The Lion King (2019)'s box office tells us how much people loved The Lion King (1994). Mufasa's box office tells us how much people loved The Lion King (2019).
Exactly. And as someone who actually saw Mufasa, it’s a good movie. Not great, but the songs are bangers, the animation is vastly improved from TLK 2019 (characters have actual expressions), etc. But since it’s a follow-up to a genuinely boring and pointless cash grab, nobody is going to see it.
@@QuintaFeira12 I disagree. The connection between Scar and mufasa was amazing. The tension was realistic. Loved it! Seems you're the soulless one here if you didn't feel that.
This is something I wish more people understood. Good marketing and brand recognition can make a bad movie succeed... once. But the studio is actively burning audience goodwill to make that success happen, and the consequences WILL be felt later. Short term gain, long term loss. Happens with game series a lot too.
Someone said once that it’s never enough for companies to have infinite money, they also demand infinite growth. Because having infinite money is apparently not enough.
This is literally the foundation of the modern stock market thanks to shareholders playing hot potato with everything. It doesn't matter how far the line goes up; a company could have a yearly profit of $600 trillion one year and then $598 trillion the next, and now suddenly they're a failure, people freak out, and their valuation starts to tank.
As of this last weekend, Nosferatu reached $100m globally on a $50 million budget, before that The Substance got $78m from less than $18m, and before that Godzilla Minus One hit $115m ish for less than $15m. None of them aimed for billions, all spent just what was needed, and as a result they all found their audiences and turned healthy profits. Hell, Get Out, a film that became a global phenomena in 2017 was only made for $4.5 million, proof if needed that it's not what you spend, it's how you spend it.
The 15 million for Godzilla minus 1 is a bit of a lie. Essentially the cast and crew and cgi team wanted to compete with the Godzillaverse movies so they worked overtime and extra hours to get it finished. Essentially its true cost is definitely north of $20 million. Still not bad for the money it made but isn’t as huge as they’re making it out to be.
You named three horror movies which are notorious for low budgets and a film made with Japanese work ethic. Try making an American sci-fi film for that level. Even the creator ended up being around hundred million I think
@ Also, Japanese labour laws and work culture are fundamentally different than those in the United States as well, making any one-to-one comparison difficult.
It's actually even simpler than this: Mufasa doesn't feature Shadow doing an Akira Slide on a motorbike up the side of a skyscraper, ergo there's a clear superior option
Fair. But not sure I could extrapolate larger industry trends out of that. (Darren starts editting Shadow into “The Marvels”, “Joker 2” and “Schindler’s L--“ Actually, just the first two.)
man those old clips of iron man 1 and 2 made me forgot how physical and real the iron man suit used to feel :'( they really lost that in later installments
The crack at Disney making thousands at the box office reminds me of when I saw "The Nut Job" at the cheap theater with my kid, and she was like, "That movie was awesome. It must have made thousands of dollars!". I chuckled at that and thought, that's probably a good take for that movie.
It's bizarre to me that every financial bro out there will say "DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO" and everyone will agree - and then we keep seeing this shit with studios putting all of their eggs in only a couple baskets. Not just that, but those baskets are ALL worn down and falling apart, bc they're too scared to pay someone to make a new basket that may somehow end up faulty.
The funny thing is they're setting themselves up for a situation where they have relied so much on raggedy franchises that they have nothing anyone wants anymore
It really feels like a cargo cult mentality from the shareholders and studio heads, reproducing things they don't understand in hopes on getting similar results.
@@LaurieCheers I know the original quote you're referencing came from Einstein, if i'm not mistaken. But i will always find hilarious that an Ubisoft game popularized this quote to must people
Yep. Making you care about the characters. I don’t know who the heroes of “Secret Wars” or “Doomsday”, what their arcs are and what their relationships are to one another.
Maybe if crops could talk. A bad movie that fans don't want will get people telling others not to go see it. No matter how much you fund or market it, no matter how many sequels. People don't need to see your movie either, whilst they do need to eat, there is always demand for food good or bad, bad movies are ignored and forgotten about.
@@cattysplat I mean, crops are grown based on market demand for them. If people stop eating potatoes, or stop paying for them, farmers will stop growing them. (See, for example, the issue with cocoa farming. Because rubber is more valuable on the international market, African farmers are growing less cocoa. Which, in cause you're wondering, is why so many of your chocolate bars now have filling. Because there's less cocoa to make chocolate, because demand for rubber is higher.)
@@Darren_Mooney Speaking of chocolate filling, I recently discovered up to 100% of the chocolate we get in America is filled with lead and heavy metals
At this point, I don't particularly feel sad for Hollywood if the movies and television shows they keep producing underperform. It's not like we don't have a back catalogue of far superior films and programming stretching back more than a century. The only hope of bringing in audiences on a massive scale is a hard creative reboot to define what makes a movie 'successful', but that'll no doubt take time and that's not something Hollywood seems to have grasped. Good work takes time, effort and passionate people involved, bad work is none of those things.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier for Hollywood to erase a lot of that back catalogue thanks to the decline of physical media and the rise of streaming.
The world was accepting to making one change to Lion King but not two. At this point no one cares about the cgi . Especially if the whole movie is cgi. Id rather have the original drawn up animation.
I caught a quick video on youtube the other day that mentioned how Jon Favreau's Lion King was shot with real camera angles moving in augmented reality (ua-cam.com/video/CupdZeOJus4/v-deo.html) that I thought was a really interesting way to direct and shoot a CGI film. I don't know if Mufasa used similar techniques. I still didn't see it but an interesting way to look at how not all CGI is the same.
@@kkattrap cheers ill take a look. The live looking stuff to me just doesn't hold up to the old artist. I miss the old school stuff that they really worked and are proud of
It's also interesting how people might develop new connections to long existing franchises. One detail I spotted about Alien Romulus was how much new fans that came into the series via Alien Isolation were big supporters of the new film. The 2014 video game that was initially considered a disappointment in sales but had a sort of prolonged life from regular sales etc had built up quite a big following and the movies own director mentioned it influenced his approach to the movie. It clearly hit a chord with a younger newer fanbase that showed up a long side more cautious jaded older fans.
@@JuanxDlol Yep as I mentioned the director himself stated it influenced his approach to the movie and he intentionally put a bunch of those props in as a nod to it.
Don't forget that there was likely far more people who watched content creators make lets plays of scary videogames at this time. So the influence is far more than just sales numbers.
This is basically an extended, film-focused version of the 30 Rock joke where Jack Donaghy's plan to improve NBC's profitability includes "Make it 1997 again through science or magic."
When I saw that this film was coming, my only response was "Who even asked for this?". They already tried this origin story approach with Solo and it was a notorious disappointment. It's like flushing money down the toilet.
Hey, Mr. Film industry. I'd like you to meet Mr. Fossil Fuel industry. I think you might like each other; you already have a lot in common, so I think you'd both really hit it off!
"In this part of the economy? Localised within the entertainment industry?" "yes!" "Will it make graph go more up?" "no." "DISNEY! THE MCU IS ON FIRE! HELLLLP!" "No Marvel, that's just our infinite growth." "Well Disney, you're an odd corporation. But you still made made millions in profit."
It seems like it's the only thing capitalists know how to do anymore. I wonder when it will collapse and I wonder what will happen to the rest of us when it does
It's too bad shareholders and CEO's must have infinite growth. Anything less is failure, so nothing will change. We're just going to watch them all run these massive ships into the ground chasing an impossible goal. The games industry is currently speed running this future.
Maybe it's the expectations of infinite growth that the studios feel like they are failing when they just seem to be doing fine just as long as the cut back some of the budgets.
Yep. It’s the need to post several billion dollar grosses in a given year. Like, set aside debates about the quality of the movie (impossible to do in UA-cam comments), but the moment that Warners’ production model on their DCEU films completely imploded was when “Batman v. Superman” only made $900m, instead of a billion, and set in motion a series of increasingly panicked and contradictory business decisions that basically destroyed that arm of the studio. Again, not talking quality. Talking simple finances.
I just watched a video about fast food going through this same pain as movie studios - infinite growth is impossible and they're going to start self-cannibalizing trying to make it happen.
God just look at video games. Infinite growth has sent the entire industry into freefall as they drive more and more people away with predatory monetization and bloated hardware prices. Ubisoft is going to be on the verge of collapse if they don't turn their ship around fast which would have sounded insane 5 years ago.
Let's not forget another very important factor in leisure and entertainment products (like movies) making less money: Who can even afford to go to the movies these days? Dear corpos: If you want us to buy your products, you need to pay us living wages.
Funny thing is that Henry Ford figured this out over a hundred years ago. He knew his business wasn't going to do much for itself if even his own employees couldn't afford to buy what they were producing.
100%. 2020's box office falling off a cliff was completely unsurprising because nobody could even go to the theatres, but past that and the impact it had on people's theatre-going habits (paired with the expansion of the streaming market, as Darren noted), the long-term economic impact of the pandemic has meant that many people can barely afford necessities, let alone spending $20+ on a couple hours of entertainment. With less disposable income, people have to be choosier about which movies they see in theatres instead of waiting for a home/streaming release. That inevitably means less overall revenue.
It’s the Christmas release corridor. If you put a family friendly movie there, there’s a very real chance it can overcome a disappointing opening weekend to make a reasonable total (“Greatest Showman”, “Aquaman 2”).
@@Darren_Mooney Doesn't help that Disney thought they were sly enough to believe that they can artificially recreate the Encanto phenomenon where the soundtrack drives interest for the film, but this time translate that into ticket sales. Although I doubt "I Always Wanted a BRUDDA" will even have the same lasting power of "We Don't Talk About Bruno". Lin-Manuel Miranda is a big draw sure (even inferior facsimiles were apparently enough for audiences to flock to Moana 2 after years of exposure to Moana 1 on D+), but he is still bound to having to copy what Elton John and Tim Rice did with the original Lion King songs.
Maybe if Disney execs stopped getting cold feet and changing half the movie in post production, they could actually break even on some of their movies. I think another issue is that by trying to appeal to everyone, they cast too wide a net and the end product suffers for it.
Yep, having to do reshoots and VFX crunch is a large part of why these movies cost as much as they do. One of the reasons that Christopher Nolan's budgets tend to be surprisingly reasonable is because he doesn't run over, he doesn't need reshoots and he generally finishes slightly ahead of schedule. (I suspect that is also why Villeneuve's "Dune" movies were such a bargain.)
Hollywood movies keeps flopping is actually giving people in America to try foreign movies. For non-American (at least in my country), it's just reminder to support local movies. There are more movies from Japan, China, Korea, being released on local cinema alongside with American and local movies.
Foreign films are to Hollywood what indie and AA are to AAA gaming. The more the latter puts out trash, the more appeal the former has to audiences that never would've checked them out.
@@Darren_Mooney Are we seeing a replay of the end of the Hollywood Golden Age, when audiences got tired of big spectacle musicals and historical epics and embraced grittier, more mature foreign films?
@@digitaljanusAnd the emergence of a New Hollywood? That is my most optimistic reading of the situation. But I don’t know. Even in the New Hollywood era, studios (and the companies that ran studios) were owned by people who liked movies, and I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
@@Darren_Mooney Great analysis and intelligent insights can only get you so far in the video essay industry. Clever wordplay and cheeky visuals are how you one-up the competition.
You can also add audience disappointment and indifference in obvious cash-grab films. Particularly with Sony and Disney, I see a lot of fan just disinterested in anything they produce, especially with big franchises. Sonic works because not only is it new...but it's actually good and listens to their fanbase in a positive way. The studio earned a lot of respect changing the Sonic model after the backlash and taking responsibility for it. We as fans LIKE when a studio accepts their mistakes and works WITH us to improve things.
Even without the pandemic, this should have been expected. You can't recycle the same properties over and over forever. People eventually get bored. Nostalgia wanes, especially when you don't have time to romanticize it
Another thing I'm sure people have noticed, 2019-2020, covid happened locked everyone away indoors. Streaming services popped up to bring in revenue since everyone was stuck to their homes. Fast foward to now, and it's bitten them in the ass. As a consumer, you have little incentive to go see a new film if it'll be on a streaming service in half a years time. It really is now, if you want to bring people into cinemas, you have to give things that we can't wait to see
Meanwhile the Monsterverse has just chugged along and Minus One was a huge success considering its budget and language with a win for VFX, one of the first wins that has felt earned in a long time Calling it now, monster movies are going to have a more major resurgence very soon
Kaiju movies are all about seeing giant monster comit violence on other giant monster, the plot is mostly an afterthought. How much does Megalon being an Atlantean beetle god actually matter when Jet Jaguar and Godzilla show up?
@Telcantar86 I agree the Monsterverse is really the only other successful "cinematic universe" for a number of reasons. -Not too many movies to follow even after 10 years. - The expanded media is supplemental yet not needed to get what's going on. No need to do homework. - The movies themselves after 2014 don't take themselves too seriously and not very complicated. - Overall they are just fun popcorn experiences.
Ironically, Monsterverse and Sonic are technically the only currently succesful cinematic universes right now. I like both of them (the Godzilla movies especially), it's just kinda funny. Godzilla's a global icon that'll take breaks but never truly die down in culture. He's like Batman.
Someone ought to tell these studios that "too big to fail" is no longer a thing anymore. Failure is absolutely something that can and will get you if you continue to bugger it all up like this.
Ironically, the ones that have best recaptured the success of 2019 are directors. Bong Jo Ho, Greta Gerwig, Rian Johnson, Robert Eggers all had successful small/mid budget films that year and went on for greater success. Almost like Hollywood should focus less on franchises and more on hiring creative filmmakers.
The Sonic films were one of those projects I'm happy got to have a growing success over time in spite of the 1st movie's middling reception. It gave the property a chance to slowly learn over time (starting with redesigning the character to look better after the original design) and be able to develop a franchise. I'm very happy Sonic 3 is as good as it is, and that's because the series wasn't scrapped after the 1st attempt.
Absolutely - but we must be cautious here. After all, the problem could very easily repeat itself with Sonic as well. While I'm sure that 4 will be good too, it will have to stop at some point before it gets milked too much.
@@Drekal684To use the math in this video, if we’re still getting a steady stream of “Sonic” sequels after 2032, then we might need to worry. (I’m trying to think of exceptions. And they all tend to reboot or take long breaks. James Bond recasts. “Fast and Furious” effectively resets with “Fast Five.”)
I have to believe that a lot of this downtrend is also the result of audiences wisening up to the decline in quality of these films, much like how gamers wisened up to live services.
15:05 I'd also like to bring up _Godzilla Minus One_ (2023, dir. Takashi Yamazaki) here. Admittedly, it having the 70-year-long proven track record of the _Godzilla_ name on top of its small budget of $10-15 million basically meant that there was no way it _wasn't_ going to turn a profit, but pulling in $115 million against that budget *and* winning the big G his (IMO long overdue) first Academy Award (appropriately, for Best Visual Effects) is certainly noteworthy.
Very fair, but also a lot to potentially unpack there, with Japan being a very different economy than Hollywood. But, yeah, there's no reason that more blockbusters can't be planned/budgeted/shot like "The Creator." Admittedly, that one example didn't work. But it still lost less for Disney than "The Marvels."
Disney misunderstood the reason for the live action Lion Kings success. People wanted to see what a live action version an animated classic would look like. If it was true to the original. If the characters were as expressive. If the musical numbers were as vibrant and bombastic. Mufasa was always going to flop, because the only thing going for the first remake was the novelty.
I have been absolutely murdered by the fact that you have called "the Lion King," an animated movie, live action I know what you mean, but, like, come on
Well, it’s Hollywood economics. Rule of thumb is a movie has to make between 2.5x and 3 times its budget back to turn a profit. Couple of reasons for this: (a.) box office is split with theatres, (b.) box office can be shared with creatives like stars and director, and (c.) there are lots of “hidden” costs like P&A - prints and advertising - that aren’t officially part of the film’s budget.
@@Darren_Mooneyall true, but could be completely avoided if studios stopped pumping insane budgets into their movies. There's no reason all the biggest movies throughout the year have to be big spectacle blockbusters. If they invested modest budgets to a wide variety of scripts and gave more power to creative voices it'd be a win win. Just do what blumhouse does basically, the model is right there. Instead every studio is just chasing the MCU, a model that's worked once and is currently dying.
@@thecriticalgamer8462 Absolutely true. (And this gets into basic production stuff like having a finished script, so you don’t have to do weeks of reshoots and fixes in post.)
If it cost 200m to make then they lost a shit ton on money it. Theaters get 40-50% of the take and there are other costs as well that aren't included in the publicized budget. Typically a movie doesn't break even unless it makes 2x it's budget.
You're forgetting about advertising costs. Franchise films tend to spend more on advertising, even those with modest budgets. An $80 million film that's a brand new property might spend an extra 30% on advertising but an $80 million comic book film will spend an extra 50% on advertise.
The idea of taking a mega success like an Avenger's Endgame isn't to make an even BIGGER movie...its to reset, set up a new, cheaper franchise continuation in a new direction with lower budgets, more planning, and an endgoal to see what sticks, and adapt the plans to include that...while also starting several new IP ideas in new areas to look for the next big thing. Keep the budgets modest but tight, look to create great value, and see if the audience pays attention. Besides, Deadpool 3 was fun...but only if you're a giant comic book nerd. Otherwise, not worth it.
I'm paying for Disney+ There is no way i will ever see a disney movie in theaters again because i will have it in the comfort of my home within a couple of months
I've heard people suggest that the push for RTO is blunting interest in going to the movies. If you spend an hour commuting to sit on zoom for 8 hours and then another hour home; you really don't have a lot of interest in commuting again to stare at another screen for 2-3 hours and also pay $50 for the privilege.
It was funny seeing all of those box office flops, all of which would have earned a very good sum if they only managed to stick to their last movie's budget instead of inflating it heavily.
The thing I don't get about movie budgets is ..where's the money all going? We see big expensive movies, but they're not usually all that visually impressive. Save the biggest names, most actors and set workers are struggling. Cgi artists are scraping by and crunching . As with everything, we're paying more for a worse product and the actual people who produce it are struggling.
Ignoring obvious exceptions like, say, Downey getting a sizable chunk of that “Avengers” budget: reshoots and VFX crunch. Even if you’re not paying VFX artists well, you’re employing a lot of them and making them do a lot of work very quickly. They aren’t being compensated fairly for the work they’re doing and the hours they are putting in, but they are being paid. That’s why Villeneuve and Nolan, for example, are able to stretch their budget so far, because they plan in advance, lock down their script, and don’t need reshoots or to remake the movie in post production.
Marketing. It's usually half of a movie's budget. That audiences are more split in how they get their media, older audiences with traditional TV/newspapers/radio and even Gen X and Millennials using different sites/apps from Gen Z and Alpha, makes it much harder for marketing to reach a wide audience.
True enough, although Fox was swallowed in 2018/2019, right? (I was watching "Spy" over the weekend. Maybe the best studio comedy of the past decade, give or take "Game Night", and *of course* it's from a studio that no longer exists.)
Its always greed. One of the big overlooked problems is how the home theater experience tends to be so much better than the movie theater experience. The last time I went it cost $15, another $10 or so if you want popcorn and a drink. Then you're in a theater with people constantly talking over the movie looking at their bright phones. The management won't stop these people and it gets in the way of doing the thing you're there to do, watch the movie. I'm better off just waiting a couple of months, buying the blu-ray, and enjoying it at home. Its not like I'm missing anything waiting that couple of months. Heck the best experience I had over the last couple of years was going and watching an early showing of the Fifth Element because it was a nearly empty theater and an early showing that was a bit cheaper.
To be fair, adjusted for inflation, it kinda is. “The Brutalist” was made for $10m in Europe, which is nuts. It should have been a $30m to $40m American production. It’s a “Great American Movie” that nobody in America will make any longer.
Amazingly creative uses of small stages and CGI. Go look up some of the behind the scenes, they used all the old tricks with smart CGI *and a great storyline* to make it sing.
When your projected revenue (1bil box office) rely on the equivalent of getting 15 cents from every single human being on earth, then maybe, just maybe, your expectations are be skewed and overestimated.
Why the hell would I go see a movie right now? The cost is insane and it's taking everything just to pay for food and a home. Don't see our incoming oligarchs helping with that so yeah, movies are way down the list.
The puzzle is solved, but remember the difference between a puzzle and solution so you know how to work at it. Thanks for teaching us, Professor Layton
As correct as I think this take is, I also think the real reason behind these films flopping is a bit simpler. They just aren't very good, and audiences are catching on to how bad they are. You can only watch so many films that just don't deliver before you stop going to see the next installment.
If Tarantino built a career out of blatantly collating film tropes, some Gen-Alpha film director is going to do the same for the terminally online. Forget Boomers, even _Millennials_ will be like "what on Earth did our kids just watch?"
The characterisation of Sonic as a new cinematic franchise for families, while technically correct, doesn't quite cover why the most recent movie was been so successful. Sonic as a franchise in general has been about since the early 90s and there's been a new game every 4 years or so. However it's common consensus that they've been a very mixed bag so I suspect a lot of kids know Sonic through the same cultural osmosis through which they might know Indy. I think a big part of it is that there's an infamously passionate adult fanbase which has been clamouring for decades to see more of these characters and the cinematic adaptation is clearly interpreting them, as you can see from other comments on this video, in a way those people really like. That a lot of that fanbase probably have their own children too is likely helping a lot.
it doesn't help that Hollywood execs keep hiring abysmal writers/directors. People who are far more interested in their self insert characters. They Lash out at the audience declaring them insert convenient -ists if their content has any criticism. Makes for a miserable experience all around.
There is something truly perverse about judging an industry as artistic and wildly variable as cinema with the kind of soulless perfunctory expectation of a box factory. 2019 was a gross outlier - setting your expectations to that is asking for pain.
Movie making is a business designed to make products that sell to most number of customers to maximise profits. You may not like it but that's what it is. The only difference between a success or failure is if the customer is buying what you are selling.
@ Actually, even assuming you are completely rejecting any notion of artistic merit (which is debatable, but for the purposes of this argument let’s accept it), the only difference between success and failure is whether you make a profit. It doesn’t matter that more people paid to see “Quantumania” than “Morbius.” It matters that because “Quantumania” cost more than “Morbius”, “Morbius” made a significantly greater profit.
Is there perhaps any weight to Disney spending this amount of money on movies in order to increase demand/spending on their theme parks? I've heard arguments that the reason it's worth giving RDJ all the money to be Dr Doom is that they can then put this character in their parks completely masked up for cheap later.
That makes no sense, movie studios are billion dollar revenue which, even in a bad year is several times more than what they make at a theme park. Sure they can put this character in the theme park, but they're quite happy using non-masked characters through the park like Indiana Jones. So no. always follow the money I doubt the parks are even a consideration.
@@EdwardFairburn You say "many times", but in 2023 "Disney Entertainment" (movies, tv, streaming) generated $40 billion in revenue while their "Parks & Entertainment" division pulled in $32 billion. And that's a pretty recent switch.
When was the last time you heard of someone going to a theme park? For me, it was Jenny Nicholson's review of the "Avatar" park (2018?), but that may reflect more on me than anything else.
@@kingdead42 "Parks" is outdoor stuff. The other bit is that one named "Entertainment" is theatrical & video (video is still non-theatrical, they made discs and tapes until recently). As to why both have "Entertainment" in the name, I'm unsure.
@@typacsk Disney isn't just theme parks. They have cruises, tours, they own a couple castles in Europe, etc. It's a huge operation, and until very recently the backbone of their business.
3:47 "It'd be foolish to bet against Avengers Doomsday and Secret Wars" Well call me Boo Boo the Fool then, because I have no confidence this upcoming dumpster fire is going to make money, let alone be GOOD.
Oh, I’d be very surprised if they’re good. But I reckon they’ve decent odds of being “Avengers” and “Ultron” level hits, at least. I agree “Endgame” seems unlikely. But who knows?
People show up for events. It only needs to be decent to be successful. No Way Home made 2bn off of cameos. Deadpool & Wolverine was big too. A lot of the people staying home for Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels will probably show up for Avengers 5 and 6. Spider-Man meeting Deadpool, Wolverine, Tony Stark Doctor Doom and a billion cameos will get people in seats.
Ironically, if they wanted to try and damage control over the cultural fracking, they really need to frack some more: milk rereleases for all they're worth. How many classics exist that feel so much more amazing on the big screen? The work's already been done
The lesson about not making everything a hyper-expensive blockbuster was learned back in the 60s and 80s. Both of those decades saw studios trying to make bigger and bigger films before realising 1) the market is only so big and 2) spectacle through budget has a limited appeal. This slump (or potential bubble burst) was always coming, but it could have been avoided if studios had taken away what you've talked about where you build up broad interest slowly for a large, future payday. Instead, I think with the AI bubble we're just gonna see more and more films like Mufasa until the tech over-saturates and takes a large part of the industry with it in the fall or Disney and the other top studios take the nuclear option and leverage their IPs to destroy what we understand as film entertainment. These studios are incapable of sustainability and are too big to be moved by the market incentives of even the most die-hard capitalist.
I feel part of why movies are having a tough time now compared to 2019 is that some of those movies were... not very good. What I think execs don't see is that the result of the current movie, is a lot part of the previous one. Toy Story 4 scored a lot of money, not so much because its a good movie, but because Toy Story 3 was a good movie (I have heard not pretty things about TS4). MCU Series, like Loki, did well because Avengers Endgame. But the rest of the series, and movies after, did not so good because of the previous series. Loki was ok, but not MCU worth, and the following series was not as good as Loki, and the next series was not as good as the previous one, etc etc. It might also depend on what Disney counts as "success". If you can watch a movie for a whole family of 4 cheaper in your house than going to the cinema, why go to the cinema? Disney+ is still making money... just not as much money, but I don't know if they are counting Disney+ into the equation.
Yes the damage to reputation by a bad movie in a series, causes the next movie to suffer in sales, regardless of if it is good or bad. It has to rebuild it's reputation.
The absolute desperation in mainstream forms of entertainment is spreading like metastatic cancer. The AAA game industry is on the ropes. Hollywood's starting to look like Muhammad Ali in the 10th round of the Trevor Berbick fight. The NBA's ratings are in the tank and it hasn't had a superstar crisis of the magnitude of 40-year-old LeBron since Michael Jordan's second retirement. The NHL is losing popularity even in Canada. Major League Baseball has turned into Calvinball with its rule changes. We are entering another pop cultural Dark Age on a level not seen since the early aughts. I genuinely wonder what's going to come out the other side.
To be fair, I think that’s maybe tied to other broader cultural forces outside the remit of a pop culture video series. Next decade (and change) is gonna be rough, I fear.
@@carlschrappen9712 The same could be said of the industry in 1983. Which is where I think western AAA is headed. Nintendo's just gonna keep on Nintendo-ing like they have since '85.
If Marvel pulls off a bait-and-switch with Chris Evans and Robert Downey, since their characters are rumored to be evil doppelgangers, I really have to wonder what the audience thinks.
I remember that being a great year for movies in large part because I had an AMC A-List membership and was going to the movies once or twice a week. Given how early on that was for the service and others like it, I wonder how much those effected the box office and that year's reputation.
Not a bad point. There were also just more movies in general and more variety of movies as well - although the range of movies had been shrinking for about a decade at that point too.
Yeah, it really was something special to go see a different film in a different genre every few days. I mostly go to my local reperatory theater now, I don't see as many new movies but I still get that same variety.
Some box office reporters I follow suggest that Hollywood should have treated the $100-$300 million China would contribute to blockbuster box offices as found money instead of a reliable income stream. Because comparing any pre-2020 film with a 2020s release should have an asterisk indicating that Hollywood films rarely screen in China anymore. Maybe this will have the knock on effect of bringing budgets down to manageable levels.
Bruh, I completely forgot about that. The bad blood that has resulted between China and the US, itself a result of the covid blame game (and, of course, the ignorant, paranoid, psycho politics that started the blame game) has cost the American economy A LOT of money. Your point is very well taken, and Hollywood should probably adjust to that reality.
Honestly, many people have seen this coming with streaming becoming more and more popular. The comparrison is easy: you can spend either 20 bucks, for example, for a movie ticket for the night and maybe some snacks, OR: you can pay 20 bucks and gain access to a gigantic library of shows and movies in the comfort of your home, including new stuff for a few months. Don't need to think much about what honestly makes more sense money-wise for the vast majority of people. Add to this how messy most big budget movies have become (Because it is now more so then ever a gigantic gamble if a movie becomes financially succesful) because the higher ups are getting cold feet faster, and here you go. The amount of stories we get to hear of movie productions where basically heavy changes are made more or less directly before said movie is supposed to release are wild.
So... How do you think Yatzee feels knowing Sonic movie 3 did well? He never liked the franchise taking itself seriously but Sonic Movie 3 took itself seriously and was a massive success.
@gayanudugampola8973 Sonic 3 had Jim Carrey do a synchronised laser hallway dance alongside another Jim Carrey... that movie did not take itself too seriously. If children are laughing in a cinema... not a serious movie.
Mega budget movies are *required* to be international successes because at some point there physically aren’t enough domestic customers to make a profit, which then affects the substance of the film trying to please everyone
To be fair, this is arguably a general trend with blockbusters. The same is true even internally within the United States with the notion of a four-quadrant hit. Time was, parents would drop the kids at “Beauty and the Beast” while they see “Cape Fear.” Now everyone has to see “Beauty and the Beast.”
You can't go back to 2019. And you cannot solve cinema's problems by churning out endless sequels - the Film Stories website currently lists more than 150 sequels to earlier films that are currently in development. It took years to build the momentum of the MCU, and even Disney is going to find it hard to replicate that sequence of events. Plus you add in the drain of streaming on audience numbers and how quickly films come to home screens (either through digital services or more rapid DVD/BluRay release), and you are left with Hollywood scrabbling to earn that much ever again (even allowing for inflation). High-profile flops like Joker Folie a Deux need to be learnt from, and NEW IDEAS must be nurtured rapidly.
2019 was anomaly in pop culture when MCU, Game of Thrones and Star Wars had massive finales (which all sucked in my opinion). I think Cats cursed us with covid and box office slops.
the only people going to watch these kinds of films are either captive audiences who will buy literally anything with the right brand slapped on it, or in disney's case, families who are trying to find a movie to entertain the kids for the afternoon. a lot of people have checked out of the mainstream box office entirely. there's nothing in there worth spending 20 bucks a ticket for, plus an additional 30 for popcorn and drinks
and since this is a primarily gaming channel, it is worth noting that AAA publishers are doing the exact same thing. With the difference that Hollywood is still behind on widespread mtx and manipulative fomo so Hollywood does not have those insane profit margins.
I personally really enjoyed the second Joker movie. It was a very interesting take on mental health and how the system lets broken people fall through the cracks.
No way share holders relent and focus on sustainability. But those that do and do as you pointed out Darren, diverse movies on controlled budgets and grow the ones that catch fire, they'll be there to rake in the cash......while unfortunately other studios take the wrong message....again. The ciiiiircle of liiiiiife!
To be fair, Universal are doing a decent job of it, allowing for their “Jurassic Park” and “Fast and Furious” movies. Nolan, Peele, Eggers. Their recent adaptations of their horror properties, arguably including “Nosferatu.” But yeah, it’s really just them. Sony and Paramount don’t release enough movies anymore. Lionsgate, Disney and Warners are largely franchise-blind.
I mean the problem isn't a movie problem it's a consistent problem across all mature parts of the economic system. Shareholders demand constant exponential growth even in developed mature fields that no longer have substantive room for further growth and should by all sane rights be focused on cultivating a stable and sustainable economic equilibrium.
Yep. That said, this is a pop culture show, so the focus is understandably on films. Plenty of commenters have made the point that it applies just as readily to AAA games. And I know it also applies to music, politics, and various other facets of public life as well.
The sony spider-verse may have turned a profit, but clearly Sony execs were tired of being humiliated because they clearly fired the head because of the failure of Kraven.
I feel like the biggest problem is marketing, All the normal channels to reach people are dying so unless the podcast circuit starts getting much more active about and evolved to promote movies, The same way and cost with which they promote vitamins lol I genuinely just don't see those working out long term Google ads are overpriced, tv commercials are overpriced And neither is particularly effective. I genuinely getting butts and seats My wife and her bestie. We're genuinely stoked to go see wicked, But number one. They thought it came out a week later than it actually came out And worse movie theaters are shrinking, there is two dead zones where ideally there would be a movie theater that they could both meet at. That would be somewhat equidistant to both of them Instead one of the two of them has to go 2/3rds+ to get there. I think Hollywood is very wisely embracing the hey give us 20 bucks and you can rent the movie that's still in theaters. But That's not being marketed the same way it needs to be
I am disappointed that you didn't use any of Snyder's slo-mo farming sequences from Rebel moon part 2 during the farming metaphor, come on Darren Snyder gift wrapped that for you. Also it does seem like slowly but surely the mid-budget movies are making a comeback first through critical appreciation & now audience appreciation.
Yep, the real problem is crazy budgets. It's the same with videogames: AAA games are huge gambles, so you fail twice ina row and you see Ubisoft today. It's not impossible to build a surefire ultra-expensive hit, but the amount of effort making sure you are building the right thing needs to be much higher
That farming metaphor for movie production is a really insightful one. Definite high point of the video for me, even edging out cultural fracking. All in all, a good watch, thank you for the upload.
The Lion King (2019)'s box office tells us how much people loved The Lion King (1994). Mufasa's box office tells us how much people loved The Lion King (2019).
@@Yodelingviking Exactly!
Exactly. And as someone who actually saw Mufasa, it’s a good movie. Not great, but the songs are bangers, the animation is vastly improved from TLK 2019 (characters have actual expressions), etc. But since it’s a follow-up to a genuinely boring and pointless cash grab, nobody is going to see it.
@@Monocular0 I actually watched mufasa and that movie is completely fucking devoid of soul.
@@QuintaFeira12 I disagree. The connection between Scar and mufasa was amazing. The tension was realistic. Loved it! Seems you're the soulless one here if you didn't feel that.
This is something I wish more people understood. Good marketing and brand recognition can make a bad movie succeed... once. But the studio is actively burning audience goodwill to make that success happen, and the consequences WILL be felt later. Short term gain, long term loss.
Happens with game series a lot too.
Someone said once that it’s never enough for companies to have infinite money, they also demand infinite growth. Because having infinite money is apparently not enough.
To quote the “Wolf of Wall Street” trailer: enough is never enough.
This is literally the foundation of the modern stock market thanks to shareholders playing hot potato with everything. It doesn't matter how far the line goes up; a company could have a yearly profit of $600 trillion one year and then $598 trillion the next, and now suddenly they're a failure, people freak out, and their valuation starts to tank.
Shareholders demand infinite money this quarter, and then more money next quarter.
@@scottbutler5 Infinity + 1 then the next year Infinity + 2 then the next year Infinity + 3 and on and on it goes, when does it stop? nobody knows.
As someone else countered, "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell."
"Cultural Fracking" might be one of the best descriptions of recent studio behavior.
Thank you. I read it somewhere years ago, and it’s been bouncing around my head!
He's used it on this channel before.
"*desperate* cultural fracking"
As of this last weekend, Nosferatu reached $100m globally on a $50 million budget, before that The Substance got $78m from less than $18m, and before that Godzilla Minus One hit $115m ish for less than $15m. None of them aimed for billions, all spent just what was needed, and as a result they all found their audiences and turned healthy profits. Hell, Get Out, a film that became a global phenomena in 2017 was only made for $4.5 million, proof if needed that it's not what you spend, it's how you spend it.
“Get Out” made it to nearly half a billion, right?
The 15 million for Godzilla minus 1 is a bit of a lie. Essentially the cast and crew and cgi team wanted to compete with the Godzillaverse movies so they worked overtime and extra hours to get it finished. Essentially its true cost is definitely north of $20 million. Still not bad for the money it made but isn’t as huge as they’re making it out to be.
Godzilla minus one was so good
You named three horror movies which are notorious for low budgets and a film made with Japanese work ethic. Try making an American sci-fi film for that level. Even the creator ended up being around hundred million I think
@ Also, Japanese labour laws and work culture are fundamentally different than those in the United States as well, making any one-to-one comparison difficult.
It's actually even simpler than this: Mufasa doesn't feature Shadow doing an Akira Slide on a motorbike up the side of a skyscraper, ergo there's a clear superior option
Fair. But not sure I could extrapolate larger industry trends out of that.
(Darren starts editting Shadow into “The Marvels”, “Joker 2” and “Schindler’s L--“ Actually, just the first two.)
Nice seeing you here in the wild ♥
Also no Jim Carrey going hard as a motherfucker opposite himself to a Chemical Brothers song.
Huh, you might have a point. I've literally never cared about the Sonic movies, but now I want to see the third one.
I was pleasantly surprised to see he picked up a gun. He didn't cap a fool, but I'll take it. I needed something to keep me entertained in that movie.
man those old clips of iron man 1 and 2 made me forgot how physical and real the iron man suit used to feel :'( they really lost that in later installments
Yep. It’s a real shame he stopped wearing even the helmet.
Oh no, the poor billionaires aren't able to make lines go up forever.
Yep. But the real suckers are those of us who have to sit through “Mufasa”, “The Marvels”, “Fury of the Gods” and so on.
This just in: infinite growth with infinite acceleration not possible in a finite system with finite resources.
The crack at Disney making thousands at the box office reminds me of when I saw "The Nut Job" at the cheap theater with my kid, and she was like, "That movie was awesome. It must have made thousands of dollars!". I chuckled at that and thought, that's probably a good take for that movie.
Ha! Love that story.
To paraphrase Steph Sterling: just because you copied a successful movie, it doesn't mean you'll copy its success
Thank God for them
It's bizarre to me that every financial bro out there will say "DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO" and everyone will agree - and then we keep seeing this shit with studios putting all of their eggs in only a couple baskets. Not just that, but those baskets are ALL worn down and falling apart, bc they're too scared to pay someone to make a new basket that may somehow end up faulty.
The funny thing is they're setting themselves up for a situation where they have relied so much on raggedy franchises that they have nothing anyone wants anymore
There was a Mufasa movie?
Apparently!
"And in the new movie, you get to see him as a little kid!" - Patton Oswalt circa 2006
@@cyanmantaMo’ fasa.
I guess
Boo-fasa.
"cultural fraking" is such a good way of describing it
Thank you! It’s a very evocative phrase.
It's spelled fracking, just to let you know
It really feels like a cargo cult mentality from the shareholders and studio heads, reproducing things they don't understand in hopes on getting similar results.
This is actually a perfect metaphor.
The definition of capitalism: doing the same thing again and again and expecting the same revenue?
@@LaurieCheers I know the original quote you're referencing came from Einstein, if i'm not mistaken. But i will always find hilarious that an Ubisoft game popularized this quote to must people
"Franchising is like farming..." Thank you! Part of the reason why the first Avengers movie was so great was that they spent years building up to it.
Yep. Making you care about the characters.
I don’t know who the heroes of “Secret Wars” or “Doomsday”, what their arcs are and what their relationships are to one another.
Maybe if crops could talk. A bad movie that fans don't want will get people telling others not to go see it. No matter how much you fund or market it, no matter how many sequels. People don't need to see your movie either, whilst they do need to eat, there is always demand for food good or bad, bad movies are ignored and forgotten about.
@@cattysplat I mean, crops are grown based on market demand for them. If people stop eating potatoes, or stop paying for them, farmers will stop growing them.
(See, for example, the issue with cocoa farming. Because rubber is more valuable on the international market, African farmers are growing less cocoa. Which, in cause you're wondering, is why so many of your chocolate bars now have filling. Because there's less cocoa to make chocolate, because demand for rubber is higher.)
@@Darren_Mooney Speaking of chocolate filling, I recently discovered up to 100% of the chocolate we get in America is filled with lead and heavy metals
@@MaxOakland Well, that’s one way to cut the cocoa.
At this point, I don't particularly feel sad for Hollywood if the movies and television shows they keep producing underperform. It's not like we don't have a back catalogue of far superior films and programming stretching back more than a century. The only hope of bringing in audiences on a massive scale is a hard creative reboot to define what makes a movie 'successful', but that'll no doubt take time and that's not something Hollywood seems to have grasped. Good work takes time, effort and passionate people involved, bad work is none of those things.
Yep.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier for Hollywood to erase a lot of that back catalogue thanks to the decline of physical media and the rise of streaming.
@@mattmuir2160 Nah, as long as we have BitTorrent, everything is fine
A good thing Hollywood isn't the entirety of the Movie Industry, only the epicenter.
People gotta eat
The world was accepting to making one change to Lion King but not two.
At this point no one cares about the cgi . Especially if the whole movie is cgi.
Id rather have the original drawn up animation.
I caught a quick video on youtube the other day that mentioned how Jon Favreau's Lion King was shot with real camera angles moving in augmented reality (ua-cam.com/video/CupdZeOJus4/v-deo.html) that I thought was a really interesting way to direct and shoot a CGI film. I don't know if Mufasa used similar techniques. I still didn't see it but an interesting way to look at how not all CGI is the same.
@@kkattrap cheers ill take a look. The live looking stuff to me just doesn't hold up to the old artist. I miss the old school stuff that they really worked and are proud of
@@kkattrap surf's up did the same thing. That's how they got the handheld camera/documentary look
Me too
Well, why watch barely emoting CGI lions, when you can watch Sonic 3 Baybee!?
why watch either, might as well go watch nosferatu.
Fair question.
@@ComboSmoothFair answer.
Shadow Sweep.
(Would also recommend Transformers One, but I think it's left cinemas now.)
Sonic 2 was like half an advert for some resort, I'll pass
It's also interesting how people might develop new connections to long existing franchises. One detail I spotted about Alien Romulus was how much new fans that came into the series via Alien Isolation were big supporters of the new film. The 2014 video game that was initially considered a disappointment in sales but had a sort of prolonged life from regular sales etc had built up quite a big following and the movies own director mentioned it influenced his approach to the movie. It clearly hit a chord with a younger newer fanbase that showed up a long side more cautious jaded older fans.
> into the series via Alien Isolation
There was also a lot of Alien Isolation props, references and visual styles through the movie.
@@JuanxDlol Yep as I mentioned the director himself stated it influenced his approach to the movie and he intentionally put a bunch of those props in as a nod to it.
Don't forget that there was likely far more people who watched content creators make lets plays of scary videogames at this time. So the influence is far more than just sales numbers.
This is basically an extended, film-focused version of the 30 Rock joke where Jack Donaghy's plan to improve NBC's profitability includes "Make it 1997 again through science or magic."
I should have used that clip.
When I saw that this film was coming, my only response was "Who even asked for this?". They already tried this origin story approach with Solo and it was a notorious disappointment. It's like flushing money down the toilet.
Shareholders. Shareholders asked for it.
Shareholders, that's who
Transformers One: let me show you how to do this right
Yeah but this time it's a different toilet! You never know what might happen.
@@Drunkencrono I think that's exactly the creative process that led to Skibidi Toilet.
Wait, you're telling me that a major industry is using unsustainable practices in an attempt to attain short term growth? In this day and age?
Shocking, right?
Hey, Mr. Film industry. I'd like you to meet Mr. Fossil Fuel industry. I think you might like each other; you already have a lot in common, so I think you'd both really hit it off!
"In this part of the economy?
Localised within the entertainment industry?"
"yes!"
"Will it make graph go more up?"
"no."
"DISNEY! THE MCU IS ON FIRE! HELLLLP!"
"No Marvel, that's just our infinite growth."
"Well Disney, you're an odd corporation. But you still made made millions in profit."
It seems like it's the only thing capitalists know how to do anymore. I wonder when it will collapse and I wonder what will happen to the rest of us when it does
It's too bad shareholders and CEO's must have infinite growth. Anything less is failure, so nothing will change. We're just going to watch them all run these massive ships into the ground chasing an impossible goal. The games industry is currently speed running this future.
Maybe it's the expectations of infinite growth that the studios feel like they are failing when they just seem to be doing fine just as long as the cut back some of the budgets.
Yep. It’s the need to post several billion dollar grosses in a given year.
Like, set aside debates about the quality of the movie (impossible to do in UA-cam comments), but the moment that Warners’ production model on their DCEU films completely imploded was when “Batman v. Superman” only made $900m, instead of a billion, and set in motion a series of increasingly panicked and contradictory business decisions that basically destroyed that arm of the studio.
Again, not talking quality. Talking simple finances.
That what late stage capitalism does to you. You end up with a unsustainable insatiable greed.
@ Cinematic Soylent Green.
I just watched a video about fast food going through this same pain as movie studios - infinite growth is impossible and they're going to start self-cannibalizing trying to make it happen.
God just look at video games. Infinite growth has sent the entire industry into freefall as they drive more and more people away with predatory monetization and bloated hardware prices. Ubisoft is going to be on the verge of collapse if they don't turn their ship around fast which would have sounded insane 5 years ago.
Let's not forget another very important factor in leisure and entertainment products (like movies) making less money: Who can even afford to go to the movies these days?
Dear corpos: If you want us to buy your products, you need to pay us living wages.
This is also very true!
Funny thing is that Henry Ford figured this out over a hundred years ago. He knew his business wasn't going to do much for itself if even his own employees couldn't afford to buy what they were producing.
100%. 2020's box office falling off a cliff was completely unsurprising because nobody could even go to the theatres, but past that and the impact it had on people's theatre-going habits (paired with the expansion of the streaming market, as Darren noted), the long-term economic impact of the pandemic has meant that many people can barely afford necessities, let alone spending $20+ on a couple hours of entertainment. With less disposable income, people have to be choosier about which movies they see in theatres instead of waiting for a home/streaming release. That inevitably means less overall revenue.
Exactly! It's like the meme with the dog who wants you to throw the ball but doesn't want to let go of it
The fact that Mufasa even has a box office is concerning
It’s the Christmas release corridor. If you put a family friendly movie there, there’s a very real chance it can overcome a disappointing opening weekend to make a reasonable total (“Greatest Showman”, “Aquaman 2”).
@@Darren_Mooney Doesn't help that Disney thought they were sly enough to believe that they can artificially recreate the Encanto phenomenon where the soundtrack drives interest for the film, but this time translate that into ticket sales. Although I doubt "I Always Wanted a BRUDDA" will even have the same lasting power of "We Don't Talk About Bruno". Lin-Manuel Miranda is a big draw sure (even inferior facsimiles were apparently enough for audiences to flock to Moana 2 after years of exposure to Moana 1 on D+), but he is still bound to having to copy what Elton John and Tim Rice did with the original Lion King songs.
"They're making literally THOUSANDS of dollars over there!" was a hilarious line.
Thank you! Very proud of that, and the accompanying silly joke.
Maybe if Disney execs stopped getting cold feet and changing half the movie in post production, they could actually break even on some of their movies.
I think another issue is that by trying to appeal to everyone, they cast too wide a net and the end product suffers for it.
Yep, having to do reshoots and VFX crunch is a large part of why these movies cost as much as they do. One of the reasons that Christopher Nolan's budgets tend to be surprisingly reasonable is because he doesn't run over, he doesn't need reshoots and he generally finishes slightly ahead of schedule. (I suspect that is also why Villeneuve's "Dune" movies were such a bargain.)
Execs shouldn't be changing anything. They're not writers. They're not filmmakers. They are business people. They need to remember their place
Hollywood movies keeps flopping is actually giving people in America to try foreign movies.
For non-American (at least in my country), it's just reminder to support local movies.
There are more movies from Japan, China, Korea, being released on local cinema alongside with American and local movies.
This is not a bad point. I think streaming has also encouraged audiences (American and otherwise) to embrace “foreign” content.
Foreign films are to Hollywood what indie and AA are to AAA gaming. The more the latter puts out trash, the more appeal the former has to audiences that never would've checked them out.
@@Darren_Mooney Are we seeing a replay of the end of the Hollywood Golden Age, when audiences got tired of big spectacle musicals and historical epics and embraced grittier, more mature foreign films?
@@digitaljanusAnd the emergence of a New Hollywood?
That is my most optimistic reading of the situation. But I don’t know. Even in the New Hollywood era, studios (and the companies that ran studios) were owned by people who liked movies, and I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
I've always been a big fan of European films, actually.
I’m surprised that this is the first time I’ve heard the “hindsight is 2020” pun. Regardless, excellent execution.
Hey, I’m good at what I do.
… well, for a certain value of “good.”
@@Darren_Mooney Great analysis and intelligent insights can only get you so far in the video essay industry. Clever wordplay and cheeky visuals are how you one-up the competition.
@ Thank you!
Shareholders and art are two things that should not blend together.
Remember Hollywood, plant the seeds, reap the rewards.
*Hollywood:* Reap the rewards, got it.
“Reap, reap, reap, reap, reap! Boy, this’ll never get old. Is there something we’re forgetting? Nah. Where was I? Reap, reap, reap, reap, reap!”
You can also add audience disappointment and indifference in obvious cash-grab films. Particularly with Sony and Disney, I see a lot of fan just disinterested in anything they produce, especially with big franchises.
Sonic works because not only is it new...but it's actually good and listens to their fanbase in a positive way. The studio earned a lot of respect changing the Sonic model after the backlash and taking responsibility for it. We as fans LIKE when a studio accepts their mistakes and works WITH us to improve things.
Even without the pandemic, this should have been expected. You can't recycle the same properties over and over forever. People eventually get bored. Nostalgia wanes, especially when you don't have time to romanticize it
Yep. The video touches on this.
Another thing I'm sure people have noticed, 2019-2020, covid happened locked everyone away indoors. Streaming services popped up to bring in revenue since everyone was stuck to their homes.
Fast foward to now, and it's bitten them in the ass. As a consumer, you have little incentive to go see a new film if it'll be on a streaming service in half a years time.
It really is now, if you want to bring people into cinemas, you have to give things that we can't wait to see
Yep. The video touches on that. Hell, even without the pandemic, Disney+ launched in November 2019, in what feels like a grim punchline.
"Franchises are like farming" is a really smart line
Thank you. It’s the best metaphor I could think of.
That CGI lion King making 1.6 billion 2019 shows how powerful Nostalgia bait was and how low standards the normie audience has
Meanwhile the Monsterverse has just chugged along and Minus One was a huge success considering its budget and language with a win for VFX, one of the first wins that has felt earned in a long time
Calling it now, monster movies are going to have a more major resurgence very soon
People like monkey movies.
Except when they star Robbie Williams.
Kaiju movies are all about seeing giant monster comit violence on other giant monster, the plot is mostly an afterthought. How much does Megalon being an Atlantean beetle god actually matter when Jet Jaguar and Godzilla show up?
@@JonCrs10
True, but a really good human story like in Minus one is a very welcome and we should get more of that.
@Telcantar86
I agree the Monsterverse is really the only other successful "cinematic universe" for a number of reasons.
-Not too many movies to follow even after 10 years.
- The expanded media is supplemental yet not needed to get what's going on. No need to do homework.
- The movies themselves after 2014 don't take themselves too seriously and not very complicated.
- Overall they are just fun popcorn experiences.
Ironically, Monsterverse and Sonic are technically the only currently succesful cinematic universes right now. I like both of them (the Godzilla movies especially), it's just kinda funny.
Godzilla's a global icon that'll take breaks but never truly die down in culture. He's like Batman.
Someone ought to tell these studios that "too big to fail" is no longer a thing anymore. Failure is absolutely something that can and will get you if you continue to bugger it all up like this.
Ironically, the ones that have best recaptured the success of 2019 are directors. Bong Jo Ho, Greta Gerwig, Rian Johnson, Robert Eggers all had successful small/mid budget films that year and went on for greater success. Almost like Hollywood should focus less on franchises and more on hiring creative filmmakers.
Yep. I was thinking that, but the video was already long enough!
Absolutely. Barbie is the only movie I saw in theaters that year
The Sonic films were one of those projects I'm happy got to have a growing success over time in spite of the 1st movie's middling reception. It gave the property a chance to slowly learn over time (starting with redesigning the character to look better after the original design) and be able to develop a franchise. I'm very happy Sonic 3 is as good as it is, and that's because the series wasn't scrapped after the 1st attempt.
Absolutely - but we must be cautious here. After all, the problem could very easily repeat itself with Sonic as well. While I'm sure that 4 will be good too, it will have to stop at some point before it gets milked too much.
@@Drekal684To use the math in this video, if we’re still getting a steady stream of “Sonic” sequels after 2032, then we might need to worry.
(I’m trying to think of exceptions. And they all tend to reboot or take long breaks. James Bond recasts. “Fast and Furious” effectively resets with “Fast Five.”)
I have to believe that a lot of this downtrend is also the result of audiences wisening up to the decline in quality of these films, much like how gamers wisened up to live services.
15:05 I'd also like to bring up _Godzilla Minus One_ (2023, dir. Takashi Yamazaki) here. Admittedly, it having the 70-year-long proven track record of the _Godzilla_ name on top of its small budget of $10-15 million basically meant that there was no way it _wasn't_ going to turn a profit, but pulling in $115 million against that budget *and* winning the big G his (IMO long overdue) first Academy Award (appropriately, for Best Visual Effects) is certainly noteworthy.
Very fair, but also a lot to potentially unpack there, with Japan being a very different economy than Hollywood. But, yeah, there's no reason that more blockbusters can't be planned/budgeted/shot like "The Creator." Admittedly, that one example didn't work. But it still lost less for Disney than "The Marvels."
Disney misunderstood the reason for the live action Lion Kings success. People wanted to see what a live action version an animated classic would look like. If it was true to the original. If the characters were as expressive. If the musical numbers were as vibrant and bombastic. Mufasa was always going to flop, because the only thing going for the first remake was the novelty.
I have been absolutely murdered by the fact that you have called "the Lion King," an animated movie, live action
I know what you mean, but, like, come on
jeeeez a movie profits over 200 mil and its considered under performing.
Well, it’s Hollywood economics. Rule of thumb is a movie has to make between 2.5x and 3 times its budget back to turn a profit.
Couple of reasons for this: (a.) box office is split with theatres, (b.) box office can be shared with creatives like stars and director, and (c.) there are lots of “hidden” costs like P&A - prints and advertising - that aren’t officially part of the film’s budget.
@@Darren_Mooneyall true, but could be completely avoided if studios stopped pumping insane budgets into their movies.
There's no reason all the biggest movies throughout the year have to be big spectacle blockbusters. If they invested modest budgets to a wide variety of scripts and gave more power to creative voices it'd be a win win. Just do what blumhouse does basically, the model is right there.
Instead every studio is just chasing the MCU, a model that's worked once and is currently dying.
@@thecriticalgamer8462 Absolutely true. (And this gets into basic production stuff like having a finished script, so you don’t have to do weeks of reshoots and fixes in post.)
If it cost 200m to make then they lost a shit ton on money it. Theaters get 40-50% of the take and there are other costs as well that aren't included in the publicized budget. Typically a movie doesn't break even unless it makes 2x it's budget.
Damn Darren, fortunately dunking on Folie a Deux never gets old. 😆
To be fair, my thoughts on “Folie á Deux” are… “complicated.” (It’s not good, but it is fascinating.)
You're forgetting about advertising costs. Franchise films tend to spend more on advertising, even those with modest budgets. An $80 million film that's a brand new property might spend an extra 30% on advertising but an $80 million comic book film will spend an extra 50% on advertise.
The idea of taking a mega success like an Avenger's Endgame isn't to make an even BIGGER movie...its to reset, set up a new, cheaper franchise continuation in a new direction with lower budgets, more planning, and an endgoal to see what sticks, and adapt the plans to include that...while also starting several new IP ideas in new areas to look for the next big thing. Keep the budgets modest but tight, look to create great value, and see if the audience pays attention.
Besides, Deadpool 3 was fun...but only if you're a giant comic book nerd. Otherwise, not worth it.
I'm paying for Disney+
There is no way i will ever see a disney movie in theaters again because i will have it in the comfort of my home within a couple of months
I've heard people suggest that the push for RTO is blunting interest in going to the movies. If you spend an hour commuting to sit on zoom for 8 hours and then another hour home; you really don't have a lot of interest in commuting again to stare at another screen for 2-3 hours and also pay $50 for the privilege.
That’s an interesting read. Hadn’t thought of it.
It was funny seeing all of those box office flops, all of which would have earned a very good sum if they only managed to stick to their last movie's budget instead of inflating it heavily.
Yep.
The thing I don't get about movie budgets is ..where's the money all going? We see big expensive movies, but they're not usually all that visually impressive. Save the biggest names, most actors and set workers are struggling. Cgi artists are scraping by and crunching . As with everything, we're paying more for a worse product and the actual people who produce it are struggling.
Ignoring obvious exceptions like, say, Downey getting a sizable chunk of that “Avengers” budget: reshoots and VFX crunch.
Even if you’re not paying VFX artists well, you’re employing a lot of them and making them do a lot of work very quickly. They aren’t being compensated fairly for the work they’re doing and the hours they are putting in, but they are being paid.
That’s why Villeneuve and Nolan, for example, are able to stretch their budget so far, because they plan in advance, lock down their script, and don’t need reshoots or to remake the movie in post production.
Marketing. It's usually half of a movie's budget. That audiences are more split in how they get their media, older audiences with traditional TV/newspapers/radio and even Gen X and Millennials using different sites/apps from Gen Z and Alpha, makes it much harder for marketing to reach a wide audience.
I feel an important thread line irl is that the number of studios making these films have shrunk drastically over the last 10 years.
True enough, although Fox was swallowed in 2018/2019, right? (I was watching "Spy" over the weekend. Maybe the best studio comedy of the past decade, give or take "Game Night", and *of course* it's from a studio that no longer exists.)
Its always greed. One of the big overlooked problems is how the home theater experience tends to be so much better than the movie theater experience. The last time I went it cost $15, another $10 or so if you want popcorn and a drink. Then you're in a theater with people constantly talking over the movie looking at their bright phones. The management won't stop these people and it gets in the way of doing the thing you're there to do, watch the movie. I'm better off just waiting a couple of months, buying the blu-ray, and enjoying it at home. Its not like I'm missing anything waiting that couple of months.
Heck the best experience I had over the last couple of years was going and watching an early showing of the Fifth Element because it was a nearly empty theater and an early showing that was a bit cheaper.
In the UK the tickets are £5 ($6.18) which makes it cheap enough that it might be fun is reason enough.
I love how a 50+ million budget is considered "keeping it modest" these days
To be fair, adjusted for inflation, it kinda is.
“The Brutalist” was made for $10m in Europe, which is nuts. It should have been a $30m to $40m American production. It’s a “Great American Movie” that nobody in America will make any longer.
I wonder how they budgeted Godzilla: Minus One. $15 million is almost unthinkable these days.
Amazingly creative uses of small stages and CGI. Go look up some of the behind the scenes, they used all the old tricks with smart CGI *and a great storyline* to make it sing.
2019 - We can finally rest now.
2020 - PSYCH!
When your projected revenue (1bil box office) rely on the equivalent of getting 15 cents from every single human being on earth, then maybe, just maybe, your expectations are be skewed and overestimated.
Why the hell would I go see a movie right now? The cost is insane and it's taking everything just to pay for food and a home. Don't see our incoming oligarchs helping with that so yeah, movies are way down the list.
The puzzle is solved, but remember the difference between a puzzle and solution so you know how to work at it.
Thanks for teaching us, Professor Layton
The law of going public: to gain a fortune you must lose your soul.
As correct as I think this take is, I also think the real reason behind these films flopping is a bit simpler. They just aren't very good, and audiences are catching on to how bad they are. You can only watch so many films that just don't deliver before you stop going to see the next installment.
You cant recreate magic if there is no soul
Count down to the first feature film that's just a collage of current internet memes Boomers haven't seen.
Skidibidi Toilet movie incoming.
If Tarantino built a career out of blatantly collating film tropes, some Gen-Alpha film director is going to do the same for the terminally online. Forget Boomers, even _Millennials_ will be like "what on Earth did our kids just watch?"
That… will be fascinating,
The characterisation of Sonic as a new cinematic franchise for families, while technically correct, doesn't quite cover why the most recent movie was been so successful. Sonic as a franchise in general has been about since the early 90s and there's been a new game every 4 years or so. However it's common consensus that they've been a very mixed bag so I suspect a lot of kids know Sonic through the same cultural osmosis through which they might know Indy.
I think a big part of it is that there's an infamously passionate adult fanbase which has been clamouring for decades to see more of these characters and the cinematic adaptation is clearly interpreting them, as you can see from other comments on this video, in a way those people really like. That a lot of that fanbase probably have their own children too is likely helping a lot.
Similar to the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
it doesn't help that Hollywood execs keep hiring abysmal writers/directors. People who are far more interested in their self insert characters. They Lash out at the audience declaring them insert convenient -ists if their content has any criticism. Makes for a miserable experience all around.
There is something truly perverse about judging an industry as artistic and wildly variable as cinema with the kind of soulless perfunctory expectation of a box factory. 2019 was a gross outlier - setting your expectations to that is asking for pain.
Yep.
Movie making is a business designed to make products that sell to most number of customers to maximise profits. You may not like it but that's what it is. The only difference between a success or failure is if the customer is buying what you are selling.
@ Actually, even assuming you are completely rejecting any notion of artistic merit (which is debatable, but for the purposes of this argument let’s accept it), the only difference between success and failure is whether you make a profit.
It doesn’t matter that more people paid to see “Quantumania” than “Morbius.” It matters that because “Quantumania” cost more than “Morbius”, “Morbius” made a significantly greater profit.
Is there perhaps any weight to Disney spending this amount of money on movies in order to increase demand/spending on their theme parks? I've heard arguments that the reason it's worth giving RDJ all the money to be Dr Doom is that they can then put this character in their parks completely masked up for cheap later.
That makes no sense, movie studios are billion dollar revenue which, even in a bad year is several times more than what they make at a theme park. Sure they can put this character in the theme park, but they're quite happy using non-masked characters through the park like Indiana Jones.
So no. always follow the money I doubt the parks are even a consideration.
@@EdwardFairburn You say "many times", but in 2023 "Disney Entertainment" (movies, tv, streaming) generated $40 billion in revenue while their "Parks & Entertainment" division pulled in $32 billion. And that's a pretty recent switch.
When was the last time you heard of someone going to a theme park? For me, it was Jenny Nicholson's review of the "Avatar" park (2018?), but that may reflect more on me than anything else.
@@kingdead42 "Parks" is outdoor stuff. The other bit is that one named "Entertainment" is theatrical & video (video is still non-theatrical, they made discs and tapes until recently). As to why both have "Entertainment" in the name, I'm unsure.
@@typacsk Disney isn't just theme parks. They have cruises, tours, they own a couple castles in Europe, etc. It's a huge operation, and until very recently the backbone of their business.
I appreciate you forcing your way into that 2019/2020 hindsight pun
You gotta commit to the things you believe in.
3:47
"It'd be foolish to bet against Avengers Doomsday and Secret Wars"
Well call me Boo Boo the Fool then, because I have no confidence this upcoming dumpster fire is going to make money, let alone be GOOD.
Oh, I’d be very surprised if they’re good. But I reckon they’ve decent odds of being “Avengers” and “Ultron” level hits, at least. I agree “Endgame” seems unlikely. But who knows?
People show up for events. It only needs to be decent to be successful. No Way Home made 2bn off of cameos. Deadpool & Wolverine was big too. A lot of the people staying home for Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels will probably show up for Avengers 5 and 6. Spider-Man meeting Deadpool, Wolverine, Tony Stark Doctor Doom and a billion cameos will get people in seats.
Ironically, if they wanted to try and damage control over the cultural fracking, they really need to frack some more: milk rereleases for all they're worth. How many classics exist that feel so much more amazing on the big screen? The work's already been done
Chris Nolan’s “The Odyssey”, incoming!
Multiple theaters in my area that hung on through the pandemic finally gave up last year. Puts a huge damper on going to the movies
The lesson about not making everything a hyper-expensive blockbuster was learned back in the 60s and 80s. Both of those decades saw studios trying to make bigger and bigger films before realising 1) the market is only so big and 2) spectacle through budget has a limited appeal. This slump (or potential bubble burst) was always coming, but it could have been avoided if studios had taken away what you've talked about where you build up broad interest slowly for a large, future payday. Instead, I think with the AI bubble we're just gonna see more and more films like Mufasa until the tech over-saturates and takes a large part of the industry with it in the fall or Disney and the other top studios take the nuclear option and leverage their IPs to destroy what we understand as film entertainment. These studios are incapable of sustainability and are too big to be moved by the market incentives of even the most die-hard capitalist.
I feel part of why movies are having a tough time now compared to 2019 is that some of those movies were... not very good. What I think execs don't see is that the result of the current movie, is a lot part of the previous one. Toy Story 4 scored a lot of money, not so much because its a good movie, but because Toy Story 3 was a good movie (I have heard not pretty things about TS4). MCU Series, like Loki, did well because Avengers Endgame. But the rest of the series, and movies after, did not so good because of the previous series. Loki was ok, but not MCU worth, and the following series was not as good as Loki, and the next series was not as good as the previous one, etc etc.
It might also depend on what Disney counts as "success". If you can watch a movie for a whole family of 4 cheaper in your house than going to the cinema, why go to the cinema? Disney+ is still making money... just not as much money, but I don't know if they are counting Disney+ into the equation.
Yes the damage to reputation by a bad movie in a series, causes the next movie to suffer in sales, regardless of if it is good or bad. It has to rebuild it's reputation.
Disney + is not making money. I don’t think it’s made a profit in its existence
The absolute desperation in mainstream forms of entertainment is spreading like metastatic cancer.
The AAA game industry is on the ropes. Hollywood's starting to look like Muhammad Ali in the 10th round of the Trevor Berbick fight. The NBA's ratings are in the tank and it hasn't had a superstar crisis of the magnitude of 40-year-old LeBron since Michael Jordan's second retirement. The NHL is losing popularity even in Canada. Major League Baseball has turned into Calvinball with its rule changes.
We are entering another pop cultural Dark Age on a level not seen since the early aughts. I genuinely wonder what's going to come out the other side.
To be fair, I think that’s maybe tied to other broader cultural forces outside the remit of a pop culture video series. Next decade (and change) is gonna be rough, I fear.
The eastern side of the gaming industry is doing fine. Just look at Nintendo. The western side absolutely is collapsing though.
@@carlschrappen9712 The same could be said of the industry in 1983. Which is where I think western AAA is headed. Nintendo's just gonna keep on Nintendo-ing like they have since '85.
@SimuLord Probably. I'll just that I think the industry is too big and diversified for the crash to be quite as bad as it was in 83.
Indies and foreign media are eating good whilst the customer is not buying what Western media is selling.
If Marvel pulls off a bait-and-switch with Chris Evans and Robert Downey, since their characters are rumored to be evil doppelgangers, I really have to wonder what the audience thinks.
I remember that being a great year for movies in large part because I had an AMC A-List membership and was going to the movies once or twice a week. Given how early on that was for the service and others like it, I wonder how much those effected the box office and that year's reputation.
Not a bad point. There were also just more movies in general and more variety of movies as well - although the range of movies had been shrinking for about a decade at that point too.
Yeah, it really was something special to go see a different film in a different genre every few days. I mostly go to my local reperatory theater now, I don't see as many new movies but I still get that same variety.
It was an amazing year to have a cinema pass.
Some box office reporters I follow suggest that Hollywood should have treated the $100-$300 million China would contribute to blockbuster box offices as found money instead of a reliable income stream. Because comparing any pre-2020 film with a 2020s release should have an asterisk indicating that Hollywood films rarely screen in China anymore. Maybe this will have the knock on effect of bringing budgets down to manageable levels.
Bruh, I completely forgot about that. The bad blood that has resulted between China and the US, itself a result of the covid blame game (and, of course, the ignorant, paranoid, psycho politics that started the blame game) has cost the American economy A LOT of money. Your point is very well taken, and Hollywood should probably adjust to that reality.
Honestly, many people have seen this coming with streaming becoming more and more popular.
The comparrison is easy: you can spend either 20 bucks, for example, for a movie ticket for the night and maybe some snacks, OR: you can pay 20 bucks and gain access to a gigantic library of shows and movies in the comfort of your home, including new stuff for a few months. Don't need to think much about what honestly makes more sense money-wise for the vast majority of people. Add to this how messy most big budget movies have become (Because it is now more so then ever a gigantic gamble if a movie becomes financially succesful) because the higher ups are getting cold feet faster, and here you go. The amount of stories we get to hear of movie productions where basically heavy changes are made more or less directly before said movie is supposed to release are wild.
So... How do you think Yatzee feels knowing Sonic movie 3 did well?
He never liked the franchise taking itself seriously but Sonic Movie 3 took itself seriously and was a massive success.
@gayanudugampola8973 Sonic 3 had Jim Carrey do a synchronised laser hallway dance alongside another Jim Carrey... that movie did not take itself too seriously.
If children are laughing in a cinema... not a serious movie.
Mega budget movies are *required* to be international successes because at some point there physically aren’t enough domestic customers to make a profit, which then affects the substance of the film trying to please everyone
To be fair, this is arguably a general trend with blockbusters. The same is true even internally within the United States with the notion of a four-quadrant hit.
Time was, parents would drop the kids at “Beauty and the Beast” while they see “Cape Fear.” Now everyone has to see “Beauty and the Beast.”
You can't go back to 2019. And you cannot solve cinema's problems by churning out endless sequels - the Film Stories website currently lists more than 150 sequels to earlier films that are currently in development. It took years to build the momentum of the MCU, and even Disney is going to find it hard to replicate that sequence of events. Plus you add in the drain of streaming on audience numbers and how quickly films come to home screens (either through digital services or more rapid DVD/BluRay release), and you are left with Hollywood scrabbling to earn that much ever again (even allowing for inflation). High-profile flops like Joker Folie a Deux need to be learnt from, and NEW IDEAS must be nurtured rapidly.
2019 was anomaly in pop culture when MCU, Game of Thrones and Star Wars had massive finales (which all sucked in my opinion). I think Cats cursed us with covid and box office slops.
The slow death of the theater and greed of streaming will tighten the belt of Hollywood further until theaters are gone or bot staffed
When the business is hot you can do no wrong
When the business is cold you can do no right
Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.
If the customer is not buying what you are selling, maybe the problem is what you are selling.
the only people going to watch these kinds of films are either captive audiences who will buy literally anything with the right brand slapped on it, or in disney's case, families who are trying to find a movie to entertain the kids for the afternoon. a lot of people have checked out of the mainstream box office entirely. there's nothing in there worth spending 20 bucks a ticket for, plus an additional 30 for popcorn and drinks
and since this is a primarily gaming channel, it is worth noting that AAA publishers are doing the exact same thing. With the difference that Hollywood is still behind on widespread mtx and manipulative fomo so Hollywood does not have those insane profit margins.
Sonic has been gaining nostalgia since 1991 I dont think that's the best example here.
I personally really enjoyed the second Joker movie. It was a very interesting take on mental health and how the system lets broken people fall through the cracks.
I… don’t hate “Folie á Deux.” I don’t love it. But it is the best superhero film of last year.
I guess you could say Disney needs to:
*sunglasses on*
Live and Learn.
Sometimes it is, indeed, a passing craze.
It's the difference between passion (James Gunn) and passion (Kevin Feige)
Shadow the Hedgehog killed Mufasa, not scar.
He does have a gun. And a motor bike.
Godzilla has been getting bigger and biggerer
You can make good sequels, you just have to make something worth watching
No way share holders relent and focus on sustainability.
But those that do and do as you pointed out Darren, diverse movies on controlled budgets and grow the ones that catch fire, they'll be there to rake in the cash......while unfortunately other studios take the wrong message....again.
The ciiiiircle of liiiiiife!
To be fair, Universal are doing a decent job of it, allowing for their “Jurassic Park” and “Fast and Furious” movies. Nolan, Peele, Eggers. Their recent adaptations of their horror properties, arguably including “Nosferatu.”
But yeah, it’s really just them. Sony and Paramount don’t release enough movies anymore. Lionsgate, Disney and Warners are largely franchise-blind.
I mean the problem isn't a movie problem it's a consistent problem across all mature parts of the economic system. Shareholders demand constant exponential growth even in developed mature fields that no longer have substantive room for further growth and should by all sane rights be focused on cultivating a stable and sustainable economic equilibrium.
Yep. That said, this is a pop culture show, so the focus is understandably on films. Plenty of commenters have made the point that it applies just as readily to AAA games. And I know it also applies to music, politics, and various other facets of public life as well.
to quote another second wind contributor "Lets all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee !"
Ha!
The sony spider-verse may have turned a profit, but clearly Sony execs were tired of being humiliated because they clearly fired the head because of the failure of Kraven.
I feel like the biggest problem is marketing, All the normal channels to reach people are dying so unless the podcast circuit starts getting much more active about and evolved to promote movies, The same way and cost with which they promote vitamins lol
I genuinely just don't see those working out long term
Google ads are overpriced, tv commercials are overpriced
And neither is particularly effective. I genuinely getting butts and seats
My wife and her bestie. We're genuinely stoked to go see wicked, But number one. They thought it came out a week later than it actually came out
And worse movie theaters are shrinking, there is two dead zones where ideally there would be a movie theater that they could both meet at. That would be somewhat equidistant to both of them
Instead one of the two of them has to go 2/3rds+ to get there.
I think Hollywood is very wisely embracing the hey give us 20 bucks and you can rent the movie that's still in theaters.
But That's not being marketed the same way it needs to be
I am disappointed that you didn't use any of Snyder's slo-mo farming sequences from Rebel moon part 2 during the farming metaphor, come on Darren Snyder gift wrapped that for you.
Also it does seem like slowly but surely the mid-budget movies are making a comeback first through critical appreciation & now audience appreciation.
Ha! Tried to keep the clips as 2019-adjacent as possible, but that is a fair point.
Yep, the real problem is crazy budgets. It's the same with videogames: AAA games are huge gambles, so you fail twice ina row and you see Ubisoft today. It's not impossible to build a surefire ultra-expensive hit, but the amount of effort making sure you are building the right thing needs to be much higher
That farming metaphor for movie production is a really insightful one. Definite high point of the video for me, even edging out cultural fracking. All in all, a good watch, thank you for the upload.
Thank you.