Movie Master

Word of mouth for "Troy" collapsed, and even though Warner Bros. didn't want to admit it, it inevitably happened. The 51 points in the comprehensive media review have completely declared that the film is impossible to become the second "Ben-Hur". The dream of the awards season can be temporarily put away, and the most realistic goal is to focus on the box office; and With the end of the premiere weekend, audience feedback also ushered in an avalanche of tragedy.

The theater score is barely maintained at "B-", which is two grades lower than the "B+" of "The Day After Tomorrow"; reviews from 98 media on Rotten Tomatoes set off a frenzy, but the freshness is only 5% Fourteen, the score is set at 6 points; in addition, IMDB has attracted nearly 40,000 viewers to rate, and the score is temporarily maintained at 6.8 points.

Total fiasco! Total collapse! Total defeat! The word of mouth of the audience has ushered in an unbelievably heavy blow.

For an epic masterpiece eager to achieve a win-win situation in both word of mouth and box office, it can almost be said to be a tragic ending. What's worse, all the statistics of "Troy" are comprehensively at a disadvantage in front of "the day after tomorrow"—— It's sad enough that they're being compared to a commercial popcorn movie, and what's even more tragic is that they lost!

But the "Chicago Tribune" comment pointedly pointed out that "in the name of epic, it completely abandoned the elements of ancient Greek mythology, and reduced it to a popular and simple commercial movie-and it was still the bad kind." In other words, "Troy" is originally of the same type as "The Day After Tomorrow", and there is no so-called difference at all. What is really sad is that "Troy" feels good about himself, but his performance is not as good as that of "The Day After Tomorrow".

The only thing that can make Warner Bros., Diorama Pictures and Plan B Pictures happy is that the IMDB rating audience is approaching 40,000. Last week, after the premiere weekend of "The Day After Tomorrow", the number of rated viewers barely exceeded 30,000, so is this because the number of viewers of "Troy" far exceeds that of "The Day After Tomorrow", or is it simply because the number of people who rated "Troy" exceeds "the day after tomorrow"?

Ryan Kavanaugh would like to believe it is the former; but the cruel reality has destroyed his expectations.

"Troy" landed in 3,500 theaters across the United States on May 14th, making it the largest movie released so far this year. However, after the release of box office statistics on Friday, it surprised everyone. The million-dollar box-office stats caused consternation.

Almost everyone had the same reaction: Are the box office statistics wrong? It's only 17 million? Not to mention the premiere box office data of "The Day After Tomorrow", even for "Troy" itself, it is considered a failure if the box office did not exceed 20 million in a single day on Friday. But, it's only 17 million?

Seventeen million?

Unlike last week's "The Day After Tomorrow" box office of 28 million on Friday, when people saw the box office statistics of "Troy" on Friday, the shock and majesty were indescribable, and almost everyone fell into In a daze: what happened? In the end what happened? "The day after tomorrow" showed a dark horse posture and there are traces to follow, so what is the reason for the collapse of "Troy"?

"Entertainment Weekly" once again conducted a random sample interview with the audience of "Troy". For Brad, Eric Bana, who plays Hector, is even more brilliant", "It's a waste of cast, and the actors don't know what to say", "I thought that only Helen was a vase, but it turns out that apart from Hector Everything else", "No special effects, no mythology, no war, not even heroes, don't know what to watch", "It's boring, just a bunch of selling/meat", "Bula De is not suitable for Achilles at all, from the appearance to the performance, even to the portrayal of the characters, it is not like it, and it does not even have the charm"...

Negative responses throughout the story, even a small number of viewers expressed their approval of the appearance of the leading actors such as Brad and Orlando, but the words were still powerless to complain about the empty to boring plot, let alone the complete negative reaction to the whole movie of viewers responded.

However, one thing can be found in common, that is, many people have said that under the extremely high expectations, the finished product of the movie really cannot meet expectations. More than 80% of the audience clearly expressed this point during the interviews, and this became the biggest highlight of the sample interview process of "Entertainment Weekly".

This is a double-edged sword.

Throughout the publicity stage, "Troy" led the way, and it seems to have become the most watched blockbuster in this summer. Even if "The Day After Tomorrow" held its premiere last week, it was with the help of "Troy" that it attracted more attention. . It is no exaggeration to say that the expectations of "Troy" have broken the table.

In fact, "Troy" and "The Day After Tomorrow" are facing similar situations: the expectations brought about by the long-term publicity, and the hot topic effect after the opening of the summer file, all of these have created conditions for the film to achieve good results, but at the same time Facing the danger of chain effects caused by the "possibility of being lower than expected", the huge gap after the high expectations fell through made the situation fall directly to the bottom and into the abyss. Compared with "The Day After Tomorrow", the expectation value of "Troy" is not only one level higher, and the difficulty is naturally doubled.

But the difference is that "The Day After Tomorrow" relied on the thrills of popcorn movies and successfully met expectations—at least the expectations of the audience; but "Troy" disappointed the audience. The best footnote of the work.

After an in-depth study of the two films, Hollywood's internal publicity department found an interesting fact that the publicity strategy deserves further study.

The publicity method of "The Day After Tomorrow" caught everyone's eyes, but more importantly, the content of the publicity. During the promotional stage of the film, two themes were always closely linked, the consequences caused by the greenhouse effect, and "bringing them home", so All viewers focus on this. When the film was released, the computerized special effects of the end of the world won praises, and the touch of family reunion aroused the audience's sympathy, so when the film critics were mixed, the audience's word of mouth blossomed-especially the recommendation value soared.

"Troy" became a global sensation relying on traditional publicity methods, but the focus of their publicity has always revolved around Brad, including Brad playing Achilles, including the star cast with Brad as the core; In addition, the focus of the publicity is also closely related to the ancient Greek epic, which has formed a fixed influence of "epic blockbuster" in people's minds.

When the film was released, the lack of personality of the characters wasted a star-studded cast, and even Brad's Achilles was completely robbed by Eric; not to mention that the so-called epic was reduced to simple and crude. War movies, even without the support of Homer's epic, are applied to any other ordinary commercial blockbuster body, and the story makes sense, losing the core charm of the original. As a result, all expectations of the audience were dashed.

Simply put, it is whether the effect of the finished product meets the publicity expectations.

Along with this discovery, people also noticed two details. One is that Lance was once the director candidate of "Troy". Lance once showed the control of the scene pattern in "City of God". Nei Nei's sketches of the characters are also very impressive. If he directs "Troy", will the story be more charming and have more depth?

The other is that Lance thinks that Brad is not suitable for Achilles. He thinks that Brad's fame and status will become the screenwriter's fetters, resulting in an unnecessary shift in the focus of the entire story. Looking at it now, Lance's "joke" seems to be the truest portrayal of "Troy".

This is really an interesting detail, which has inspired many discussions in Hollywood.

But even so, the box office of 17 million in a single day on Friday still caused an uproar. Before the premiere of "Troy", all major media in the United States have made box office predictions for this film. As many as eleven media believe that the film's opening weekend can achieve a box office of 100 million, and it will dominate the second week of May. North American box office rankings; there are six other media that believe that the premiere score of "Troy" should be more than 84 million - refer to last week's data of "The Day After Tomorrow".

Of course, at the same time, seven media outlets gave predictions lower than 60 million, believing that "Troy" would be hit hard by "the day after tomorrow" and would not be able to reach the expected height. One of the lowest forecasts comes from The Boston Globe, a tabloid that puts the movie at just $53 million at the opening.

The official box office forecast given by Warner Bros. is 82 million US dollars, which is not too high, at least not the kind of domineering that broke the record - it is even lower than "The Day After Tomorrow"'s last week's results, but at least it belongs to the giant crocodile level. When Warner Bros. gave the official forecast, many media had already exclaimed and began to speculate:

The forecast of 82 million shows the confidence of Warner Bros., but considering that "The Day After Tomorrow" hardly encountered any opponents last week, while "Troy" has to face the market squeeze from "The Day After Tomorrow" this week, so This forecast data is very reasonable; but it can still be seen that Warner Bros. is cautious.

Still, with just Friday, all of those predictions are already out of the question. The single-day box office started at 17 million, which means that even if Saturday ushered in a counterattack at the box office, the premiere box office of "Troy" must be adjusted down to 60 million. The impact of word of mouth is not good, and this data must continue to be revised down.

Without the arrogance of 100 million, nor the strength of 80 million, the bad reputation of "Troy" is like a heavy shackle, which seriously drags down the momentum of the box office, and falls from heaven to the mortal world overnight—and the abyss The hell below is also close at hand.

And who could have imagined that the summer of 2004 would start like this: the generally pessimistic "The Day After Tomorrow" counterattacked, but the imposing "Troy" suffered a tragic defeat?