See, the length of a movie doesn't put me off. The longer the better for me! Considering a movie ticket in the UK is like £11 (so nearly 15 dollars) I want to get my moneys worth. God remember the days of Lord of the Rings when it was over 3 hours long? That didn't put the GA off. Titanic for example... that was like 10 hours long and it was HUGE.
I don't think we'll ever have a definitive reason as to why people didn't go to see it... especially as EVERYONE I know DID see it (my brother saw it three times) and loved it. Massive head scratcher.[/QUOTEdidLOTR and Titanic are accessible movies...BR 2049 irrespective of length isn't. The reasons are obvious:-
As much as I respect the intent of the production team it's an expensive art film that, it's final moments aside, is tonally bleak. It's failure is hardly baffling. Gosling draws only in romance oriented movies, Ford nowadays does only when he plays his most popular characters which Deckard isn't.
Film buff bros may scoff but also the lack of appeal to female cinemagoers ( and the criticisms the film has attracted in some quarters for it's supposed sexism) can't, in this age, be discounted.
As someone who grew up on blockbusters, on TV, such as Lawrence Of Arabia and The Godfather I don't want all big films to be generic yet I am aware that in order for ones that don't conventionally play to audiences to succeed they have to work on more than one level for multiple viewers.
In other words they need to be entertaining on a basic level whatever the artistic or intellectual purposes of the piece is. Remove all the action sequences out of The Matrix and Inception respectively for example and neither of those films do as well as they did. BR 2049 is thoroughly what it is and in this era that's commendable but like the original film the consequences of that is trying to attract the kind of audience who go in expecting one thing.
