Stop Loss ( Hollywood in general)

Joe Fan

Joe Fan

10,000+ Posts
Stop Loss is tanking at the box office, despite an expensive ad campaign and MTV branding.

" . . . opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M."

Anyone suprised?

When I see this, I cant help but wonder why they keep throwing money at these kind of movies? Sure the actors and writers get paid, but someone somewhere is on the line for the loss. Yet, despite a long list of established losers (Redacted, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, Home of the Brave, No End in Sight, Badland, Grace Is Gone) -- they keep cranking them out. Lions for Lambs did so poorly that it almost bankrupted a new production studio that has some big names associated with it.

What gives?

In reply to:
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You don't know much about Hollywood. Your statement about not caring about returns proves you've never bothered to read a thing about the crack house that is Hollywood. Money is the crack.

Every movie decision is a crapshoot. Why did Cinderella Man tank? Great movie, but I wasn't attracted to see it in the theatre. Why did Porky's become a franchise? It was sent out with hopes that it would just make a profit.

Also, Hollywood is not the monolith that outside, right-wing critics would have you believe. There is no "Hollywood" as they describe it. There is no grand council to decide either what to feed the masses to take their money or what to feed the masses to change their minds. Hollywood is an odd combination of swindlers, businessmen and creative people trying to find a working compromise between putting out a good product with some integrity and putting out a product that attracts the most money. Guess which side of that equation does the most (if not all) of the compromising.

Early Vietnam movies that were actually pretty good did not do well either. The market wasn't ready to reflect on the painful issue until some time had passed.

Decision makers in Hollywood, probably influenced by talent willing to attach themselves to projects reflective of their views of the war, did not guess that they would change minds. Their guess was that people would pay to see George Clooney in anything. He's bankable.

I somehow don't see an Iraq War version of "The Green Berets" doing bang up box office either.

In reply to:
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RV

Don't stop him, he's on a roll. Those evil Hollyweird liberals only make movies to make boys kiss and force real americans to eat brie.
 
Judging from the reviews, a lot of these movies are just bad. The decent one I saw (Valley of Elah) was heavy handed to the point of taking away from the rest of the movie. I'm not buying the "we aren't ready to face Iraq" angle. Nobody is going to look back in 15 years and think, "Damn, I can't believe Lions for Lambs didn't do better at the box office". Somebody made a good point in that some of these movies can get the talent, because the talent might really believe in the script and message. That might push forward a movie that wouldn't normally be up to snuff.
 
i think the biggest problem with these is how much we are pounded by the story already, thats the last thing anybody wants to see is even more iraq.
 
Your knowledge of the situation is overwhelming.
Valley of Elah was only a limited release
Redacted, also limited release not to mention alot of stupid protests by the right
Lions for Lambs, maybe people were kinda sick of Tom Cruise
No End in Sight was a documentary those historically preform great at the box office.

As far as needing a villain, maybe your world view is a tad simplistic for film.
 
Well put argument, I agree wholeheartedly. Much of the problem is the time issue. We're still at war in Iraq. The best Vietnam movies came out years after the war ended (Deer Hunter 1978, Full Metal Jacket 1987, Good Morning Vietnam 1987, Hamburger Hill 1987, Platoon 1986, Born on the 4th of July 1989, etc). It's hard to make a war movie, especially one with moral undertones, without the benefit of time and historical judgement.
 
I completely agree with the original poster.

Syriana was the one movie that really got me. It was completely predictable that the bad guys were the US government and, of course, the big bad Texas oil company. It's completely insane that portraying Texas oil companies and our government as conspiring murderers is the acceptable norm in Hollywood fantasy land.
 
Wow. A lot of you guys have a guilty conscience. Hollywood makes movies that it thinks it can make money on. That's it.

Really, Bourne made you feel bad? It was the CIA coming after him in the 1980 book too. Or Casino Royale, really? Has James Bond ever had a realistic villain? With Bond, people want ridiculous plot twists and ridiculous threats and demands.

Our covert ops are far from squeaky clean, and people like to see a gritty movie. We could have a movie where a guy just goes over satellite photos all day and then calls in an airstrike and it would be realistic, but it would make a ****** movie. People want to see the dirty side of it. They don't want absolute realism. They want to see one guy take out 15 men at once and converse fluently in 20 different languages.

There's plenty of Muslim terrorist movies that come out, too. Vantage Point, the Kingdom. What about WTC and United 93?

People have always liked the Euro sleezeball terrorists that are after money. Why single out Die Hard 4 when every Die Hard had Euro terrorists?

I can't say anything about Stop-Loss though because the only Ryan Phillippe movie I'll sit through is the Way of the Gun. I'm sure, however, that its a character study on a guy who doesn't want to go back into a warzone, no matter what warzone that may be.
 
if money is the only objective for all of these movies, then why are so may of these types of movies being released still? How many unprofitable movies have to be made before the bigwigs stop greenlighting new ones with the same storyline?
 
madscientist, the movies were all greenlit before the receipts from the last movie were in. Don't forget how long the development cycle is on these films.

The movies were initially greenlit because movies which cast unpopular wars in an unfavorable light typically have a pretty good return on investment. Hell, Hollywood did so well on Vietnam, they didn't stop making those movies until the late 90s. That name actors wanted to be associated with the projects made them seem like good bets. The bets didn't pan out, and I'd be surprised if you see as many anti-war movies in 09.
 
I wish we all had Michael Knight's condescending, know-it-all attitude. Then maybe we could all appreciate how Hollywood has it right, has no agenda and that only war movies portraying our soldiers as evil, narcisistic, killers are "intelligent."

I'm not going to speak of Hollywood's bias or willingness to throw money down the drain but has anyone ever considered whom the audience for a war movie might actually be? Obviously, soldiers, veterens, "American jingoistic cowboys" and the like are going to be very picky when it comes to a portrayal of something they care about. On the other hand, Leftist, peaceniks probably aren't going to flock to a war movie regardless of the portrayal. Who the hell exactly is the audience supposed to be?

I'm going to go watch Rambo now. At least I can grasp its realism.
 
I want to see a movie that shows how they hate us for our fraydum
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I'm just hoping Fondren can point me towards a newsletter or metting info for the 35 - 55 Armchair Rambos.
 
or even Shia Lebeouf in Stop Loss with the same exact story and it would've opened at number one.
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I don't think so...
 
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