Steven Spielberg and the BFG.

Lots happened until now, just saw the new trailer.

Movie's looking quite intriguing. It sure is a breath of fresher air when in a theater after a dozen previous "scream in your face" kids movie trailers...

I wonder if there will still be whizzpopping. If so, there must've been a fight to keep that out of the trailers...

Just saw this here movie.

Overall I think it's warm in tone, visually engaging, and faithful to the book, but tends to run too long. Whether it's a conversation that it is beginning to get redundant, a hunt scene that is still going on, a random stop to chat about hopes and whatnot right before the climax, or the very British breakfast that, while very funny, halts the plot dead in its tracks. The less patient might get tested. But in between there are some creative depictions of the dream world and its dream tree, the amiable malaproping BFG and headstrong Sophie, and the misshapen thuggish giants.

So if you're looking for a loyal adaptation of the book that doesn't snuff out own's childhood imagination of it and adds more to it, then you'll find it here. But compared to the recent Zootopia and Finding Dory, it's just a fun romp, nothing major to say about the world.

Also, I was not expecting to see a Schlinder's List reference in a movie this cheery....

Matt Zoller Seitz's review.

edited 2nd Jul '16 5:21:10 PM by Tuckerscreator

I thought it was good, but I didn't quite understand everything that was happening.

So is it out already in the US? Because it doesn't come out here in the UK till the 22nd.

Yup, just premiered yesterday.

My theater was mostly quiet for the first half, but then couldn't stop cracking up at the queen's breakfast.

edited 2nd Jul '16 6:11:16 PM by Tuckerscreator

Saw it yesterday as a back to back showing with Dory, had no prior knowledge of the story so had no expectations other than disappointment that it wasn't about the gun. Overall it was okay-good; I wasn't a fan of the breakfast scene (other than using a sword as a knife), but I adored the stealth sequence and dream world tree thing.

I wasn't able to hear what was said at the start because I was at a drive in, was there exposition about kids being taken and eaten or something? Because I don't remember seeing anything to explain why a newspaper's front page would have an article on children disappearing, and it otherwise would seem that Sophie and BFG mind raped the Queen into mobilizing the SAS for the sake of revenge.

The beginning of the film didn't mention it. In the book the disappearances are just mentioned to be in the news (I don't recall a mention of a specific newspaper page). The film probably just had it on the front page out of simplicity.

As for the "mind rape", Sophie in the book is more conflicted about giving the queen the dream, as she wasn't expecting it to be a nightmare. The BFG then quite logically points out that any dream about giants eating children would be a nightmare. Here she actually wants it to be scary, probably to galvanize the queen into action. I was kind of surprised that was changed.

edited 2nd Jul '16 8:13:39 PM by Tuckerscreator

The film seems to be at this stage a complete and utter box office bomb.

http://variety.com/2016/film/box-office/steven-spielberg-bfg-box-office-flop-1201808161/

140 million budget, not including its marketing budget yet making a projected less than 20 million in its first long weekend. And going on form that's going to get worse in the second week.

Still, the film kicking its arse all round the street is one from Disney.

Wow, not what I was expecting. His last PG rated movie, Tintin made almost 400 million despite not quite as big in America and being motion capture.

I've been hearing rumors going around that Disney sabotaged The BFG's marketing because Spielberg didn't renew his contract with them in favor of going back to Universal, but I'm not sure I buy that because I saw a huge amount of billboards and adverts on the freeways around here. Marketing is easy to blame, but maybe the close release to Finding Dory affected it.

edited 5th Jul '16 10:36:44 AM by Tuckerscreator

It's still Spielberg, he's one of the biggest names when it comes to directors, and it's not like the movies existence was completely unknown. Sabotage, if it happened, may have hurt the movie, but I don't think it could have done this badly if there wasn't something else at play.

I dunno. None of Spielberg's kids/YA movies he's made as a director since the days of Schindler's List/Saving Private Ryan have seemed like they had his heart in them. Sure, they've got his name, but none of the stuff that made Raiders sparkle. I think those movies, the whole process of making them, getting into the headspace of the kind of director that could make them, broke something inside the man. His films where he was executive producer or producer are even more problematical.

This whole big list on Wikipedia of his filmography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg_filmography

kinda proves my point. "The Legend of Zorro", made in 2005, seems to be universally considered to be absolute garbage compared to "The Mask of Zorro", yet it had most of the same crew and cast. And "Mask" was in my view one of the best action films of the Nineties.

I watched the movie and liked it okay for the most part... until the parts with the queen, which my god. It's so goddamn British that I'll be seeing Union Jacks every time I close my eyes for the rest of the month. Just... make it stop!!

Seriously, though, they could have afforded to cut those parts down severely. Those scenes go on forever.

The BFG looks even more like a bomb than it did the last time I visited Box Office Mojo -

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=bfg.htm

A movie that makes 57 million dollars domestically, and only another 17 million overseas, on a budget of 140 million dollars (minus of course the advertising budget, which could be at least that), in over three weeks of release, is a disaster on an almost biblical scale.

Disney's going to have to look at the reasons why this film has failed - and whether or not it learned the lessons from John Carter and The Lone Ranger.

I don't really see what it has in common with John Carter and The Lone Ranger, aside from bombing. Lack of big stars perhaps, but the marketing wasn't as confusedly vague as JC or worryingly racist like LR.

I feel like my problem with the advertising is that I just didn't really know what it was about or why I should care.

The gist I got from the trailers was 'Androgynous kid meets a Friendly Giant. They go on an adventure' and that's about it.

Makes sense, though John Carter's marketing was on another even vaguer level. From the first trailer of The BFG, I could tell you that the little British girl is the lead who is kidnapped by a giant, that he has great hearing, that he goes dream hunting, that the villains are other bigger giants, etc. From John Carter's... um, there's a guy named John Carter, it's in 18-ish century (England? America?), he ends up in a fantasy world with a princess... and I guess that's it.

The film is currently number 1 at the UK box office, beating Star Trek: Beyond. It's probably doing better here because of the British cast and source material. Finding Dory opened a couple of days ago though, and that might push it down.

That's some good news at least anyway. The idea of the film is something I've said I'm not too happy about earlier in the thread, but it occurs to me that I'm not going to watch it anyway so it's not really affecting me personally. I'm certainly not implying those that go and see it are wrong - my taste in cinema's rather peculiar so I can't throw those kinds of stones.

All that said, however, the film's going to struggle to make back its production and marketing budgets - or in standard Hollywood Maths DOUBLE those combined costs. And questions are going to be asked as to why it happened. Mark Rylance is a good actor but was his performance as the BFG way too down in the Uncanny Valley to appeal to audiences, and so on.