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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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Black Panther hit a billion before it opened in China. Star Power and hypothetical profits from China are irrelevant if you competently make something that people actually want.
edited 7th Apr '18 6:52:55 PM by TheAirman
PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/TheyIt really is just sad how studios bank on foreign markets to prevent their bad movies from being total failures.
A movie people could not give a shit about here could be saved simply because the combined profits from 20 something nations add up enough to qualify it as a "success."
If it wasn't for China the last Transformers could have been a bull blown Box Office Bomb.
edited 7th Apr '18 7:01:51 PM by slimcoder
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."In the light of foreign markets giving Hollywood an excuse not to make films about LGBT characters, ongoing international political issues, or ghosts, I couldn't care less about the effect it has on star power in Hollywood.
Besides, I suspect with domestic theatre atendence deminishing, blockbuster films won't be able to afford star power much longer. Unless foreign markets continue to grow I guess.
The Mummy which was a bad movie was saved by Tom Cruises star power in foreign markets.
Pacific Rim: Uprising a recent bad movie & a prefect example of Hollywood's homogenization of films was saved relatively speaking by foreign markets though I'm not sure if star power was involved.
The heavy reliance on foreign markets actually has quite a negative effect on movies.
We all know why The Ancient One isn't Tibetan after all.
edited 7th Apr '18 8:42:05 PM by slimcoder
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."I mean, I don't think Hollywood is intending to make mediocre plots, it's just that international star power is saving some of the slip ups.
However, they're defiantly intending to avoid casting actors without star power (ie, why east Asian actors are struggling to make it big in Hollywood) and avoiding dealing with political issues (Tibet and LGBT).
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I've been melodramatically announcing that Uprising is dead to me since I heard some of the spoilers. If I want to watch John Boyega fighting aliens (and let's be honest, who doesn't?), I'll just watch Attack The Block again.
Maybe they're not trying to make mediocre plots or anything, but they're definitely trying to play it safe with a lot of major blockbusters. The bigger the budgets get, the more the effect gets exacerbated in an attempt to turn a profit.
I don't think the pairing is sexist so much as it's cliché and lacking the depth such a complex pairing requires. I think it would have been far more satisfying if it had been platonic.
The age and power difference and projecting between them would be fine and interesting if the movie let them actually discuss these things.
And a romance plot for Nat would have been fine if she wasn't at the time still the only female character in the Avengers, making it feel obligatory. Not to mention by that point Winter Soldier had been the only MCU film without a romance sub plot. Maybe Guardians if you're not squinting too hard.
edited 7th Apr '18 9:46:55 PM by Whowho
Guardians is a bit weird there - there's a pairing that's been teased, but one of them is not having it, and the narrative is more or less taking their side at the moment, so...I guess it counts?
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There's that, but the larger problem in my eyes is the specific romance for her blows, was not really fleshed out or built up to properly, and is rife with Unfortunate Implications. It was very poorly conceived and very poorly executed.
edited 7th Apr '18 10:44:44 PM by Draghinazzo
I like the idea of a romance arc set up to fail but the writing lets it down.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI think it's worth pointing out that while Doctor Strange's screenwriter suggested that the Ancient One not being Tibetan was due to concerns of being commercially barred from China, he later stated on Twitter that this was only speculation from him
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Additionally on the queer angle, the comic SQ Begin W/Your Name! was made and sold in China recently, about a romance between two girls, and does not appear to have garnered any censorship, from what I've read so far. (If anyone knows anymore about this case, let me know.)
What I'm saying is, while foreign censorship is sometimes a legitimate concern (Overwatch's Christmas comic being banned in Russia, for instance), so far it appears that Hollywood might be utilizing this claim of fear of censorship to stick by their old prejudices that they've always displayed. China itself seems to go back and forth on how hard it enforces its embargo. They even let "Coco" play there uncensored despite all the usual rejection of movies with ghosts.
edited 7th Apr '18 10:49:59 PM by Tuckerscreator

Star power used to be literally the only reason you'd need to go see a movie, but the film industry has evolved to the point that neither the company making it nor any one person working on it can sell a film by itself.