By Emily Cutler | Videos | August 30, 2016 |
By Emily Cutler | Videos | August 30, 2016 |
So really, how does this happen? And by that I mean both the plot of the movie and the international best selling book upon which the movie is based, and the movie’s promotional campaign. Let’s start with the movie/book first.
The titular Louis Drax has had a life threatening accident on each of his previous eight birthdays. His ninth birthday sees him pushed off a cliff leaving him in a coma. How exactly did that happen? Well, given that he was on a birthday excursion with only his parents, my guess is child abuse. Child abuse is how that happened. But instead of using basic police work and intervening social services, Dr. Shades of Grey opts to use cutting edge technology to do a Vulcan mind meld with young Louis in order to discover if the actual culprit is his seemingly aggressive father, his too-perfect mother, or the sludge-moss monster that’s haunting his subconscious. Whatever it is that’s going on, Dr. Shades of Grey will sexily stare it down. Also Oliver Platt is there because he loves us, but hates himself.
From the point of the movie’s ad campaign, how did this happen? I know I don’t watch a lot of live TV, but I saw the first commercial on Saturday. The movie comes out on Friday. And regardless of how we feel about their box office work, both Jamie Dornan and Aaron Paul have proven they can make money. So how does a movie with the two of them, based on an international best seller, try to sneak into the theaters without anybody knowing about it?
And I get that smaller movies won’t have the budget to do Suicide Squad levels of publicity (thank God), but legitimately what’s the rationale of intentionally releasing a movie in a way that tells the audience the studio 100 percent doesn’t believe in it? Wouldn’t it be better to either A) do an actual campaign to hopefully trick some people into seeing it or B) do absolutely no advertisement and pray that word of mouth is decent? What exactly is the sense of telling the audience, “Here’s this thing that we believe is a turd. Do you want to pay us $12 to see it?”
Because unless that sludge-moss monster is somehow Hank Schrader seeking revenge on all those who harmed him and those that they love, no, I’m not interested in seeing that turd.