2019 Box Office Busts

[Theleviathan]

Yes Fox made mistakes expanding and building a universe because really they didn't know how til it was too late and 1 films reaction scared them. But as a whole im sure Fox was happy to have the profits the X-Men did for years to keep doing films..

I'm sure, overall, they're happy with what the franchise netted them. I'm sure they'd also trade it in a heartbeat for what Marvel and Disney built.

They had the first shot at capturing the public's imagination and didn't get it done. Phoenix is the culmination of that bungled opportunity. (Which started snowballing at the end)

[Totoro Man]

I'm starting to wonder if "Dark Phoenix" isn't just an over-rated mess of a story. if it was really THAT good why can't anybody make an even passable movie out of it?

I'll admit that I've never been a huge X-Men fan... and I thought Apocalypse, as a character, was just sorta boring. he's too powerful, his motive seems too banal. and the idea of only allowing the strong to survive was .... too similar to the plots from the earlier films. the larger problem is that they always use the SAME genocidal plot. their idea of 'variety' is to merely jump back and forth between two sides:
one evil mutant wants to turn all humans into mutants - thereby wiping out 'humanity'. one evil human wants to wipe out the mutants. one evil mutant wants to wipe out...

who knows... maybe "Dark Phoenix" really is a great story... but, perhaps, only for the medium it was originally created for. "Watchmen" and "Akira" are good examples where brilliant comic books are produced into merely adequate films. "Nausicaa" is a classic comics story... and if anybody other than the genius film director who actually wrote it had tried to adapt it into film we would have probably gotten a hot mess of a film there too.

[Flashback]

I'm starting to wonder if "Dark Phoenix" isn't just an over-rated mess of a story. if it was really THAT good why can't anybody make an even passable movie out of it?

I'll admit that I've never been a huge X-Men fan... and I thought Apocalypse, as a character, was just sorta boring. he's too powerful, his motive seems too banal. and the idea of only allowing the strong to survive was .... too similar to the plots from the earlier films. the larger problem is that they always use the SAME genocidal plot. their idea of 'variety' is to merely jump back and forth between two sides:
one evil mutant wants to turn all humans into mutants - thereby wiping out 'humanity'. one evil human wants to wipe out the mutants. one evil mutant wants to wipe out...

who knows... maybe "Dark Phoenix" really is a great story... but, perhaps, only for the medium it was originally created for. "Watchmen" and "Akira" are good examples where brilliant comic books are produced into merely adequate films. "Nausicaa" is a classic comics story... and if anybody other than the genius film director who actually wrote it had tried to adapt it into film we would have probably gotten a hot mess of a film there too.

I just don't know how you could have put "Watchmen" the movie and "Akira" the animation into the same category. *faints in horror

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I'm starting to wonder if "Dark Phoenix" isn't just an over-rated mess of a story. if it was really THAT good why can't anybody make an even passable movie out of it?

I'll admit that I've never been a huge X-Men fan... and I thought Apocalypse, as a character, was just sorta boring. he's too powerful, his motive seems too banal. and the idea of only allowing the strong to survive was .... too similar to the plots from the earlier films. the larger problem is that they always use the SAME genocidal plot. their idea of 'variety' is to merely jump back and forth between two sides:
one evil mutant wants to turn all humans into mutants - thereby wiping out 'humanity'. one evil human wants to wipe out the mutants. one evil mutant wants to wipe out...

who knows... maybe "Dark Phoenix" really is a great story... but, perhaps, only for the medium it was originally created for. "Watchmen" and "Akira" are good examples where brilliant comic books are produced into merely adequate films. "Nausicaa" is a classic comics story... and if anybody other than the genius film director who actually wrote it had tried to adapt it into film we would have probably gotten a hot mess of a film there too.

I'm of the opinion that comics storylines should NOT be adapted to film. A story that took a year or so to tell can't be condensed into a 2-hour movie and have the same impact. It'll just feel like a highlight reel of a better story.

It was true with the Watchmen movie, and it was also true of Batman v Superman which tried to adapt elements of Death of Superman and Dark Knight Returns while setting up future DCEU movies all told in a Watchmen-like style. BvS, which I did like in spite of everything, should have been the 10th movie in the DCEU series, not the 2nd, so that plot elements could have been seeded over years and BvS would have had more of an impact.

I think that's the true success of the MCU. They took the time to build the Thanos confrontation as a subplot over a decade before Infinity War. That's why Dark Phoenix was successful in the comics. First, and perhaps most importantly, nothing of that nature had ever been done before, so it was thrilling and uncharted territory. Second, the story took months to tell, and for those of us, like me, who were reading comics at the time and had to wait 30 days for the next installment, it only increased the anticipation and the enjoyment factor when the next chapter came in.

It's very different reading DP, Great Darkness Saga, Judas Contract, Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Sandman, or any great comic when you read it piecemeal as opposed to reading it as a trade decades after the fact. A lot of the love fans have for those stories and others is reading it "in the moment" as it unfolds and being swept away by it.

Dark Phoenix should have been seeded with the 2nd X-film after the First Class reboot. That's when Jean should have become Phoenix. The 3rd movie should have been the M'Kraan Crystal story introducing the Shi'Ar where Phoenix really shows her full power to save the Universe. The 4th, the Hellfire Club with the Dark Phoenix cliffhanger ending. The 5th, Jean as Dark Phoenix extinguishing the star and killing the alien planet, but ending with Jean back on Earth reasserting control. The 6th, the ending where she faces her fate against Lilandra and the Shi'Ar (but not the Imperial Guard Legion knockoffs) and sacrifices herself to prevent Dark Phoenix from taking control again.

I think that longform comics stories would work better as serialized TV shows so that the plot twists and surprises can be built up properly over the course of episodes. It just feels too cramped and rushed to introduce something, have surprising plot twists, and resolve everything in a single 2-hour movie. Of course, the budget isn't there for TV to bring everything to life the way we saw it on the page, unfortunately, but at least the story would develop properly.

It's a compromise either way, I guess. I'm curious as to how successful the CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths story will be this fall in terms of serving the plot within television budgetary constraints.

[sunofdarkchild]

Yeah. Getting a proper buildup is essential to telling this sort of story. Imagine if Infinity War was released right after the first Avengers with nothing in between. The movie would not have been anywhere near as successful or beloved because the groundwork would not have been laid.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I'm sure, overall, they're happy with what the franchise netted them. I'm sure they'd also trade it in a heartbeat for what Marvel and Disney built.

They had the first shot at capturing the public's imagination and didn't get it done. Phoenix is the culmination of that bungled opportunity. (Which started snowballing at the end)

I'm sure every studio would like to have the success Disney had with Marvel franchise formula. It takes years of building to get there.

At the tine the Marvel franchise plan began Fox and others didn't know what the studio was doing. The old way was to do a trilogy of films n move on to a reboot a few years later. Because there was no big storyline team up deal.

It wasn't til a few years later Fox n others tried replicating this. They tried to build a film universe and one failure was FF and by the end Disney owned them.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

And judging by 19 years and so many X-Men films we saw....they did capture the publics imagination for a good while. One bomb at the end does not negate that

[The Ozman]

I'm of the opinion that comics storylines should NOT be adapted to film. A story that took a year or so to tell can't be condensed into a 2-hour movie and have the same impact. It'll just feel like a highlight reel of a better story.

That's kind of an odd way of thinking about it. It only took that long because of monthly comic release schedules. If you had all the issues in your hand at the same time, how long would it take to read the whole lot? A couple of hours or less, depending on how fast you read?

[CliffHanger2]

I'm starting to wonder if "Dark Phoenix" isn't just an over-rated mess of a story. if it was really THAT good why can't anybody make an even passable movie out of it?

.

Because ppl aren't actually telling the Dark Phoenix story in the movies. Just taking certain elements and plot points and making their own stories-which happen to be a lot worse than the original.

[Theleviathan]

And judging by 19 years and so many X-Men films we saw....they did capture the publics imagination for a good while. One bomb at the end does not negate that

Well...it's been two bombs. And First Class wasn't well received either. If they did have the public's imagination, it was a long time ago.

[Theleviathan]

I'm starting to wonder if "Dark Phoenix" isn't just an over-rated mess of a story. if it was really THAT good why can't anybody make an even passable movie out of it? .

Well....for starters it'd help if the same guy that failed the first time wasn't given a second shot.

Phoenix shouldn't happen without a lot of build. These movies never did that well. Everything was "cameo of the week!" style, right to the bitter end.

[The Ozman]

And First Class wasn't well received either.

86% on RT seems kinda well received.

[Theleviathan]

86% on RT seems kinda well received.

Sorry, meant in terms of box office. Domestically it was the third worst of all the X-movies.

[The Ozman]

Sorry, meant in terms of box office. Domestically it was the third worst of all the X-movies.

That's fair enough. I guess people were down on X-Men films as a result of The Last Stand though, which probably put a lot of people off. It did well on home media though from what I can tell, and it was obviously successful enough for them to push ahead with another instalment. I think it did a decent job of setting the groundwork for DOFP to be a success.

[Theleviathan]

That's fair enough. I guess people were down on X-Men films as a result of The Last Stand though, which probably put a lot of people off. It did well on home media though from what I can tell, and it was obviously successful enough for them to push ahead with another instalment. I think it did a decent job of setting the groundwork for DOFP to be a success.

I think what set DoFP up for success was bringing back many of the original actors. In terms of story, First Class did so little to set up the movie they killed off virtually everyone.

But your point is in line with mine - after Last Stand people stopped trusting this franchise with their money. They were tepidly interested, but confidence waned.