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Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value
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Comments
The JW sequel didn't do as well, but it was still profitable. We live in a world of hype and 'momentum', whether warranted or not.
Reminds me of the nominating system we have with primaries in the US. If someone finished 1st in the Iowa Caucus and in the New Hampshire Primary, why should that have any impact on a national election?
- whether or not the metanarrative makes sense to begin with
- whether the rules of the metanarrative never being clearly outlined is intentional "magic realism" style ambiguity or simply narrative discontinuity/carelessness
- whether they think the story is using the metanarrative to unfairly attack or stereotype some group they identify with (such as parents, AFOLs, men, capitalists, etc)
- whether they think the live action scenes are too boring, too unrealistic, too schmaltzy, etc.
- whether they think the LEGO characters don't, do, should, or shouldn't have narrative agency within the context of the metanarrative
- to what extent they identify specific characters in the LEGO world with specific human characters in the metanarrative
…and so on.I know that this was targeted toward @mustang69 and I'm not sure if I agree with this view but can definitely understand. Some of my favorite scenes from the first movie were the batman scenes but the opposite is true about the 2nd one. I thought batman in LM2 was too silly. Yes, he was silly in the first movie but it was a more subtle and smarter silly (more with jokes and what he says rather than just acting silly). This is a big part in why I didn't enjoy the 2nd one as much.
Slight aside, but I rather like how the Lego films treat Batman as the sum total of all of his parts. That there is no 'definitive' Batman, and all are one and the same. While leaning heavily on material from his screen incarnations, they also include nods to the character's publication history.
I think the more appropriate comparision would be to the Cars films. They were "it" for a couple of years there, and Disney pumped out as many sequels and offshoots that they could while it was hot. As we sit here 10 years later or so, they are no longer hot or even worthy of another film. The time has past. Now to kids of a certain age, they will be looked at as nostalgia to them someday, for sure. But beyond that group, they will just be "another movie". I feel TLM will fall into THIS catagory, not the timeless one. Its HARD to make a timeless ANYTHING, you cant predict it, it just happens. I dont think TLM could have EVER become timeless (with or without a sequel shortly after). It just wasnt good enough tbh. I'm not saying it wasnt good, just not good enough. But had they made a sequel right away, they could have gone the cars route and really taken it to the bank. Now it's just too late.
As far as Pixar goes, dont give them too much credit for anything. They have Toy Story yes, but beyond that they have a bunch of "good" films yes, but Toy Story is the only timeless one they have. It's pretty much carried pixar.
I doubt any of us thought a Toy Story 4 was coming, and I'm certainly not going to be surprised if a Cars 4 ropes in another generation of Disneyphiles.
Monsters Inc., Wall-E, Coco, Finding Nemo/Dory, Ratatouille, Up, and Inside Out. The Toy Story franchise has not carried Pixar by any means.
And The Incredibles are perhaps the best superhero movies ever made. (Not to mention that the two Incredibles movies grossed more than the three Toy Story movies.)
Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten a Robin Hood movie starring Elton John. Or a Mummy movie starring Ethan Hunt.
And maybe we'd be be marvelling over a really successful Solo movie that was released in December 2018... (and not a summer box office 'bomb' that still has generated $450M+ for Disney)
Are you pushing this movie to the twelve year-old audience that theoretically could make this another billion dollar film - or is it new crop of six year-olds that you would rather introduce into all of that sweet, sweet merchandising money? Or does it even matter because the goodwill with these characters is still so high from the first movie?
Is it Incredibles? Or it is TLM2? Both seemed to have really good legs in their first run. On their second run, one did bananas and the other was mediocre with their audiences.
The time between releases (brand recognition for Lego will never fade), the weather conditions surrounding it's release (ticket sales didn't climb when the storms let up), the quality of the film (nearly unanimous critical praise accompanied it's release).... all fall flat to me. I honestly think it just feels like too much of a finacial investment that parents are more than happy to skirt. They'd just rather buy their kid a trainable dragon action figure or Elsa doll after a jaunt to the cinema than a 40$ plus Lego set.
If Frozen 2 makes a billion this winter, it'll be less successful than Frozen. But if in 'hard' numbers it grosses literally one dollar more, I'm sure the marketing machine will claim it's the highest grossing cartoon not featuring blue cat people, purple scrotum chins or James Spader murderbots.
There was plenty of grumbling about Age of Ultron being not as successful as Avengers, but who is going to proclaim in various media outlets that a movie that generated $1.4B was not a success.
Especially if it involves animated princesses, blue cat people, Batmanses or lightsabers.
My daughter asked for a Princess Buttercup doll and was shocked there wasn't an entire line of Princess Bride paraphernalia at the store.
be attributed to inflation, but a lot more can probably be attributed to stuff going on behind the scenes, whether it’s inefficiency due to creative difficulties or just having to pay for the increased prestige of the first movie’s talent (after all, before they worked on The LEGO Movie, a lot of the cast was best known for TV sitcoms, not big screen starring roles!)
This is part of why I feel like The LEGO Movie franchise is hardly doomed to a direct-to-video future, as long as Warner Bros. can manage to bring costs back down from Disney or DreamWorks level to the more modest sort of budget that made The LEGO Movie’s box office success possible. The Captain Underpants movie a couple years ago demonstrated what huge profits are still possible on a more restrained budget, even from a major studio like DreamWorks.