TheBeastWithin said:
I love Spider-Man and Batman Begins but that's just pathetic. Batman Begins is the kind of movie Marvel wished Hulk was.
Yeah, I watched that interview. And I agree that comparing Batman to Spider-man is a ridiculous comparison:
1) No way in hell Avi Arad predicted that Spider-man would gross over 400 million. To act holier than thou about it now, as if Spider-man was just a given to make that much, comes off to me in a very bad light. 400 million is a one in a thousand type of film, and no film coming out is ever thought of in advance to make that much... it's just unrealistic.
2) Comparing Spider-man (Marvel's, undisputed, most popular character) to Batman (DC's, arguably, most popular character) as movies go is not a 1 to 1 comparison. On the one hand you had a character who'd never had a film before in his 30+ year history. With Batman, you had a character who had 4 films in 8 years recently, with the last one, only 8 years ago, being one of the worst films of ALL TIME.
3) This isn't Ari's fault, but you have WB/DC not communicating properly to the general public that Batman is a complete reset of the franchise. I can't tell you the number of people I've heard describe this as a "prequel". It's infuriating.
Honestly, Spider-man and Shrek 2 might be a couple of the last films to gross that much in a theatrical run. I mean, if Revenge of the Sith can't do it, that's scary. The theater institution is in trouble due to the directions in which it's pushed itself the past ten year (higher and higher budgets, faster releases, more movies, less time in the theater... worse quality)... we will never again have a film like Titanic. Titanic made 600+ million thanks to teenage girls obsessed with Leonardo Dicaprio. Three girls I know EACH saw Titanic TWELVE times in the theater during its run. If Titanic came out today, besides the fact that the DVD would be out 5 months later, most of those girls would get a "good enough" bootleg off the internet (not saying it's acceptable) and gotten their fix that way.