Posted on 05/28/2006 11:30:50 PM PDT by dangus
The way I see it, Dan Brown should be very happy for Fandango, which allowed millions of theater-goers to see "The Da Vinci Code" before reading the reviews. Normally, movies don't crash, losing 57% of their audience in the second weekend. Especially not when the 2nd weekend is a holiday weekend and the first weekend was not. But normally people who see movies this stupid have already invested in their Jar-Jar Binks Happy Meal Action Figure. Go figure that the Happy Meal featuring a dead, naked museum curator with a pentagram scratched in his back didn't sell to well. (OK, I recycled that joke concept, but Da Vinci Code readers aren't known for having good memories.)
Come on, folks; the problem isn't Ron Howard or Tom Hanks. The problem is that you could read the entire 450-page book faster than you can watch the movie. I mean, I'm not saying that Brown is a devil-spawned, historically ignorant hack who simply makes stupid people feel smarter. But only because I'm alone at my keyboard and my cat kinda looks at me funny when I talk to her as if I expect her to know English.
I know, calling 60 million people "stupid" is no way to win friends and influence people, but by now I've used enough three-syllable words that I've lost most of them. My big issue is that the raves this story got proves how anti-Christian the nation's book reviewers are. Come on, this is the sort of book movie viewers should *warn* us about: "Caution: Put down this book and go smoke some pot. It will kill fewer brain cells and make you more capable of coherent conversation."
OK, Dan Brown fans. You don't have to respond saying, "it's only fiction." We all have heard that. First of all, Dan Brown has been all over all the talk shows insisting that the backstory is all true. But there's also something really nasty about making such horrific accusations of genocide against people in a backstory.
You see, backstories about historical peoples and characters usually are generally true. If they are preposterous, book critics will point it out, and knowledgeable readers' suspension of disbelief will be shattered, and they'll go tell their friends how stupid the book was. But Dan Brown's readers, apparently, aren't used to historical fiction, unless it's got that guy from the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" commercials on the front cover. Brown puts horrific slander in people's brain as little details, and the next time they hear those tid-bits, they say, "oh, yeah, I think I heard about that."
Some critics have pointed out how bad Brown's history is as if it were a product of his ignorance. This is not the case. Brown is quite well aware, I'm sure, that "Da Vinci" is not a name, as many critics have pointed out it isn't, but rather an origin. Please understand; he's trying to attract an audience which last read a book about Leonardo that was subtitled, "Heroes on a Halfshell."
As much as I'm picking on his audience for being nitwits, it actually is a simple truth that novels, since they contain far more information than a movie, can spend much more effort convincing people that something preposterous is actually believable. Many books I've read, particularly science fiction, have the more incredible portions of them toned down to maintain credibility. For instance, in the novel, "2010," we learned about plant life on Io by reading about how a Russian spacecraft was virtually devoured by a mobile plant; the novel could explain why Io might have mobile plants. In the movie, the crew thought they might have seen readings indicating a trace of photosythetic material.
There simply is no toning down the ridiculousness of Brown's story, because it's all necessary for the plot line. In the movie, it all seems so insipid that viewers apparently have been warning friends not to see it (as evidenced by its crash at the box office), if they are willing to admit to having shelled out $9 to see it in the first place.
ROFLMAO! Good one!
And, of course, the movie has not made NEARLY that much money. Domestic take: $136 million. Although certain to go into the black, it is still in the red. I'm guessing an ultimate profit margin of about 15%.
Yeah, somebody dropped a large hammer there a while back.....
You must live in a high-priced neighborhood. I've never paid $10 to see a movie.
It's fascinating to watch the denial of reality on these threads. People want the movie to fail, so they pretend that it is.
Looks like Jesus survived the DiVinci Fad, again!
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
I like HBHG, in spite of its having been thoroughly debunked and Pierre Plantard being a low-rent forger.
Thanks. The New Yorker's film reviews are, at times, sheer brilliance. I still remember the brutally hysterical bashing of "Star Wars ROTS"
>> the sole beneficiaries of the entire fiasco will be members of Opus Dei, some of whom practice mortification of the flesh. From now on, such penance will be simpleno lashings, no spiked cuff around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket, and two and a half hours of pain. <<
Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum are the two greatest confusion-writers of our time.
Clancy can't write a paragraph without military or scientific jargon, and Ludlum is addicted to new characters.
Trying to teach "The Bourne Identity" was one of the hardest tasks I've ever had. The class said, "Where did THAT guy come from?" so often, we started keeping a Bourne Identity Cast List.
With about 80% of America calling them selves Christian, and with only about 20% of the Christians then I would say the audience will dry up rather fast. Yes, they would get a major opening weekend but there is no sustaining audience.
I think you mean Dustin Hoffman. Richard Gere was nowhere near this particular stinker.
SoddomWood knew they had a profit from the readers alone. It didn't bring out any new people or generate the Passion they had hoped. Jesus survives another attack.
As for it's only fiction, he claimed it was true until he was called out a year or two ago.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Not the movie so much but the Saturday Night Live mockery, Hanks and Howard have lost a fan and for good. I used to be a Woody Allen fan until he proved himself a pervert. Have refused to see anything since.
Commercial success; professional failure.
>> Weird. Most people would think that a movie that has grossed $320 million in a little over a week is not sucking badly. <<
It's amazing how the movie's promoters always mindlessly parrot their daily talking points, no matter how well the issue has already been addressed.
>>>> I don't think anyone figured on preventing the movie from being profitable. At least in the U.S., the point of all the anti-DVC information was simply to counter the movies' lies. <<<<
I mean, I think it'd also be pretty obvious that I don't equate suckage with lack of an initial BO take, since the VERY FIRST LINE IN MY REVIEW is about how Dan Brown ought to thank Fandango for helping him sell so many tickets, and the second line uses the ENORMOUS BLOCKBUSTER, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace as the standard of a movie which sucks.
bump
YEah, OK... Hey, I fired my editor, whaddaya want? (Ref post #7, or thereabouts,)
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