience.

    you would be hard pressed to take your date to Transformers

    Spot on! Of all the dozens and dozens of films we’ve seen together over the past five years, this is the only one my grrlfriend has declared she ‘hated’.

  • Ed Richardson

    Cloverfield sounds like the Blair Witch Project of giant monster movies. Budget of $30m for a movie in which NYC gets destroyed? I don’t care what’s destroying the city, you need more than that to depict it realistically. This explains the extensive use of “hand held camera” (the Wikipedia entry makes it sound so arteeeestic). Cloverfield will likely be a docu-style monster movie. I may be the only one with this sentiment, but forget trying to depict something unreal as utterly real and happening. I remember Jack Nicholson saying how he was obsessed with realism in acting during the shooting of the The Shining and Kubrick curtly told him “Yeah, it’s real but it’s not interesting.” We need the fantastical – we need suspension of disbelief in our art.

    Having said all that, I have to take issue with the poster who complained that the Transformers look “over rendered.” How do you render an everyday truck that unfolds like a giant origami piece to become a seven story tall robot? It takes a whole lot of rendering. For me, the key is the shading and lighting. The movement is 80-90% ok. There is still some unreal jerky-ness to some scenes (certainly not all), but they just nailed the light on this one.

    Anyway, it’s Saturday. See for yourselves if you dare brave the multiplex on it’s opening weekend.

    And no, women are not going to go for this movie. Young women (early 20s) yes, but beyond that, hell no. This is the ultimate geek boy/man movie. Regardless, it is cool and I think some females might be surprised and engaged by it more than they thought they would be.

  • hk6909

    Um, Raydeen’s pilot was named Richard Carson. I still want to find those just in case somebody ever got on my back about the “Fantastic 4” ep of Movie Task Force Scanranger.

  • Ed Richardson

    Thanks. I remember one of the comics (Marvel only ran 20 of them) where Carson is separated from Raydeen and has to fight some thugs and he thinks “What would Bruce Lee do in a situation like this?” followed by “Well, I know what Hopalong Cassidy would do.” and he throws dirt in the eyes of the thug prior to taking him out.

    Most here probably know the Shogun Warriors had weapons that included firing their hands. In the comics, the hands and other appendages are piloted by androids.

    The scale of the Shogun Warriors is way beyond Transformers. In the comics they’re on par with skyscrapers in terms of size. Ditto for Marvel’s Godzilla. You were a lucky Marvel reader indeed if you followed their brief Godzilla run, which ended with Godzilla stomping through New York City and battling the team effort of just about every Marvel superhero in existence. It’s awesome.

    Anyway, Marvel grew them big. They seem to be between 500 and 800 ft tall. That would great for the big screen.

    Still, there are two Marvel comics that I would die to film prior to Shogun Warriors: Rom and Dr. Strange.

  • hk6909

    Of course, the Shogun Warriors were loosely based on a series of disparate anime shows from the 70’s and 80’s, each with their own story and universe. Making a movie might be kind of problematic especially with pleasing diehard fans of the separate shows.

  • Ed Richardson

    I don’t think famous directors commanding $150-$200mil budgets really care all that much about the purists. In fact, I don’t think any director is married to the source material. This is why Stephen King lambasted Kubrick for deviating from his novel, The Shining. He’d already gone through the same thing with Carrie prior to that.

    Spiderman shooting webs from his veins rather than an invention he made? Rami ran with that one and said to hell with Marvel’s Spiderman on that point.

    The Hulk a product of a Faustian father? Only Hollywood would do that.

    Ghostrider played by an actor in his 40s rather than the young long haired blond Johnny Blaze a’la Marvel? Movies folks.

    In Hollywood people meet and a lot of money flies around. The script writers (and yes, it’s always four or five) change things up as they see fit and the directors run with it because of their resumes, not because of the progenitors of the actually characters and basic stories.

  • hk6909

    You’re sure into this for a fantasy project, m’man. :P

  • Hasimir Fenring

    I remember Jack Nicholson saying how he was obsessed with realism in acting during the shooting of the The Shining and Kubrick curtly told him “Yeah, it’s real but it’s not interesting.”

    In an interview on The Shining‘s DVD, Nicholson says he tries to work with directors who don’t share his vision so that he doesn’t keeping giving the same performance he likes to give. If only other actors would take a cue from The Great One (Nicholson, not Gretsky).

    This is why Stephen King lambasted Kubrick for deviating from his novel, The Shining.

    King was once a great writer, but he never knew much about movies. Does anyone remember ‘his’ film version of The Shining? I’m not overly enamoured with Kubrick’s version, but it does have an impact and isn’t easily forgotten. I couldn’t remember King’s version the day after I saw it. King’s conclusion, which works in the book, looks silly on film. Kubrick knew what was cinematic and what wasn’t, and King doesn’t.

    He’d already gone through the same thing with Carrie prior to that.

    How so? The only major changes I remember are the climax, which was made for budgetary reasons (the producers weren’t willing to pay for the destruction of an entire town), and the structure being changed from a series of flashbacks to a more traditional linear story. Again, that structure was a smart move in the book, because the reader might get bored waiting for something to happen for 100 pages of linear storyteling that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere (which is King’s stated reason for using that structure). In a film this isn’t as much of a problem, and constantly switching from interviews and court testimony to the events being described is a really cheesy device in film. (‘Ah yes, I can remember it like it was yesterday…’ as the wavy lines distort the screen….)

  • Songino

    Spiderman shooting webs from his veins rather than an invention he made? Rami ran with that one and said to hell with Marvel’s Spiderman on that point.

    That’s because the idea of a teenage kid inventing a wrist-mounted device that shot football fields worth of strong and flexible plastic is ABSOLUTELY RETARDED. Peter is smart, very smart actually, but he’s not the Steven Hawking of engineers. In fact, as an irregular at best reader of Spider-Man comics as a youth, I didn’t even know the web shooters were of Peter’s own design until the movie details came out, because even though I read comics about a naked silver man flying through space on a surfboard and the X-Men spelunking through the deep caverns that apparently run under below sea level New Orleans, I’d never even considered such a ludicrous thing as that.

    In an interview on The Shining’s DVD, Nicholson says he tries to work with directors who don’t share his vision so that he doesn’t keeping giving the same performance he likes to give.

    Apparently he stopped doing that 20 years ago. Nicholson’s been playing himself and only himself for that long. And, to be fair, that’s apparently exactly what the audience wants.

    King was once a great writer, but he never knew much about movies. Does anyone remember ‘his’ film version of The Shining? I’m not overly enamoured with Kubrick’s version, but it does have an impact and isn’t easily forgotten. I couldn’t remember King’s version the day after I saw it. King’s conclusion, which works in the book, looks silly on film. Kubrick knew what was cinematic and what wasn’t, and King doesn’t.

    Too bad Kubrick didn’t know how to make things scary. Of course, the book was mostly interesting to watch the dad go insane and King’s movie was pretty tepid, but Kubrick’s version is nothing special. The most haunting image from Kubrick’s The Shining is the naked old woman, because no one besides old men should ever have to see naked old women. Brr.

    Okay, I’ve been WAY too negative about all this, so here’s some positive stuff.

    I thought Transformers was fun. It was mostly pretty dumb fun (especially when Turturro’s character showed up), but fun nonetheless. And if the movie makes enough cash, there WILL be a sequel involving reinforcements from space for both sides.

    I also wouldn’t consider Jurassic Park as a giant monster movie; the biggest threats in that film were the velociraptors. The T-Rex is all big and roar-y, but the raptors were a much bigger threat. I never got all the way through Jurassic Park III, so I can’t say anything about the Spinosaurus.

  • El Santo

    One last volley into the “Chicks dig giant robots” mini-debate: What about Robotech? I remember when us boys in elementary school were all over Transformers and GI Joes and He-Man, the girls were in their little corner poring over their thick Robotech character guide. The main attraction was of course the Rick Hunter-Lisa Hayes romance, but you cannot deny that there were several giant robots in that series.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    I can’t speak for others, but I didn’t say ‘chicks’ don’t dig giant robots. I said I don’t see ‘chicks’ digging this movie. Please don’t confuse my ‘Transformers sucks’ with ‘Action movies suck’ or ‘Giant robot movies suck’. When I criticise a film like Transformers, people like to say things like ‘Come on, it’s just an action film. Don’t be snide.’ Rubbish. I try to judge films by the standards of their genre (or at least my standards for films of that genre). I don’t hate Transformers because it’s an action film. I hate it because it fails as an action film.

    I love Commando, for Asimov’s sake! I made my grrlfriend watch the original Highlander (supposedly a ‘guy’ film, but she loved it and was still talking about it weeks later)! I was excited about Robot Jox! Bring on a good giant robot movie!