Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

LiquidDeath

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There is so much wrong with your whole argument.

Firstly, and this is coming from someone who watches the 86 cartoon movie 3-4x a year - just because something is popular with pre teen boys doesn't mean it can become an Uber franchise.

In fact, has any toy line achieved greater success than the bay formers? TMNT, power rangers etc also flunked

Whilst I was turned off by the first movie due to the way they changed the characters, saying all they had to do was copy the old cartoons - have you even watched them recently? Whilst there are some decent episodes they're also fairly cheesy and season 3 was a massive downgrade in both animation and story quality. Human characters got plenty of screen time etc
Clearly they can't copy the TV show directly into a movie. They could certainly have taken the broad story elements everyone was familiar with and, this is the big one, focused on the robots as the driver of the story and not the humans. The humans were completely ancillary in the TV show. Of course, having a mute Bumblebee as the primary representative for the robots was also a huge own goal since it forced the story to rely on human exposition even more.
 

En Sabah Nur

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Clearly they can't copy the TV show directly into a movie. They could certainly have taken the broad story elements everyone was familiar with and, this is the big one, focused on the robots as the driver of the story and not the humans. The humans were completely ancillary in the TV show. Of course, having a mute Bumblebee as the primary representative for the robots was also a huge own goal since it forced the story to rely on human exposition even more.
A movie that focuses strictly on the robots is not going to appeal to broad audiences and is not going to do well in the box office. This is exactly why Bay structured the movies the way that he did. The robots, while cool, are not relatable and a story about them alone isn't going to interest general audiences - only the geeks. Sure you'll be able to attract some of the surviving Transformers diehards from the 80s but that's about it and you're nowhere close to making back the hundreds of millions you spent on CGI. You can get away with non-human leads if they are anthropomorphic (Avatar) but it doesn't work with robots that don't have romances and don't have sex (this is all the female audiences are interested in). Bay did the smart thing in having the leads be audience surrogates (Shia and Fox) and raked in the cash.

Also, there was a Transformers movie that focused on the robots and it bombed:
 
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LiquidDeath

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A movie that focuses strictly on the robots is not going to appeal to broad audiences and is not going to do well in the box office. This is exactly why Bay structured the movies the way that he did. The robots, while cool, are not relatable and a story about them alone isn't going to interest general audiences - only the geeks. Sure you'll be able to attract some of the surviving Transformers diehards from the 80s but that's about it and you're nowhere close to making back the hundreds of millions you spent on CGI. You can get away with non-human leads if they are anthropomorphic (Avatar) but it doesn't work with robots that don't have romances and don't have sex (this is all the female audiences are interested in). Bay did the smart thing in having the leads be audience surrogates (Shia and Fox) and raked in the cash.

Also, there was a Transformers movie that focused on the robots and it bombed:

This is exactly as stupid as saying Godzilla movies can't do well if they focus on giant fighting monsters.

The literal comment that started this whole sidetrack was talking specifically about how the best parts of this new movie were the over the top monster fights and the worst parts were the humans.

And all this is besides the fact that you just implied that Transformers aren't anthropomorphicized when they are exactly machines that have a humanized form. You don't need sex or a romance to sell a tragic story of humanized creatures cast out of their home world and looking to fit in somewhere else. That is also why you have a brainless Megan Fox type inside the cast to be saved by the robots, you just don't give her more than 4 fucking lines.

The animated Transformers Movie has nothing to do with this discussion as it was made contemporaneously with the original show. It is not confusing at all that adults in the late 80s would not be interested or nostalgic about toys they bought for their children from a TV show they never watched. Bringing up that movie at all makes you seem completely disconnected from what we're trying to discuss.
 

OU Ariakas

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A movie that focuses strictly on the robots is not going to appeal to broad audiences and is not going to do well in the box office. This is exactly why Bay structured the movies the way that he did. The robots, while cool, are not relatable and a story about them alone isn't going to interest general audiences - only the geeks. Sure you'll be able to attract some of the surviving Transformers diehards from the 80s but that's about it and you're nowhere close to making back the hundreds of millions you spent on CGI. You can get away with non-human leads if they are anthropomorphic (Avatar) but it doesn't work with robots that don't have romances and don't have sex (this is all the female audiences are interested in). Bay did the smart thing in having the leads be audience surrogates (Shia and Fox) and raked in the cash.

Also, there was a Transformers movie that focused on the robots and it bombed:

Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? If you are so hell bent on changing the thing to make it more appealing to all audiences then why not just make a new IP that fits the audience you want to capture? Also, don't complain when the fans of the thing you changed are unhappy with it and don't support it. Here is a HOT TAKE from 2007 when the original came out.

1712149369361.png
 

En Sabah Nur

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This is exactly as stupid as saying Godzilla movies can't do well if they focus on giant fighting monsters.

The literal comment that started this whole sidetrack was talking specifically about how the best parts of this new movie were the over the top monster fights and the worst parts were the humans.

And all this is besides the fact that you just implied that Transformers aren't anthropomorphicized when they are exactly machines that have a humanized form. You don't need sex or a romance to sell a tragic story of humanized creatures cast out of their home world and looking to fit in somewhere else. That is also why you have a brainless Megan Fox type inside the cast to be saved by the robots, you just don't give her more than 4 fucking lines.

The animated Transformers Movie has nothing to do with this discussion as it was made contemporaneously with the original show. It is not confusing at all that adults in the late 80s would not be interested or nostalgic about toys they bought for their children from a TV show they never watched. Bringing up that movie at all makes you seem completely disconnected from what we're trying to discuss.
Obviously the over the top action scenes are going to be the stand out parts of the movie... the point is that an entire movie of fights between unrelatable creatures that the audience doesn't feel connected to is not going to be enjoyable for most people. There's a concept in screenwriting called pacing that deals with this.

This is getting deep into the weeds of movie marketing demographics and trends, but in the mid-2000s when these movies were being developed close to 50% of movie going audience was age 25 and under. This is why crap like Twilight was able to catch fire at the box office. This percentage has shifted considerably because millennials are perpetual children, but that's besides the point here. The point is if you're Paramount and want to make a movie that's going to do gangbusters at the box office in 2007, you need to appeal to the 25 and under demographic, and if you want to sell your movie to this demographic, you do need sex and romance. Using sex to sell a product to teenagers is a concept as tried and true as can possibly be.
 
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En Sabah Nur

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Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? If you are so hell bent on changing the thing to make it more appealing to all audiences then why not just make a new IP that fits the audience you want to capture? Also, don't complain when the fans of the thing you changed are unhappy with it and don't support it. Here is a HOT TAKE from 2007 when the original came out.

View attachment 522743
Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? To make money. Women are~45% of moviegoers in the US and to secure a box office return on an enormously expensive tentpole movie like these, you need them in your audience. You can easily argue that pandering to women makes them far worse movies (you can argue this for almost anything and probably never be wrong...) but you really can't argue that it isn't good business sense for a blockbuster movie franchise.
 
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OU Ariakas

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Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? To make money. Women are~45% of moviegoers in the US and to secure a box office return on an enormously expensive tentpole movie like these, you need them in your audience. You can easily argue that pandering to women makes them far worse movies (you can argue this for almost anything) but you really can't argue that it isn't good business sense for a blockbuster movie franchise.

You are absolutely correct but missing the point. Why did Paramount try to take a boys cartoon and make it into a tentpole movie with a huge budget? No one was asking for it and the geeks would have eaten up a much smaller scale movie target to them. Instead they watered down everything, took a short term gain, and have effectively killed the market for the movies since neither the general audience nor the hardcore fans want what they are producing.
 

En Sabah Nur

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You are absolutely correct but missing the point. Why did Paramount try to take a boys cartoon and make it into a tentpole movie with a huge budget? No one was asking for it and the geeks would have eaten up a much smaller scale movie target to them. Instead they watered down everything, took a short term gain, and have effectively killed the market for the movies since neither the general audience nor the hardcore fans want what they are producing.
I think the part of the answer here is still just "to make money"... you make a lot more money with a movie that does $750m box office against a budget of $250, than you do with a movie that does $150m on a $50m box office.

I think there's also a question if the economics would be even possible to make a smaller scale Transformers movie in 2007. On a per second basis, it is a lot more expensive to have the CGI robots on screen than it is to have your actor in front of a green screen. So I'm skeptical that in 2007 film you could have made a Transformers that gives considerable screen time to the robots and have it done at a budget small enough that it wouldn't need to have wide audience appeal. Basically, I think they had to swing for the fences in order for the movie's budget to make sense on paper. There's also the toy marketing aspect to this, where Hasbro is wanting the movie to basically be a giant ad to sell toys to kids.

I do agree the franchise has been poorly handled in the last 10 years from a business perspective. I'm confident though if they were to get Bay to direct another film starring Shia and Fox it would do well in the box office. Reason being that millennials love nostalgia more than just about anything.
 
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rhinohelix

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Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? To make money. Women are~45% of moviegoers in the US and to secure a box office return on an enormously expensive tentpole movie like these, you need them in your audience. You can easily argue that pandering to women makes them far worse movies (you can argue this for almost anything and probably never be wrong...) but you really can't argue that it isn't good business sense for a blockbuster movie franchise.
This is why everything sucks today: Because even when you get past Marxist Ideologues and DEI Activists (Same thing) trying to enforce The Message™ quotas in everything, you have accountants and consultant asshats preaching GOD MONEY (hat tip NIN) AUDIENCE like this. Wonder why we had so many good movies in the 70s/80s and none today? Wonder why we got LOTR in the early 2000s and ROP today? This kind of corporate head count audience pandering art destroying BULLSHIT is why.

If you make a good movie, all kinds of people, men and women, all races, will go see it. You can't pander/quota/DEI ART. Its the death of culture and creativity and why no one goes to the movies any more. It's why Hollywood is dying. It's got (Marxist Corporate Quota) DEI Cancer.
 

LiquidDeath

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I respect the fact that you have moderated your language and actually want to discuss this, so I'll do the same.

Why would someone making a movie about giant space robots try to capture a female audience? To make money. Women are~45% of moviegoers in the US and to secure a box office return on an enormously expensive tentpole movie like these, you need them in your audience. You can easily argue that pandering to women makes them far worse movies (you can argue this for almost anything and probably never be wrong...) but you really can't argue that it isn't good business sense for a blockbuster movie franchise.

I think you are falling into the "Modern Audience" fallacy that hit Star Wars and Marvel hard, and Transformers was one of the pioneers of it.

Women don't give a shit about Transformers and they never will. You can turn it nothing but girl shit and they won't care because they will always associate it with boys toys. This means that catering to any percentage of that audience was always going to be at the expense of your actual audience, nostalgic fans and new little boys. I am someone who will go see movies multiple times in the theaters, and was doubly so back in the 2000s before I got married, and I only saw Transformers once. It was cool, but had the problems everyone described. The only way they were getting female money for this movies is from men dragging their women to see it or by casting a Tom Cruise/Arnold/Sly type that brought in people for the name. Shit, that is why they hired Markey Mark at all even though he sucked balls. Transformers was never going to carry any substantial female audience and by catering any part of it to females, they actively hurt their only female participation by potentially alienating men that would have brought women to it.

This has been borne out in recent times by Barbie, the Marvels, Star Wars, and many others.

I think the part of the answer here is still just "to make money"... you make a lot more money with a movie that does $750m box office against a budget of $250, than you do with a movie that does $150m on a $50m box office.

I think there's also a question if the economics would be even possible to make a smaller scale Transformers movie in 2007. On a per second basis, it is a lot more expensive to have the CGI robots on screen than it is to have your actor in front of a green screen. So I'm skeptical that in 2007 film you could have made a Transformers that gives considerable screen time to the robots and have it done at a budget small enough that it wouldn't need to have wide audience appeal. Basically, I think they had to swing for the fences in order for the movie's budget to make sense on paper. There's also the toy marketing aspect to this, where Hasbro is wanting the movie to basically be a giant ad to sell toys to kids.

I do agree the franchise has been poorly handled in the last 10 years from a business perspective. I'm confident though if they were to get Bay to direct another film starring Shia and Fox it would do well in the box office. Reason being that millennials love nostalgia more than just about anything.

Sure, but these movies aren't making as much money as you think. Besides the fact that the studios only receive half of the domestic box office, they always under sell the budget, never include the marketing, and won't disclose the actual percentage return from foreign markets. We know for a fact that pulling money out of China amounts to 1/4 of the projected box office at best. There is no foreign market on the planet that returns 50% like the domestic market which is why domestic take is always the most important. It is always better business sense in movies to play to the domestic US market then to make up your profit on foreign releases. Just because all the studios decided to push the lie that China was a huge money-maker doesn't mean it is the truth, regardless of how hard they continue to try to tap it. It is the second half of the "Modern Audience" fallacy.
 
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En Sabah Nur

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This is why everything sucks today: Because even when you get past Marxist Ideologues and DEI Activists (Same thing) trying to enforce The Message™ quotas in everything, you have accountants and consultant asshats preaching GOD MONEY (hat tip NIN) AUDIENCE like this. Wonder why we had so many good movies in the 70s/80s and none today? Wonder why we got LOTR in the early 2000s and ROP today? This kind of corporate head count audience pandering art destroying BULLSHIT is why.

If you make a good movie, all kinds of people, men and women, all races, will go see it. You can't pander/quota/DEI ART. Its the death of culture and creativity and why no one goes to the movies any more. It's why Hollywood is dying. It's got (Marxist Corporate Quota) DEI Cancer.
Finance still existed in the 70s and 80s. The main change in the business has been the increasing scale of productions. Top Gun (1986) had a budget of $15 million, adjusted for inflation that's less than $50 million. ET had a budget of $11 million. Back to the Future $19 million. Star Wars $11 million. Today, $100 million budget is pretty much table stakes to produce an action film with tentpole films doing multiples of that. With more money at stake, it follows that there's a tighter risk management function as well. This is a big part of why we have so many remakes and sequels now - previous box office success is the strongest predictor of future box office success. The Lord of the Rings films that you rightfully laud were not exempt from this sort of Hollywood optimization function. Changes were made to the source material to make the films more marketable to general audiences, such as expanding the role of Arwen and deleting the scourging of the Shire. Even though most reasonable people would agree these changes make sense in the context of making a Hollywood film, there are Tolkien purists (including his children) who reject Jackson's interpretation of the story, just as there are OG Transformers fans who curse the legacy of Michael Bay.

"If you make a good movie, all kinds of people will go see it" is a nice platitude, but it's not reality. It's generally true that "good" (as in generally well received) movies will do better business than ones that aren't, but it's very straightforward to predict the demographics of who will go see your movie based on the content of the film and the cast. For example, we know that Wes Anderson crowds are going to be nearly all white while the audience for the next Madea movie will be nearly all black. We know that a romcom audience will be 55%+ female while action movies will be 60%+ male. UCLA puts out an industry report every year that has some interesting data on audience demographics:


Something I'll point out that isn't directly related to the conversation be relates to audience demographics in general is that whites are underrepresented in movie audiences and minorities are overrepresented. Whites make up ~60% of the US population, but account for only ~45% of movie ticket sales. Table 4 in the above report gives you a glimpse of that. This isn't a new phenomenon coming out of the DEI push either - it's something that's been historically observed. So while Hollywood rightfully gets a lot shit for pushing DEI bullshit on productions and audiences, it's not as crazy or self-destructive as you may think when you understand who is actually paying to see their product.
 

Vuuxo

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Anyway, anyone else think Pinkzilla was just a side character in this? Seemed more like the son of Kong movie.
 

rhinohelix

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Finance still existed in the 70s and 80s. The main change in the business has been the increasing scale of productions. Top Gun (1986) had a budget of $15 million, adjusted for inflation that's less than $50 million. ET had a budget of $11 million. Back to the Future $19 million. Star Wars $11 million. Today, $100 million budget is pretty much table stakes to produce an action film with tentpole films doing multiples of that. With more money at stake, it follows that there's a tighter risk management function as well. This is a big part of why we have so many remakes and sequels now - previous box office success is the strongest predictor of future box office success. The Lord of the Rings films that you rightfully laud were not exempt from this sort of Hollywood optimization function. Changes were made to the source material to make the films more marketable to general audiences, such as expanding the role of Arwen and deleting the scourging of the Shire. Even though most reasonable people would agree these changes make sense in the context of making a Hollywood film, there are Tolkien purists (including his children) who reject Jackson's interpretation of the story, just as there are OG Transformers fans who curse the legacy of Michael Bay.

"If you make a good movie, all kinds of people will go see it" is a nice platitude, but it's not reality. It's generally true that "good" (as in generally well received) movies will do better business than ones that aren't, but it's very straightforward to predict the demographics of who will go see your movie based on the content of the film and the cast. For example, we know that Wes Anderson crowds are going to be nearly all white while the audience for the next Madea movie will be nearly all black. We know that a romcom audience will be 55%+ female while action movies will be 60%+ male. UCLA puts out an industry report every year that has some interesting data on audience demographics:


Something I'll point out that isn't directly related to the conversation be relates to audience demographics in general is that whites are underrepresented in movie audiences and minorities are overrepresented. Whites make up ~60% of the US population, but account for only ~45% of movie ticket sales. Table 4 in the above report gives you a glimpse of that. This isn't a new phenomenon coming out of the DEI push either - it's something that's been historically observed. So while Hollywood rightfully gets a lot shit for pushing DEI bullshit on productions and audiences, it's not as crazy or self-destructive as you may think when you understand who is actually paying to see their product.
Holy shit your stint here is going to be short. Do you think no one here has ever heard of risk management or demographics or statistics? Do you think that any of those things make a movie good? Make a movie watchable? Make anyone feel anything? Make anything ART? Does making a Transformer speak with an urban accent mean that POC will enjoy it more? How did that Transformer movie with POC humans do?


You're looking in the wrong end of the telescope, beancounter. Rub that Panderstone harder.

How many quandrants did "American Society of Magical Negroes" fill? How many theaters?

That's what your version of movie making gets you.

That smell is Hollywood burning.
 

En Sabah Nur

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Holy shit your stint here is going to be short. Do you think no one here has ever heard of risk management or demographics or statistics? Do you think that any of those things make a movie good? Make a movie watchable? Make anyone feel anything? Make anything ART? Does making a Transformer speak with an urban accent mean that POC will enjoy it more? How did that Transformer movie with POC humans do?


You're looking in the wrong end of the telescope, beancounter. Rub that Panderstone harder.

How many quandrants did "American Society of Magical Negroes" fill? How many theaters?

That's what your version of movie making gets you.

That smell is Hollywood burning.
I'm not sure why you're upset. Did I give you the impression I'm an advocate for DEI? Nothing could be further from the truth, I dislike American Inventors, faggots and Jews as much as anybody you'll ever meet. I'm just sharing with you some insight as to why DEI is so pervasive in Hollywood - because whites don't go to the theater. Hollywood is a business first and foremost, the artistry will always be second to that. You can't make movies without people pouring huge amounts of money into the production and expecting a return. That's capitalism at work, too bad comrade. You seem very passionate about the artistry side of things though so I fully encourage you to independently produce your authentic vision of Transformers where the entire 3 hour movie takes place on Cybertron with photorealistic CGI and the robots speak only in binary. I will be first in line to see it at my local arthouse theater.
 

Phazael

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Anyway, anyone else think Pinkzilla was just a side character in this? Seemed more like the son of Kong movie.
He had his whole leveling up side quest montage as the B story. Zilla really only works for fights (the Coliseum bed was a nice joke though) and has always worked best as a force of nature the protagonists have to work around somehow (see Minus 1), while kong has actual emotional reactions so you can do more with him from a story standpoint. I honestly do not mind as the King Kong movies from Legendary have been their stronger movies.

Liked is slightly less than the last one, despite the corniness being upped a bit. Black podcaster as POIV character was a good choice for the movie, too.
 
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OU Ariakas

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He had his whole leveling up side quest montage as the B story. Zilla really only works for fights (the Coliseum bed was a nice joke though) and has always worked best as a force of nature the protagonists have to work around somehow (see Minus 1), while kong has actual emotional reactions so you can do more with him from a story standpoint. I honestly do not mind as the King Kong movies from Legendary have been their stronger movies.

Liked is slightly less than the last one, despite the corniness being upped a bit. Black podcaster as POIV character was a good choice for the movie, too.

My favorite scene was when Kong meets Scar King and they have the "conversation" where Scar King makes fun of his fake tooth. It was great.
 
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spronk

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it was kinda lame how they'd just cut away every godzilla fight and you'd just see the results. diddy kong was pretty funny though, especially when G picked him up as used him as a weapon.

i also don't understand at all the pyramids gravity shit, like all that seemed to do was help the villain reach the portal that was too far away otherwise. nested hollow earths was also hilarious, i think the monarch tv show goes to a different place so the lore is janky AF
 

Void

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I'm just sharing with you some insight as to why DEI is so pervasive in Hollywood - because whites don't go to the theater.
They sure did before DEI became so pervasive. Or are we to believe it was entirely non-whites that powered the MCU to such huge numbers by the end? (Obviously I'm referring to Endgame, not the subsequent garbage.) Or years before that movies like Avatar, or Titanic. Were those notably non-white viewed movies?

We don't go to the theater anymore because they are making shit specifically not for us, and making it a focus of their marketing as well. And how well is that working for them? It is clear they don't want us as viewers, so we aren't viewing. If they returned to making movies for us, or at least not specifically NOT for us, I bet you'd see a resurgence in whites going to the theater.

On the subject of this movie, I still haven't seen it but it is pretty clear that spoilers aren't going to ruin it for me, so I watched Lauren Chen's review of it since I could stare dreamily at her all day. It seems to be pretty much what you guys are saying, great monster action, don't ask worry about the plot. Spoilers, in case you care.

"But Lauren, what about...."

"I just want to stop you right there. Don't ask questions."

 

Fadaar

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They sure did before DEI became so pervasive. Or are we to believe it was entirely non-whites that powered the MCU to such huge numbers by the end? (Obviously I'm referring to Endgame, not the subsequent garbage.) Or years before that movies like Avatar, or Titanic. Were those notably non-white viewed movies?

We don't go to the theater anymore because they are making shit specifically not for us, and making it a focus of their marketing as well. And how well is that working for them? It is clear they don't want us as viewers, so we aren't viewing. If they returned to making movies for us, or at least not specifically NOT for us, I bet you'd see a resurgence in whites going to the theater.

On the subject of this movie, I still haven't seen it but it is pretty clear that spoilers aren't going to ruin it for me, so I watched Lauren Chen's review of it since I could stare dreamily at her all day. It seems to be pretty much what you guys are saying, great monster action, don't ask worry about the plot. Spoilers, in case you care.

"But Lauren, what about...."

"I just want to stop you right there. Don't ask questions."



I'd fart punch her tongue box
 
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En Sabah Nur

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They sure did before DEI became so pervasive. Or are we to believe it was entirely non-whites that powered the MCU to such huge numbers by the end? (Obviously I'm referring to Endgame, not the subsequent garbage.) Or years before that movies like Avatar, or Titanic. Were those notably non-white viewed movies?

We don't go to the theater anymore because they are making shit specifically not for us, and making it a focus of their marketing as well. And how well is that working for them? It is clear they don't want us as viewers, so we aren't viewing. If they returned to making movies for us, or at least not specifically NOT for us, I bet you'd see a resurgence in whites going to the theater.

On the subject of this movie, I still haven't seen it but it is pretty clear that spoilers aren't going to ruin it for me, so I watched Lauren Chen's review of it since I could stare dreamily at her all day. It seems to be pretty much what you guys are saying, great monster action, don't ask worry about the plot. Spoilers, in case you care.

"But Lauren, what about...."

"I just want to stop you right there. Don't ask questions."


You're dead wrong on this. Minorities have always been overrepresented in movie audiences. For whatever reasons they just go to the movies more than whites on a per capita basis. Possibly because whites don't want to sit in a theater with blacks who don't shut the fuck up or bring their crying children but that's besides the point here.

Here are the minority domestic audience shares for top grossing films of 2019, which includes Avengers: Endgame:

1712334398388.png


In other words, whites were responsible for only 46% of Avengers: Endgame's domestic ticket sales despite being ~60% of the overall population.

Avatar was indeed very popular with minorities. I can't find any solid data on the 2008 movie demographics, but Avatar 2 is in the 2022 version of the above chart:

1712334670350.png


Obviously the Titanic box office would be very white, but the country was also 70+% white in 1999.

Of course, America is just going to get less white as time goes on so you can rest assured that nothing will be improving on this front. The American Inventorfication of your movies is here to stay.