Endnotes and digressions from the
latest show:
* Let’s go backwards first. Late in the show, Vic asked what movie we thought was going to be the biggest hit this summer. I said that I wasn’t sure about that, but that I was pretty sure that Baywatch was going to be the biggest surprise. Let me walk you through my reasoning:
In order for a movie to find traction at the box office during the summer, it has to be able to find room to breath on opening weekend. That’s not easy when you have $200 million tent-pole flicks being released every seven days. So how does a mid-budget action-comedy such as Baywatch break through? Well, it’s being released on the same weekend as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales—the fifth installment of a tired franchise.
What do I mean by “tired”? The series has seen massive declines in box office since the second installment. When you
adjust for ticket-price inflation, Pirates 3 fell 30 percent from the series high and Pirates 4 fell by a whopping 55 percent. The Pirates franchise is dying and Disney either doesn’t realize it or (more likely) thought they could squeeze a few more pennies out of it before audiences abandon it completely.
So for a fresh movie like Baywatch to counter-program the same weekend as Pirates is just about the perfect situation. Baywatch doesn’t have to carry the weekend on its own, but can build its audience while scooping up the runoff of people who decide not to see Pirates. It’s the best possible strategic position for a new, mid-budget entry to occupy.
Of course, Baywatch isn’t entirely new. It’s being spun off of the massively pre-aware TV property. And here the prospects look good, too. A few weeks ago Power Rangers opened to $40 million on the strength of nostalgia alone. That’s probably an absolute floor for Baywatch.
Power Rangers was based on a kids TV show from a million years ago. It had no stars. And the movie was only so-so in terms of quality. The TV version of Baywatch ran for decades in syndication and is a cultural touchstone. The movie version looks pretty good. And it’s got a gigantic movie star sitting at the center of it.
And here let’s pause for a moment to talk about Dwayne Johnson. He’s one of the most beloved figures in entertainment today—seriously, he’s at the Tom Hanks-level of universal likability. As an actor he improves every movie he’s in. But his particular gifts work best in action-comedies. Johnson can work in just about any kind of movie—he’s that great a screen presence. But find a well-constructed action-comedy for him and he absolutely slays.
When you watch the
trailer for Baywatch what you see looks like a very crafty action-comedy with all the elements for success. It’s directed by Seth Gordon, whose calling-card is the classic documentary The King of Kong. It’s got a proven co-star in Zac Efron. The overall vibe of the project looks close to that of 21 Jump Street, which was (a) a great movie developed a cult following; and (b) grossed a surprising $138 million on a budget of just $42 million.
I think Baywatch is going to be significantly north of there and will be regarded as the (non-horror) surprise of the summer.
* I say the “non-horror” surprise of the summer because there are a slew of low-budget horror flicks coming out and at least one of them is guaranteed to catch on and become a sensation. That genre has become something like lottery scratchers for Hollywood: Cheap to buy and guaranteed to pay off at a certain rate.
* P.S.: The Rock for President, 2028. Let’s make this happen.
* On to other possible summer surprises, here’s the
trailer for Luc Besson’s Valerian. It looks . . . not quite as awesome as The Fifth Element? Yet still kind of awesome? I’m Ron Burgundy?
* Sonny mentioned that Warner Bros. executed a trade to get a piece of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Here’s a
piece on how it went down. It’s the first time I’ve seen a “player to be named later” kind of swap in Hollywood.
* On the subject of Transformers: My favorite of the bunch was the first one I ever got: Soundwave. Go ahead and
drink in the awesome. Vic’s favorite was
Shockwave. In the analogy of “Decepticons as Soviets,” where Starscream is Trotsky and Megatron is Stalin, Shockwave might have been—I’m just spitballing here—Chairman Mao? Bonus points if you can construct an argument for why the Decepticons are the real heroes of the Transformers series.
* Which brings us, finally, to “chav.” My brother-in-law assures me that
chav is a thing. A very real thing. He writes: “A good friend of mine lived in the U.K. for about five years and says that calling someone a ‘chav’ in the pub was a sure-fire way to get a beat down.”
Meanwhile, friend of the show Gabriel Rossman sent me a 2005
piece from the New York Times which is a portrait of Michael Carroll. Carroll had been an impoverished 22-year-old resident of a small-town in England with a long track record of crimes against public decency. Until he won the lottery and became a rich 22-year-old with a long track record of crimes against decency. He is the ur-chav.
I cannot convey how great this piece is. You simply have to read it. And pray for the day when Guy Ritchie makes a movie about Carroll’s story.
* As always, you can download the episode here and subscribe to the Substandard on iTunes or on Google Play.
You should leave us a five-star review on iTunes and tell us which movie you’re most looking forward to this summer so that Sonny can mercilessly mock you on next week’s show.
Sonny’s the best-worst.
