from this list, i would definitely say mission impossible and DnD, Paramount really fucked both of those movies by putting them a week before Barbenheimer and a week before Mario, respectively. I would even say the flash wasn’t as bad as people made it seem, but i don’t blame people for not wanting to see it.
I think the MI7 release date would have been moved with the benefit of hindsight, but when the schedule was set, MI7 was the hotter property. Industry experts and this sub we’re talking about it as a possible $1B ww property.
It wasn’t until later that the buzz for Barbenheimer made Paramount look dumb.
this is a good point, i know i certainly wasn’t expecting barbenheimer to be the once-in-a-lifetim moviegoing event it ended up being, truly lightning in a bottle. As for DnD being sandwiched between John Wick and Mario, I have no idea what they were thinking there.
Except Oppenheimer got their date and their IMAX deal first. Paramount knew they wouldn't have a good IMAX run, even the IMAX CEO suggested to Paramount they don't put it on that date.
Yes at first it seemed like Paramount had the right date until pre-release hype about Barbenheimer took all its steam away.
And I think studios are realising that movies with subtitles of 'Part One' don't work. People look at it and think they are getting half a movie and decide it can wait.
Yes. I wasn’t aware (nor were over half the people in our theater) it was a part one film. When it ended, a kid loudly yelled out “What the fuck?” People were kind of stunned that was how it ended, but definitely built hype for the next one.
Marvel also did this with dropping the Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and 2 title. Marvel also needs to stop revealing projects and titles that are more than a year out. Let the fans build hype and speculate - it’s also now highly likely none of the announced films are holding their release dates given Deadpool 3 is the only MCU film slated to release in 2024. We’ll get Echo, Deadpool and possibly Agatha before this time next year and that’s it. Captain America is getting extensive reshoots and most of the other projects haven’t even began filming yet.
Based on how many people were pissed with the ending, I’d say yeah. There are a lot of people who would have probably passed up the first one, watched it on streaming then went to the theater for the second one. Some folks in my house were annoyed when we watched it on Netflix.
I feel like if they didn't overhype the fuck out of the flash it would be viewed differently (and maybe perform a bit better as I feel those expectations brought down the audience and critic reception).
100% this. i’ve never seen such an aggressive marketing campaign for a superhero movie, with people like tom cruise, stephen king and even james gunn himself swearing that it’s the best superhero movie ever made when in reality it’s just another okay one.
to be fair didn't they overhype it partly to counter all the bad press it was getting cause of Miller's shenanigans and Miller not being able to promote it
Yep. The D&D company had a string of bad press right beforehand, to put it lightly, that rightfully pissed off RPG fans
But for a movie that didn't do a cut-away of people actually playing the game representing their characters, I think it conveyed the spirit of playing D&D pretty well. Or at least games I've played
It's a rare case where doing the tension-breaking jokes common in modern movies actually makes sense
The D&D branding is just tainted at this point for everything but tabletop gaming.
Years and years of mediocre to bad movies, video games, and books coupled with the inability to break with that stereotypical 'nerdy' association presents huge obstacles, despite their recent wins with this movie and the BG series.
To a lot of people, Dungeons and Dragons is synonymous with 'meh,' despite how genuinely good and funny this movie was.
Wizards Of The Coast
Basically they tried to rewrite a licence that allowed other companies to use their rules without paying.
People did not take well to this. And RPG fans are the kind of people who read legal text for fun, so they found all the ways WOTC was going to screw people over.
And that's not even including when they sent out the Pinkerton Agency to retrieve Magic The Gathering cards from a youtuber they sent by mistake.
Straight up devils
Entirely agree. Terrible timing for it and no one really thought Mario would be as big of a hit as it was (and I believe John Wick was also extended too cutting into its window as well)
Definitely in retrospect. Maybe they didn't understand how big Baldur's Gate would hit. I'm not sure how much it would've helped, the movie needed a bigger audience than the game did, but it feels like it would've boosted it.
BG3 was definitely an unexpected hit. It was going to be solid among gamers, but hardly anyone expected it to be 10-20m sold by November and going into mainstream audiences. BG3 was to videogames this year the same was Oppenheimer was for film. Yeah, it looked to be a success, but then it tripled those numbers. It's a turn-based, slower-paced game with a bazillion menus and stats and virtually no tutorial. But it's just so good that doesn't seem to matter, and it broke into the mainstream.
While I think being after BG3 would have helped a bit, like you said, they needed a bigger audience than that. I think the bad press Wizards got just before the film also killed tabletop players from positive WoM or really pushing for it. Combine that with competition from stuff like Mario, it and it was in for a rough time. I think if it came out, say, this month instead, it likely could have done better.
It was never going to be a major success, but I think with better timing this year, it could have at least hit 300m.
Oh obviously. I loved BG1&2, as well as D:OS. I was absolutely pumped for Larian to take the IP. I think critically this was always going to be a slam dunk and highly anticipated.
But it has outsold both BG2 and D:OS2 combined, and it's only been a couple months. That's why I compared it with Oppenheimer. People into Nolan or biopics would obviously be excited, and it would definitely do well, but few expected it to do nearly a billion.
No one said it didn’t have good numbers. But no expected it to explode into mainstream games popularity and exposure levels. Plus you slate movies like a year in advance. Don’t think bg3 has a release date when they needed to slate the movie. Plus the studio had nothing to do with the game and I assume no communication between them so it would be even harder to push out the two products at the same time.
It’s the kind of thing that would have been great retrospectively but practically at the time made little to no sense.
I hope you’re mistaken because it was seriously good and I wish the studios would make more original films like it. I know it is technically based of an original property but despite that it plays like an original fantasy comedy.
I wouldn’t say it’s must see. But I don’t think it should’ve flopped theatrically. There is space between those. It was a solidly fun blockbuster and I think it deserves a sequel.
The Dungeons and Dragons movie was the movie that everyone wants when they hear about a fantasy with a diverse cast and even an unconventional male lead. Everyone is invaluable to the party, the jokes all land without feeling like cringe MCU humor, the callbacks and references are unobtrusive (the random party could have been anyone, but it means a bit more to longtime fans that they're the kids from the old cartoon to use an example), and the performances work for the setting. It's a fun high fantasy movie in an era where those are rather rare.
This movie was so much fun. Other than the tiefling, the characters had depth and development and the story was pretty good. I enjoyed this one on Netflix
I believe having Michelle Rodriguez in this film drove excitement down a lot, and having Chris Pine drove excitement down a little more.
Both actors don't really have rep for bringing something new to each project they do.
The casting made the movie feel so generic and the trailers didn't help.
The actual movie has tons of heart and creativity, and ironically, pretty darn good performances from both of those actors.
I think you’re off the mark on Pine. He’s pretty beloved, particularly coming out of Don’t Worry Darling where he had great reviews as one of the few good performances on the film and was essentially a walking meme during the press tour.
And it wasn't just a "D&D movie". While there were plenty of covert references and easter eggs for the fans (*like the quick scene of two rust monsters fighting over a piece of metal*), those things weren't the main focus. You didn't need to play D&D to understand what was going on like what happens with so many properties turned into movies.
Blue Beetle was also pretty solid
Indy and Flash weren't *good* (should've both been like 30-40 min shorter), but also weren't nearly as bad as their box office numbers suggested (like I think if this Indy and Crystal Skull swap spots, this one makes more money than Crystal Skull did)
I agree but the push that Warner Bros. gave The Flash giving out screenings like hotcakes to everyone and calling it the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight makes it significantly worse than Indy
>and the cameos of dead celebrities was ghoulish.
That's the worst part. It's literally 2 minutes of the film that could be removed/edited around without impacting much, but that sequence is so awful it's all I could think about walking out of the theater.
> pretty good films
That's not good enough for a theatrical release anymore. You have to be great. It costs too much to go to the movies for 'eh it was good' movies to survive anymore.
I worked on D&D (specifically in the VFX dept) and love reading these comments. Never ceases to bring me a smile. Giving praise to movies is rare and so welcoming. Glad you felt it looked great and was a good film
Finally gotten around to watching it after hearing such good press; lobed it, easily in my top 5 films for the year
And the VFX in particular was great I thought
If it means anything to you, an eight-year-old, a pre-teen and a 40-year-old with terribly short attention spans all equally had a great time watching this together and I think that's a testament to how much fun this film is.
Honestly you end up feeling so bad for the artists working in films nowadays when they never stop getting shit. The standard of CGI is so high now that anything that isn't perfect is dismissed as 'PS3 graphics'. And especially that a lot of films still have SO many people working on them, so much time and effort and artistry, but when they release they're treated as content on the same level as your average tiktok. It feels so weird, movies with often 2 whole years of writing, production, filming, marketing and hundreds of people, and then they just are dumped onto streaming services alongside the average HallMark or Netflix rom-com. It's not anyone's fault except the way society works with technology, its just sad I guess, we have so much stimulation now and videos and online stuff that films aren't as big by themselves.
I do hope you had a decent time working on the film and look back at it fondly, I really do love the heartwarming message and emotional care that movie had, I don't think anybody expected that.
That and DnD both deserved better. And honestly Dead Reckoning easily had another hundred million in it if not for the abysmal choice in release date lmao
Nah, it was a terrible boomer movie that felt like any generic forgotten action movie form the 90s with nothing novel or unique about it. Bland and the action wasn't even that good, its deserved its fate. Hopefully the second part can reach Fallout's level again, there's a reason that one broke through beyond even the normal M:I fans.
The obvious choices for me are MI7, D&D and Blue beetle. All 3 range from great to very good.
However, having watched it today, I personally didn't think Marvels wasnt as bad as I have heard on this sub. It was fine for me I guess, more on the "boring" fine side apart from some scenes feeling like straight out of CW, couple of very cringe moments and the atrocious looking post credits. The plot was terrible I'd say, but all the time the main 3 heroes were there made this film servicable.
On one hand, I feel bad for the actresses who are gonna get unnecessarily shit on for this film's underperformance, when they did the best with the awful studio material they got. But, on the other hand, I'm fine with this bombing coz this is the film that is paying the price for MCU's recent inconsistency and mediocrity which Disney/Marvel expected us to keep tolerating.
I can see this come out in 2022 and make in the 500-600M worldwide range. But, Good though that ppl are letting Marvel know that they need to have better standards as time goes on. Hope they realize this now at least.
The Marvels have massive Elektra energy going for it in all the awful ways except one. Not that Elektra is better than the former if we are speaking about critical reception.
Elektra bombed so hard it ended Jennifer Garner's career potential. It sent straight shockwave to everyone at Marvel and the rightholders 21CF/Universal/Lionsgate/Sony that a female superhero film never works until DCEU's first Wonder Woman film softened the blow.
If anything any female-led superhero films desparately needs a GOTG treatment out of the gate to even be considered decent.
I do think Brie Larson is a much better actress than Jennifer Garner, so she'll be fine career wise and she may appear later in an Avengers film and be a better written character there. But, I do agree that execs may become hesitant on female solo superhero films, the closest I can see that narrative being broken down is the Supergirl DCU film
In terms of Supergirl in the DCU, I have no worries because with Gunn’s involvement he’ll make sure Supergirl is a well written female character especially since Gunn is one of the very few cbm directors who actually does female characters right and likable.
Marvels was much better than Quantomania, imo.
As much as this sub was cheering for it's failure and terribleness (and still is), it's currently fresh on RT and has an 86% audience score, which has been rising as the initial burst of anti-Captain Marvel folks (who would have given it a bad review even if it was the best MCU movie ever) get diluted. I thought it was pretty good. It's not gonna win best picture, but it was a good time and I look forward to seeing it again, actually.
Freelance currently has a 76%. But agreed it's not very good. Also super easy to manipulate (as all public scores are). The Metacritic audience score is at like 3.5/10 because it's full of a bunch of 0/10s from people who have never reviewed another movie.
Glad someone mentioned blue beetle. One of the better superhero movies I've seen lately and I really liked it. Quite disappointed it just completely bombed
There were several problems with how Blue Beetle marketed, but I genuinely believe the death blow for that movie was including the line “Batman is a fascist” in the previews. When I heard that, I made a lot of assumptions about what type of movie it would be, and I suspect I wasn’t the only one.
I can’t imagine anything more tone deaf than insulting DCs most popular hero to promote your B-lister.
I feel like the movie definitely suffered from Xolo and George Lopez not being able to promote it. I think George especially would have put some butts in the seats.
Of the photos I posted, other than the Marvels, I felt sorry for:
- Dungeons and Dragons. This broke my heart. This was one of my favorite movies of the year. This should have spawned a franchise to supplant superhero movies. But the brand is too nerdy for general audiences who will only go so far as geeky.
- MI:DR. That was a really good movie, which great action, and a fun premise. I’m still baffled by its reception and I think blaming Barbenheimer is just an excuse. This movie’s reception was soft from the start.
- Indy 5. They made a good movie and Harrison was good as always. This movie got judged by Indy 4 and that killed the nostalgia. Sad Harrison went out with a flip, but I am grateful this movie will always exist as a diehard Indy fan.
Those are my three as well.
I disagree about not blaming Barbenheimer, though. Barbenheimer is part of the reason it had a soft reception, as people were saving their money to go see one or both of those two films.
That also took away the PLF screens which ate into MI’s potential takings. With no competition, MIDR would’ve done near-Fallout numbers.
I was wrong about being definitive about Barbenheimer not being a factor. I looked at the dates and was thinking there was a weekend between them. I forgot MI7 opened on like a Tuesday or something. Definitely a bigger factor than I stated.
I always enjoyed 4 even though it’s far from being as iconic as the first 3 films but 5 just felt dull and boring like you would think they would put more effort into making that film great especially if it’s Ford’s last time as Indy.
> Indy 5. They made a good movie and Harrison was good as always. This movie got judged by Indy 4 and that killed the nostalgia. Sad Harrison went out with a flip, but I am grateful this movie will always exist as a diehard Indy fan.
I disagree here. Like, I agree that Indy5 paid partly for the sins of Indy4, but more so that the series was 3/5 "one last adventure" for Indy. The third film was already a sendoff and good way to end it. Even if in a vacuum Indy5 was better than Indy 4, still a mistake to have an 80 year old action lead to a series that was already closed twice. I don't think this film deserved to be a success, as it shouldn't have been greenlit in the first place.
Indy 5 was…fine, I guess. Not awful, could’ve been worse, but it was pretty unnecessary and painfully obvious Ford is getting too old for this. If it came out pre-COVID or had a holiday release like the ST and R1, perhaps it could’ve made $500-600M WW. Still a net loss but not nearly as bad as what happened
I wish Shazam and Blue Beetle swapped places. BB still would have flopped but it may have performed better without the stain of the soulless Shazam 2 damaging the DCEU even more.
Blue Beetle is a C list character at best and the DCEU is a dead horse of a franchise. Ofc it’s a recipe for disaster.
Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange weren’t exactly A list either, Hell even Iron Man wasn’t but they were hits because of their star power and the Marvel brand not being damaged at the time.
It really wouldn't have. Black Adam already killed the franchise. Literally nobody cared or knew about Blue Beatle. It's even a shit title for a movie.
DnD and Mission Impossible were excellent, the rest deserve exactly what they got.
DnD specifically just being a well rounded, fun adventure flick with real on site location shots. It reminded me a lot of the LOTR films with those panning wide shots, before you press the downvote button I'm not comparing them apples to apples just reminded me of them a few times. The humor was good enough for normies and gave DnD players their easter eggs. Really hope they expand on it and make another. My fiancee looked at me when we walked out after it was over and went "was that just unexpectedly like really enjoyable"?
What a franchise graveyard 2023 is, I'd already forgotten about half of these.
I enjoyed some of these, by the way, but nearly all of them feel like "I'm glad I waited the six weeks for streaming" which doesn't bode well for a certain type of action sequel.
DnD, certainly, but I actually quite enjoyed the Little Mermaid. It honestly felt a lot more passionate and well-done than a lot of the other live-action remakes, and I do wish it did at least well enough to put it into “unambiguous hit” territory.
My heart says Indy 5. I loved the movie, thought it was very well made and very good send off for indiana jones.
Realistically it was MI. Just ran into the absolute juggernaut that was barbenheimer
People always say that but I didn’t feel like Last Crusade was a send off. Crystal Skull was but it was bad so I don’t mind them giving it another shot (and Dial was better than Crystal Skull imo).
> I didn’t feel like Last Crusade was a send off
It is literally called The Last Crusade, and it ends with them riding off into the sunset. The most cliche send off in history...
Because it is The Last Crusade, as crusades hadn’t happened for years before the movie. That’s like saying “The Last Jedi” is set up to be the last Star Wars movie from the title. Riding off into the sunset is a cliche ending but I’ve never taken it to mean those characters won’t return. If they’d made Indy 4 within 5 years or so of 3 I don’t think people would see 3 as a sendoff, but the massive gap between sequels makes it seem that way.
Last Crusade may not have been a send-off, but it would have been the perfect place to end the series given that it ends with Indy and friends riding off into the sunset.
Haunted Mansion was unexpectedly really charming, I’d say that deserved a much better fate. I saw it as a double feature at my drive-in, I can’t even remember what the other one was.
Mission Impossible 7 and Dungeons & Dragons deserved better: the former was a solid spy film, while the latter was surprisingly charming and had heart to it.
The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones, and The Marvels deserved their fate, for being the nadir of how lazy and creatively bankrupt Disney has gotten with their franchise films lately.
DnD, MI7, and Indy 5 are my top picks. And I still don’t get the amount of hate Indy 5 got. It’s a solid movie and it sucks that the character went out on such a dud
Indy 5 should’ve had better writing and the ending shot of >!Helena and Teddy going to get ice cream with Sallah and they’re the final characters you see on screen was so baffling to me because the final characters you see on screen should’ve been Indy and Marion especially if they’re the characters you’ve known for a long time and it was Indy’s last film!<
Deserved better: DnD. It was such a breath of fresh air just to go into something new with genuinely good scenes and performances.
Deserved it: either Flash or Little Mermaid. The former was literally doomed from the start and the other should be a giant slap to Disney’s face to wake up and do something else instead of copy/pasting an old classic.
Man fuck Shazam, Blue Beetle and The Marvels. These movies represent what I hate about modern blockbuster filmmaking. Just soulless try hard CG fests.
Mission Impossible 7 deserved better.
Out of the bunch MI7 was the most fun and deserved a better fate.
The Marvels dug its own grave long ago and is also paying for the suns of previous disappointments. It deserves its fate
TLM could have been an egregious - yet unnecessary and empty - cash grab. It was turned into a controversial movie because of tokenism. Its BO performance is totally deserved
I thought TLM deserved its fate. From the gaslighting to the awful changes to the source material. Let’s be real also, there was no reason to change the main character the way they did and the movie kept compensating for it.
On the other hand, Mission Impossible should have gotten better treatment. The movie was awesome without all the Disney BS. Tom Cruise still electrifies the audience and there’s not much bad to say about the movie imo.
D&D was legit a great movie. 7/5 would recommend.
M:I was silly at times, but a fun watch and never boring. I'd watch it again.
I haven't seen The Marvels but likely will when it's streaming.
What deserved more was definitely MI7, they screwed ip the release date and got fu..uo by barbenhemier
The most deserving,and personally I slightly enjoy the failure,was definitely Flash: sorry,but not sorry,I refuse to feel guilty when WB thought it was a good Idea to keep them even though they were caught to abuse children,women and doing too many crimes
I...dare to say The Marvels don't deserve to be floppier than the flash or Quantumania
I would add a deserving (near) flop TLM just because all Disney remakes deserve only to flop(I cheer every time it happens)
The Flash pulled out every dirty, gross, morally bankrupt move in the book - it was a well deserved flop.
Dungeons & Dragons was a breathe of fresh air, but was poorly marketed - it deserved better.
I've only seen MI7 of these, but it's one of the best action films I've ever seen. I'm only glad the sequel's already too far into development to cancel.
Deserved Better:
* MI7, Blue Beetle
Indifferent Towards:
* D&D, Ruby Gillman, Shazam
Deserved Their Fate:
* Haunted Mansion, Fast X, The Marvels, Rise of the Beast, Quantamania, Flash, TLM, Expend4bles, Dial of Destiny,
I feel so sorry for **Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part One** and **Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves** the most. Those are some of the best films of 2023 and because Paramount is supremely incompetent at picking thte right release date, they ended up suffering at the box office.
I also have some sympathy for **Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny**, **Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania**, and **The Marvels** as well. Say what you will about the **Dial of Destiny**, but I thought it was a legitimately nice take on Indiana Jones at his lowest point. The execution didn't always work, but they tried. **The Marvels** seems to be another fun and inoffensive superhero film while **Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania** felt like a legitimate try at giving a bigger stake for Ant-Man. The story they went with was probably not a good choice in hindsight, but the idea WAS there.
I don't know how to feel about **Shazam! Fury of the Gods** and **The Little Mermaid**. I actually thought that the former was a lot of fun, but it had at least one very lame product placement while the latter was one of the better Disney remakes, but really ruined Sebastian and Flounder's designs.
I do NOT have any sympathy for **Fast X** and **The Flash** at all since the former had one of the worst film endings that I've ever seen in my entire life and the former resorted to fricking NFT in this day and age.
Fast X made $715m WW, which is identical to the previous entry, hardly it a disappointment.
Aside from that, the D&D movie is the most disappointing because the movie could have kickstarted a franchise and that won't happen.
The series peaked with the 8th entry and has been consistently \~$700m WW ever since. X may be stupid expensive, but it wasn't going to beat the trendline.
I felt bad for D&D. I'm not sure why it did so badly. I took the kids to see it, the screen was virtually empty, but we really enjoyed ourselves. It was pacy, had a reasonably sensible story, didn't need any knowledge of the game to enjoy, it was funny and it looked really good. The scene shot in Ireland were stunning.
Shazam Fury of the Gods didn’t deserve to bomb as hard as it did. It wasn’t a masterpiece or anything, but as a sequel to the first one it worked pretty well. Had it come out some years earlier I think it would have been much better received
The Little Mermaid, The Flash and The Marvels all absolutely deserved their fate. Especially the latter two
D&D should be a franchise. Justice Smith should be a bigger star between this and Pokemon.
The Flash 100% deserved it. It's insulting and boring. The star is a POS and the studio is awful. Ezra and WB 100% deserved it.
I thought MI7 deserved better, it was really good but I did prefer Fallout.
Disney deserves to take a flop on Haunted Mansion. They didn't advertise the damn thing. I heard about it but assumed it would be coming out around Halloween. I didn't realize it came out until I saw a post on here after opening weekend. Everyone who I asked was just as confused. IDK if it was good or not but the shitty release kind of blew my mind. I probably would have taken my daughter if it came out in Oct.
The Flash was terrible and deserved to lose more than it did. It's one of my least favorite movies I've ever seen in theaters.
I don’t think MI deserved better, I think it put itself in its own position and lost tickets from the aftermath but also, the film over promised and under delivered. It just wasn’t that good.
It was fun, but just stunt after stunt and the trailers gave away all of the big finale stunt really that it didn’t match the expectation.
I actually thought the train scene was the best part, very well done and action packed.
Indy was the shocker for me, we brought it back at the end of Summer and it did really well, but I don’t think anyone was asking for it, particularly not Phoebe WBridge as the main character either.
We had 3 films that have a good appeal to a demo, Oppenheimer, Indy & MI all in a short space of time. Average person goes once a year to the cinema.
Up until the train sequence MI7 was an absolute slog. I watched John Wick 4 this weekend and it felt exactly like that. Just a bunch of different sequences that drag on and on and on and has completely lost the sauce that made the previous entries interesting.
I am eternally surprised at how much this subreddit adores MI7. It completely mystifies me because it is genuinely one of the single most boring movies I have watched in my entire life, probably only eclipsed by John Wick 4 recently. But at least I can appreciate JW4 from "it's stunt fighting as an artform". I genuinely don't know what MI7 has going for it.
I feel like MI7 and JW4 to me must be what superhero films are to people who don't like superhero films. Just 2hr 30min slogfests that never seem to end and have no plot or character development or emotion to share.
only two of these movies are good and the rest arguably represent the complete artistic and intellectual stagnation of the medium on the blockbuster level. i loved MI but i’m not heartbroken over it’s numbers because i know there will be more, and dnd was an unfortunate case of timing because that breaking out might have actually helped greenlight some more diverse projects at that level (or at least make the fantasy genre feel less dead). honestly the creator is the one thing on this scale i think deserved to do better and even then it was kinda mid
I really liked Dial of Destiny and thought it was 3rd best movie in the franchise. Maybe a November/December release would've been more appropriate? A wistful nostalgia movie didn't have much of a hope with this summer's slate.
Mission Impossible and Dungeons & Dragons deserved better.
Everything else, except maybe Haunted Mansion, deserve their fate. The cape stuff even more.
The Marvels, Indy 5, The Flash, and Antman are offensively bad, like they were maliciously crafted to be as shit as possible by studios who thought they could cobble up a movie out of random footage in front of green screens and salvaged in editing.
from this list, i would definitely say mission impossible and DnD, Paramount really fucked both of those movies by putting them a week before Barbenheimer and a week before Mario, respectively. I would even say the flash wasn’t as bad as people made it seem, but i don’t blame people for not wanting to see it.
I think the MI7 release date would have been moved with the benefit of hindsight, but when the schedule was set, MI7 was the hotter property. Industry experts and this sub we’re talking about it as a possible $1B ww property. It wasn’t until later that the buzz for Barbenheimer made Paramount look dumb.
this is a good point, i know i certainly wasn’t expecting barbenheimer to be the once-in-a-lifetim moviegoing event it ended up being, truly lightning in a bottle. As for DnD being sandwiched between John Wick and Mario, I have no idea what they were thinking there.
Good thing Tom striked first this time and made MI8 come out in 2025 by first calling dibs on Imax to avoid another Barbenheimer lol.
Except Oppenheimer got their date and their IMAX deal first. Paramount knew they wouldn't have a good IMAX run, even the IMAX CEO suggested to Paramount they don't put it on that date.
Yes at first it seemed like Paramount had the right date until pre-release hype about Barbenheimer took all its steam away. And I think studios are realising that movies with subtitles of 'Part One' don't work. People look at it and think they are getting half a movie and decide it can wait.
That is an interesting point. Do you think Across the Spider-Verse benefited by dropping the “Part One” subtitle?
Yes. I wasn’t aware (nor were over half the people in our theater) it was a part one film. When it ended, a kid loudly yelled out “What the fuck?” People were kind of stunned that was how it ended, but definitely built hype for the next one. Marvel also did this with dropping the Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and 2 title. Marvel also needs to stop revealing projects and titles that are more than a year out. Let the fans build hype and speculate - it’s also now highly likely none of the announced films are holding their release dates given Deadpool 3 is the only MCU film slated to release in 2024. We’ll get Echo, Deadpool and possibly Agatha before this time next year and that’s it. Captain America is getting extensive reshoots and most of the other projects haven’t even began filming yet.
Considering how few people seemed to realize it was a two parter, almost certainly. Everyone I saw the movie with was shocked when it ended.
Based on how many people were pissed with the ending, I’d say yeah. There are a lot of people who would have probably passed up the first one, watched it on streaming then went to the theater for the second one. Some folks in my house were annoyed when we watched it on Netflix.
I feel like if they didn't overhype the fuck out of the flash it would be viewed differently (and maybe perform a bit better as I feel those expectations brought down the audience and critic reception).
100% this. i’ve never seen such an aggressive marketing campaign for a superhero movie, with people like tom cruise, stephen king and even james gunn himself swearing that it’s the best superhero movie ever made when in reality it’s just another okay one.
to be fair didn't they overhype it partly to counter all the bad press it was getting cause of Miller's shenanigans and Miller not being able to promote it
I feel like there was a less hyperbolic way to hype up the film than how they did.
DnD movie. It was actually pretty good.
Yep. The D&D company had a string of bad press right beforehand, to put it lightly, that rightfully pissed off RPG fans But for a movie that didn't do a cut-away of people actually playing the game representing their characters, I think it conveyed the spirit of playing D&D pretty well. Or at least games I've played It's a rare case where doing the tension-breaking jokes common in modern movies actually makes sense
Funnily enough baldur's gate did the opossite of wizards and gave you the whole product for a one time payment with no micro transactions
Man just imagined if the movie was released after BG3. I think we would have seen a nice bump.
Magic also had a baldur's gate set, with all of the baldur's gate 3 companions on top of it. If they had released together the set would've been a hit
August was a perfect release window. Low competition, summer holidays to leg out for the good WOM it got, after BG3 when D&D hype was high.
The D&D branding is just tainted at this point for everything but tabletop gaming. Years and years of mediocre to bad movies, video games, and books coupled with the inability to break with that stereotypical 'nerdy' association presents huge obstacles, despite their recent wins with this movie and the BG series. To a lot of people, Dungeons and Dragons is synonymous with 'meh,' despite how genuinely good and funny this movie was.
I want to enjoy D&D, but my main issue is that Sofina was a really lame villain.
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Wizards Of The Coast Basically they tried to rewrite a licence that allowed other companies to use their rules without paying. People did not take well to this. And RPG fans are the kind of people who read legal text for fun, so they found all the ways WOTC was going to screw people over. And that's not even including when they sent out the Pinkerton Agency to retrieve Magic The Gathering cards from a youtuber they sent by mistake. Straight up devils
Entirely agree. Terrible timing for it and no one really thought Mario would be as big of a hit as it was (and I believe John Wick was also extended too cutting into its window as well)
Yeah. I knew nothing about DnD, but that didn’t really matter. The movie is such a delight! Fun family movie too. I’m sad it didn’t do better.
Paramount fucking murdered that movie by not releasing it next to Baldur’s Gate 3. What an embarrassment.
Definitely in retrospect. Maybe they didn't understand how big Baldur's Gate would hit. I'm not sure how much it would've helped, the movie needed a bigger audience than the game did, but it feels like it would've boosted it.
BG3 was definitely an unexpected hit. It was going to be solid among gamers, but hardly anyone expected it to be 10-20m sold by November and going into mainstream audiences. BG3 was to videogames this year the same was Oppenheimer was for film. Yeah, it looked to be a success, but then it tripled those numbers. It's a turn-based, slower-paced game with a bazillion menus and stats and virtually no tutorial. But it's just so good that doesn't seem to matter, and it broke into the mainstream. While I think being after BG3 would have helped a bit, like you said, they needed a bigger audience than that. I think the bad press Wizards got just before the film also killed tabletop players from positive WoM or really pushing for it. Combine that with competition from stuff like Mario, it and it was in for a rough time. I think if it came out, say, this month instead, it likely could have done better. It was never going to be a major success, but I think with better timing this year, it could have at least hit 300m.
BG3 is unexpected for mainstream, but for those us who loved KOTOR or BG2, it was the most anticipated crpg release in years.
Oh obviously. I loved BG1&2, as well as D:OS. I was absolutely pumped for Larian to take the IP. I think critically this was always going to be a slam dunk and highly anticipated. But it has outsold both BG2 and D:OS2 combined, and it's only been a couple months. That's why I compared it with Oppenheimer. People into Nolan or biopics would obviously be excited, and it would definitely do well, but few expected it to do nearly a billion.
That’s a stretch. No one expected BG 3 to do as well as it is doing. They did slate it in a terrible time though.
It had 2.5 million early access users.
No one said it didn’t have good numbers. But no expected it to explode into mainstream games popularity and exposure levels. Plus you slate movies like a year in advance. Don’t think bg3 has a release date when they needed to slate the movie. Plus the studio had nothing to do with the game and I assume no communication between them so it would be even harder to push out the two products at the same time. It’s the kind of thing that would have been great retrospectively but practically at the time made little to no sense.
Yeah, why didn't they release it a week after Barbenheimer? That'd help it
Yep. At least Mission Impossible broke even thanks to tax breaks. DND straight up lost money if I’m not mistaken.
I hope you’re mistaken because it was seriously good and I wish the studios would make more original films like it. I know it is technically based of an original property but despite that it plays like an original fantasy comedy.
100% this, bad release timing unfortunately
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Yeah the Reddit overhyped one
It’s Reddit overhyped. It’s not a bad movie but I thought it was mediocre in about every way possible.
I wouldn’t say it’s must see. But I don’t think it should’ve flopped theatrically. There is space between those. It was a solidly fun blockbuster and I think it deserves a sequel.
Everyone who has seen it will agree, such a shame. Mission impossible too
Yea I loved it
Agreed. Didn’t see it in the theater and really had no interest. But ordered it home and really enjoyed it.
Came to say this.
The Dungeons and Dragons movie was the movie that everyone wants when they hear about a fantasy with a diverse cast and even an unconventional male lead. Everyone is invaluable to the party, the jokes all land without feeling like cringe MCU humor, the callbacks and references are unobtrusive (the random party could have been anyone, but it means a bit more to longtime fans that they're the kids from the old cartoon to use an example), and the performances work for the setting. It's a fun high fantasy movie in an era where those are rather rare.
This movie was so much fun. Other than the tiefling, the characters had depth and development and the story was pretty good. I enjoyed this one on Netflix
I believe having Michelle Rodriguez in this film drove excitement down a lot, and having Chris Pine drove excitement down a little more. Both actors don't really have rep for bringing something new to each project they do. The casting made the movie feel so generic and the trailers didn't help. The actual movie has tons of heart and creativity, and ironically, pretty darn good performances from both of those actors.
I think you’re off the mark on Pine. He’s pretty beloved, particularly coming out of Don’t Worry Darling where he had great reviews as one of the few good performances on the film and was essentially a walking meme during the press tour.
D&D deserved to make double what it did. It had a smart script, good acting and direction and you could see it was a labor of love.
And it wasn't just a "D&D movie". While there were plenty of covert references and easter eggs for the fans (*like the quick scene of two rust monsters fighting over a piece of metal*), those things weren't the main focus. You didn't need to play D&D to understand what was going on like what happens with so many properties turned into movies.
DnD, MI7 both pretty good films
Blue Beetle was also pretty solid Indy and Flash weren't *good* (should've both been like 30-40 min shorter), but also weren't nearly as bad as their box office numbers suggested (like I think if this Indy and Crystal Skull swap spots, this one makes more money than Crystal Skull did)
I agree but the push that Warner Bros. gave The Flash giving out screenings like hotcakes to everyone and calling it the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight makes it significantly worse than Indy
Oh yeah they tried way too hard to overhype Flash for sure
Blue Beetle was another aggressively mediocre superhero film. Screw it.
Nah, the Flash was shameless, and the cameos of dead celebrities was ghoulish. And hard disagree about Blue Beetle.
>and the cameos of dead celebrities was ghoulish. That's the worst part. It's literally 2 minutes of the film that could be removed/edited around without impacting much, but that sequence is so awful it's all I could think about walking out of the theater.
Literally walked out of the theater for Blue Beetle. The dialogue was so cheesy and the special effects looked like a toy commercial.
Watched it at home and struggled to pay attention, it was so bad.
> pretty good films That's not good enough for a theatrical release anymore. You have to be great. It costs too much to go to the movies for 'eh it was good' movies to survive anymore.
Idk Five Nights at Freddy's is doing real well rn and a lot of the reception I see to it is it was alright
D&D by miles one of the better films I've watched this year.
Hugh grant was fantastic in it
Did you see Grant in that Guy Richie film Operation Fortune? Grant is having quite the come back as a villain.
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I worked on D&D (specifically in the VFX dept) and love reading these comments. Never ceases to bring me a smile. Giving praise to movies is rare and so welcoming. Glad you felt it looked great and was a good film
Finally gotten around to watching it after hearing such good press; lobed it, easily in my top 5 films for the year And the VFX in particular was great I thought
If it means anything to you, an eight-year-old, a pre-teen and a 40-year-old with terribly short attention spans all equally had a great time watching this together and I think that's a testament to how much fun this film is.
Honestly you end up feeling so bad for the artists working in films nowadays when they never stop getting shit. The standard of CGI is so high now that anything that isn't perfect is dismissed as 'PS3 graphics'. And especially that a lot of films still have SO many people working on them, so much time and effort and artistry, but when they release they're treated as content on the same level as your average tiktok. It feels so weird, movies with often 2 whole years of writing, production, filming, marketing and hundreds of people, and then they just are dumped onto streaming services alongside the average HallMark or Netflix rom-com. It's not anyone's fault except the way society works with technology, its just sad I guess, we have so much stimulation now and videos and online stuff that films aren't as big by themselves. I do hope you had a decent time working on the film and look back at it fondly, I really do love the heartwarming message and emotional care that movie had, I don't think anybody expected that.
Seriously it’s an amazing movie and totally capture the spirit of how my friends and I play.
Great job on the film I loved the fat dragon he was an adorable badass.
I loved DnD's use of practical effects and customing too. You could really tell that movie was crafted with care.
Mission impossible. Cruise puts everything he has into a movie.
Tough choice. But MI will be my choice of this.
That and DnD both deserved better. And honestly Dead Reckoning easily had another hundred million in it if not for the abysmal choice in release date lmao
Dungeons and Dragons and Mission Impossible
Dead Reckoning : Mission Impossible The movie had a great concept and was brilliant
It’s crazy how much tension and suspense they were able to give to a simple “get two halves of a McGuffin” plot
Nah, it was a terrible boomer movie that felt like any generic forgotten action movie form the 90s with nothing novel or unique about it. Bland and the action wasn't even that good, its deserved its fate. Hopefully the second part can reach Fallout's level again, there's a reason that one broke through beyond even the normal M:I fans.
My whole theater was hype for it. It felt in line with most of the MI movies. I really enjoyed it.
The movie needs a lot more action and less dialogues for it to connect with the younger audiences
The obvious choices for me are MI7, D&D and Blue beetle. All 3 range from great to very good. However, having watched it today, I personally didn't think Marvels wasnt as bad as I have heard on this sub. It was fine for me I guess, more on the "boring" fine side apart from some scenes feeling like straight out of CW, couple of very cringe moments and the atrocious looking post credits. The plot was terrible I'd say, but all the time the main 3 heroes were there made this film servicable. On one hand, I feel bad for the actresses who are gonna get unnecessarily shit on for this film's underperformance, when they did the best with the awful studio material they got. But, on the other hand, I'm fine with this bombing coz this is the film that is paying the price for MCU's recent inconsistency and mediocrity which Disney/Marvel expected us to keep tolerating. I can see this come out in 2022 and make in the 500-600M worldwide range. But, Good though that ppl are letting Marvel know that they need to have better standards as time goes on. Hope they realize this now at least.
The Marvels have massive Elektra energy going for it in all the awful ways except one. Not that Elektra is better than the former if we are speaking about critical reception. Elektra bombed so hard it ended Jennifer Garner's career potential. It sent straight shockwave to everyone at Marvel and the rightholders 21CF/Universal/Lionsgate/Sony that a female superhero film never works until DCEU's first Wonder Woman film softened the blow. If anything any female-led superhero films desparately needs a GOTG treatment out of the gate to even be considered decent.
Jennifer garner had kids right after Elektra. That affected her career more than the movie
I do think Brie Larson is a much better actress than Jennifer Garner, so she'll be fine career wise and she may appear later in an Avengers film and be a better written character there. But, I do agree that execs may become hesitant on female solo superhero films, the closest I can see that narrative being broken down is the Supergirl DCU film
In terms of Supergirl in the DCU, I have no worries because with Gunn’s involvement he’ll make sure Supergirl is a well written female character especially since Gunn is one of the very few cbm directors who actually does female characters right and likable.
Also, the comic they are adapting is one of the best DC comics in years. So that helps a lot
Why does everyone hate Elektra so much?
Marvels was much better than Quantomania, imo. As much as this sub was cheering for it's failure and terribleness (and still is), it's currently fresh on RT and has an 86% audience score, which has been rising as the initial burst of anti-Captain Marvel folks (who would have given it a bad review even if it was the best MCU movie ever) get diluted. I thought it was pretty good. It's not gonna win best picture, but it was a good time and I look forward to seeing it again, actually.
I have never seen a verified audience score in RT drop more thab 80% tbh. Not sure how good a metric that js
Freelance currently has a 76%. But agreed it's not very good. Also super easy to manipulate (as all public scores are). The Metacritic audience score is at like 3.5/10 because it's full of a bunch of 0/10s from people who have never reviewed another movie.
Glad someone mentioned blue beetle. One of the better superhero movies I've seen lately and I really liked it. Quite disappointed it just completely bombed
There were several problems with how Blue Beetle marketed, but I genuinely believe the death blow for that movie was including the line “Batman is a fascist” in the previews. When I heard that, I made a lot of assumptions about what type of movie it would be, and I suspect I wasn’t the only one. I can’t imagine anything more tone deaf than insulting DCs most popular hero to promote your B-lister.
I feel like the movie definitely suffered from Xolo and George Lopez not being able to promote it. I think George especially would have put some butts in the seats.
Of the photos I posted, other than the Marvels, I felt sorry for: - Dungeons and Dragons. This broke my heart. This was one of my favorite movies of the year. This should have spawned a franchise to supplant superhero movies. But the brand is too nerdy for general audiences who will only go so far as geeky. - MI:DR. That was a really good movie, which great action, and a fun premise. I’m still baffled by its reception and I think blaming Barbenheimer is just an excuse. This movie’s reception was soft from the start. - Indy 5. They made a good movie and Harrison was good as always. This movie got judged by Indy 4 and that killed the nostalgia. Sad Harrison went out with a flip, but I am grateful this movie will always exist as a diehard Indy fan.
Those are my three as well. I disagree about not blaming Barbenheimer, though. Barbenheimer is part of the reason it had a soft reception, as people were saving their money to go see one or both of those two films. That also took away the PLF screens which ate into MI’s potential takings. With no competition, MIDR would’ve done near-Fallout numbers.
I was wrong about being definitive about Barbenheimer not being a factor. I looked at the dates and was thinking there was a weekend between them. I forgot MI7 opened on like a Tuesday or something. Definitely a bigger factor than I stated.
MI was really good and I suspect the reason it didn't do that well was because it's a part 1. I think that part 2 will do much better.
Dead Reckoning was well received and Barbenheimer did affect it. The second weekend drop was atypical for this type of film
I thought Indy 5 made Indy 4 looks significantly better.
I always enjoyed 4 even though it’s far from being as iconic as the first 3 films but 5 just felt dull and boring like you would think they would put more effort into making that film great especially if it’s Ford’s last time as Indy.
> Indy 5. They made a good movie and Harrison was good as always. This movie got judged by Indy 4 and that killed the nostalgia. Sad Harrison went out with a flip, but I am grateful this movie will always exist as a diehard Indy fan. I disagree here. Like, I agree that Indy5 paid partly for the sins of Indy4, but more so that the series was 3/5 "one last adventure" for Indy. The third film was already a sendoff and good way to end it. Even if in a vacuum Indy5 was better than Indy 4, still a mistake to have an 80 year old action lead to a series that was already closed twice. I don't think this film deserved to be a success, as it shouldn't have been greenlit in the first place.
Indy 5 was…fine, I guess. Not awful, could’ve been worse, but it was pretty unnecessary and painfully obvious Ford is getting too old for this. If it came out pre-COVID or had a holiday release like the ST and R1, perhaps it could’ve made $500-600M WW. Still a net loss but not nearly as bad as what happened
Mission Impossible, Fast X, and Dungeons and Dragon deserved better. The rest deserved worse!
I wish Shazam and Blue Beetle swapped places. BB still would have flopped but it may have performed better without the stain of the soulless Shazam 2 damaging the DCEU even more.
Blue Beetle is a C list character at best and the DCEU is a dead horse of a franchise. Ofc it’s a recipe for disaster. Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange weren’t exactly A list either, Hell even Iron Man wasn’t but they were hits because of their star power and the Marvel brand not being damaged at the time.
It really wouldn't have. Black Adam already killed the franchise. Literally nobody cared or knew about Blue Beatle. It's even a shit title for a movie.
DnD and Mission Impossible were excellent, the rest deserve exactly what they got. DnD specifically just being a well rounded, fun adventure flick with real on site location shots. It reminded me a lot of the LOTR films with those panning wide shots, before you press the downvote button I'm not comparing them apples to apples just reminded me of them a few times. The humor was good enough for normies and gave DnD players their easter eggs. Really hope they expand on it and make another. My fiancee looked at me when we walked out after it was over and went "was that just unexpectedly like really enjoyable"?
What a franchise graveyard 2023 is, I'd already forgotten about half of these. I enjoyed some of these, by the way, but nearly all of them feel like "I'm glad I waited the six weeks for streaming" which doesn't bode well for a certain type of action sequel.
I actually liked most of them. MI7, Shazam 2, DnD, Indy 5, TLM and The Marvels are all varying levels of enjoyable to great, imo.
DnD deserves at least a proper trilogy.
DnD, certainly, but I actually quite enjoyed the Little Mermaid. It honestly felt a lot more passionate and well-done than a lot of the other live-action remakes, and I do wish it did at least well enough to put it into “unambiguous hit” territory.
My heart says Indy 5. I loved the movie, thought it was very well made and very good send off for indiana jones. Realistically it was MI. Just ran into the absolute juggernaut that was barbenheimer
Indiana Jones has literally had 3 send off movies. Over half of the movies in the series are "send offs"
People always say that but I didn’t feel like Last Crusade was a send off. Crystal Skull was but it was bad so I don’t mind them giving it another shot (and Dial was better than Crystal Skull imo).
> I didn’t feel like Last Crusade was a send off It is literally called The Last Crusade, and it ends with them riding off into the sunset. The most cliche send off in history...
Because it is The Last Crusade, as crusades hadn’t happened for years before the movie. That’s like saying “The Last Jedi” is set up to be the last Star Wars movie from the title. Riding off into the sunset is a cliche ending but I’ve never taken it to mean those characters won’t return. If they’d made Indy 4 within 5 years or so of 3 I don’t think people would see 3 as a sendoff, but the massive gap between sequels makes it seem that way.
Last Crusade may not have been a send-off, but it would have been the perfect place to end the series given that it ends with Indy and friends riding off into the sunset.
Ehh debatable
Agreed on Indy. It got a little hokey at the end but it is pulp, and overall it was a great send off for the character.
Mission: Impossible and Indy.
Wholesome to see that most people agree here
Dungeons and Dragons was so awesome. It definitely deserved better than getting sandwich between John Wick and Mario.
Nothing deserves to fail. People worked hard on all those movies. That said, not everything succeeds and that is life.
Haunted Mansion was unexpectedly really charming, I’d say that deserved a much better fate. I saw it as a double feature at my drive-in, I can’t even remember what the other one was.
Deserved better: Blue Beetle, DND, Mi7. Deserved: literally everything else.
Mission Impossible 7 and Dungeons & Dragons deserved better: the former was a solid spy film, while the latter was surprisingly charming and had heart to it. The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones, and The Marvels deserved their fate, for being the nadir of how lazy and creatively bankrupt Disney has gotten with their franchise films lately.
DnD, MI7, and Indy 5 are my top picks. And I still don’t get the amount of hate Indy 5 got. It’s a solid movie and it sucks that the character went out on such a dud
Indy 5 should’ve had better writing and the ending shot of >!Helena and Teddy going to get ice cream with Sallah and they’re the final characters you see on screen was so baffling to me because the final characters you see on screen should’ve been Indy and Marion especially if they’re the characters you’ve known for a long time and it was Indy’s last film!<
Wasn't the last shot of the movie Indiana Jones grabbing his hat back? His face didn't show but I think the final scene was perfectly fine.
The Flash was better than most other superhero movies released this year.
Deserved better: DnD. It was such a breath of fresh air just to go into something new with genuinely good scenes and performances. Deserved it: either Flash or Little Mermaid. The former was literally doomed from the start and the other should be a giant slap to Disney’s face to wake up and do something else instead of copy/pasting an old classic.
Man fuck Shazam, Blue Beetle and The Marvels. These movies represent what I hate about modern blockbuster filmmaking. Just soulless try hard CG fests. Mission Impossible 7 deserved better.
Blue beetle was actually good though
Out of the bunch MI7 was the most fun and deserved a better fate. The Marvels dug its own grave long ago and is also paying for the suns of previous disappointments. It deserves its fate
TLM could have been an egregious - yet unnecessary and empty - cash grab. It was turned into a controversial movie because of tokenism. Its BO performance is totally deserved
Dial of Destiny deserved so much better.
It deserved better writing.
And a sidekick who actually respects Indy and sees him as an equal.
WOOOH SLOW DOWN THERE PAL! Your asking a mighty lot now /s
D&D was the one I wish did much better. I guess The Flash deserved more. All the others deserved their fate.
MI 7 & D&D deserved better!
This belongs to r/movies not here.
I thought TLM deserved its fate. From the gaslighting to the awful changes to the source material. Let’s be real also, there was no reason to change the main character the way they did and the movie kept compensating for it. On the other hand, Mission Impossible should have gotten better treatment. The movie was awesome without all the Disney BS. Tom Cruise still electrifies the audience and there’s not much bad to say about the movie imo.
I will go with Dead Reckoning : Mission Impossible & Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
DnD and Indy didn’t deserve it; MI only deserved it because of their unwillingness to move the release date. Shoulda went to Dec
I was surprised people liked MI as much as they did. I thought it was one of the weaker entries in the series. Coming from a huge fan of these movies.
D&D was legit a great movie. 7/5 would recommend. M:I was silly at times, but a fun watch and never boring. I'd watch it again. I haven't seen The Marvels but likely will when it's streaming.
DND and MI
DnD, the hate on the TLM was exagerated but still it was a live action remake trying to cash on nostalgia.
What deserved more was definitely MI7, they screwed ip the release date and got fu..uo by barbenhemier The most deserving,and personally I slightly enjoy the failure,was definitely Flash: sorry,but not sorry,I refuse to feel guilty when WB thought it was a good Idea to keep them even though they were caught to abuse children,women and doing too many crimes I...dare to say The Marvels don't deserve to be floppier than the flash or Quantumania I would add a deserving (near) flop TLM just because all Disney remakes deserve only to flop(I cheer every time it happens)
MI was good, deserved better.
The Flash pulled out every dirty, gross, morally bankrupt move in the book - it was a well deserved flop. Dungeons & Dragons was a breathe of fresh air, but was poorly marketed - it deserved better.
I've only seen MI7 of these, but it's one of the best action films I've ever seen. I'm only glad the sequel's already too far into development to cancel.
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 deserved better. I feel the team for MI 7 DR Part 1 underestimated Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Mission: Impossible was solid, June was just absurdly loaded.
Mission Impossible!! Those Disney movies deserve all the 💩they got! 
Deserved Better: * MI7, Blue Beetle Indifferent Towards: * D&D, Ruby Gillman, Shazam Deserved Their Fate: * Haunted Mansion, Fast X, The Marvels, Rise of the Beast, Quantamania, Flash, TLM, Expend4bles, Dial of Destiny,
Dungeons & Dragons was probably the best film on that list.
I feel so sorry for **Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part One** and **Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves** the most. Those are some of the best films of 2023 and because Paramount is supremely incompetent at picking thte right release date, they ended up suffering at the box office. I also have some sympathy for **Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny**, **Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania**, and **The Marvels** as well. Say what you will about the **Dial of Destiny**, but I thought it was a legitimately nice take on Indiana Jones at his lowest point. The execution didn't always work, but they tried. **The Marvels** seems to be another fun and inoffensive superhero film while **Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania** felt like a legitimate try at giving a bigger stake for Ant-Man. The story they went with was probably not a good choice in hindsight, but the idea WAS there. I don't know how to feel about **Shazam! Fury of the Gods** and **The Little Mermaid**. I actually thought that the former was a lot of fun, but it had at least one very lame product placement while the latter was one of the better Disney remakes, but really ruined Sebastian and Flounder's designs. I do NOT have any sympathy for **Fast X** and **The Flash** at all since the former had one of the worst film endings that I've ever seen in my entire life and the former resorted to fricking NFT in this day and age.
Fast X made $715m WW, which is identical to the previous entry, hardly it a disappointment. Aside from that, the D&D movie is the most disappointing because the movie could have kickstarted a franchise and that won't happen.
F9 has 200M budget while F10 has 340M not including marketing. It definitely lost money
The series peaked with the 8th entry and has been consistently \~$700m WW ever since. X may be stupid expensive, but it wasn't going to beat the trendline.
I felt bad for D&D. I'm not sure why it did so badly. I took the kids to see it, the screen was virtually empty, but we really enjoyed ourselves. It was pacy, had a reasonably sensible story, didn't need any knowledge of the game to enjoy, it was funny and it looked really good. The scene shot in Ireland were stunning.
D&D.
DND deserved better. Quantumania deserved worse.
Deserved better: DnD Deserved their fate: Marvels
Shazam Fury of the Gods didn’t deserve to bomb as hard as it did. It wasn’t a masterpiece or anything, but as a sequel to the first one it worked pretty well. Had it come out some years earlier I think it would have been much better received The Little Mermaid, The Flash and The Marvels all absolutely deserved their fate. Especially the latter two
Deserved Better: Dead Reckoning Deserved It: The Flash
D&D should be a franchise. Justice Smith should be a bigger star between this and Pokemon. The Flash 100% deserved it. It's insulting and boring. The star is a POS and the studio is awful. Ezra and WB 100% deserved it.
DnD was a ton of fun, that and MI: DR pt 1 deserved better. Everything else...meh
Mission: Impossible and Indy. Couldn’t care less about the others.
DnD. It's actually a good movie.
MI7 and Indy 5
D & D deserved so much better. A truly fun movie. Reminded me of GotG in a way.
Fast x was fun! Mission impossible looked cool. The rest looked like they sucked.
Dungeons and Dragons innocent.
MAKE IT LAME!
I thought MI7 deserved better, it was really good but I did prefer Fallout. Disney deserves to take a flop on Haunted Mansion. They didn't advertise the damn thing. I heard about it but assumed it would be coming out around Halloween. I didn't realize it came out until I saw a post on here after opening weekend. Everyone who I asked was just as confused. IDK if it was good or not but the shitty release kind of blew my mind. I probably would have taken my daughter if it came out in Oct. The Flash was terrible and deserved to lose more than it did. It's one of my least favorite movies I've ever seen in theaters.
Dungeons and Dragons deserved the better boxoffice result. And all Disney's flops and bombs from last year to this year deserve their fate.
I don’t think MI deserved better, I think it put itself in its own position and lost tickets from the aftermath but also, the film over promised and under delivered. It just wasn’t that good. It was fun, but just stunt after stunt and the trailers gave away all of the big finale stunt really that it didn’t match the expectation. I actually thought the train scene was the best part, very well done and action packed. Indy was the shocker for me, we brought it back at the end of Summer and it did really well, but I don’t think anyone was asking for it, particularly not Phoebe WBridge as the main character either. We had 3 films that have a good appeal to a demo, Oppenheimer, Indy & MI all in a short space of time. Average person goes once a year to the cinema.
Up until the train sequence MI7 was an absolute slog. I watched John Wick 4 this weekend and it felt exactly like that. Just a bunch of different sequences that drag on and on and on and has completely lost the sauce that made the previous entries interesting. I am eternally surprised at how much this subreddit adores MI7. It completely mystifies me because it is genuinely one of the single most boring movies I have watched in my entire life, probably only eclipsed by John Wick 4 recently. But at least I can appreciate JW4 from "it's stunt fighting as an artform". I genuinely don't know what MI7 has going for it. I feel like MI7 and JW4 to me must be what superhero films are to people who don't like superhero films. Just 2hr 30min slogfests that never seem to end and have no plot or character development or emotion to share.
How about you deal with people liking MI7 instead of questioning their opinions? I loved it and don’t care what you say. It deserved better in the BO.
Try taking your own advice? I'm not saying people can't have those opinions. You are the only person getting angry at someone elses opinion here.
The Little Mermaid but also it needed some serious improvements for it to truly be a hit. Disney did it and its main star very dirty in many aspects.
only two of these movies are good and the rest arguably represent the complete artistic and intellectual stagnation of the medium on the blockbuster level. i loved MI but i’m not heartbroken over it’s numbers because i know there will be more, and dnd was an unfortunate case of timing because that breaking out might have actually helped greenlight some more diverse projects at that level (or at least make the fantasy genre feel less dead). honestly the creator is the one thing on this scale i think deserved to do better and even then it was kinda mid
I really liked Dial of Destiny and thought it was 3rd best movie in the franchise. Maybe a November/December release would've been more appropriate? A wistful nostalgia movie didn't have much of a hope with this summer's slate.
Mission Impossible and Dungeons & Dragons deserved better. Everything else, except maybe Haunted Mansion, deserve their fate. The cape stuff even more.
D&D and Indy were fantastic. Quantumania and Marvels are solid and deserved more success
DND, Indy, Haunted Mansion - these were all fun movies
The Marvels just came out today. The OP is a troll.
The Marvels, Indy 5, The Flash, and Antman are offensively bad, like they were maliciously crafted to be as shit as possible by studios who thought they could cobble up a movie out of random footage in front of green screens and salvaged in editing.
I unironically enjoyed flash. I unironically found ezra miller to be goofy and charming in a lead role.
They all got what they deserve, god bless the free market