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#141. The Substandard on The Meg and Summer Box Office 2018
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Dudes Chatting — Summer 2018 box office retrospective: Opening anecdotes: JVL's son Flash called him a "nerd" at the comic book shop; Sonny's dog got stuck on a glue trap and he freed it with dish soap and vegetable oil; Vic experienced Jaws on the beach at Cape May. The main discussion is a full summer 2018 retrospective. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the consensus best of summer. Incredibles 2 surprised everyone with its quality. Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed, which the group attributes to The Last Jedi backlash souring the audience on the franchise. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is written off as bad. DC had no summer films at all, which the group treats as remarkable. Teen Titans is flagged as a squandered IP. The group also discusses the collapse of MoviePass and the rise of AMC A-List as a replacement, plus a sidebar on the Paramount Decree's relevance to modern exhibition.
Reviews: The Meg — Sonny reviewed it. Silly but fun: a PG-13 shark movie built for the Chinese market, Jason Statham's physicality doing most of the heavy lifting, deliberately dumb in a way that earns it. Positive verdict; Sonny rates it 8 or 9 on the dumb-movie enjoyment scale.
Box Office: The Meg opened at #1 with $44.5 million — the first non-sequel to top the chart all summer. Mission: Impossible – Fallout fell to #2, Christopher Robin to #3.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00This is Flash, and you're listening to The Substandard. I'm sure it's fine. Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Substandard, sponsored by the Black Tux. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you The Substandard is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Just look at our podcast and search for Substandard. You will easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL.
JVL00:00:33Hey there, boys. What's going on? I'm having a crazy week. Having a crazy, crazy week. Most of my family is down at the beach. I am back in Washington, D.C. working. And I have with me Flash. Flash and I, the two of us, together all week, guys week, no rules. So we do anything.
Vic00:00:57No rules, just right.
JVL00:00:58No rules. So yesterday, we did some baseball card shopping when I was breaking for work. Bought a lot of baseball cards.
Sonny00:01:07Do you have a baseball card shop?
JVL00:01:10No, there are no baseball card shops anymore. Really? So where do you go?
Sonny00:01:13Comic book store? Do you just go to like a Target? Or Walmart. Walmart.
JVL00:01:20Walmart has a huge, huge selection of baseball cards. That's where they ended up. Very good selection of baseball cards. And we did, so we're just doing things that I think, would be fun, things that my son and I can enjoy together. And so we went, after getting baseball cards, we went to the comic book shop. Because this is a thing we used to enjoy together. And we walked into the comic book shop, and I went looking around for, I have not bought a comic book in months and months and months. Looking around, what did I miss? What did I miss? Oh, here's, get these back issues, that back issues. And I turned to look at Flash, who I expect to be going around picking out a couple things for him to read. And he is simply standing in the corner with his arms crossed, shaking his head. Judging you. You were being judged. And I looked at him. Oh, boy. And I swear to God, he was like Ted McGinley in Revenge of the Nerds. And he's shaking his head. And he looks at me and goes, Nerd.
Vic00:02:09Oh!
JVL00:02:11That's mean. But you loved comic books. Dad, I don't do this sort of thing anymore. He's a jock now. You've got a full-on jock. He's going to be trying to give me wedgies soon around the house. Like, it's really just. And so, literally, I'm. Is he going to be a bully? No kidding. Is he bullying now? I'm watching him over. And he's, like, standing in the comic book shop, just, like, flexing, looking at his triceps. And I was like, oh, my God. I now live with a bro. You got a bro. I got a bro. You got a bro. That's good. Things are so no rules the other day that I said to him yesterday, as we're, like, you know, we're, like, getting ourselves. He came up to get dressed, and I was making breakfast for us. And I said, you know, go get dressed. I said, make sure you put on. A clean pair of underwear today, please. And he turned and he looked at me as if I was speaking Farsi to him or something. Like, what are you talking about? Why do I? And I was just like, oh, my God. You're a disgusting little teenage boy already. Bro. Teenage bro. Bro. When I went to. Do you even, bro? But he's still very into baseball cards.
Sonny00:03:20Still into baseball because they're part of baseball. Baseball cards are cool.
JVL00:03:22It's part of baseball.
Vic00:03:24A couple of weekends ago, I went back to, brought my kids to Victory, Comics, you know, the place out in Falls Church. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where they're now selling the.
Sonny00:03:32Is that the one that's run by John Weaver?
Vic00:03:33Yes, and they're selling his book there. But we go in. It's like Saturday afternoon. It's very hot outside, so it's nice and cool inside. Magic the Gathering. Thank you. I was going to say, how did you guess? There are a lot of grown-up people sitting around with cards.
JVL00:03:47That is the lifeline for comic book shops. That is the economic lifeline for them right now.
Vic00:03:51How does that, okay, explain. Like, they're paying for the.
Sonny00:03:54Even when I was, like, getting out of, like, going to the comic book store every month, so, like, back in 2003 or so, it was like there was a section of the store that was comic books, and then there was a much, much larger section of the store that was, like, tables for people to play Magic and Warhammer.
Vic00:04:11Is Warhammer still a thing? Do people play Warhammer? I just saw Magic the Happening. I was curious. The Gathering. Jesus. What's the Happening? Oh, the Happening is a movie?
JVL00:04:19Hello. May I please participate in Magic the Happening? I would like one card deck, please.
Vic00:04:27Yeah, I clearly don't play this game. The Gathering? Magic the Gathering. So, how does the comic book store make money off of this? You have to...
JVL00:04:37So, it gets people in the store, right? So, it is, you know, hey, we have a special... So, first of all, they sell all the cards. Okay. And there's real money. The margins on Magic cards. Really? Wow. Because you... Do you understand how this works, Steve? No, I have no D&D, but this is not like this, obviously, because there are cards. No, it's not because there are cards. You have to buy your set. Do you know something also?
Sonny00:04:56Have you ever played it? It is... So, certain cards are very expensive. It is based on scarcity. It is like a natural economic experiment where...
JVL00:05:03Imagine D&D, where your character wants a plus six ice sword, and to get it, all you have to do is go to eBay and spend $150.
Sonny00:05:11Right.
JVL00:05:12That's Magic the Gathering.
Sonny00:05:13Yeah. And people put together, like, killer decks, and you do it, and it's like, it's a whole thing. I never played Magic the Gathering, because it's Satan worship, so I was never into it.
JVL00:05:25But I did... I did... It's funny.
Sonny00:05:28I actually... Do you remember the Star Wars collectible card game? No. There was a Star Wars collectible card game in the late 90s, and I never actually played it, but I bought a ton of the packs just because I liked having the cards and, like, building theoretical decks. I was like, I could play this. You just didn't have any friends to play with. I literally had nobody who was nerdy enough to play the game with, and I didn't want to, like, go to the comic book store. Did you deal out different sides? No. I just would, like, look at my Death Star card and be like, that's the card. That's the best card. So, anyway. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. That's the sad, sad look at Sonny when he's about 14 years old. You know, you're walking out with it.
Vic00:06:05What's in the back? It's porn. No, seriously, it's porn. Sonny, how are you?
Sonny00:06:11I'm good. I had a pretty good weekend. My dog had a not great weekend. Let me tell you what happened to my dog. I know JVL's not a dog person, but this is, he may enjoy this. It's not a dog story. It's a Sonny story. Yeah. So, we went out on Sunday and came back a couple hours later, and our dog, Sonny, was basically in the master bedroom because we're remodeling the basement and all this stuff. It's not done? It should be done next week, fingers crossed. It's almost done. It's very close.
JVL00:06:39Coming second quarter 2019.
Sonny00:06:41I mean, it's like, you know when they remodel the theaters and they put all the nice seats in, and those are done in like two weeks?
JVL00:06:49How does that happen? How does that work?
Sonny00:06:51How does that work? So, anyway, go upstairs to the master bedroom. I mean, usually. Usually the dog is like right there at the door and like excited to get out.
JVL00:07:00Like, oh, my family's back packed here.
Sonny00:07:02But instead, she was laying very sadly on the ground, just like laying on her side. And I was like, oh, I woke you up. You must have been sleeping. And she doesn't get up. I'm like, oh, are you okay? And I like look down at her. And she has managed to get both of her paws and her face stuck in a glue trap, you know, like the glue trap you put down for mice. Which was apparently somewhere underneath the bed. We had a glue trap. And has managed to get that stuck in the carpet. And she's just glued to the floor. She's like straight up glued to the floor. So she's like kind of looking at me, not even like wagging her tail, like thank you for coming home. Just like having been defeated. Having been. I imagine it looks something like, you remember that Simpsons episode where Homer gets stuck in the tar pit and he's like, first, I'm going to put my arm down here and grab my leg. And now I'm going to put my other arm down here and grab my arm. And I'm going to put my face in the tar and pull it all up. That's what I imagine happened with my dog. So anyway, after I peel her off of the trap, it's like, it is extremely sticky, but not like, it's not going to like tear her skin off or anything. So I peel everything off and she's stuck and I take her and put her in the bath and I like give her a bath and wash her off and get all the stuff off. Before you do that, you have to put oil all over her to like get... If you ever get a kid stuck in a glue trap, did you have to Google this or did you know it all? Google it. I had to Google it. I had no idea. What kind of oil? Like olive oil or canola oil or whatever. Just like vegetable oil. Anything. Any kind of cooking oil, basically. We'll break it down. Crisco. So anyway, these are, by the way, here are some life hacks. I'm giving you a bunch of life hacks right now. So if you ever get stuck in a glue trap, don't Google, just go get the oil. Use that to get it off. So I wash her up a bunch and she comes out of the bath and she's still like super oily because it's... It's olive oil. It doesn't really come off with regular soap. So I go to the dog store and again, I have to Google it. I'm like, all right, get oil off dog. And there are these like $20 degreasing shampoos, $25. And I'm like, okay, I guess I got to get one of these. So I go to the store and I'm looking and the guy at the store is like the guy at the Petco plus the Petco. It's like the small... Petco Unleashed. Thank you. Unleashed. That's right. Is like usually... Well, usually we have this like kind of... Orange flavored one, but we don't have that right now. So I don't know. We don't really have anything for you. And then he said he like kind of like looks around and he's like, oh, that's my manager. You could just go to the grocery store next door and get palm. Yeah. And palm...
Vic00:09:43Palm oil or palm spray?
Sonny00:09:44No, like palm. Like palm, the dishwasher detergent. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, the ads that you see on TV where they're like using the palm to clean off the little duck? That apparently works for dogs too. So I could have spent $20 on this degreasing shampoo. Or I could just go to the store next door and get the $2 palm. Worked perfectly. Dog is super, super soft and fluffy now. I might wash her in palm all the time from now on. Thanks to the PetSmart guy. Thanks to the PetSmart guy. You know, he lost some business on that sale, but he gained a customer for life. Or as long as I'm kind of close to it. So anyway, that's my two life hacks. Two life hacks. If your dog gets stuck to a glue trap, oil. And then once you do the oil, some palm. Just use the palm. Gets it nice and clean. So your house is infested with rodents. Well, no. So this is why. That's what I'm taking from this entire story. No, when we moved in, when we moved in, because we were like right up against the woods. So there's like woods and a creek and stuff. So when we moved in, there were some mice. We had to put down some traps. I haven't seen a mouse in three years, but I forgot that all those traps were back there. There were also some snap traps. I hope she didn't get into those, but they had all been snaps. I was like, ugh. She's probably been having fun with this for a year.
Vic00:11:01Didn't you used to say, or am I mistaken about this in my memory, that your parents' house, where they used to live, you used to get in your basement all sorts of animals? Like not just mice, but snakes that are looking for the mice. You ever get snakes in the basement, or was that somebody else?
Sonny00:11:18Yeah, well, my parents also lived up against a creek, and they would get the occasional garter snake or something that would come in, like little tiny snakes.
JVL00:11:27How about on a plane?
Sonny00:11:29Lots of snakes on planes. Lots of snakes on planes. Well, I... Victorino, how are you?
JVL00:11:36How was your week?
Vic00:11:38Well, you know, first of all...
JVL00:11:39With the missus.
Vic00:11:40It's ongoing, but let me tell you something. It's the fastest week ever in many ways. But I don't mess around. I said, okay, now we can play Civ. Three minutes and on to Civilization.
JVL00:11:56Civilization takes action. Hours by comparison.
Vic00:11:58Civilization takes hours. Okay. But we also...
JVL00:12:04Honey, in that time, we could have built a granary.
Vic00:12:08Certainly several wonders. Several wonders in the amount of time that I take. To do the dishes. To do the dishes. To do the dishes. We did Cape May, our annual trip. Yes, it went well. It went very well. It went very nice. I took the boys, meaning my son and my nephew, Captain Bill Dwyer. Son, to the arcade. They still have them? They still have them. And they want...
JVL00:12:31Jeff Spicoli style? Teenagers walking around smoking in a darkened...
Vic00:12:35Yeah, because it is Jersey, so you would expect that. Not as many kids smoking. And now they use the... It used to be, until last year, until this year, it was the coin-op normal quarters. Oh, cards. Now it's cards. It's the worst. Yeah, now you're stuck with the card. But I issued them both cards, and then they just wanted to play the aliens game. Which, by the way, if they turn that into a movie... The double guns aliens game. Yes, it'd be a pretty scary movie, you know, the aliens game. And they have all sorts of other creatures that they don't have, like alien with wings and kind of things like that. And so they completed that. But, you know, you're not accumulating points. But this is the weird thing. So if you're playing, you know, any of these other games of skill that require... You know, or a chance that we can get normally tickets spit out. They're not spitting out tickets anymore. So it's just being accumulated in your carpet. Oh, and put it on your card. But it takes... You know, it's not the same feeling.
JVL00:13:27When you roll like a 290, you want all those tickets coming out. And then the last ticket that's halfway out or a third of the way out, if you pull that just right, you can get an extra ticket.
Vic00:13:39Oh, my gosh. Well, that takes skill. And then, no, gone. So, you know what I mean? That doesn't work anymore. And, you know, they also have... I never seen anybody use it, but they have slot machines that are tickets. So it's weird because you're not going to see adults use it. Training wheels. Yeah. Or gambling. It's so unseemly. So my nephew...
JVL00:14:00This arcade actually owned by the Harris Group.
Vic00:14:03Right. And so, like, my nephew asked me, he's like, you know, Uncle Vic, what is that? I'm like, that is a slot machine. Well, how does it work? It looks like... That's how you make money.
Sonny00:14:10Wait, is it like an actual slot machine with, like, an arm? Yeah, the whole thing.
Vic00:14:14But instead of coins, it's for, quote, tickets for prizes.
JVL00:14:18It's like candy cigarettes. Remember candy cigarettes? Exactly.
Vic00:14:20I just want to teach kids how to smoke. That's exactly what you want to teach children how to gamble. Candy cigarettes were amazing. End of story. And he wanted to play this... Oh, it looks... And he was trying to read, and he says, look, it looks like you can... Like, there's so many ways to win. There's so many ways to win. Just like real gambling. I said, you know, you see old people that play slot machines, and they're not playing there because they'll go up to Exit 38, you know, to Atlanta City to play the real slot machine. And you wouldn't... And seeing a child, you didn't see it. But if you saw a child play a slot machine, even for me, and I love gambling, that would just be unseemly. I said, don't do it. And he goes, why not? And I'm like, oh. You know, it's just not right. It's just not right. You know, stick to the aliens or skee-ball, because this thing is just...
Sonny00:15:03It's depressing. Depressing. We went to Chuck E. Cheese this weekend, because we needed something to do, and they have something kind of similar, but it's like the, you know, like the wheel, not the slot machine at the casino, but the wheel that you, like, spin. The money wheel. Right. They have something like that, except it's Paw Patrol. Oh. It's like... Training. It has, like... In training. That's Joe Camel. It has, like... Yeah, it has, like, Paw Patrol figures on it. Like, if you land on this one, you get four tickets. If you land on this one, you get three tickets. I was just like...
Vic00:15:31Mm-hmm.
JVL00:15:32No. This is wrong.
Vic00:15:33No, my daughter was saying the same thing.
JVL00:15:34She talked about wanting to win the jackpot. Did you see some little five-year-old with an oxygen tank sitting at the... No.
Vic00:15:41With a candy cigarette. Yeah, with a candy cigarette.
JVL00:15:44But sitting between the two slot machines. Have I mentioned this before?
Vic00:15:47The worst thing I ever heard when I was at the Lady Luck Riverboat in Iowa. So, I am a degenerate myself, as you know. Oh, God. Those are the saddest... No, those are the saddest ones.
Sonny00:15:56Those are the saddest ones. That is, like, if you had, like, a map that would... You know those 3D maps with, like, the wells in it to demonstrate? Like, if you were, like... If you wanted to look at a 3D map of sadness areas in America, there would be a moving one where, like, the boat is going up and down the river. Just like... It's not an actual boat.
JVL00:16:15It can't move. It just has to float a certain number of feet off of the shore to count as a riverboat. True story.
Vic00:16:21There was a collision on the President ship, which is in St. Louis, and that actually was a casino, and it got pushed into the Mississippi, and it went adrift. Everyone's grabbing the chips.
Sonny00:16:32I've only been on one that was off of the East Coast. It was off the Outer Banks or something. So we actually had to, like, go out into international waters. So, like, you couldn't gamble for, like, the first 30 minutes. You just kind of all had to hang out. Enjoy the boat ride. And it was the saddest collection of people I've ever seen in my life. Saddest collection.
Vic00:16:51Those are not people traveling from far and wide, from, like, people who go to Monte Carlo
Sonny00:16:55and Monaco, and now they're going to this... We were there for a bachelor party, and I was like, this is... After, like, an hour, I was like, I want to jump off this thing and swim back to shore.
Vic00:17:03It was so depressing. I'll play a little bit.
Sonny00:17:05But now I was going to say, the lady luck...
JVL00:17:07Who got thrown off of the riverboat? Was it Peter? No, no, it wasn't him.
Vic00:17:12But I was going to say... Who was it who got thrown off for life? Peter. Yelling at the dealer. That was my late friend, Eddie Parker. Oh, it was the Dice Man? Yeah, it was the Dice Man.
JVL00:17:22Oh, God.
Vic00:17:23Yeah, so we should have known the signs then. But I was going to say, at Lady Luck, a blackjack dealer says to me, I said, well, a lot of locals come here. You strike conversation with the blackjack dealer. And he said, yes. He said, you know, and this old lady, she's old, God bless her, she comes in every day in her wheelchair, oxygen tank, and she can't actually use her hands, so she uses a straw, and she just presses the max bet button with the straw in her mouth. You can't see it here because we don't have Facebook Live, but I'm moving like a chicken. Like a chicken, like...
Sonny00:17:52Like one of the birds with the water at the bottom of it.
Vic00:17:57So, yeah, that was that.
JVL00:17:59Oh, I want to get my friends from Reason Magazine over here to tell me how good gambling is for everybody, because we ought to respect freedom.
Sonny00:18:06No, it's weird, but JBL, of course that's sad, but it would be so much worse if we banned them, because then they would have to do this through the mafia.
Vic00:18:14And also, how else...
JVL00:18:15Then that lady would be, like, wheeling her wheelchair into some, like, underground speakeasy casino.
Vic00:18:21And then you never know if she gets a fire hazard, plus, you know, how else are you going to spend your Social Security check? So here's the other interesting thing. We're walking out one night on the boardwalk, and a bunch of people are walking the other direction holding lawn chairs. So we found out it was a movie night on the beach.
JVL00:18:36Ooh.
Vic00:18:37And so Kate asks, oh, what's the movie? And they go, oh, Jaws. So we stopped immediately, turned right around. The whole family went out there to the beach.
JVL00:18:45Jaws on the beach?
Vic00:18:47It was, first of all, the beach was packed, right? It was packed. And before they play the movie, they play this song, like the Kate May song, on the way to Kate May, and the entire... Everyone who's there, hundreds of people all singing the song. It was nuts. It was like something out of the 50s. Anyway, go in there, watch it. It was the first time for Captain Bill's kids to see Jaws. I said, don't worry, kids.
JVL00:19:09Did you clear this with Captain Bill?
Vic00:19:11No. They told him after. Don't worry. I said, Michael, I said...
Sonny00:19:15It's rated PG. It's fine.
Vic00:19:16It was. That's what it said. And they said, I thought it was R. I said, no, it was like a 1976 PG rating. It is.
Sonny00:19:23I watched Jaws for either the first time or the first time. I may have seen it when I was a little kid, but I don't remember. But I watched it for the first time in a long time, like four years ago, maybe three years ago. And I was like, oh, PG. And the first scene, just naked chick swimming in the water, just swimming around, dies, gets eaten. And I was like, this is already at least a PG-13 movie, which they didn't have back then. But I was like, that is actually probably an R scene right now. It's disturbing.
Vic00:19:54Yeah. And I mean, it is such a strong opening. To that movie, you know, where she's being moved around and she's yelling and screaming. And the great thing is, the people are so into the movie that, you know, there are certain scenes. The first time when Quint scrapes the chalkboard with his nails, everybody claps because they love Quint's appearance. And then, of course, when Roy Scheider says, we're going to need a bigger boat, everybody claps. And then when the shark explodes, everybody claps.
JVL00:20:19The next morning, you go to the beach, not a single person in the water all day.
?00:20:24No.
Vic00:20:24I know. Everybody just standing up on the beach. No, the movie was great last night. You don't need to go in the water today. You can hear the waves crashing as the movie's going at night. I mean, it was wild. Could you hear your niece and nephew crying? I told my son, I said, let them know when the scary parts come. And then, okay. And then I hear him whispering to my nephew, by the way, did you see the head, the floating head in the boat? Remember that one? Which is kind of fake.
JVL00:20:48Which is a jump scare almost. Right. Yes. The floating head is a jump scare. Yes. Yes, it is. Oh, when they go underwater. That was it. It's the only jump scare. It's the only jump scare in the movie, I think.
Sonny00:20:59Well, there's the bit where Roy Scheider's like standing there throwing the chum and the shark pops out of the water. And he's like.
JVL00:21:06Would you. Remember that one? Yeah, but that's. But you know something's going to happen. Like the classic jump scare. You always know something's going to happen when it jumps. In the moment when he's underneath it. No, the jump scare, the classic jump scare is something that comes out of nowhere. Right. There's no contextual clues that something is supposed to, is going to happen here.
Vic00:21:23I love the politics in the movie. What's really more interesting are the politics. The politics of the pressure of the mayor, the great mayor, played by, I believe it's Murray Hamilton, is the actor.
JVL00:21:31Got to keep the beaches open.
Vic00:21:32Got to keep that.
JVL00:21:33And all the shopkeepers. Chamber of Commerce.
Vic00:21:34This is it. They got to have that. And you know how it's a big deal on the shore. Beach town. Fourth of July. You're kidding me? It's a great idea.
Sonny00:21:41There was a fascinatingly anti-government streak in a lot of those early Spielberg movies, or like kind of faux anti-government. You had the Jaws mayor keeping the beach open. There was the Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the government is going around lying to people. Gassing them. E.T. E.T. But E.T. is where it kind of starts to shift, because it turns out that the government's actually the good guys. They're trying to help out. No, they're bad.
JVL00:22:06Well, they're bad at first. Peter Coyote is good, but the other ones are questionable.
Sonny00:22:09So anyway, it is like this kind of weirdly, like, not libertarian, but like conspiracy.
JVL00:22:17So you know he's making Lincoln and Bridges Spies.
Sonny00:22:21The family version of the conspiracy, the paranoid conspiracy thrillers.
Vic00:22:27I was asking Sonny, you know, that scene, everybody, even my nephew, notices the one thing that he thought was unrealistic is the very end when the shark jumps on top of the ship on the boat. Bruce. Bruce. And he's moving back and forth. I'm surprised that he's not tempted the way George Lucas was to make even a little fix to that. Like, oh, let me go back for the re-release. I'm not, because he's not a whore.
JVL00:22:48I'm not surprised at all.
Sonny00:22:50I serve that up to you. He has changed things, though.
JVL00:22:54He has gone back. Right, we talked about E.T. We talked about E.T., right?
Sonny00:22:58Well, there's E.T., and then Close Encounters of the Third Kind had some touch-ups. There was the special edition that came out a couple years later. He's not going to screw with Jaws. I agree that Spielberg has much more comfort with the way things looked back in the 70s than Spielberg does.
Vic00:23:16Anyway, speaking of sharks, over the weekend, The Meg took a, that was easy, that was obvious, took a big bite of the box office with $44.5 million. Followed by Mission Impossible Fallout, with $20 million. And in third place, Disney's Christopher Robin, with $12.5 million. Just as you predicted, right, Sonny? With The Meg.
Sonny00:23:38I wrote, I had a whole thing in my review that was like, this is tracking in the low 20s. People are, the studios are betting wrong by going on this China only. I was very wrong. I was very, very wrong. Dumb. I'm dumb. They ate it up. They ate it up, so to speak.
Vic00:23:53They ate it up like shark fin soup, which is very popular over there. Um, if you, uh, wouldn't, yeah, somebody's calling, ignore that. It's cheddar. Give us the gist, though, if you don't mind, Sonny, of The Meg. You saw it. I mean, we didn't see it, but I mean, you know, basically what's happening.
JVL00:24:12It's better than Jaws, right, because the shark is bigger?
Sonny00:24:14100%. So, look, here's the thing. I don't know if you know this, guys, but bigger is better in the shark movies. So, like, Jaws, kind of a little bitch shark compared to The Meg, which is the biggest shark of all time. So big. The biggest shark of all time. It's like, they thought it was extinct, even. So, the movie, it takes place off the coast of China. A wealthy, ugly American billionaire, played by Rainn Wilson, has furnished all the expenses on this ridiculous sea station that exists. Spared no expense. Spared no expense. But it's not actually clear what he wants from it. He just built it. He just paid for it. And they go down on this dive, and they find the, oh, they go under, they go lower than the Marianas Trench. They're at the lowest point that any human has ever gone. And there's a big shark down there. There's a big shark down there. Wow. Well, because it's the Marianas. It's the deepest part of the world. They then, the shark attacks the sub that they send down there, and Jason Statham has to go down and rescue them. And then when they come back up, the shark comes back up.
Vic00:25:25Oh, no.
Sonny00:25:27So, that's about it. That's what happens to big sharks.
Vic00:25:31Is it graphic? Or is it so big that it just swallows people?
Sonny00:25:35It's PG-13. I mean, it's like, it's as graphic as you can get with a PG-13. The most, like, disturbing image is the shark, like, biting a humpback whale in half. Ooh.
Vic00:25:46Well, that would make sense because it's a big thing. It's a big shark. It's got to chew it.
Sonny00:25:50You got to show it eating a big shark. Look, the problem with this movie is that it is a CGI shark, and it's hard to care about CGI sharks. Who cares? It's just big. It's just a bigger shark that they got to kill. And some of the people die, and some of the people live. And, like, I find the whole thing annoying, but also it was entertaining. I'm not going to lie. I enjoyed it. I laughed. Oh, you did? All right. I had some laughs. Jason Statham remains, like, one of our better, like, comic action stars. His abs look great on the screen. And he's old now. He's, like, in his 50s.
JVL00:26:22He's, you know.
Sonny00:26:24So, anyway, Big Shark, Jason Statham. Statham's abs, kind of fun. Question.
JVL00:26:29Yes. On a scale of seriousness, so shark movie seriousness, where one is Jaws and ten is the Deep Blue Sea, where does the Meg fit in?
Sonny00:26:41It's a solid, like, eight to nine on the dumb scale. So, it's a silly movie. It's a silly movie. And you get a lot of that, like, toward basically anything dealing with Rainn Wilson's character is, like, here's a ridiculous person. Here's a, look at this. Look at this gross American billionaire who wears sneakers. Or as open water would be, like, two.
Vic00:27:01Open water would be, like, .5. .5. .5. Question.
JVL00:27:05Yes. Does, because I'm interested in the CGI-ness of the shark. Yes. Does the Meg itself wind up with any sort of personality that resonates with the audience? Just a big shark. So, really, you just. Just eating stuff.
Vic00:27:20It's just there. It's not like Jaws 4, where it follows them through the Bahamas because it's personal. No. It follows Michael Caine. Was Jaws 4 this time it's personal? This time it's. I don't know if they called it this time, but it follows the wife of Brody, you know, of Sheriff Brody. And it follows him to the Bahamas and, what's his name, gets married, I've had peoples, I think, gets killed. But, yeah.
Sonny00:27:40I mean, this is very much. It is. It is. It is the shark version of Skyscraper, which we talked about a couple weeks ago, that it is. It is a movie that is entirely aimed at the Chinese market and the Chinese audiences. It is. It is. And it's interesting. They took, this is based on a book, apparently, you know, like a 20-year-old. Supposedly a very, very good book. Great book. Great genre book. Also called The Meg. Yes. But they've moved the action off the coast of California to the coast of China. Of course. And they've done it entirely so they can play up the Chinese locations and they have a bunch of Chinese extras. And it's like, okay. I mean, this is fine, I guess. But it is an indication of things to come. The fact that this movie made $45 million this weekend, or whatever, is really depressing. You know what else is depressing? First non-sequel to be number one at the summer box office.
Vic00:28:39Wow. That's insane.
Sonny00:28:42I saw somebody tweet that. And that is just, that is something else.
Vic00:28:50JVL, do you remember, so Jaws came out in the summer of 76. Summer of 77, Richard Harris did a movie called Orca. Do you remember this? Yes. You know how I remember this? Because the poster was such a famous poster, and it was on the back of almost every comic book at the time.
JVL00:29:09Oh, that's right.
Vic00:29:10But they made it the size of the town. So Orca is like, I don't know if you've seen this, Sonny. The Orca is about the size of a town, and it's about to land on the town. It's like taking a jump, and it's crushing everybody. But I always thought that was, I mean, that was purely about, you know, hey, they made money last year. Let's do it. We'll have to do it bigger. So it'll be about Orca.
JVL00:29:30It'll be about Orcas. Yeah. Can I throw a little something at you here? Go for it. I'll be interested to see if the Meg outgrosses Black Panther in China.
?00:29:41Oh, could.
JVL00:29:43Could. Because it could. Mm-hmm.
Sonny00:29:45What did Black Panther gross in China? Some very unflattering things about the racial attitudes of our friends in China, don't you think?
JVL00:29:53I think we've discussed that before. No, that's exactly what I was thinking. Black Panther, this is amazing, in China, opened to 65 million and then a grand total of 105 million.
Sonny00:30:07So it did 65% of its business opening weekend. That is unheard of, at least stateside. I think that's more common in China, I think, where they have these kind of big, giant openings and then huge drop-offs. But that is interesting that it only grossed. Well, I mean, Black Panther is a fascinating movie because it grossed $700 million. In the United States, almost exactly, because they kept it in. I saw that. Which makes it the third highest grossing domestic picture of all time. And it opened in February or whenever it opened. But it has grossed only another $700 million in the rest of the world. It has performed very weirdly.
Vic00:30:52I'm tempted to make a transition. But I won't. So I'll go to the original transition. Which was, you know, these movies come out all the time now because it is shark season. That's when they come out because it's happening now. And I saw actually, in Cape May, there were a lot of dolphin sightings. But luckily, I don't think I saw them. Dolphins are always good.
JVL00:31:12Remember, if you see dolphins, there aren't any sharks. Because dolphins are the natural enemies of sharks. And dolphins will drive them off.
Vic00:31:18I really hope so. This is totally true. This is like a surf thing.
JVL00:31:21If you're out surfing and you see dolphins floating around, you're going to, hey, work it.
Vic00:31:24There was one alone that was maybe 10. They were 20 feet away from me. And I just, because they usually travel in groups. But it's possible a dolphin could be alone, right?
JVL00:31:32All the time. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good.
Vic00:31:33No, all the time.
JVL00:31:34You know how to tell them apart, right? I didn't have my glasses.
Vic00:31:36Yeah, I didn't have my glasses. So, let's see. Exactly. But it is. Kill them all. Let God, it's on now. Anyway, it's shark season. Put a barrel on him.
JVL00:31:47Yes.
Vic00:31:47So, anyway, it's shark season. But did you know it's also wedding season? You're going to be doing it big and going out to all of your buddies' weddings. And you're breaking a date. You want to look fresh. But it has to be convenient. And that's where the BlackTux.com comes in. The Black Tux has awesome suits and tuxedos in all kinds and styles. And you read them online. Substandard friend Grant Addison tells me his friend, Grant Hodges, what are the odds to both name Grant, he just got married. He's a substandard listener also. And guess what? He and all the groomsmen, including Addison, all got their tuxes from Black Tux using the substandard discount. So, there you go. The Black Tux offers the kind of suits and tuxedo styles that would normally be wildly expensive to buy. And you might only wear it once, just like at your wedding, Grant Hodges, because you only get married once. Like the emerald shawl tuxedo, it's funky, it's cool, but how many times are you going to wear an emerald green tuxedo with the Black Tux? You could do you and blow it out for your big one-time event. So, try out a new look, do something different, and take your style to the next level. With the Black Tux freehold triad, you could see the fit and feel the quality of your suit months before your event, after ordering your suit. The suit will arrive 14 days before the event. If anything is less than perfect, the Black Tux will send you a replacement right away. And remember how simple returns are. Wear it, turn heads, then send it back three days after your event. Shipping is free both ways. Stand out at your event for the right reasons with the Black Tux. To get $20 off your purchase, visit theblacktux.com slash substandard. That's theblacktux.com slash substandard for $20 off your purchase. The Black Tux. Premium rental suits and tuxedos delivered. Such a pro. Gosh, you're such a pro. It's been a while for me to read. You've been on double duty these last couple episodes here. Repping our brands. Glad you got a little break. But we thought we'd spend some time now, since there's no other movie really coming out, but talk about a look back on the box office, summer box office, and our thoughts, predictions, turned out. JVL, you want to go first?
JVL00:34:00I will set us up, because I took the extra step of listening to our summer box office summer movie preview, and we did a round-robin style of the three movies we were most looking forward to. And the three movies, really there were only one, two, three, there were only four movies that we were all looking forward to, and they were Mission Impossible Fallout.
Vic00:34:26Okay, fair.
JVL00:34:27Jurassic World, you, Victorino Matus Yeah, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Deadpool 2, and so... Yes.
Vic00:34:37Guilty as charged on film.
JVL00:34:37And so those are the movies we were most looking forward to, and I find it interesting that none of us was at all interested in Incredibles 2, which has become the highest grossing Pixar movie ever by a 20% margin. Go figure. Which is astonishing.
Vic00:34:52And it's a nice movie.
JVL00:34:54And there are a bunch of other surprises. Yes, but I was just wondering what you guys think. Now, looking back, how did those movies measure up for you, and were there other... What were your favorite and least... I mean, I don't know. I have short thoughts.
Vic00:35:07I have... Your summer 2018 movies? I did not... Oh, I'd have to do it on the spot, but let me just say this, and then I'll yield to Sonny. Very disappointed, obviously, in Solo. Just because... I'll tell you why. Really? Yes. You know why? Because of the... The villain. Yes, thank you. Okay, it didn't have to be that, but again, they're bringing back this thing. So what, they were the rebel? This is the birth of the Rebel Alliance, but they just killed half the crew, or two of those people. So, I mean, disappointing. Jurassic World, also a bit much, okay? And I see where it's going, because now you have just dinosaurs roaming around America. That's the whole point. What I was really, really pleasantly surprised by was Ant-Man and the Wasp. I had mediocre expectations, and I much enjoyed it. Maybe it's because I was on the ship, you know? So it's just everybody, everything is great. So you just enjoy it. But that's basically how I felt about that.
JVL00:36:15Yes. If I were to have told you before the summer that Solo would be nudging out Ant-Man and a quiet place domestically at the box office. What would you have said?
Sonny00:36:28That's really something. No, I think we're all, we discussed this last week or the week before. This is the Mission Impossible 3 problem. Mission Impossible 3 was not a bad movie, but it got hurt because Mission Impossible 2 was so bad.
JVL00:36:41All I need to do is punish the movie they've been, the movie following the movie they were disappointed by. We do that.
Sonny00:36:47So The Last Jedi was trash, and everyone...
JVL00:36:50No one denies this now.
Sonny00:36:50At this point, we're all just getting ready for J.J. Abrams to fix all the things. We're wrong.
JVL00:36:56Clean things up.
Sonny00:37:00I am curious to see how long the critics refuse to admit that The Last Jedi was trash. They'll stand by this forever.
JVL00:37:07I have a theory for why Solo didn't perform better.
Sonny00:37:11Is it Emilia Clarke? No. I love her. It's because the movie treated droid feminism as a joke.
JVL00:37:18Oh, probably true.
Vic00:37:19Well, this is the ongoing debate here in the studio about was it kidding or was she serious?
JVL00:37:26I had been more woke about that than audiences would have responded better. I hope that Kathleen Kennedy takes this to heart and understands that this is how she fixes.
Sonny00:37:35Star Wars needs more social justice.
JVL00:37:37More social justice, not better stories with new characters. Yeah. No.
Sonny00:37:41If the next movie isn't 50% Rose, then we should just boycott, frankly. If it's not just Rose. 50% Rose. 50% Rose, just Rose talking, doing stuff. Just camera on her, just on her face. All the time.
Vic00:37:58What is the name of-
Sonny00:37:58When the other characters, when Rose isn't on screen, the other characters should stand around saying, where's Rose? Where's Rose? And that's the movie.
Vic00:38:05That's the movie. That's the movie. Remind me again the ridiculous name of the, quote, villain in Solo who turns out to be the little girl.
JVL00:38:12Fez Naz Massage, he says. Yes, yes. That's right. Bashar Al-Assad. Maz Kanata. Maz Kanata.
Vic00:38:19Okay.
JVL00:38:20Sonny, your thoughts.
Sonny00:38:22I like The Incredibles 2 a lot, but it did leave me feeling kind of cold. There's really just nothing out this summer that I've, no big movies this summer that I've really, really liked. I mean, A Quiet Place was out in the spring, and it's great, but there's just not really Mission Impossible, Fallout.
JVL00:38:40I liked Ocean's 8.
Sonny00:38:41I didn't, I mean, I liked Ocean's 8 a fair amount. It wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, but it was fine. It was entertaining. Mission Impossible was good, but I think, again, in the lower tier of the recent Mission Impossible movies. It was kind of, it was a very, very underwhelming summer. Jurassic World 2 was bad. It was a bad movie.
Vic00:39:03And you mentioned this JVL, how Chris Pratt, you felt like that was the most mailed in.
JVL00:39:08The only time I've ever seen a mail-in of a performance. Fallen Kingdom dropped. I mean, so Jurassic World grossed $650 million, Fallen Kingdom $410 million. Yeah. That, I mean, that does not happen often. Now, Jurassic World was a- No, but Jurassic World-
Sonny00:39:26Was a giant, sort of pent-up demand. It's hard to compare the two like this, because Jurassic World massively overperformed everyone's expectations.
JVL00:39:35Except that it's a lousy movie. This is, I mean, so Jurassic World is a bad movie that audiences inexplicably loved. It's a sort of hit at the right moment for some reason.
Sonny00:39:44I certainly liked it better than Fallen Kingdom. When I reviewed it, when I reviewed it, I gave it a negative review. And then when I went back and watched it with my wife after, like before, Jurassic World 2, it was fine. It was entertaining enough. I didn't hate it or anything like I did in the theaters. So this is one of those. But especially in comparison to Jurassic World 2, which is just a bad movie. There's nothing about it that's good. Redeeming.
JVL00:40:15I have some thoughts. JVL. Thoughts. So there were some surprises. One of which is that Avengers Infinity War couldn't catch Black Panther domestically.
Sonny00:40:26That's really something. Yeah, I see that. Who would have thunk that? I'm not shocked by this insofar as Black Panther had the benefit of coming out a couple months earlier and therefore was dealing with slightly weaker competition. But also it was a thing. It was like everybody had to go see it a bunch of times. It was a cultural thing.
JVL00:40:45Also, it was a better movie. Yes. Black Panther is a better movie. Yeah, Black Panther undoubtedly is just a better movie than Avengers Infinity War. Marvel had three of the top four highest grossing movies of the summer.
Vic00:40:59Yeah. Yep.
JVL00:41:01DC could not get a movie into theaters during the summer of 2018.
Vic00:41:06Not one.
JVL00:41:08What the hell is happening at Warner Brothers? I mean, how does this happen?
Vic00:41:15It's exclusively Warner Brothers that has the DC franchise.
JVL00:41:18Yeah, Warner Brothers owns DC and Jeff Johns, who has been running that studio into the ground I mean, I really don't understand.
Sonny00:41:28You don't think people are going to be excited for Aquaman? Jeez.
JVL00:41:32I mean, how do you just see the field entirely like this? How does this happen?
Sonny00:41:40It is one of the great corporate mismanagements of our time. Yeah. In this industry. They wanted to do two things simultaneously that don't really work simultaneously. They wanted to have an auteurist vision. They wanted a vision driving the franchise, and they wanted a connected universe where everything is kind of planned at the top by corporate. I mean, the reason the MCU works is because it's an Irving Thalberg-style run organization where Kevin Feige is just like, hey, this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing here. It is very tightly managed. It is very tightly planned. It's a studio system. It's a studio system.
JVL00:42:22It is the only studio system in existence.
Sonny00:42:25I think Warners kind of wanted to do that, but also have a unique vision and style, and you can't do the two things at the same time. You can have Christopher Nolan making his Batman movies. You could have Zack Snyder making Superman movies. You could have Patty Jenkins making Wonder Woman movies, but trying to do them all kind of together at the same time, I don't think it works. I don't know. Very bad. But don't worry. Aquaman's going to save it.
JVL00:42:52The dark side is going to save all of this. When we finally get to dark side, that is the thing that audiences ... Because when you go around and you talk to people culturally, and you say, look, what is it, when you think about DC Comics, what characters really spring to mind that you love, and everybody says dark side.
Sonny00:43:16Dark side.
Vic00:43:16And Steppenwolf. Steppenwolf.
Sonny00:43:18The new gods. What if we just acknowledge the fact that DC superheroes are kind of lame? Batman and Superman. Superman is lame.
JVL00:43:28They're top heavy.
Sonny00:43:29Wonder Woman, kind of lame.
Vic00:43:31Aquaman, he's not lame.
Sonny00:43:32Aquaman, lame.
Vic00:43:32He has power over fish.
Sonny00:43:34DC superheroes are just kind of lame, with the exception of Batman. With the exception ... But this is like saying ... Marvel superheroes are amazing.
JVL00:43:45Marvel's bench is incredibly deep.
Sonny00:43:47Yes. But it's everybody. But their top is very strong, too. X-Men, Spider-Man. Spider-Man's less interesting than you think. Iron Man. Captain America. Apologies, Travis Smith. I'm just throwing this out there. No, I'm with you, Sonny.
JVL00:44:01This is not a controversial opinion you have here.
Vic00:44:03No.
Sonny00:44:04But this is the real problem, is if you try to build a joint universe out of a universe that has one interesting character, it's never going to work. No, there are plenty of other ... Here's the problem.
JVL00:44:15There are plenty of other interesting characters. For instance, the characters who make up the Teen Titans. Classic man.
Vic00:44:19The character who makes up the Teen Titans. Shazam's uncle.
JVL00:44:22Beast boy. Are incredibly interesting, and what did DC do with the Teen Titans? The Teen Titans, I went on a rant about this over email, they took what was, during the 90s and 80s, their best-selling comic book, and their most critically acclaimed comic book for DC, the Teen Titans, which was, at that point, Cyborg, and Raven, and Robin, and Wonder Girl, and they took that property, which is just ready-made for cinematic, modern moments, and they turned it into a kiddie cartoon.
Vic00:44:53Yep.
JVL00:44:54Have you ... It's listed as Teen Titans Go!, which I believe has grossed a total of $25 million. Yeah, it's out now, right?
Vic00:45:01That movie, yeah.
Sonny00:45:01I find that movie offensive on every level, just aesthetically, on every aesthetic level. Oh, aesthetically.
Vic00:45:06I saw the trailer for it, it was horrendous. I could barely get through the trailer.
JVL00:45:09But when I tell you that this is corporate mismanagement, here is your property, here is your IP, the thing that you could do something with, and instead, they decided that this is what they're going to turn into their gateway drive-thru. For kids. The little kids.
Sonny00:45:22But they're also doing the Titans TV show. Yeah. Which looks like the worst thing I've ever seen, committed to celluloid. It looks like, JBL, do you disagree? Agree or disagree? I have not seen it. Have you seen the trailer for it? I have not seen it. You should watch the trailer for it, and then email everyone your thoughts. I think that would be... Is it that bad? It's one of the worst things I've ever seen.
JVL00:45:47To anybody who ever read the Teen Titans books, which I suspect is some non-trivial percentage of our readers, go back and reread... The Judas Contract, which is the three-run conclusion of what was like a four-year story arc with Tara Markov and Slade Wilson, the Terminator. And it's one of these things that actually holds up in the same way that the Elektra saga from Daredevil really holds up and reads well today.
Sonny00:46:13All of the material is there, the characters are there, the IP is there, and Warner's... It's amazing. Can we all agree that the lasting legacy of the 2008 summer season will not be any of these films, but the radical changes to the business model that MoviePass managed to introduce while also collapsing in on itself?
Vic00:46:32Yes, for 2018, yes. Let's talk about that, Sonny, with MoviePass, because we have a colleague who really tried to sell me hard on MoviePass, and the more he described it, the worse it sounded. And I just didn't... I'm not going to see that in any movies.
JVL00:46:48I mean, how did it sound bad? It's amazing. It's like they're handing you money.
Sonny00:46:51I mean, it's great for consumers for the short time that it existed, but just a terrible terrible business model. I mean, the company that owns MoviePass announced a $126 million loss this quarter or something. Like, it's insane.
Vic00:47:04Those days are numbered, right?
Sonny00:47:05Yeah. I can't imagine it's going to exist for very much longer.
JVL00:47:09Can you, just for the five people who listen to the show who haven't heard about MoviePass, can you give the 30-second version of their business model?
Sonny00:47:15Their business model is you pay $10 a month, and you get to go see an unlimited number of movies. Basically, a movie a day. You can see one movie a day. So, for half the price of a movie ticket, you can see 30 movies a month? Literally, for the cost of one matinee ticket, you could see 30 movies a month. And there were some limits to it. Like, you couldn't go see IMAX. You couldn't go see the Regal Atlas. How did they make money? Don't be outmissing. Volume? The theory was that they were trying to collect user data and sell that to theaters and restaurants. That's right. And then they were going to make a lot of money. Insane. It was just an insane, insane business model. I do think that we are going to see that it will have long-lasting impacts via the fact that AMC has introduced a similar program. And more interestingly, and something I'm reading up on, I actually don't have coherent thoughts on it yet, but the DOJ is reopening, is looking at the antitrust settlement that the studios made with the DOJ. Back in the 40s, right? A long time ago. The Paramount decree. Yeah. They're reexamining that. So, it's an open question as to what it will actually look like if they change this. I actually want to do some reporting on this. I haven't done it yet. But it's a fascinating thing because, look, what happens if you get to a world where, say, AMC has 10 million A-list members, right? And they go to the studios and they say, if you show your movie exclusively at AMC theaters, where are A-list customers? Customers can have, you know, a two-week window or a one-month window or something. What is that worth to you? You know, maybe we give you 80% of the ticket sales. Maybe we, you know, maybe we strike some sort of... So, I think if we get to a world where the DOJ kind of says, all right, you guys, studios and theaters, you can do whatever you want. We're going to get into a very weird and turbulent time with movie releases. But also, nothing may happen. The DOJ may be like, yeah, this is all working. It's basically fine.
JVL00:49:27It is working basically fine. I guess I am reflexively anti-anything that changes the status quo ever for anything, but particularly for this. Because the end result of this, as Richard Rushfield calls it, the great entertainment semifinals, is a real fight between, like, Disney, which is now 40% of the studio business, and the tech companies. And the tech companies are going to want to... Restore the theatrical window, and I want to preserve the theatrical experience selfishly because I like the theatrical experience.
Sonny00:50:01And what if you maintain the theatrical experience by letting the studios have their own theaters again?
JVL00:50:09I am open to that, but I can't imagine it would work out that way. Right? I mean, that's fine if that's the way it works out.
Sonny00:50:16I have trouble believing that that's how it... The Paramount Decree, essentially, the main thing it did was it split the studios from their theaters that they own. The studios used to own theaters in every town, and there would be first-run theaters, and you would show your movies there, and they would have deals with each other. But basically, the Paramount Decree said, nope, can't do that anymore, can't fix ticket prices, can't do some other things. Right.
JVL00:50:39And among the other effects, so this had far-reaching effects, the biggest of which, and the most obvious of which, is that the business of movies from the theatrical, meaning the theater owner perspective, was no longer the business of selling tickets, but the business of selling popcorn. Because their profits... And the presenters became, then, the ancillary foodstuff, and who buys popcorn, it's teenagers and kids, and so you wind up with, like, the 80s. Right. You know, you wind up with movies becoming more juvenile and more targeted towards the type of kids who are going to go and spend 12 bucks on a tub of popcorn. So, I mean, there are all sorts of downstream effects from this, and there's a really good Popcorn Economy, is a book sort of about the economic history of this stuff, which
Sonny00:51:20is worth, I forget who wrote it, I could effort it if you really wanted me to, but it's good.
JVL00:51:25Yeah, I don't know, it's all very bad. I do wonder, so AMC could make this work in ways that MoviePass can't, because they're not paying anything for the tickets, they own the tickets. Oh, right, it makes 100% more sense for them. And AMC can just make all their money off of popcorn, or food, Bev, and all that stuff. And they are keeping people out of Regal, and they're keeping people out of Cinemark.
Sonny00:51:43I mean, it's a deal that makes much more sense for AMC, because AMC is only losing, say, $5 on a ticket that they sell instead of, you know, $10.
JVL00:51:53MoviePass reminded me of Cosmos. Cosmo.com. Do you remember Cosmo.com, Victorino?
Vic00:51:57I do remember, because we used to get it here at the office.
JVL00:52:00So in the first internet bubble, there was a service that popped up called Cosmo.com.
Vic00:52:06Sonny, you might have been there at the time. You remember this at all?
JVL00:52:08No, no, it's after Sonny's time.
Vic00:52:09After Sonny's time.
JVL00:52:10Where it was a delivery service that would bring certain things to you. And it started out with DVDs, I think books and snacks, like snack-type food. And they were undercutting, like, the sell-through price of DVDs. DVDs at Target or wherever else you would buy your DVDs, a blockbuster, by, like, 50%. And so a new-release DVD that you would spend $22 for at Target, Cosmo was selling for $12, and they would deliver it to you, wherever it is that you were.
Vic00:52:40But there was a delivery. There's also a return process on the DVDs, right? You had to return the DVDs? No, you were buying them. You were just buying them. You were just buying them for $12. You could buy it.
JVL00:52:49And so I would sit at The Weekly Standard's offices. I'm collecting large amounts of DVDs, and I would just order them all.
Sonny00:52:58And I remember thinking to myself, how does this company's business model work?
JVL00:53:02And their answer was, because it was the internet, it was just scale. Scale. We could lose $10 on each transaction, and that's bad if you only lose $10 on 100 transactions. But if you lose $10 per transaction on 10 million transactions, well, all of a sudden you have a business, because internet. And that's essentially the MoviePass model.
Vic00:53:21You would order your copy of, like, Titanic. And then a box of Krispy Kreme.
JVL00:53:26Yes. And the Krispy Kreme were sold below par, too. So the idea is, they're paying somebody to deliver the box of donuts to you for less money than you would pay at the Krispy Kreme down the street.
Vic00:53:36The guy would show up at the front desk with his donuts.
Sonny00:53:41Yes. Somebody made a joke about MoviePass that, like, it went something like this. Like, the decline of MoviePass is really bad for my business that's coming up, MoviePassPass, where I sell you MoviePasses for $4 a piece. I sell you the 10. I sell you the $10 MoviePass for $4 a piece. It just, it doesn't make any sense. It never made any sense. It makes more sense for AMC, but I still think it's, because the AMC one, you know, you can go see IMAX. You can go see the Dolby Atmos. Like, I still think that unless you are going and buying, you know, who actually, I would, here's what I would really like to know, is what percentage of customers actually go and buy popcorn and concessions when they go to the movies? Not me, and I don't know that. When I go to, the only time I ever buy concessions anymore is when I go to the movies. When I go to a place with, that sells alcohol. That's it. And, you know. I couldn't tell you.
JVL00:54:30But it also could be that the AMC just needs to do this to help bury MoviePass quickly, and that they, you know, they will intentionally make this a Stillborn project that they abandoned 10 months from now.
Vic00:54:40When MoviePass is dead. Yeah, right.
JVL00:54:41I mean, this is entirely possible. This is just sort of predatory. And then we go back to it.
Vic00:54:45Yeah. Quite possible. The one thing I always thought with MoviePass, though, when they were saying, you know, like you could see all these movies, and I think they were trying to limit it now to three a week. I mean, obviously, because they're dying. They're in the death row, so they have all these. Three a month.
Sonny00:54:56Three a month?
JVL00:54:57You can go to all the movies you want, but you have to sit in the front row.
Sonny00:55:01You can see any movie you want, so long as it's snow dogs.
Vic00:55:05Right. Okay. I think we're good. Are we good? Yeah, we're fine. All right, fine. Do we have corrections, additions? I have a shout-out.
JVL00:55:12Victorino, what do you got?
Vic00:55:13A friend of mine from back home, from Tom's, well, she used to live in Tom's River, Lynn Sigil Malatek. She lives out west now. She was having a conversation with her brother-in-law, Mike Malatek, and the conversation of, podcasts just came up, and this guy, Mike, said, you know, I've been listening to one. It's really, really good, called The Substandard. So I just wanted to thank him out there. He lives in San Jose, and he's an attorney for a very, very, very small computer company in Cupertino.
JVL00:55:40Oh.
Vic00:55:41And so anyway, just want to say thank you, and tell all your friends over there at Cupertino to listen to The Substandard. And question, since you're an attorney, why do we keep getting the E in our episodes? Sonny Bunch does a good job in bleeping. No, we want the E. Oh, we want the E. We want the E. We're edgy. We're edgy. E for edgy, by the way. Not explicit. E is for edgy.
JVL00:56:00Didn't this used to happen? Like, you know, you'd make a movie, and if it came out as a PG, they would throw in a piece of language just to get it to PG-13.
Vic00:56:07PG-13 is better than PG. But you don't want to get too far where it then becomes NC-17, and then you don't get enough people seeing it.
Sonny00:56:13Yeah, well, then you, I mean, that's if you throw in, like, the dismembered newt corpse. I mean, it's hard to get from a PG to an NC-17. I have a brief addition. I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, I wanted to give many thanks to loyal Substandard listener Ming Liu for picking up a copy, or a I Heart Zack Snyder shirt. Hold on, I'm trying to unzip my hoodie. I had to wear a hoodie today, because I don't really wear t-shirts.
JVL00:56:36JVO is going to take a picture of this. You look like you work out a lot. What are you, you a woodworker?
Sonny00:56:43You like to work with hard wood? No, give me the hands. Give me the fancy hands. There you go. Jazz hands. All right, are we good? Let's see.
JVL00:56:52No. Did we get that? You tell me. Does that work? Yes. That works for me. I love it.
Sonny00:56:59I love it. I should put my glasses on, actually. Should I put my glasses on? He does look a little weird without the glasses.
?00:57:04Hold on.
JVL00:57:04This is good content, guys. I love this. This is great. People are sitting around, like, what's happening? That's better, because you're not in motion. There we go. This is a classic, Sonny.
Sonny00:57:14Oh, that's a good one. JVO just took a picture. This is uber millennial, Sonny. We'll put that up on Twitter. Yeah, we can throw that on Twitter. We'll put that up on Twitter. I'll wait until Saturday.
JVL00:57:22Oh, maybe we'll, you know, you know what? We'll use that as our show image.
Sonny00:57:25No, that's not good. Because there's not, what else are we going to do? It's like summer wrap-up. Shark, big shark. Oh, yeah, I guess, okay. Anyway, thanks to Minglu for picking that up for me.
Vic00:57:34But just one.
Sonny00:57:35I do heart Zack Snyder. I heart him.
JVL00:57:37JVL. So we often talk about the megathread. Yes. I have some news about the megathread. There's a new member of the megathread. There is now a priest on the megathread.
Vic00:57:51Yes. Is his father?
JVL00:57:52We're all in a lot of trouble.
Vic00:57:54This is Father Harris Ayers, perhaps, in British Columbia?
JVL00:57:57We're all in a lot of trouble.
Vic00:57:59Thank you, Father. A lot of Hail Marys for this show.
JVL00:58:03I mean, I'm fine.
Vic00:58:07Okay. I lost my place on that one there. All right, wow. I can't wait for vacation. That's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments. Tweet us at VictorinoMana. We're going to set Sonny Bunch at JVLast. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:58:43I have one, but if you don't.
Vic00:58:46Tell me. What do you got? So, we're here. My kids are still up in Jersey. Do you know, at this very moment, at this very moment, do you know where my kids are? My sister has taken them to Great Adventure. This is really for JVL.
JVL00:59:00Is it any safer?
Vic00:59:02So, my daughter says, you know, we've taken them on all the different rides. She wants to go to the haunted house. Don't go to the haunted house. And to this day, I don't think they ever rebuilt one. It's just too much. Or lightning loops. Was it lightning loops? Lightning loops. So, she says, oh, there was a certain... By the way, by the way, apparently, I guess, Six Facts has a huge, huge deal with DC because all the rides are DC comic themed. Yes. Right? Right. There's Batman and there's Harley Quinn. Superman Man of Steel. Man of Steel. And so, but she said there was one ride she didn't want to go on because she heard somebody died on one ride. I said, yes, one person died on one ride ever at Great Adventure. I'm sure it's fine.
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