Stiller and wilson have been in unsuccessful movies before (remember "Duplex", and "Around the World in 80 Days"?).
What is the point of this statement? Even A-list stars have their flops. My point was that Stiller and Wilson are big names in comedy, and box office draws.
I saw Duplex. It was horribly unfunny, and it was also dark. The main characters of the movie actually lose it and scheme to MURDER an old lady they don't like. Not the kind of movie that parents would take their kids to, unlike
Museum.
I haven't seen
Around the World in 80 Days, but AFAIK Owen Wilson is a mere cameo in that movie. The stars were an over-the-hill Jackie Chan (not in an action movie which people like to see him in) and Steve Coogan (who?). The ads and trailers did not prominently feature Owen Wilson. In fact, the trailer looked horribly kiddie with fake-looking visual effects.
I think you need a good screenplay and a good director as well to make a great picture. You just don't make $447 million dollars on a film off a $110 million budget and call it bad. I'm sorry. In fact there is no good and bad because there is no true way to measure that. It all depends on what the viewer's tastes will be, which is often hard to predict. What you can measure is wether a film is successful or not and that can be determined by wether or not it got its money back.
So you believe that if a movie is profitable, it's good? I believe the profits and the actual quality are two different things.
All I can say is that the last four films that Levy directed made more than its money back, so that shoud be an indication of the type of director he is. His most recent one made $447 million (which could equate to 70 million viewers if you want to look at it that way). According to a 2005 MPAA report on theatrical market statistics, a Neilson Entertainmen study held in August of that year showed that 81% of movie goers believed that their entertainment experience was money well spent, so I would lean to the belief that most of those people enjoyed the film in spite of what got them there.
Uh, what the hell? A study in
2005 about what movie goers thought about movies in general is supposed to show that people thought
Night at the Museum was good?
Look, I'm certainly not going to go or not go to a film because some film critic said so and I would certainly hope that you are an independant thinker as well. I have learned that lesson years ago.
I don't go to movies based on what any one critic says. But when the
majority of them say a movie sucks, that's a red flag to me. Experience has shown me that when so many people are in agreement over how bad a movie is, they're usually not that far off.
"Different strokes for different folks". I am going to go because I am interested in the genere or the story or some other element in the film. Yes, we are talking about appealing to wide audiences here because it betters the studio's chances of making money (because of the larger market size). I thought "Fantastic Four" was entertaining and my kids liked it too. I even own a copy on UMD for PSP and they watch it all the time. Those fans that say it was mediocre should be grateful that it made money else we wouldn't be getting an even better sequel.
They should be grateful that they got a movie that wasn't very satisfying to them, and butchered Dr. Doom?
Well, if you look at those reviews as a sample, out of the 16, only one disliked the film, "Night at the Museum". That and the fact that the film had 70 million or so viewers ought you tell you something about that critics review.
Do you not understand that 16 people is not a meaningful sample? If I show you a small group of people who loved
Battlefield Earth or
Gigli, does that mean anything?
But it does show that he can direct successful films. Keep in mind that he is not writing, but directing here and he did say that he was not going to make a comedy for "The Flash".
Tim Story didn't intend to make a "comedy" out of FF, but that didn't mean he knew how to make a good superhero movie either.
That is a matter of opinon. I thougt the series was good (as good as "Smallville") and was not given a chance. The period that it was aring was just not the right time for that particular show and there were fans that wanted more of The Batman.
A lot of people thought it sucked, and were displeased by the butchery of the source material (making Huntress a mutant, making the show look like an X-Men ripoff with "metahumans" running around everywhere, Black Canary being a teenager with psychic powers).
BTW, you keep bringing up box office to show that a movie is good. Yet BOP failed in the TV equivalent (ratings). Could it be that *gasp*, the number of people who see something isn't the same thing as how good it is?