The Dark Knight rises again! Our last show on The Dark Knight Rises dealt necessarily with serious and troubling events offscreen. We return to the topic of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy to uphold and celebrate the vast achievements and influences of this genre-defining enterprise, and to look ahead – to Superman, Man of Steel, Nightwing, and any other thing that might be waiting in the (bat)wings.
To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo263.mp3
Mentioned in the episode: this video essay on SUPERMAN RETURNS is essential viewing. Even for (especially for?) the haters.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video-essay#
I need to re-watch superman returns. I hardly remember anything about it.
Peter Sciretta @slashfilm
If my calculations are correct, TDKR would have made $230 million on opening weekend if it were released in 3D (per Avengers 3D %)
Read more at http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=64405#OXzFb8L8jd9GQGum.99
Totally speculative and false. The announcement of 3d would have turned many fans off. What is true is that preshooting it was easily on course for 205-215 million, just based on tracking. Seriously, the logic is terrible.
I don’t think we’ll ever be able to accurately gauge what had an impact on the TDKR opening weekend – the shooting, 3-D, Avengers, franchise fatigue… there are a lot of potential culprits and no way to accurately boil them down.
I’m not sure people realize the general public’s zest for 3-D for event films. They not only expect it, they are disappointed when it isn’t in 3-D.
Yep. I had a couple of friends who were looking for 3D screenings of TDKS.
TDKS:
THE DARK KNIGHT SLALOMS
Yup, I heard the same from some people and saw some of that online.
While some hardcore fans would have been disappointed, I think they left many millions off the table by it not being in 3D. Also to me it seems like a lot people don’t choose 2D versus 3D, they choose a particular theatre and time that is convenient and see it in whatever the format is.
I’m sure the DKR lost some money from people staying away from the theatres, but that $200+ million seemed way too high to me. Note I gave it $210 opening weekend in the box office contest, but post-Avengers it seemed that some of the excitement of a new Nolan Batman movie was gone.
That said, as Mr. Brown puts it, there are so many factors that I don’t think we will ever accurately figure it out.
It never felt like people didn’t turn up for the film due to the tragedy, though I’m sure plenty of people did. I do think that people are far more on edge and will be for sometime, though they may not even realize it.
And yeah, $200+ was a pipe dream with that runtime. Yes the screen count was high but it had to be to offset the show it was losing on each screen.
The Hobbit could run in to a similar issue due to its runtime and the holiday season being so jam packed that it won’t be able to get a crazy high screen count, which will offset the extra revenue from it being in 3D.
I don’t understand why the tragedy would keep people away.
Just because some crazy guy in colorado shot people in a theater for the first time since Lincoln, does that mean people everywhere are going to start?
I get that some people probably didn’t go, but it really makes no sense.
Judging from my own reaction, it was less a fear of copycats (though that did cross my mind briefly) and more just that I don’t know if I would’ve been able to enjoy the movie on Friday. The shooting would’ve been too much on my mind. Had we planned to go on Friday, I probably would’ve gone and tried not to think about it, but I was actually pretty glad we planned to go Saturday. By that time, I’d recovered enough from the initial shock that I only thought about it during the stock exchange scene.
So I’d say for at least some people it was less a question of fear that it would happen again, and more a question of being in the right mood to go see a movie, especially this one when the horrific connotations hadn’t had time to subside yet. But I don’t know if that would’ve affected the overall weekend box office or not.
Out of curiosity I did a search on Twitter for the Dark Knight Rises 3D and found a lot of people who still don’t realize it’s not in 3D. That they would be seeing it on IMAX 3D on the weekend, or they are going to look up theatres further away to see where it is in 3D. Even some who asked why they weren’t handing out glasses at the theatre.
I’m going to guess that this is the last summer we will see any big summer blockbuster not available 3D. Next summer, they will all be in 3D as while I personally dislike the format, from a business perspective they would be stupid not to do so as they would otherwise be leaving millions on the table.
I’ve actually been phasing out 3D this year unless it was unavoidable. I believe AVENGERS was the only film this summer I purposely saw in 3D.
I just wish that Cineplex would stop with the compounded surcharges (i.e. $15.99 for a “regular” 3D screening, but $18.99 for an UltraAVX 3D screening)
Jesus, $18.99 to see a movie? That’s insane. We can still get $6 tickets for the Sunday matinees… and we have a pretty dang nice theater in Erie.
I keep going on how much I like VIP theatres, but they keep jacking up the price on them. It’s now $19.25 for a VIP screening (or $17.32 with a ccene points card) and then you add 3D and it’s at a crazy $22.25 ($20.02 with Scene)! These screenings of big blockbusters on opening weekend quickly sell out as well.
Another theatre nearby me has started reserved seating for an extra $1. So I might be going to that rather than VIP. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include making it 19+, so I’ll have to see how it goes.
I generally avoid 3D but sometimes convenience of where and when it’s playing trumps not wanting to see the format.
We can go from $6 for pre-noon weekend matinees at AMC to probably around $20 for 3D IMAX at the Arclight. All depends on what kind of experience you want. We generally do the $6 early matinees or $10 later matinees for stuff we don’t care that much about, but we’ll do $13.50-$16.50 for Arclight on the stuff we’re really excited about. Don’t like 3D, though, so at least that surcharge is avoidable.
Funnily enough, one of the best theatres in town still has $7 afternoon matinees, making it a pretty awesome deal, as long as its one screen is showing the thing you want to see.
Even though they disappeared for a few years, discounted Tuesday screenings have started making a return and I sometimes go to those.
Also the smaller independent cinemas tend to charge less, even though they tend to be smaller screens and/or second run films.
Any fears of a copycat if at all serious seems to have dispersed now that another week has passed without any other horrible incidents.
Yet, Dark Knight Rises is dropping at a rate faster and and comparable is not doing as well as the Dark Knight:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?view=daily&id=batmanvs.htm
Tom Hardy’s Bane has not captured the public’s imagination like Heath Ledger’s Joker. Which at this point in 2008 people were raving about and how people needed to see the movie to see his take on the Joker.
It would have been unrealistic to expect Bane to capture that public imagination, as we expressed in our start-of-summer episode. In addition to the inevitable realities of the Joker as a character (he’s just a lot more fun than Bane), the death of Ledger created painfully heightened awareness of the performance that Hardy/Bane couldn’t hope to duplicate.
I think TDKR is clawing back strongly after a soft opening weekend. It won’t do TDK numbers, but I never expected it to; it’ll certainly clear $400M in the next couple of weeks, and after that, who knows.
When we close the summer box office contest, we’ll have some more to say about what did and didn’t happen with The Dark Knight Rises.
It just seemed to me that a lot of people were expecting the Dark Knight Rises to by pass the Dark Knight, but I don’t think that was ever in the cards.
Do they really need to do a Dark Knight Returns I mean this film was Nolan’s take on that in a large part.
The time Bruce has been away from being Batman in both is very close (8 and 10 years). Bane is as much the Mutant Leader as he is the comics Bane, the other cop who is around Gordon is in many ways a male version of Commisioner Yindel. One of the major themes of both is the succession of the young/new over the old.
Return, Hunt, Triumphant these work as chapters of both works just Nolan jumbles them around. The only thing missing is the final chapter which is untenable on film.
Rick I basically agree with you completely, but I think there will always be a mad chocolate craving deep inside me to see Bale, Nolan et. al. return to the batcave in 20 years to try The Dark Knight Returns anyway.
Dane Cook’s ultra-classy Aurora CO joke:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/here-is-dane-cooks-aurora-shooting-joke.html?mid=twitter_vulture
I’m not a big fan of the superhero genre, but for the most part, I really liked Superman Returns. My only gripe with that film is its weird choice to use Donner footage with Brando, then do the same plot as the original superman with the land grab. The less-punching, more low-key character stuff in Superman Returns (along with the elegiac Christ (and Last Temptation) like look at the character) was what made the film interesting…
I’m very curious what the Zack Snyder take will be considering the trailer that aims for a Malick-like tone.