Movies: New Mutants (April 2020)

[JenniferH]

I loved it. I was invested the entire time. Definitely not my favourite X-Men movie (Days of Future Past was ridiculously good), but this probably a close second.

Do not understand the bad reviews whatsoever.

I generally do not go for conspiracy theories at all, but I genuinely believe that Disney suggested to critics that they give the film bad reviews or lean in that direction because this film was good or at least good-ish. Certainly not worthy of the lambasting the critics gave it AT ALL. And then to add insult to injury, there was the changing of the narrative about the box office. Initial projections had it at $5million for opening weekend... and THEN it did so well on opening night, so all of a sudden, they upped the projections to $8-10 million dollars. And what happened? A ton of crazy bad reviews (that really didn't make sense--seriously, a lot of the reviews were more on the lines of 'the film is OK, it's decent, just not ground-breaking' but the headlines/scores made it seem worse and so the Rotten Tomatoes score listed the review as rotten even though the review was more on the 'the film was OK/decent) flooded the internet so instead of bringing in that amount, the film made $7 million.

So the majority of headlines called the film a flop, below projections. Again, yeah, changing the narrative. Initial projections? $5 million. It actually surpassed projections. In the middle of a pandemic. It did better than any other film had thus far. It did so despite the skewed reporting of the reviews. But that didn't fit the 'failure' theme.

Yeah, Disney wants to bury this film and get the "Fox" out of their Marvel universe ASAP!

 

[Jussi]

I generally do not go for conspiracy theories at all, but I genuinely believe that Disney suggested to critics that they give the film bad reviews or lean in that direction because this film was good or at least good-ish. Certainly not worthy of the lambasting the critics gave it AT ALL. And then to add insult to injury, there was the changing of the narrative about the box office. Initial projections had it at $5million for opening weekend... and THEN it did so well on opening night, so all of a sudden, they upped the projections to $8-10 million dollars. And what happened? A ton of crazy bad reviews (that really didn't make sense--seriously, a lot of the reviews were more on the lines of 'the film is OK, it's decent, just not ground-breaking' but the headlines/scores made it seem worse and so the Rotten Tomatoes score listed the review as rotten even though the review was more on the 'the film was OK/decent) flooded the internet so instead of bringing in that amount, the film made $7 million.

So the majority of headlines called the film a flop, below projections. Again, yeah, changing the narrative. Initial projections? $5 million. It actually surpassed projections. In the middle of a pandemic. It did better than any other film had thus far. It did so despite the skewed reporting of the reviews. But that didn't fit the 'failure' theme.

Yeah, Disney wants to bury this film and get the "Fox" out of their Marvel universe ASAP!

Oh ffs...

 

[Deadpool8812]

hahah conspiracy theorists are amazing

 

[JenniferH]

Oh ffs...

Like I said I DON'T do conspiracy theories. I think they're bs most of the time. I really do. But this time, it does make sense. Disney wants this film to bomb badly. The box office reports literally changed the narrative. The morning of the opening night, EVERY SINGLE report said the film was projected to make $5 million that weekend. Then the opening night brought in a bigger haul than expected. So, all reports suddenly changed the projections to $8-10. When the film brought in only $7 million that weekend, the byline read instead of reading that they exceeded that $5 million said it was a flop.

The reviews don't appear to match the overall reaction from people who've seen the film. The film made more money than any other released during the pandemic so far, yet Disney didn't tout that at all. Disney wanted to get rid of this film, but contractually, they *had* to release it in theaters. Disney wants to do X-Men themselves, but contractually *had* to deal with this film. It makes sense that they would want to get rid of it quickly. If it was any sort of success, they couldn't feasibly just bury it. So, yes, Disney likely suggested that critics not be so gung-ho on the film. Here's the thing, on RT critics decide which is Rotten or Fresh. Many of the reviews found the film OK, decent, just not ground-breaking, more or less predictable. A film like that isn't necessarily rotten, it could go either way. It's up to the critic to decide which rating it gets, fresh or rotten. It's in this matter that a push from Disney could have come. Am I wrong? Possibly. Sure. I just know that Disney did want the movie to fail so they could go into their XMen free and clear of any Fox involvement and this movie failing helped with that.

 

[Jussi]

Like I said I DON'T do conspiracy theories. I think they're bs most of the time. I really do. But this time, it does make sense.

No it doesn't. The whole idea that a movie studio could influence critics in an era where things are so transparent, is absurd.

 

[discostu]

I follow box office closely, and projections changing over the course of the weekend isn't new, and especially hard to pin down during the pandemic.

Studios also regularly under estimate the initial forecasts, as having actuals come in be low estimate ends up indicating that the movie underperformed over the course of the weekend, and is usually interpreted as bad word of mouth.

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on the quality, but, looking at the rotten tomato score, it still got a 33%. You're agreeing with 1 in 3 critics that it's a decent movie.

 

[JenniferH]

Fair enough with the projections as I normally don't follow them that closely. Like, I said, am I wrong, possibly, but I still think that Disney encouraged bad reviews. There was no reason for Disney to treat the film as they did, but it's done with for now, I guess. Critics didn't savage the film, I read the reviews, didn't just look at the scores, and the overall feel was, it was OK, coulda been better. I just think it's sad that Fox's X-Men went out like this.

 

[Jussi]

Fair enough with the projections as I normally don't follow them that closely. Like, I said, am I wrong, possibly,

Definitely.

 

[Deadpool8812]

I saw it last night and I think it wasn't very good. It probably would have been much better if it was still able to keep in the references to the Fox X-men universe, but to me it just came off as a bad standalone X-men movie with characters no one knows or cares about (unless you're a diehard comic fan).

I can't see Disney using this movie in any way to connect it with the MCU