Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

I love that TF isn't my Star Wars. I love it yes, but I don't have the fanboy mind for it. Basically I'll just watch this movie with an open mind. It'll still suck, but not because the TF's don't look like their cartoon conterparts or their names were changed. As a matter of fact I'm loving these new design elements and think they work well for the screen.

I feel for alot of you though, I guess if they ever made a Star Wars TV show and Jabba was blue, thin, and had legs, I'd be pretty pissed too.

Milanion wrote:
Because, as even you said, "worldwide" it earned about 25 times more than any other movie in the franchise.

Taco Bell, Trendmasters, whatever - that's not the movie. The movie is the movie. It was successful as a movie. It was the most successful of the Godzilla movies.

Milanion wrote:
Because, as even you said, "worldwide" it earned about 25 times more than any other movie in the franchise.

Taco Bell, Trendmasters, whatever - that's not the movie. The movie is the movie. It was successful as a movie. It was the most successful of the Godzilla movies.

It also cost about 250 times more to make. Toho's most successful films typically cost around 10 million and earn 18-20 million, nearly twice what they spent on it and their low production costs mean lower investment risks. They, like most big-budget films in the U.S., make a large chunk of their profit off of licensing and royalties.

You can proclaim Godzilla a genuine success based solely on it's worldwide earnings, but you'd be looking at it with blinders on. The risk the investors took eventually paid off but after the negativity the film spawned and the failure of the licensors to generate a profit they wouldn't have touched a sequel. If it were a genuine success it would have spawned sequels as planned, not been the mocked stillbirth of a planned domestic franchise. It was a critical and financial flop and everyone but Tristar got hosed by it.

EDIT: By those same standards, Burton's Planet of the Apes would have been the most successful Planet of the Apes film.

AbsumZer0 wrote:Toho's most successful films typically cost around 10 million and earn 18-20 million, nearly twice what they spent on it and their low production costs mean lower investment risks.

So 10 million profit is better than 150 million?

AbsumZer0 wrote:The risk the investors took eventually paid off

So again, you point out that the movie was successful. What happened as far a future investment in a sequel is irrelavant.

AbsumZer0 wrote:It was a critical and financial flop and everyone but Tristar got hosed by it.

So the movie was a success for the company that made it, but that should be overshadowed by the bad profit margins experienced by third party merchandise licensors that had nothing to do with the actual movie itself?

You are trying to make a point by attempting to make irrelavant factors overshadow relevant factors.

Milanion wrote:
You are trying to make a point by attempting to make irrelavant factors overshadow relevant factors.

Of course. He's one of the ones running around trying to tell people that they arn't real Transformer fans if they like the new movie.

Milanion wrote:So 10 million profit is better than 150 million?

To an individual, no, but to a company, yes, because you're doubling your investment without the huge risk.

Milanion wrote:So again, you point out that the movie was successful. What happened as far a future investment in a sequel is irrelavant.

No, it isn't. If it were a small independent picture then yeah, it would be a success. When you're producing major big-budget summer blockbuster and everyone whose put trust in your property gets screwed while you make a profit primarily because you demand an exceedingly large percentage of the box-office take in the first two weeks (after which nobody is going to see it anyway because of poor word-of-mouth) you've screwed-up. Consider how many merchandise tie-ins Tristar has managed to get since Godzilla. Their biggest budgeted film since then has been what... Silent Hill with 50 million? They made their money but they screwed themselves and they're back to small-budget independent films because of Godzilla.

Milanion wrote:So the movie was a success for the company that made it, but that should be overshadowed by the bad profit margins experienced by third party merchandise licensors that had nothing to do with the actual movie itself?

You are trying to make a point by attempting to make irrelavant factors overshadow relevant factors

The movie was a financial success for the company that made it. It was a financial flop as far as anyone else involved was concerned, making it a commercial flop, and the damage it did to Tristar in terms of their reputations and corporations willing to work with them probably wasn't worth it.

They're not irrelevant. The licensees are a huge part of the movie industry as a whole. If you can't grasp the relevance of critical failure and the financial losses of the 2nd-party companies then you're probably the sort who still doesn't understand why a sequel was never made and thinks a Planet of the Apes sequel is going to be announced any day now.

Ironhidensh wrote:

Milanion wrote:
You are trying to make a point by attempting to make irrelavant factors overshadow relevant factors.

Of course. He's one of the ones running around trying to tell people that they arn't real Transformer fans if they like the new movie.

Where exactly did I ever say or infer that? Seriously, I'd like to know.

I'm sorry, but these designs are terrible. If I wanted to watch Gundam, Evangelion, and other Anime series styled robots, I'd watch those shows/movies. Frankly, this movie is a complete "flipping of the bird" to the original series ALL THE WAY through to what we see now with Cybertron and the BinalTech/Alternators toys. Bay and company have taken a cherished and treasured franchise and turned it into typical cinematic Hollywood dookie.

Terrible. Simply terrible.

Word.

AbsumZer0 wrote:To an individual, no, but to a company, yes, because you're doubling your investment without the huge risk.

Interesting. I manage a company branch, and this is news to me.

AbsumZer0 wrote:When you're producing major big-budget summer blockbuster and everyone whose put trust in your property gets screwed while you make a profit primarily because you demand an exceedingly large percentage of the box-office take in the first two weeks (after which nobody is going to see it anyway because of poor word-of-mouth) you've screwed-up.

Re-read that, and think of it from Tri-star's point of view.

AbsumZer0 wrote:They made their money but they screwed themselves and they're back to small-budget independent films because of Godzilla.

Just because they couldn't make another blockbuster as big as Godzilla, doesn't have anything to do with Godzilla. That's the company's fault for not investing in lucrative properties. Again, this has nothing to do with Godzilla's success as a movie - just you trying to associate failure with it.

AbsumZer0 wrote:The movie was a financial success for the company that made it.

Yep, end of sentence.

AbsumZer0 wrote:If you can't grasp the relevance of critical failure and the financial losses of the 2nd-party companies then you're probably the sort who still doesn't understand why a sequel was never made and thinks a Planet of the Apes sequel is going to be announced any day now.

I'm the sort that knows when someone blindly wants something to be considered a "failure" for personal reasons, even when confronted with the basic facts. Since you refuse to accept facts which are relavant, I think I'm done with this one.

Milanion wrote:
I'm the sort that knows when someone blindly wants something to be considered a "failure" for personal reasons, even when confronted with the basic facts. Since you refuse to accept facts which are relavant, I think I'm done with this one.

And I'm the sort who knows when someone wants to believe something so badly they'll insist that everything but the one piece of information they think will prove their point to be 'irrelevant'.

Nearly every Hollywood rag, entertainment magazine, and news company has referred to the Tristar Godzilla as a 'flop' at some time or another.

"Despite slick computer special effects and a $125 million budget, U.S. studio TriStar's 1998 Godzilla was a colossal flop." -CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/ ... 7015.shtml

"The green monster was resurrected as a computer-generated creature in a Hollywood blockbuster five years ago but the $120m (£65.5m) film was a flop." -BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3529465.stm

"Some monsters just won't die, even when they flop on the big screen. Godzilla, that giant dinosaur that was seen ravaging New York this summer in the ultra-expensive Hollywood version of the Japanese cult classic, will return to the movies, this time with Japan's Toho Company."- CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/News/9812/14/showbuzz/

"Forget the abominable Godzilla imposed on the public two years ago by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. That state-of-the-art flop drained every ounce of fun from the franchise, replacing its adorable cheesiness with expertly computerized destruction." - St. Petersburg Times
http://www.sptimes.com/News/081800/Week ... _s_b.shtml

Google it and you'll find dozens more.

It was a flop. Tristar lost major industry credit over it. They were trying to get a piece of the summer-blockbuster pie and Godzilla was a major mis-step. The people involved in the film have admitted they made major mistakes. Believing otherwise doesn't change that.