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#89. Substandard: In a World Without Vic...
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Vic is absent this episode — only Sonny and JVL appear. They acknowledge early on that the show doesn't quite work without him.
Dudes Chatting — 2017 year in review and The Last Jedi box office deep dive: Sonny and JVL open with an Arrested Development chicken-dance interlude before settling into 2017 in review. Both agree without much debate that Dunkirk was the best film of the year — "and it's not close" — with JVL also ranking Blade Runner 2049 highly; Sonny adds Wind River, Wonderstruck, and The Florida Project to his year-end list. The bigger conversation is a forensic autopsy of The Last Jedi's box office trajectory: it dropped 67.5% in its second weekend, running about 30% behind The Force Awakens's comparable pace, and Sonny and JVL debate whether those numbers make it a disappointment or still a success. They also survey 2017's overall box office malaise — the year's top films (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales at $172M, Kong: Skull Island at $168M, War for the Planet of the Apes at $146M) underperformed, and only three non-IP films cracked the top twenty (Dunkirk, Get Out, Coco). Both predict Ready Player One and A Wrinkle in Time will bomb in 2018. Sonny refuses to do a Spirit of the Week on the grounds that he won't drink alone.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00What do you think fans will love about this new movie? There's a lot of new, cool creatures, there's a lot of action, and I think the story is something that we haven't seen in a Star Wars film before.
Sonny00:00:15Welcome back to The Substandard. This is Sonny Bunch, not Vic Matus. I'm joined today by Jonathan V. Last and no one else. No one else is coming to save us. And we're here back from Christmas break.
JVL00:00:30The Substandard is brought to you by Quip. The new way to brush your teeth. Which is a toothbrush. Leave a review. I'm Ron Burgundy. It's a toothbrush of some sort. You know, it helps to have a professional to make the show work, to actually run the show.
Sonny00:00:45Yeah, if you have a script that you read every week, that you print out and you bring to the booth, it makes it much easier. So anyway, how was your break, JVO?
JVL00:00:56It was macabre. Utterly macabre. I'm thrilled to be back. How about yours?
Sonny00:01:01Well, I wouldn't say it was macabre, but it was very busy. It was not a very relaxing break. What did you do? Did you have to go to Home Depot, the Olive Garden, Bed Bath & Beyond, if you have time? I didn't have enough time for Bed Bath & Beyond. It was just, I had a lot of extra freelance work that kind of fell into my lap, and it is not hard work, but it is kind of time consuming.
JVL00:01:25Did you try doing this work from home, where your wife and child were?
Sonny00:01:31Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did it. I mean, the work that I got done- You didn't go to the office to do it? No, I didn't go to the office to do it. I stayed home with my family during the week. That makes it harder to do the work. I know it makes it harder to do the work. It's like adding a degree of difficulty. Yeah, tell me about it. Why didn't you go to the office? This is- Because I'm not going to abandon my family and just go to the office to be away from them. What do we say comes before everything else? That's not a thing. That's not a thing I do. Breakfast. Thanks, Michael. One great gift I got this holiday season, this for happy holidays, was it's a coffee mug with the varieties of chicken dance on it from Arrested Development. It's very funny. Maybe I'll bring it in one day.
JVL00:02:17Who's your favorite of the chicken dances? Mine is probably Job's.
Sonny00:02:23Well, Job's is best, because it's the most spastic, as with all Job's things.
JVL00:02:27No, Lindsay's is more spastic, because she like waves the hand over her head,
Sonny00:02:31like it's a comb on a rooster. Yeah, but Job is like violently throwing his head forward and like clapping. I mean, I would say that. But my favorite is probably
JVL00:02:44George's. George Sr.'s. That's a little known one. We don't get to see George Sr.'s chicken dance very often. You only see it once or two, because he's like da-da-da,
Sonny00:02:51da-da-da. If we had the camera in here, you could have seen me.
JVL00:02:54George Sr.'s pretty awesome. I mean, he's a terrible human being, and we are no longer allowed to enjoy the George booth, because he once maybe did something
Sonny00:03:05terrible to somebody on a set. He may have inappropriately rubbed against an actor while he was acting. Which, from what I can understand,
JVL00:03:15again, I'm not a professional actor, but this has actually never happened before in the history of the stage. Brave new world. Brave new world that we're in. I mean, traditionally, tell me if you sense that I'm wrong about this. Traditionally, the most stringent workplace in the world is the theater. Yes. And actors themselves have this ramrod sense of propriety. But here's the thing, though. When
Sonny00:03:44you're an actor, you don't want to be in touch with your feelings. You need to close yourself off to the world around you. Right. And you can't have any spontaneity. No. Absolutely not. Not allowed.
JVL00:03:53Look, you read the words on the page, and that's it.
Sonny00:04:00Vic, what do you think about this? Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Okay. So anyway, well, let's see. So the year is over. 2017. Thank God. Which was actually a pretty good year for me, frankly, if I'm going to be, you know, I know we're supposed to talk about how it was miserable. How was it good for you? I got a lot of new Twitter followers. I made a lot of money from, for instance, doing The Weekly Substandard every week. It's going to be great if that goes away. Yeah, me too. God, I'm just raking in the money, honestly. And well, it was good for me. Maybe I can get Vic's salary.
JVL00:04:41Maybe you could, frankly. Probably something worth thinking about.
Sonny00:04:45Hi, Steve. So anyway, but it was a good year for me, frankly. I don't know what everybody else is complaining about with this end-of-the-world nonsense. Chicken little stuff.
JVL00:04:58Yeah, well, I mean, look, the world didn't end in 2017. A lot of good people died, right? Like David Bowie. But I'm sorry, I watched television for five minutes over the weekend watching some football, and there was a commercial in which I believe Seth Green is impersonating a miniature version of Prince. The Dr. Pepper ad.
Sonny00:05:19Is this real? It's as real as anything else. But he was doing those ads before Prince died. Okay. But and also, I don't think it's necessarily supposed to be Prince. I think it's supposed to be more of a glam rocker. It's Prince. I don't think it's Prince, though.
JVL00:05:36It's Prince. I mean, there's no, I'm sorry, it's Prince.
Sonny00:05:40I know that we have a bunch of real big Prince fans out there, but Prince sounds like so many other people that you couldn't actually distinctively say that this artist sounds anything like Prince. I mean, he's just a guy. So I don't know really what you're, he sounds like any other 1980s kind of makeup, glam. False.
JVL00:06:01It's just false. That's not true.
Sonny00:06:03He sounds like a guy from Poison or whatever. Same basic thing, right?
JVL00:06:06No, because Prince has like the high voice and the little, I'm not going to do my Prince.
Sonny00:06:10Prince Neal has a high voice, doesn't he?
JVL00:06:11Whatever. Anyway, I'm sorry. I just, I was shocked that this was a thing that was on television and that people weren't, because Prince was one of the people, wasn't he taken from us in 2017? Or is that some, maybe that's David Bowie I'm thinking of. Yeah. Yeah. And Tom Petty. I think they both died in 2017. They all died. Everybody died in 2017. I kind of- 2017 was the Game of Thrones of years.
Sonny00:06:33Well, every year is going to be like this from now on though, is the thing, because people are getting older. There are more famous people. The universe of famous people is expanding and they're just going to get older and die. So like every day from now on, there's going to be a famous death.
JVL00:06:48Have we reached the steady state of fame where we have, because I believe that there is some outer limit of the number of people who can be famous. Legit famous, not like internet famous. And clearly we have been expanding over the last 40 years to fill that because like the 1980 number was smaller than the 2020 number will be. But at some point we will hit against that upper boundary of the number of people that can be famous at any one point in time. And at that point, we will no longer feel like we are increasing the number of famous people who die every year because we will just have the same number of famous people dying every year.
Sonny00:07:25Well, I don't know that this is right exactly. What we may see is we will have more people who are very well known to niche populations die, right? Like the whole thing about fame and art and that sort of thing now is that you just have groups of fans, right? You have barely overlapping Venn diagrams. So like when one person in a circle of the Venn diagram dies, it will be a big deal for those people and like kind of news to others. It's like when the YouTube guy dies. Yeah. So if like when Logan Paul dies. Please, God. Please, God. Come on, lightning. If Logan Paul had died like four days ago before everyone got mad at him about the Japanese suicide thing. It still would have been awesome. But would it have been a big deal, right? Would it have counted as a famous person? No, nobody would have noticed. Except for all of the people who he's the most he's the most famous person among among the under 30 set.
JVL00:08:25I think this is 100% fault. I don't think he's the most famous person among bots on the internet. If there's one thing we have learned is that numbers like 15 million followers on YouTube are meaningless. Because half of everybody on the internet is a bot, maybe more than half like this is there's this giant feedback loop.
Sonny00:08:44You're telling me I don't have 35,000 friends when the Twitter
JVL00:08:47when people in the actual famous media like you know, when when the people on the today show have to stand up and say, Oh, you out in middle America have never heard of this guy on the internet. But trust us, he's super famous. No, he's not super famous. The people are super
Sonny00:09:01famous for the people on the today show. Hmm. Okay. All right. Great show. Really, boy, this thing is just humming along. Vic, did you mention Logan Paul? Yeah, he's gonna die now. All right. So let's see. So 2017 is over. We're moving on to 2018. But before we move on to 2018, let's look at 2017 in review.
JVL00:09:28Oh, I thought we were just gonna go back to I thought we're gonna go back and drive over Last Jedi again. Oh, we're gonna do that. We're gonna do that. But first, we need to talk about the box office of the year. It's been a weird year at the box office, right? Bad year. Bad year. Bad year for Hollywood. How's it been JBL? It's been very bad. Very, very bad out in Hollywood. This is the so Richard Rushfield launched his fantastic newsletter, The Angler. At the perfect time because he launched it as Hollywood is falling apart. Now, it should be said Hollywood is always falling apart. Like this is an industry which is built on calamity. And it always looks like they're heading towards perfect disaster and impending catastrophe. And then somehow everything works out and how it's a mystery. But it always does. This is this is the theater and written very large. But things have gotten really bad in Hollywood. And part of that was the Harvey Weinstein perv NATO me too stuff. Part of it was Silicon Valley invading Hollywood and companies like Netflix, essentially setting them up selves up as direct competitors to the studios, but without any of the actual financial constraints that the studios have on themselves. And the part number three was the cratering out of the summer box office. And all of a sudden, Hollywood realized that they it used to be this is this is Rushfield's point, not mine. It used to be that every year there were one or two movies that bombed inexplicably. And you would look at them, these things cost like 100 or $200 million, you would say, geez, how, you know, John Carter of Mars, that thing, it should have been great. It had you who's Brad Bird and Brad Bird and
Sonny00:11:06directed but and Andrew Bird. No, who's the Brad Bird? Was it Brad Bird? Was it Brad Bird? I don't
JVL00:11:12think understand. I understand. I understand directed it. It's actually a pretty good movie. How Why could they not make this thing happen? The problem is this year, you had like 10 giant expensive tentpole movies that everybody knew we're going to bomb from six months out. And the really bad problem is that when you then telescope out a little bit further, and you look at the slate for 2018 summer and summer 2019. It looks like the studios are essentially just pulling back and leaving the space vacant. We had a weekend this August with no major new release. Several years. There's going to be I think a couple of those weekends next summer. That's the scary stuff. That's the extinction level event stuff where you wonder is the theatrical experience giving way to streaming and on your phone in portrait mode.
Sonny00:12:07No, we're getting I think we're getting back to a place where we don't need a new hundred million dollar movie every weekend. During the summer and during the rest of the year. I think that's great. I think we need to we need to have fewer movies that are better, right? The hope is that they will also be better. We'll have fewer movies.
JVL00:12:24Okay, well, first of all, I reject your premise. The fact that they are the fact that Hollywood is going to release fewer movies does not mean at all that the movies they release will be better. Okay. It just means they will release fewer. Okay. Well, I mean,
Sonny00:12:37that's probably true. The hope the hope is that with more time and more care given to each of these films, you won't have like Pirates of the Caribbean movie running on autopilot. Every except
JVL00:12:48that Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the movies that succeeded. Yeah, okay. It's Yeah, it's it probably broke even. So here's what we want. The lesson we would want Hollywood to learn, and which they won't is that instead of plowing three big bets into giant movies that cost $200 million each, you should do one big bet on a movie like that and spread your money around and a bunch of mid budget stuff that with those can be your your horn bets where you're hoping that one of them pays off big. Instead of we'll put $200 million into the film, we'll put another 150 into the marketing and we'll muscle it to $120 million opening and just claim success and run away.
Sonny00:13:31I mean, the problem with all this discussion, of course, is that the money that gets spent now is not spent on the budget. Like the problem, the problem with opening a $40 million movie is that you're going to have to spend at least $50 million to advertise it, you'll probably have to spend closer to 60 or $70 million. Well, to advertise unless you can
JVL00:13:50ask as your leads, people with big Snapchat followings. Oh, that's true. And Twitter. And that's how you do it. And Twitter. And so if you could get like some girl who was on a Survivor for a season as your lead actress, well, then all of a sudden you've just got a built-in
Sonny00:14:03audience. It's always very, very funny to read the Deadline box office recaps, because the idea that social media is a huge driver of influence is totally unfalsifiable. Oh, wait, you can't do that? It doesn't work like that? Because it's like, if you have a movie that opens poorly, but it stars Will Smith, who has 30 million Facebook friends and followers, and you're like, wow, we couldn't believe this movie underperformed. Look at all these things. But then when a movie does very well, it's like, look at the success that the social media has driven here. Look at, this guy has 5 million Twitter followers. So this is why it's doing well.
JVL00:14:43Now correct me if I'm wrong. I always thought if you have 10 million Twitter followers and tickets are averaging $15 a piece, that that means that that actor alone is bringing in at least $150 million in revenue. Yeah. Is that not the way it works?
Sonny00:14:56Well, I mean, probably it's closer to 300 million because I would assume each of those people will see it twice. And plus the retweets.
JVL00:15:02Plus the, I mean, well, again, the bot problem. Right. You know, a lot of bot retweets. Fair. Tough but fair. No. So this is, it is, it is, but I mean, just looking at like some of the
Sonny00:15:13movies, I mean, just the domestic box office alone this year has been, uh, uh, kind of a disaster in a lot of ways. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales grossed $172 million at home. Skull Island, $168 million. War for the Planet of the Apes, $146 million. The Last Night grossed just $130 million. This is a franchise that was doing $300, $400 million, uh, less than 10 years ago. You know, I, I don't, I, I, if I was a, if I was a Hollywood executive, I would be, uh, I would actually be kind of glad with this because then maybe I would get to make some good movies if we can't make all these shit movies.
JVL00:15:53Well, so here's the question though. Uh, so these movies, we've talked about this on the show before. The, these box office numbers, big movies have become overly dependent on foreign grosses. Now, on the one hand, the foreign money seems easier to get because foreign audiences are not as sophisticated as American viewers are. Sorry. It's just true. Sorry, bro. Science. Wow. Scoreboard. Problematic. Uh, and. Problematic. But the problem is that you get a smaller cut of every dollar spent overseas. Yes. So are we, is Hollywood trading smaller pieces of the dollar pie by catering movies for those, those people, for those audiences that are then simply not going to work for more sophisticated American audiences?
Sonny00:16:44Well, you have to, you also have to remember that, uh. Who wants something like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2? More sophisticated.
JVL00:16:50A really beautifully crafted movie that takes risks and has something to say about the human condition. Like Thor Ragnarok. Like the, like, like Beauty and the Beast. Like Beauty and the Beast, right. Or Wonder Woman.
Sonny00:17:02Like Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
JVL00:17:03Or It.
Sonny00:17:06I, can we say, uh, It is like by far the biggest box office surprise of the year? Nope. I would say It and Get Out are the two. Get Out.
JVL00:17:12Get Out is far and away the biggest surprise.
Sonny00:17:15Yes, but I mean, every year has a, a R-rated. Horror movie that does in the 150 to $200 million range, right? Like you always have your Conjurings and that sort of film.
JVL00:17:27If I had told you that Get Out was going to gross more than Pirates of the Caribbean or Kong Skull Island or Transformers. Yeah, of course. You would have said to me, this is insane.
Sonny00:17:39But I would have said the same exact thing about It.
JVL00:17:40Man, I would have thought that It has a better chance to, to break out. Um, because it's a pre-sold, pre-aware title. People, I mean, there's a cult of this book.
Sonny00:17:50It's an R-rated, uh, horror movie about kids getting murdered, uh, that grossed $300 million based on a 30 year old book that is popular-ish. I mean, don't get me wrong. It is, I've read it twice now, actually. And, uh, it's, it's a fine book. It has like a decent shelf life.
JVL00:18:10Oh, I see what you did there. I've read It.
Sonny00:18:13Uh, but, uh, but, but the point is, um, I, I do think, I think It is by far and away the biggest surprise of the year. I mean, I, it grossed more than $300 million. It did.
JVL00:18:24I mean, like, I'm simply saying that I think Get Out, which is not just a horror movie, but is a social justice horror movie from, uh, a totally unproven director, uh, which became both a critical smash and a commercial smash.
Sonny00:18:39Gonna get a Best Picture nomination.
JVL00:18:40Uh, might win Best Picture.
Sonny00:18:43I have a hard time believing, I mean, the, the Academy is younger now, but it's still pretty old.
JVL00:18:47Who do you think, wait, can we, can we, man, I hope it comes down to Wonder Woman versus Get Out for Best Picture. I was discussing this with Jon Podhortz earlier today.
Sonny00:18:57And I do think, J-Pod is convinced that Dunkirk is the favorite. You mean back on Wednesday? On Wednesday. J-Pod is convinced that Dunkirk is the favorite to win both Best Picture and Best Director. And I think it has a much better shot at Best Director than Best Picture, because I just don't see the actors who make up the largest section of the voting, uh, uh, membership of the Academy. Going for a movie that has no acting in it.
JVL00:19:22Do you want to talk about this now?
Guest00:19:25Yeah, let's talk about it.
Sonny00:19:26We can talk about it a little bit more later when we get, or, further on in the year, if we're still doing the show. No, no, I'm in this episode. I wanted to talk about Dunkirk. Oh, you want to talk about it a little later? We can talk about it a little later.
JVL00:19:38I would say this. I would be shocked if Dunkirk won either Best Picture or Best Director. Okay. Shocked. Because it has not done well in the festival circuit. So far. And the smaller awards things. And because it did not break out the way it would have needed to, to become a cultural sensation, cultural sensation at the box office. And because it does not fit with any of the moods of Hollywood right now. Right. There is nothing in it about Donald Trump or me too, or race relations or anything. It's just a pure piece of cinema. And what would you. We'll just talk about this right now. I simply reject just out of hand. Anybody who does not think it was not the best movie of the of the year. Yeah, well, I mean, it seems to me to be the most undeniable statement of the last year, which is Dunkirk was simply the best piece of cinema made.
Sonny00:20:41Yeah, I.
JVL00:20:42This isn't close. There's nothing even in the same league. It's not. This is not because I'm a Nolan fanboy. God knows. I mean, I like Christopher Nolan a lot. I do not love everything he's done. I think Batman Begins is a disappointment. Interstellar does not work for me. I mean, I am not. Hi, John Puttharts. I do not just sort of reflexively, you know, bow down before everything Nolan does it. This is a titanic piece of filmmaking, unlike anything else which showed up on screens this year. And if what you're doing is judging the best piece of cinema and not the most popular, which which is not what we do. I mean, that's not what the Hollywood with the Oscars are actually about, but if it were a about what is the best piece of cinema for the year, then it's not even a discussion.
Sonny00:21:23Yeah, well, I, I tend to agree with this, and it obviously topped my list of the best films of the year. But I do think I like I think you could look. I don't like saying things like it is obviously objectively the best film of the year. I mean, I think there are other movies you could make a case for, but in terms of the like movies. I got a big release this year, and that were actually seen by people. It is definitely by far and away the best, but.
JVL00:21:57So the Academy has traditionally been biased in favor of giant epic movies, and I think that this is entirely correct. A small movie is a different animal than a big movie, and when you are looking at what the best picture is in a given year, the Academy has again historically been right to reward the things which are big. Gone with the Wind is a different picture than The Philadelphia Story, and in terms of best picture, is properly understood as the better best picture. I prefer The Philadelphia Story, but it's a small thing. It's more of a movie than a piece of cinema. And in this case, I simply reject out of hand any claim that anything else that came out this year was even in the same league.
Sonny00:22:42Vic, what is your best film of the year?
JVL00:22:45I did not see that coming.
Sonny00:22:46That's ridiculous. Okay, do you want to do the toothbrush ad?
JVL00:22:53Quip. Oh, Quip? Quip. Oh, I would love to do that. Let's be honest. You're supposed to brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day. But do you? Whether your answer is yes, no, or maybe, you need Quip, the electric toothbrush that looks like it was designed by Apple and cleans like premium electric brushes, but without the high price. Quip is the new electric toothbrush that packs just the right amount of vibrations into an ultra slim design with guiding pulses to simplify better brushing at a fraction of the cost of bulkier brushes. Quip comes with a mount that goes right on your mirror, fitting seamlessly into your daily routine. No charger or wires means Quip is compact and light to make brushing twice a day easy at home and on the road. Quip also offers an optional subscription plan delivering new brush heads on a dentist recommended three month schedule for just five dollars, including free shipping worldwide. Quip is backed by a network of over 10,000 dental professionals, including dentists, hygienists and dental students. I got my Quip, Sonny. I got it a couple weeks ago. I love it. And what I especially like for me, having used electric toothbrushes for many years now, the big downside for them for me, besides the expense, was travel. So when I was packing up to go somewhere, bringing a travel toothbrush plus the charger is an enormous pain in the neck. And the result being that I would never actually do it. And I would just rely on an old tech standard definition manual brush. With Quip, you just throw it in your bag. It's got a battery inside the handle. How long does the battery last? You don't have to charge it. I believe three months. Oh, wow. And so when I went traveling this holiday season, I threw the Quip in my bag. When I come to the office at 4:00 in the morning and I throw my Quip into my gym bag, it's insanely portable and convenient. Simply the most convenient electric toothbrush I've ever had. So I would remind people that Quip starts at just $25. And right now, when you go to getquip.com/substandard to get your first refill pack, you get it free with a Quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack, faux free, at getquip.com/substandard, spelled G-E-T-K-E-Y. Spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash substandard. Woo.
Sonny00:25:26Before we move on to the best and worst of the year, before we get on to that, which I know we've discussed a little bit here, I want to close out with a little more box office talk. I know people love that. I know that's what everyone... Star Wars. That everyone... Star Wars. Are we going to do Star Wars?
JVL00:25:41Let me read... I just want to read... Here's a tale of two movies here, okay?
Sonny00:25:45Here's movie A. Movie A is the best growth and film of the year. It's 91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It's got an A from CinemaScore and four out of five moviegoers definitely recommend from other sites. Movie B. Biggest second weekend drop of all time by almost $30 million this drop. 50% fresh from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. 30% off the box office pace of its predecessor in the series. Now, of course, these are both the same movie. These are both The Last Jedi. And my point here is that you could make two radically different, two radically different, but I think both accurate cases for The Last Jedi as a success or as a failure. As as a as a piece of box office business, right? So if you look at The Last Jedi, the second weekend drop was 67.5%. All right, down down to 71.6 million. The Batman for Superman had a 69% drop, so you're looking in that that kind of world of really, really terrible drops. If you include if you include all four days of the four day weekend, it still has it still dropped 55% down to 99 million, which is which is almost a third off the pace of The Force Awakens second weekend competition. Now, one of the things that people said when they looked at The Last Jedi, they said, oh, the competition is much more fierce this year. You know, Force Awakens wasn't really going up against anything. This is not. Nonsense. This is nonsense. The second weekend competition for The Last Jedi grossed $92.8 million combined, and it only had two films in the eight digit range. OK, now, if you look at The Force Awakens, you got a movie that dropped only 40% in its second weekend, down from 250 million to 150 million. You have a second weekend competition totaled $123.7 million combined. That's the top ten films. I'm just talking the top ten here. You had six other films in the eight digits. Going up against The Force Awakens in its second weekend. Now, part of the problem here is that you're comparing apples and oranges a little bit. One of the days in The Last Jedi's second weekend was Christmas Eve, so it kind of skewed the numbers a bit, and that throws things off. But still, you know, these are huge, huge numbers. And when you take that into account, The Last Jedi's third weekend drop, which, you know, WAGs were touting as, "Oh, it's the best in the third weekend, The Last Jedi dropped just 26.6% to 52 million." And people said, "Oh, well, this is the best second to third weekend drop of any movie that has ever grossed over $100 million." And that sounds kind of impressive, until you keep in mind the fact that, A, the previous weekend's totals had been depressed a bit, because you had the Christmas Eve day in the weekend. And if you look at the rest of the competition that weekend, everything else went up. Six of the ten films had higher weekends than the weekend before. Of the movies that actually dropped weekend to weekend, The Last Jedi dropped the most, by far. So, I mean, you can construct arguments.
JVL00:29:02And weekend three for Jedi was New Year's weekend.
Sonny00:29:04And weekend three for Jedi was New Year's weekend. It was a good weekend. It was a good weekend for movies. It's a good weekend for movies. That's, again, why Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was up 40% almost weekend to weekend. The Greatest Showman, up 76% weekend to weekend. So, you have to keep that in mind. That's a Vic movie? That's definitely a Vic movie.
JVL00:29:22That is such a Vic movie.
Sonny00:29:23Vic, did you see The Greatest Showman?
JVL00:29:25Did Gene?
Guest00:29:25Oh, here comes Gene!
Sonny00:29:27Gene! Hey!
JVL00:29:28Tweet @VictorinoMattus.
Sonny00:29:33That was a good bit. So, anyway, you have to keep all of this in mind. The simple fact of the matter is that Last Jedi is about 30% off the pace of The Force Awakens. 29% off from on a day-to-day basis. And I think that this suggests a very real softness in fan enjoyment of the film. The core group that goes over and over and over again to see the film and get its box office numbers up in the $901 billion range domestically, which is what The Force Awakens does, I have a hard time believing that this gets to $700 million. And it's going to be, it's going to
JVL00:30:18be close. So here is, that is a possible explanation, but allow me to proffer an alternate explanation. Go ahead. And I assume that Disney has a lot of data on this that they would never share with anybody. But is the question that the softness is in your hardcore fans, or is the softness in the casual fans not showing up in the first place? I would argue to you that the Force Awakens is not something that is duplicable, because it is like the first issue of a new comic book. It has been gone for 15 years, right? We had not a new Star Wars movie in almost a generation. It was out of the hands of Lucas for the first time. It was brought in the first new movie in Disney. It was like having a brand new Star Wars. And Disney can't ever do that again. You only get a number of first issue. Once, unless you reboot your series every 12 months, like all the comic book manufacturers now do. So this was bound to be lower. Now, you know that I hate this movie, but I actually think it's a titanic success. And if I were Disney, I would look at this and say, we can throw dog
Sonny00:31:38shit out there. People just go. So I think part of this is right. I do think that there was always going to be a lower interest in it. And I think that's reflected in the opening weekend gross, which is about 10% lower. And I think if you look at a series and you get a 10% drop on the second entry in it, you're pretty happy with it. 30% drop, that's a lot.
JVL00:32:03Yeah, but again, that number one, but higher than Rogue One. So this is the other piece of the puzzle. So we need essentially five data points. We now have three of them. What we need are, we need three franchise data points. So three Star Wars saga data points to understand where they are, because you have to throw out the first one, because the first one is a high that you'll never get to. That's like throwing out the high judge score. And you can't tell what the first and the second differential really is because of that artificial height until you then get that third one. And you need a second Star Wars story data point to understand is the softness that you see in Rogue One something that is unique to Rogue One? Or are the Star Wars story movies going to simply perform like a different class of the franchise?
Sonny00:32:58I have always assumed that that's what Disney assumed would happen. That the Star Wars story movies are going to be softer, just because they're not part of the main saga. That you're, that you really are appealing to like the core fan base here. You were like, hey, you want to see how they got the plans for the Death Star? I got a movie for you. Hey, you want to see how Han Solo met up with Chewie? I got a movie for you. And I think that those movies are, but I mean, the other thing we have to consider here is that each of these films has been the highest grossing film of its year by an enormous margin. Right. By an enormous margin. And I, you know, again, this movie will gross, let's say Last Jedi finishes in the 650 to 700 million dollar range. That puts it in the top five grossing movies of all time domestically. It's going to be.
JVL00:33:44No, there's no way to see it as anything but a giant success. I just don't, I don't think that. Which is unbelievably depressing.
Sonny00:33:50Well, no, I mean, look, I don't think that that's, I don't think that that's true. If you have a movie that grossed $2 billion worldwide and then you come back and the next one grosses $1.3 billion worldwide, your expectations are higher than $1.3 billion. I, like, you can say that on a, it will certainly make an enormous raft of money for Bob Iger and everybody else at Disney. Like they can, you know, they can make it rain on an entire nation of strippers with that cash. Not anymore. The pure success of this film was never in doubt. It was always going to make money and it was always going to make a lot of money. The relative success of it has to be
JVL00:34:27disappointed. Unclear. For my perspective, I would think that this would tell them they can make a movie that stinks and not worry about the bottom dropping out of it. I mean, what I think is the most interesting question in all of Hollywood economics is whether or not it is possible at some point for a Star Wars movie to fail. Because this is the only franchise in the history of film that bats a thousand. There is no Star Wars failure. There is no Star Wars that is disappointed even. No matter how bad they are or how good they are, they always make an unbelievable amount of money. And is that for forever? Maybe it is. I mean, maybe Star Wars just represents something special and different. That makes it different from Marvel comic books or Transformers or Indiana Jones or anything like that. I don't know. Or is it, is the culture moving so fast and fragmenting to such a degree that even Star Wars at some point will become not a, certainly a very good bet, but still a gamble
Sonny00:35:37of some sort? Can I say that I think that Disney is making a giant mistake by releasing the solo movie in May? The next, the next, so the next movie will come in less than six, about six months after the previous one. And then there will be an 18 month gap. And I think that vacating that December space where you have no real competition for like the big budget franchise action dollars is a mistake. Maybe. I think it's probably an experiment and it's probably done to protect episode nine. Rogue One was also meant to be a summer release, if I remember correctly. And they ended up having to push it back to
JVL00:36:21December with reshoots and stuff. But I mean, my guess is they wanted to this is being done to sacrifice whatever marginal dollars you would get for Solo in an effort to make episode nine more scarce and drive up demand for that because they figure that that's the bet. That's the better bet. That's their chance to make bigger piles of money. But what do I know? I'm just sad that we're Star Wars Christmas this year. I think it's going to be great because if Solo suffers because of this, we're going to see a bunch of thumb sucking pieces from the Mary Sue and Double X saying that, oh, yeah, see, this is what happens when you focus a movie on a white male. Yeah. Audiences just don't turn out. Audiences don't want that anymore. And why is it that we still have to have this Han Solo character be a cis white male? Makes you think, doesn't
Sonny00:37:17it? Danger. Boom. All right. So let's move on. Three. To the best. Best. Are we doing three
JVL00:37:27best? We're doing three best? However many. I only have two. Okay. Well, if you would just want to do two best, go ahead. So do you, if you've already done this, but maybe you haven't done this. If I was going to ask you to guess out of the top 20 grossing movies last year,
Sonny00:37:40how many were not IP plays? Of the top 20, how many were not IP plays? Uh, off the top of my head. You can just guess. I'm not gonna, there's no penalty for
JVL00:37:54getting it wrong. You don't have to count through the box office. I would, I would say
Sonny00:37:57it's like four. Three. So it's Dunkirk, Get Out, what's the third? Coco. Coco. That's
JVL00:38:03really something. Uh. Well, there's none in the top 10. In a way, it makes Dunkirk's number 12, I think. Yeah, Dunkirk is 12 on the list. Um, and by the way, 12 by a lot. Like, the drop off from 11 to 12 is close to $40 million. It makes that even more impressive that a movie that, I mean, you just can't get traction anymore as an original movie. Mm-hmm. Uh, makes that performance even more impressive rather than, I know a lot of people are like, oh, look, Dunkirk only made, you know, not even $200 million. I turn that around and say, actually, Dunkirk was able to go out and get almost $200 million by doing something original and new and different. And, you know, suck it. Yeah. Uh, Dunkirk is the best movie of 2017. It's not close. There is nothing that even makes the list at number two. Uh, and the, I, I used to see a hundred movies a year. I have not had that luxury since my children were born, but I saw more movies this year than I have in the last decade.
Sonny00:39:07What do you, how many did you see this year? Like 40?
JVL00:39:09Probably. Yeah. Uh, and so I, I am ordinarily very sensitive. To, you know, well, Hey, if you haven't seen every movie, how can you really know? No, I'm sure that there are a bunch of small, wonderful movies that are really tremendous and really gems, but they are different than what Dunkirk is. Dunkirk is a piece of pure cinema. And if you care about cinema and not just content that you can watch on your phone and portrait mode, then this is the kind of movie that you simply have to support and have to love. And if you don't, there's something wrong with you. Question.
Sonny00:39:41Yeah. If you were to watch Dunkirk on your phone in portrait mode, would you watch it? Portrait mode.
JVL00:39:47Which I'm going to do at some point.
Sonny00:39:49Which we have to do. We should do a live. Facebook live of Dunkirk in portrait mode? Yes. We'd probably run into some sort of weird, well, we would just have to tape us, tape our faces, because we couldn't actually tape the movie. Second phone.
JVL00:40:01No, second phone. We just have a second phone.
Sonny00:40:02No, no, I'm saying, but we couldn't, like, show the movie on Facebook live. That's probably some sort of copyright. Well, if it's, like, far away and we're sitting there. I think it, I mean, look, it'll be
JVL00:40:10small enough. The quality will be so high, though. It'll be small enough nobody could even tell.
Sonny00:40:13The quality will be so high. Yeah, so wait, so you have nothing at number two? You're not going to pick at number two?
JVL00:40:20The closest thing I could put in is Blade Runner, which is a heck of a movie, a wonderful movie, and even as ambitious a movie as that is, and that is a movie with ambition to spare that looks like a million bucks, that takes advantage of every single square inch of the screen. It's a different animal than what Dunkirk is.
Sonny00:40:41Yeah, yeah. My number one and two are the same. Number one is Dunkirk. It's the best movie of the year, and I don't think any of the other movies are the same. Anything else is particularly close. And number two was Blade Runner 2049, which I loved a lot, and I know, which was just a disaster at the box office. We're not seeing any more Blade Runner movies, I can tell you that, which is too bad, because it's pretty good. And I hope, the one problem with Blade Runner is that it took one of the few new directors who was making actual original films, Denis Villeneuve, and put him in this kind of weird blockbuster mode, that he is obviously very good at. He made a fantastic movie, but I would rather see another Prisoners, or Arrival, or something like that, than him making--
JVL00:41:27I did not see Arrival, but isn't this similar in scope-ish to Arrival, or no?
Sonny00:41:33No, Arrival's much more like-- Same ballpark? Arrival's much more like Contact.
JVL00:41:37But Contact's a big movie. I mean, Contact is a huge movie.
Sonny00:41:41Contact's a big movie, but it's also, it's a big movie, but it's also a personal movie and kind of-- It's restrained. It's small in scope. Fair. And Blade Runner is a big, sprawling movie. It's a very, very different sort of thing, I think.
JVL00:41:56It just shows me that he can, he has those muscles. He can do that. I mean, he is
Sonny00:42:00not like, you know, Rian Johnson, who got caught out of his-- again, wonderful filmmaker,
JVL00:42:07has made a bunch of, has made a few very, very good movies, who strikes me as simply being out of his depth. Did we talk about Lupin? We didn't. I like Looper a ton.
Sonny00:42:17We should talk about Looper at some point. I have-- Because it's a good movie. I have thoughts on Looper. I like Brick a lot. Okay. So, because we have the same top two, I'm going to just share a couple of these smaller, littler movies that people may not have seen.
JVL00:42:31Bad Mom's Christmas.
Sonny00:42:32Bad Mom's Christmas, number six. I was only going to go number five. Number five now. So, just missed the list? Just missed the list. Okay. Just missed the list. Number five, I would put Wind River, which I liked a great deal. People love it. It's a great deal. It's from the guy who wrote Hell or High Water. It's his directorial debut, kind of. He made a small film a long time ago that's apparently pretty bad. But Wind River, it's kind of like a feature-length CSI episode, but better than that. You'll like it. Number four is a movie called Wonderstruck, which is coming. It'll be on Amazon Prime soon, and I highly recommend you check it out. It's by Todd Haynes, who I don't really like very much. He's still making movies? Still making movies somehow. Carol made me want to light myself on fire. He's an electric filmmaker. Wonderstruck, I liked it a lot. JBL, I think you might like it a lot. I think you should watch it.
JVL00:43:25Back in my indie days, I liked Todd Haynes.
Sonny00:43:27You would maybe. The favorite thing that he has done, as far as ... My favorite thing of his is Karen Carpenter, the Karen Carpenter movie that he did with the Barbie dolls playing Karen Carpenter. I never saw that. Very weird and indie, and kind of Andy Warhol-ish. I really love The Florida Project, which is about sadness and poverty and life on the edge and about how we can't really help these people. Anyway, these are your three kind of indie smallish recommendations from Sonny, in addition to the two big giant movies.
JVL00:44:03The only great movies. I have a question for you. Yeah. Because I don't want to get into a worst movie. I don't really like ... You don't like doing worst movies. I don't like doing that either. That's not true. I like doing it, but I don't think there's any reason for this. But I have a question for you, and this is not meant to be a snarky fanboy question, but a serious one. What do you think was a worse movie, The Last Jedi or Justice League? Because of all the movies we saw this summer, this year, the two which I found the most inexplicable as simple matters of corporate work and married to, you know, you have these demands of commerce, the demands of artistry, and sometimes they coincide and sometimes they are intention. But in these movies, the demands of the marketplace were not intention at all with what was going on artistically. What was going on artistically was simply, I found, unfathomable. I mean, movies that were so ineptly made that it didn't even look like you could blame the suits for it.
Sonny00:45:21Yeah.
JVL00:45:23Thoughts? I mean, am I wrong in saying that these are two movies that just failed at even the most
Sonny00:45:31basic script levels? No, I think you're wrong a little bit. I mean, I do think Last Jedi is better than that. I think Last Jedi is better than that.
JVL00:45:38Better than Justice League?
Sonny00:45:39Yeah. Oh, yeah. Justice League is a mess on every level. I mean, one thing you can say about The Last Jedi is that it doesn't look cheap, like Justice League did. Yeah, fair. I mean, everything that you see, even the terrible casino destruction sequence, you can be like, okay, that's at least a reasonably well done, but there's nothing to compare to the awful Russia village thing in Justice League. Nothing like that at all. Just on the technical merits? Just on the technical level. On the technical merits, Last Jedi is better? It looks so much better. And I would say also on the story, it's a better piece of storytelling in its own way. I mean, again, I don't really like, I mean, obviously all of the Rose and Finn stuff should have been put on the cutting room floor, and then the floor should have been doused in gasoline, and they should have burned the floor, and nobody should ever have seen that footage. And Finn should have just woken up like two-thirds of the way through the movie and like, all right, let's go to that ship. Let's go over there and shut off this thing. But I did also really like the Luke and Kylo Rey stuff. I thought that was good and interesting and well done. Within the universe of the third. I mean, like this, what is more interesting about all this is that Ryan Rian Johnson, whatever his name is, he clearly, he very clearly set out to trash everything that J.J. Abrams did before him. I mean, that is what is more interesting to me about this, is that every choice he made was a decision to jettison something from the first film. And I should be clear, I do not object to that at all.
JVL00:47:15But my complaints about The Last Jedi are not fanboy complaints. It is not, oh, you can't do that in a Star Wars movie. I'm not saying you're raping my childhood. No, no, no, no, no, no. I agree with that. If he wants to burn the concept of the Jedi to the ground, great. Totally great. Obviously, we're good with that.
Sonny00:47:31Burn the... I mean, obviously, we're very... But I'm being serious here. Like, I think that we are actually... This is the thing that I find most aggravating about some of the kind of left-wing film critics who are saying like, oh, well, of course, the conservative critics like Ross... Ross and Sonny and J-Pod didn't like it because of Trump. And, you know, it reminds them of this Trump presidency. It's like, well, first off, like, we're actually pretty okay with this whole burn down the Jedi stuff. Like, all the fanboy things that people are complaining about, that's not what we're complaining about. We're complaining about little things like story structure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, and the fact that you can't... The fact that they can't see that and they kind of put this whole political loss on it is like a whole different issue that drives me
JVL00:48:12up the wall. Anyway.
Sonny00:48:15Uh, but I would say Last Jedi is much more competently made than Justice League. Okay. Like, I would say much, much more.
JVL00:48:23Okay, well...
Sonny00:48:24I don't think it's particularly close.
JVL00:48:25Fair enough. There we go.
Guest00:48:27Well, that's 50 minutes.
Sonny00:48:29Well, I guess it's an episode. We don't even have a spirit of the week this week because I'm not gonna... I don't want to drink alone. Like, some sort of sad rummy.
JVL00:48:37Like a boxer. So, I would say, in lieu of... Normally, this is the part where Vic comes on and says, you should, if you like the show, go to... iTunes, leave or... Don't do that. If you hated this episode, which you should... Bad episode.
Sonny00:48:50This is a horrible episode. Bad episode.
JVL00:48:52You should try to ensure that this doesn't ever happen again. Just send Vic a nice little tweet. Send Vic a tweet. Send him an email. Go to at Victorino Matus on Twitter. Go to his Facebook. Will you vamp while I find Vic's Facebook address?
Sonny00:49:05Da-da-da-da-da. I'm doing jazz fingers over here. Oh, wait. We're not on camera. Uh, so, yeah. You gotta bother Vic.
JVL00:49:15He is the... Oh, no. Actually, I don't think... That's a different person. We probably shouldn't tell... That's a different person on Facebook. Yeah, we probably shouldn't say who the... Wow.
Sonny00:49:22Just send him a tweet. Twitter is the preferred way of contacting civilized humans.
JVL00:49:25Tweet at Victorino Matus. And tell him how integral he is to this show. Because the truth is, the show doesn't work without him. Does not. Right? Does not work without him. As the last 50 minutes show.
Sonny00:49:36No. This is boring. Yeah. Just boring box office talk.
JVL00:49:40No humor. And then if you take the graph and the square root of the DXG from The Rogue One's third weekend on Tuesday, it's...
Sonny00:49:50So, if you want another episode of the show, the only way you're getting one is if it comes back. Just as a heads up. All right. Until next time, I'm Sonny Bunch. And there's JVL over there. Now you do the thing. So, do we have any outtakes? No, I don't have any outtakes. Do you have any outtakes?
JVL00:50:23I don't really accept to say that. Vic, do you have any outtakes? Yeah. You know, so what I kind of wanted to do, but I'm glad we didn't, was a look ahead to 2018. Because I, in the same way that we said that, you know, that I said you could see a bunch of these disasters happening from a mile away. There are two disasters coming right now. Do you know what they are? Ready Player One, which is going to bomb, and A Wrinkle in Time.
Sonny00:50:57Oh, that is a very, very problematic thing to say. A Wrinkle in Time? Oh my God.
JVL00:51:06Enormous money being spent on them from big pre-existing IP properties. And I am not speaking about whether or not the films are any good, but I will talk about how they're being packaged and how they're being sold. And I am telling you now, hear me now, listen to me later, these movies are going to just fail utterly at the box office. And you simply cannot power a big budget tentpole flick on Gen X nostalgia on the one hand. And if you dress Oprah Winfrey up like she's Liberace. On the other hand, that's not box office gold. I'm sorry. I'm sure it'll be fine.
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