Honestly? A smart decision for all parties involved, regardless of whether a sequel is made or not. 1. The studios have noticed that bringing back old franchises for a nostalgia run has been nowhere near as successful as they thought. (Look at the "3 Stooges" film for a very recent example also involving the Farrelly Brothers) They didn't want to invest too many tens of millions in the project, and this was smart. Do you really want to lose money and potentially, fire employees because of a blatant cash grab like "Dumb and Dumber 2"? Now, the can either scrap their plans, or release a much cheaper version of the film that has an actual chance of breaking even or making a small profit. 2. Jim Carrey is no longer a box office draw, and hasn't been for some time now. Him starring in a "Dumb and Dumber" sequel that flops would finally shatter this illusion. 3. Moviegoers will be saved another shitty film populating the local cinema. Or, at the very least, even fewer of them will go see said shit if it doesn't star Jim Carrey.
F-O-R-M-U-L-A! That's what happens when a movie barely gets a major release and then makes a killing (see: The Hangover). Really, I don't know why Taken was the enormous hit it was, aside from a trailer that basically sold the entire movie. It was entertaining, and never stopped moving, and was exciting. Also ultra-contrived. But does anybody else here thinks this reeks of cash-grab predictability (see: The Hangover part II)?
Me neither. I remember going to see it in theaters with a friend who thought it was the worst film he had ever seen. I wouldn't quite go that far, but even being generous, it was a mediocre mess. The first 30 minutes are painfully boring and irrelevant. (Pro tip- No one came to the see the film for the family drama) The characters, dialogue, and scenes are as generic and dull as dishwater. And the shaky cam nonsense ruins any fun from the fight scenes. It's weird, because even an action junkie like myself had a hard time deriving much enjoyment from it. Liam Neeson has a nice performance, and there is a high quantity of action scenes after the tortuous first half hour (but they're of low quality), and that's about it. And yet other people liked it, despite the action genre being essentially dead in Hollywood? I don't get it. Of course, although with action films, there is a long history of this stretching back to the 70s. It's not the newer phenomena that identical comedy films retaining the original cast and crew is.
Taken was just enough decent action and non-total-fucking-Hollywood-cheese to stand out above the rest of the bullshit cheese that comes out these days. Liam Neeson is the only reason it wasn't another throw away film. Take say the Transporter sequels, which also had Luc Benson's hands on them. Same completely contrived plot/characters minus the same level of powerful lead. I thought they suuuuucked. The Hangover 2 was about the most flagrant cash grab Ive seen in a long time. Same plot and almost joke for joke copy of the first. Still swam in a sea of cash. As for your hatred for Dumb in Dumber To. I at least respect the players involved for at least trying to get the same team back. Though maybe not the most in need of a sequel film out there one if done right with the same crew could be great. I always think of GhostBusters 2 in situations like this. A ton of people hate on it and there was some production issues with the crew. It had a solidly fresh idea for the franchise and had solid laughs. Honestly one of the better sequels.
While Transporter 3 was admittedly shitty (worse than Taken, actually), the first Transporter was a very enjoyable flick, and Transporter 2 is one of my favorite modern action movies. Transporter 2 had none of the flaws of Taken, and was a brilliant example of how to do an action movie right. I wish more movies modeled themselves after this; 1. There was no shaky cam. The audience got to see all the amazing stunts and fights in all their glory. 2. No bullshit exposition or time wasted on a lousy family drama. Of the 85 minutes of runtime in Transporter 2, I would estimate about 80 of those were devoted to pure action. There was no half hour of nauseating scenes about a divorced dad, his rotten daughter and insensitive ex-wife, and her useless pussy of a new husband. 3. There was humor. The scene in the hospital was hysterically funny, and whole way through, there was a real great tongue-in-cheek style to Transporter 2. Everything was played with a wink and a nod. 4. Transporter 2 featured the most ridiculously cool, death-defying stunts I have ever seen. It was one incredible moment after another. The fights were also pretty good. More action films should focus on, you know...the action.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j1p0_R8ZLB0[/youtube] This actually looks pretty good.
One of the biggest flaws I saw with Taken was that I didn't really care about the second half of the movie(let alone the first 30 minutes, bleh). What I mean by saying this is that Neeson's character had already killed the guys who took his daughter. Granted, he didn't have her back yet, but I felt much less invested in seeing him get revenge on a rich guy who bought her.
The most important element for a revenge movie to get viewer satisfaction is you have to make sure the hero gets to kill the guy that committed the crime hands-on. The "rich fat guy in charge" is a distant consolation prize. That was the best part of Taken. He exacted a ferocious revenge on that guy who looks like every soccer player on earth.
I haven't seen Taken, but from what I understand the US theatrical release is the most watered down version of that film. You can probably catch the cut released here (in Aus) as an un-rated dvd for you guys. I'd heard it said back on the old message board that the more violent version takes it to a place that makes all the cheesiness make sense. Adding violence doesn't automatically make for a better film, but if the neutered version left a bland taste in your mouth, perhaps it's the pepper that was missing. Damn it's tough to dig up anything on it, until I found this. Andrew Will doesn't have a lot to his name, at least in terms of writing/directing, but that's no reason to hold it against him. There was a clumsiness to the trailer, but since it's only for fundraising, I'm sure if made it will be a tad slicker. Who knows what the story is, but it looks like it plays like the Terminator in reverse (humans hunting a robot). I'd be down if there's some thought put into it and some substance to match any style brought to it. And I think Neal McDonough is a pretty cool guy (he acts in movies and doesn't afraid of anything).
I thought Taken was a pretty good movie. Borderline great. I saw the Australian version that Mav mentioned, and I suspect the US neutered release would lose a great deal; cutting the grit and the violence would have taken a lot away from the tone. More than anything though, it illustrates the make or break requirement of a truly compelling protagonist. Neeson's performance is what made the movie. Every single item of the movie apart from Neeson was at best, ok. Neeson's performance is why the movie now has a fan base so vocal that it's going to become a formula that might be awful enough to drown out Neeson's talent. What they should have taken away from it is that Neeson can be compelling as a dark action protagonist. If they'd taken inspiration from movies like Taken, Ronin, The Siege and Spy Games and gone off to really write the kind of story you can make a franchise out of for Neeson - it would have been a much smoother sell.
Four out of his last five movies have done over $150million at the box office. The only exception being I love you Phillip Morris which had almost zero release.
Luc Besson has directed a very broad range of films, but as far as producing goes, has basically riffed on his La Femme Nikita theme for decades now. Maybe the connections are tenuous, but there does feel like a connecting theme between say Transporter, Taken, Kiss of the Dragon, Colombiana, etc. It seems he directs very few of these action movies, but I think his presence is felt through all of them (producers can be very significant creative forces), and maybe it's his way of making commercially safe bets within the industry, along with his more slightly varied and risky choices as a director (I hear that The Lady is a nice, if not bland biopic). That being said, some stuff he has produced is better than anything he's done (if you're more into indie/arthouse).
This is unusual for me to say, but additional violence in "Taken" would not change my perception of it. All the flaws of the picture (idiotic family melodrama for the first 30 minutes, awful shaky cam fight scenes) were too overpoweringly annoying. This is not how you determine whether someone is a box office draw or not. You don't just look at their box office revenue. You also look at the cost of the films. John Carter and The Green Lantern both made well over $150 million too (over $200 million, even), but are both all-time bombs that led to mass lay-offs. Also, Carrey's "last five movies" go back to 2008. Let's just look at his last three, okay? Keep in mind that about 55% of box office revenue overall goes back to the movie and the rest to the theater, and that in addition to the listed production costs, there is P&A (press and advertisement) costs. So we have, from BoxOfficeMojo; Christmas Carol (2009), $200m production budget, $138m domestic gross, $325m worldwide gross Making a reasonable estimate for P&A ($100 million), and even considering the production budget might be slightly inflated, this movie already lost tens of millions of dollars on its theatrical run. It will gain some of it back through ancillary rights, but this was a significant flop. I Love You, Phillip Morris (2010), $13m production budget, $2m domestic gross, $20m worldwide gross This had a limited distribution because like most indies, it wanted to build up its audience slowly, building up word-of-mouth, and pulling the movie if people weren't interested. The fact that Jim Carrey couldn't carry an indie past $2 million domestically, and that's with a co-star of Ewan McGregor, and significant attention (because it was gay-themed) is pretty clear evidence he is no longer a significant box office draw. Anyways, considering they probably spent little on P&A, this was a minor flop. Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), $55m production budget, $68m domestic gross, $187m worldwide gross With over 3 times its production budget in revenue, this was unquestionably a significant hit. So in summary, in the last 3 years, Carrey has had two flops, one of them significant, versus one hit picture. In all cases, the films had very poor domestic numbers but good international numbers. I think it's fair to conclude he is not a major box office attraction anymore. To be fair, very, very few actors are anymore. But he is not one of them.
Slightly inflated is an understatement. Budgets on the whole are grossly overstated. Let's split it down the middle rent was 50%. That is $162mn in box office alone. While I would take any size bet the true financials have the movie breaking even at this point let's take an extreme and say $200million was the true figure leaving the movie in the red to the tune of $38million. Studio cuts of DVD sales are then 40-60%, again let's split it down the middle and say 50%. Global DVD sales figures were $78million, studio taking $39million and now making the movie profitable to $1million. I won't bother trying to guess what has already been banked from netflix, payper view tv, airline distribution etc. Disney now has a movie that has paid for itself and now owns a family film that is also Christmas themed for it to make a lifetime of perpetuity from merchandising, ongoing dvd sales and tv distribution sales. Backend sales for which Studios receive a greater cut than earlier revenue streams. How is this a significant flop? Judging a movie purely on Box Office minus published production budget is absurd and ignores the economics of movie making. The only argument I can assume you are making is taking 'Box office draw' literal and not including other revenue streams, it would then be asinine to take production budgets into consideration because Studios are focused on all revenue streams and not just one when deciding budgets. Your only argument here would be taking compartive box office figures for 2009, which has A Christmas Carol as the 18th highest grossing movie word wide for that year.
You have to count the P&A costs, though. I can agree that the true production budget was probably $120-$170 million, but with the P&A? Over $250 million, easily. So we're talking $88 million or more in the red. I'm well aware of what ancillary rights (the term you could have replaced everything above with) are, dude. But when we're talking about how a movie did, saying that it might break even 10 years from now (and by my calculations, it won't even manage this) doesn't mean the movie wasn't a significant flop if it lost anywhere from about $40 million to $80+ million in its theatrical run. Beyond this, your analysis above is flawed and oversimplified. As with the theatrical run, there are advertising and production costs for the DVDs. Revenue does not equal profit, even in the DVD market.
Who wants to see Tom Hardy as a moonshiner with Guy Pierce as the lawman antagonist? Yeah, that Transformers guy is in it, but this movie wasn't going to win any awards anyway. Lawless.
I don't know if any of you have heard of this one, but it just came out and MANY are calling it the best movie of the year. It already (of course) has an American remake in pre-production.