Steve Pond's Blog, page 2027
December 29, 2019
‘Cats’ Box Office Hairball: How Much Money Could Tom Hooper’s Musical Lose?
Tom Hooper’s big-screen version of “Cats” is continuing to cough up hairballs at the box office — with outside estimates of Universal’s total losses on the musical ranging from $71 million to $100 million.
After 10 days in theaters, the pricey adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London and Broadway hit has grossed only $38.4 million worldwide. Overall, box office analysts tell TheWrap that they expect “Cats” to finish deep in the red with a total domestic run of $40 million total domestic run and a worldwide gross that would be lucky to reach $100 million — a devastating return considering the film’s reported budget of $95 million, before marketing costs.
With that result, the total gross for “Cats” would be more than 75% below the domestic and global totals of Fox’s 2017 musical hit “The Greatest Showman” and roughly a quarter of what Lionsgate’s Oscar-winning musical “La La Land” made the year before. (And “La La Land” had a $30 million budget and a screen count that did not exceed 2,000 until its eighth week in theaters.)
The film will also finish well below the returns for last December’s big musical, Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns,” which grossed $349.5 million on a reported production budget of $130 million.
Also Read: Academy Allows 'Cats' to Submit Its New, Improved Version to Oscars
Universal put big bucks on this adaptation of Lloyd Webber’s musical, with “The King’s Speech” and “Les Miserables” director Tom Hooper in charge and a star-studded cast featuring the likes of Taylor Swift, James Corden, Jason DeRulo and Jennifer Hudson.
But the moment the first trailer was released and the Internet got its eyes on the film’s CGI humanoid felines, “Cats” was subject to months of mockery culminating in a $6.5 million opening, 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a dismal C+ on CinemaScore.
And while Swift’s “Beautiful Ghosts” managed to snag a Golden Globe nomination, “Cats” was shut out of the short list for the Best Original Song Oscar, and the film has quietly been removed from Universal’s FYC page.
A rep for Universal had no comment Sunday on the box office performance of “Cats.”
Also Read: 'Cats' Poor Reception Prompts Universal to Send an 'Improved,' Updated Version to Theaters
The good news is that Universal still has a chance to land a big hit this winter. The studio’s true Oscar contender, Sam Mendes’ “1917,” made $1 million from its limited Christmas Day release and is expected to go wide on January 10 with strong word of mouth and possibly the most Oscar nominations of any film in this year’s awards field.
With heart-pounding action scenes and war drama, “1917” has an opportunity for widespread appeal similar to Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” which grossed $526 million worldwide in summer 2017. While it will be difficult for “1917” to match that outside of the summer, it could quickly erase whatever writedown Universal will have to take on “Cats.”
And don’t expect “Cats” to put a stop to Hollywood’s enthusiasm for big-screen musicals. Warner Bros. is expected to find big summer success next year with Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” and Disney’s 20th Century Fox will try its hand with Steven Spielberg’s take on “West Side Story,” due next Christmas.
Related stories from TheWrap:
Academy Allows 'Cats' to Submit Its New, Improved Version to Oscars
Judi Dench Says Her Character in 'Cats' Is Trans
'Cats' Film Review: Andrew Lloyd Webber's Feline Fantasy Musical Becomes a Garish Hairball
‘Star Wars’ and ‘Little Women’ Can Help the Box Office More Than Last December’s Hits
The 2019 box office is set to finish well behind last year’s record $11.88 billion domestic total, but it is outperforming last year in an important way: this year’s holiday releases, led by “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” are showing signs of longevity that last year’s films, including the billion-dollar “Aquaman,” did not.
While Disney was the only Hollywood studio this year that matched 2018’s record success, another reason 2019’s overall totals are only now crossing the $11 billion mark is because 2018’s holiday films mostly ran out of gas by Jan. 1. Films like “Aquaman,” “Mary Poppins Returns,” “Bumblebee” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” did a great job of covering for the absence of “Star Wars” on the December charts, but they also made most of their millions early in their theatrical runs.
Also Read: '1917,' 'Just Mercy' Score Big Limited Release Starts at Christmas Box Office
Let’s start “Aquaman,” which was a massive success for Warner Bros. but made 70% of its $1.14 billion total overseas. The film, which was released Dec. 21, 2018, legged well into January, earning $236 million of its $335 million domestic total after New Year’s Day. But beneath that, other December 2018 releases “Mary Poppins Returns,” “Bumblebee” and “Spider-Verse” combined to only contribute $203 million to the 2019 total. Consequently, calendar grosses for January fell 15% year over year, with that month failing to rank among the top 10 highest January totals in box office history.
Analysts who spoke to TheWrap say that the films in theaters now have a better chance of providing a more robust January. “The Rise of Skywalker,” which has grossed $361 million so far, is expected to contribute $200-250 million to January’s total, while “Jumanji: The Next Level” will add $100-150 million. And farther down the charts, potential Oscar nominees are likely to play a major factor next month.
This weekend, Sony’s “Little Women” opened to $29 million and widespread critical and audience acclaim, putting it in a major position to gross $100 million in January if word of mouth continues to spread. And while Universal didn’t provide a holiday musical hit after “Cats” bombed last weekend, it could have its own $100 million-plus hit with “1917,” which is building word of mouth from its $1 million platform release this weekend and will go wide on Jan. 10.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker' Pulls In $135 Million During Extended Box Office Weekend
Studios have been known to release awards season films in select cities on Christmas Day in hopes of building interest for a wide January release. “American Sniper” pulled this off with a $350 million theatrical run in January 2015, but with so many wide releases in December 2018, no studio made a serious attempt at that strategy last year.
The result was an early year slate lacking in films that could draw large moviegoer interest and which led to a year-to-year deficit that the box office spent the rest of the year trying to climb out of. ComScore analyst Paul Dergarabedian says that while the 2020 slate does not have a guaranteed $500 million-plus domestic hit, there’s reason to believe that the year won’t start with such deep doldrums again.
“There’s way more goodwill with moviegoers now than there was this time last year, and that should carry over into January so we’re not waiting for February blockbusters like ‘Birds of Prey’ to bail us out,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of headlines about how we’re down 4% from last year, but that’s cyclical. The better news is that with awards hopefuls and new films like ‘Bad Boys for Life,’ Q1 of 2020 looks like it’s going to be a lot healthier than what we saw 11 months ago.”
Related stories from TheWrap:
'1917,' 'Just Mercy' Score Big Limited Release Starts at Christmas Box Office
'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker' Pulls In $135 Million During Extended Box Office Weekend
'Frozen II' Becomes Disney's 6th $1 Billion Box Office Hit in 2019
11 TV Winners and Losers of 2019: From Fox’s ‘The Masked Singer’ to Jussie Smollett (Photos)
Once again we find ourselves nearing the end of another year full of plot twists, disappointments, and pleasant surprises. Take Jussie Smollett for example: He began the year as a well-respected actor on a popular TV show. But then came the threatening letter mailed to him at Fox, and the alleged racist and homophobic attack. For a moment, the entire internet rallied around him — and then the police investigation turned against him. He lost his spot on “Empire” and was indicted on 16 felony counts including filing a false police report, only to have the charges against him suddenly dropped. And all that happened before May.
Yeah, it’s been a long year.
Also Read: 10 Highest-Rated TV Specials of 2019: From Hostless Oscars to 'Little Mermaid Live' (Photos)
Winner: Pro-Wrestling Goes Boom, Like “Dynamite”
There is so much wrestling on TV now. Just this fall, “SmackDown” moved from USA Network to Fox’s broadcast channel, TNT launched AEW’s weekly series “All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite,” Impact Wrestling moved to AXS TV, and “NXT” upgraded from one-hour pre-taped on WWE Network to two hours live on USA Network. These days, a pro-wrestling diehard’s week is just that jam-packed 52-times a year. What a time to be alive (and fake fighting).
Also Read: 45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
Winner: Unmasking a Massive Success
“The Masked Singer” was the runaway ratings success of 2019, especially considering Fox’s big hit debuted on just the second day of the year. The oddball singing competition was 2019’s No. 1 new series among adults 18-49, and by more than a full Nielsen ratings point over No. 2, NBC’s “Manifest.”
Also Read: Here's Your Guide to All 40 of Hallmark's 2019 Holiday Movies
Losers: Where Have All the Awards Show Hosts Gone?
Blame Kevin Hart. After a swirl of controversy last December when Hart was named host of the 2019 Oscars and refused to apologize for his well-documented history of making homophobic jokes on stage, as well as off stage, ABC and the Academy ultimately chose to go with the safest option of all — nobody. And the result was, well, fine. So fine, in fact, that the Emmys were quick to follow suit later in the year.
Also Read: 17 Best TV Memes of 2019: From the 'Succession' Theme Song to the 'GOT' Coffee Cup (Photos)
Loser: Jussie Smollett
The Lyons are down a cub on the currently airing sixth and final season of “Empire” due the curious case of Jussie Smollett, who played Jamal Lyon — the openly gay son of Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) and Lucious (Terrence Howard) — on the Fox hip-hop drama up until he was written out of the final few episodes of Season 5 last spring. Smollett’s removal from the series came a few months after he claimed to have been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack on the streets of Chicago in January.
Loser: “Game of Thrones” Fans (hear us out)
“Game of Thrones,” HBO’s epic tale of the battle to become the ruler of Westeros’ Seven Kingdoms, came to what many viewers considered to be a less than epic conclusion with its series finale this May. So not only did they lose their favorite show, but lost it in a way that still has some of them taking their anger out on series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on a daily basis, six months after the show ended. (And let’s not forget that petition.) Adding insult to injury, the untitled Naomi Watts-led “GoT” prequel that many fans were looking forward to got scrapped after production wrapped on the pilot.
Also Read: 10 Best New York Theater Productions of 2019, From 'The Sound Inside' to 'Halfway Bitches' (Photos)
Winner: Cord-Cutters
Yes, this was certainly a banner year for people who aren’t interested in paying for cable, but are OK shelling out $4.99/month for Apple’s Golden Globe and SAG Award-nominated “Morning Show,” among other original Apple series, and $6.99/month for Disney’s extensive library of movies and TV shows, plus new originals like Baby Yoda — er, “The Mandalorian.” And cord-cutters are on a roll heading into 2020, which will bring with it the launches of WarnerMedia-owned streaming service HBO Max and .
Also Read: 115 Cable Channels Ranked by 2019 Viewership - Yes, Comedy.TV Is Still Dead Last
Losers: These Losers
2019 didn’t see the same level of #MeToo fallout as last year, but as the decade drew to a close, echoes of the movement were still being felt throughout the industry. From “NCIS: New Orleans” executive producer Adam Targum to “The Chi” star Jason Mitchell, 2019 continued to see men face professional consequences for inappropriate behavior.
Also Read: 10 Best Documentaries of 2019, From 'Apollo 11' to 'One Child Nation' (Photos)
Winner: PWB
Phoebe Waller-Bridge has had a whirlwind year. She burst onto the scene with the second season of her Amazon comedy “Fleabag.” PWB wrote the series and starred in it opposite Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest. Their chemistry was so intense that it caused the internet (and the Television Academy) to fall all over themselves in adoration of her. Her writing is so revered that she has since been hired to help polish the script for the next Bond film, “No Time to Die,” and signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios shortly after snagging them all those Emmys for “Fleabag.”
Also Read: The Biggest Earners in Music in 2019, From Taylor Swift to Drake (Photos)
Winner: Media-Merger Consultants
The entertainment industry ended this decade by bulking up. A year after AT&T swallowed up Time Warner and turned it into WarnerMedia, two more major media couplings took place. Though it may seem like Disney and Fox agreed to that deal long ago (they’d be right! It was first hammered out in 2017), the deal finally consummated in March. And in December, after years of starts and stops, Viacom and CBS finally got back together.
Also Read: Lil Nas X Highlights YouTube's Top Videos of 2019
Loser: Simply Not Marvel-ous
In hindsight, it wasn’t a good start to 2019 when Netflix and Marvel decided to end their creative partnership, with “Jessica Jones” formally closing the book on the streaming service’s “Defenders” universe this summer. But then the hits kept coming for Marvel TV fans: “Agents of SHIELD” announced it will wrap up next summer, “The Runaways” ended in December, and “Cloak & Dagger” was canceled after two seasons on Freeform. The final shoe-drop came in October, when Marvel TV was moved under Kevin Feige, effectively ending the division as it gets absorbed into Marvel Studios.
Also Read: Podcasts Boomed in 2019, But 2020 Will Be Even Bigger
Winner: Your Parents’ Favorite Sitcom
The streaming era has led to an insatiable appetite for library content (no, not for you Apple), and this year that meant an all-out land grab for the rights to classic TV sitcoms. And it wasn’t cheap. “Seinfeld,” which last aired a new episode during the Clinton administration, commanded a hefty $500 million-plus deal to move from Hulu to Netflix in 2021. It wasn’t the only TV show no longer in business that got a huge payday in 2019: “The Big Bang Theory,” “Friends” and “The Office” were other old shows that garnered major dollars.
Related stories from TheWrap:
45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
11 TV Winners and Losers of 2019: From Fox's 'The Masked Singer' to Jussie Smollett
What to Watch Christmas Week 2019: TheWrap's TV Viewing Guide (Photos)
‘The Witcher': Henry Cavill Explains Why Geralt Has a Strange Accent
If you’re watching “The Witcher” on Netflix and found your way to this article, there’s a good chance you’re wondering what’s up with the strange way Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) speaks on the new fantasy series.
No, the accent isn’t quite like the one Geralt speaks with in the “Witcher” video games, but the show is an adaptation of the books, not those games. In the “Witcher” novels, so much about the way Geralt was described was intended to establish his otherness — his scars, white hair, his yellow cat eyes and, yes, the way he talks. Specifically, Geralt is supposed to sound, well, different. Unique.
In the “Witcher” video games, they establish this uniqueness by having him speak with an American accent while most everyone else has a British one. On the Netflix show, Geralt’s accent sounds like a hodgepodge of accents, like it just kinda exists somewhere between British, American and Australian accents. Speaking with TheWrap, Cavill discussed how he developed Geralt’s slightly odd accent.
Also Read: Why Netflix Is Betting You'll Want 'The Witcher' Season 2 - Before You've Seen Season 1
“Mythology-wise, there are a lot of changes from the books,” the British actor said. “And there is only so much that can be done. And for me, as a performer in the show, it was my job to bring my performance and everyone else was allowed to bring their performances, separately. Yes, there is in the books, certainly, a Rivian accent.”
The Rivian accent Cavill refers to is that of the homeland Geralt claims, Rivia. Geralt is not actually from there, but he adopted the country’s accent when he started going by “Geralt of Rivia.”
Cavill said the range of accents in the world in which “The Witcher” takes place can be compared to the range of English accents in Great Britain.
“You look at England for example, there are a vast variety of regional accents across a very, very small space. And actually the Continent would be something very similar,” Cavill said. The “Continent” he mentions is how people refer to the area of the world in which the story takes place. Everything is just the Continent because no one really knows what’s beyond the edges of the map.
“So for me it wasn’t necessarily about giving Geralt a specific accent which was different from everyone else, because that would be impossible because there are a lot of English accents and eventually you’re gonna run into someone who has a similar accent because they are trying something different,” Cavill continues. “So for me, it was about bringing a voice to Geralt which was expressing the essence of who he is in the books and bringing that to the space in the format that was allowed within the show.”
So Cavill is saying he adopted an accent that to him just… felt right for Geralt.
“The Witcher” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
Related stories from TheWrap:
The 23 Worst Parts of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Actually Makes 'The Last Jedi' and 'The Force Awakens' Worse
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
The 23 Worst Parts of ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’
(This article is 100 percent just a list of major spoilers for “Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.”)
It’s been decades since the “Star Wars” discourse has been relatively calm, and honestly that was probably only because social media didn’t exist in the 1970s and ’80s. These days we don’t have that benefit, so it’s been non-stop arguing since Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012. Since it’s going to be a few years before we have another “Star Wars” movie to fight about, you better get as much arguing about “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” as you can. And to help you with that, we’ve got here a list of things we didn’t like about the conclusion to the so-called Skywalker Saga that you can bring up when you wanna start a fight.
So here you go. Below we’ve got 22 big gripes about “The Rise of Skywalker.” It’s not an exhaustive list, but we can only think about this movie for so long before we go crazy, so this will have to do for now.
1. One thousand Death Stars
Late in the movie it’s revealed that this massive fleet of Star Destroyers that Emperor Palpatine pulled out of the ice on Exegol at the beginning of the movie was equipped with Death Star lasers. The reveal is made when one of them blows up a planet for no particular reason. The Resistance folks then briefly huddle up and decide that probably all those ships can do that. That seems like an illogical conclusion to draw, because that would mean the bad guys have an entire fleet of Death Stars, which would be easily the most ludicrous thing that has ever happened in a “Star Wars” movie. But since the issue is never mentioned again we aren’t sure what other conclusion we could come to.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Actually Makes 'The Last Jedi' and 'The Force Awakens' Worse
2. The Rebel fleet from nowhere
To challenge all those Death Stars, the Resistance launches an attack on Exegol with only a Corellian Corvette and like one single fighter squadron and one carrier ship full of troops. Fortunately for them, Lando spent a couple hours flying around the galaxy and casually assembling the biggest fleet we’ve ever seen in any of these movies. That’s absolutely crazy. Lando was not even gone that long.
3. The Emperor returns before the movie starts
There’s a lot of creative decisions on this movie I can’t even begin to understand, and the most confusing of those is the decision to have Emperor Palpatine make his big return to the galactic stage between movies. How do you bring back a dead character and not even let us see characters reacting to that revelation as it happens? This one actually makes me mad. If you’re gonna cram a whole trilogy of stories in one movie, you still have to start at the beginning.
4. Rey is the Emperor’s granddaughter
The climax of the “Skywalker Saga” was about two Palpatine family members fighting each other. Incredible.
Also Read: Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
5. Luke and Leia knew about Rey’s lineage the whole time
This is just a confusing bit. When did they learn this important fact? Why had they never done anything with that tidbit of key info? There’s a lot of weird ramifications to their possession of this knowledge, and “The Rise of Skywalker” has no interest in exploring any of them.
6. Leia died for no reason
They decided to kill off Leia in the strangest and low-key way: by calling out through the Force. It took Luke physically projecting himself across the galaxy and doing a lightsaber fight before the effort killed him. How weak are we supposed to think Leia is?
7. The Knights of Ren
Late in the film, Ben Solo/Kylo Ren is forced to fight his former bros the Knights of Ren in order to earn his redemption. It’s a powerful scene, the culmination of a character arc stretching back three films… is what we’d say if the Knights had like, any role before “The Rise of Skywalker.” They’re in this trilogy for less than 5 minutes, none of them speaks or has any personality, and they don’t even use lightsabers. They basically existed only so we’d know the origin of Kylo Ren’s dorky last name, and when we finally saw them up close, it turns out they dress like the corniest nu metal band of 1996. PASS.
8. The Resurrection
So Rey kills Palpatine, and then dies. Kylo Ren climbs out of the hole he fell into, and somehow uses the Force to revive her corpse. They can just resurrect people now! OK!
9. The Kiss
So Rey is alive again, and the first thing she does is make out with Kylo Ren. They haven’t had an ounce of romantic chemistry in these movies, but some “Star Wars” nerds shipped them so I guess they had to do it.
Also Read: Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
10. The Death
Immediately after this kiss, Ben rolls over and dies, apparently having given all of his life force to Rey to bring her back to life in what was supposed to be the film’s most dramatic and emotionally poignant scene. At that precise moment in our screening, the entire theater burst into hysterical laughter. Whoops.
11. The Force can do literally anything
All wounds are trivial now because Force users can easily heal them. If they’re too late and the person died, they can just bring them back from the dead. Need to ship a package? Just use the Force to teleport it! Wanna have a lightsaber duel with somebody a hundred miles away? The Force has online multiplayer. Rey is just a God now, the most powerful being who ever lived. But Leia died from yelling.
12. Chewie died but actually he didn’t
This whole sequence is strange. Chewie gets captured by the First Order when he’s like 30 yards from the rest of our heroes. Then Rey accidentally blows up the ship they were taking him away on. Except actually Chewie was on a different but identical ship because “The Rise of Skywalker” wanted to pull a stupidly manipulative misdirect.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' - We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
13. C-3PO got his memory wiped but then got it back
So our heroes need to read something in the Sith language, which it turns out 3PO can read. Unfortunately, his programming forbids him from translating it. (Who did this? Doesn’t matter. It just is.) This forces them to reboot 3PO to override that programming, which will erase his memory and effectively kill him as he’s been known. It sounds sad, and 3PO even gets an emotional farewell out of it. Then the film pulls a movie length JK because not only is it played for laughs from there out, at the end 3PO gets his memories restored thanks to a backup on R2D2’s hard drive.
14. Poe has Han Solo’s backstory now
One of the 57 new planets we visit in “The Rise of Skywalker” is Kijimi, where we meet Poe’s ex-girlfriend, who reveals that Poe was a spice runner before becoming a Resistance fighter. Because for some reason they needed a new Han I guess.
15. General Hux
Speaking of criminally underdeveloped characters, Hux is revealed to be a mole within the First Order, feeding information to the Resistance, uh Rebellion two movies after his Reichstag speech on Starkiller base, because he hates Kylo Ren more than he loves the First Order. And then, literally the next scene after we learn this, he’s unceremoniously killed by his commanding officer who announces “we found the mole.” Hux joins Boba Fett and Captain Phasma in the pantheon of Star Wars bad guys whose deaths are as pointless as, it turns out, the characters themselves were. At least he got more lines than Rose Tico.
16. The Force told those stormtroopers to rebel
Finn meets a woman name Jannah, who was also a former First Order stormtrooper who had been stolen from her parents when she was a kid and then rebelled as an adult. And they have this fun moment where they talk about how they decided to rebel because they had this weird feeling that they should. And they decide that feeling was the Force. Not, you know, their conscience. Or guilt about helping out a fascist government. They’d have happily done state-sponsored murder had the Force not pinged them, I guess.
17. Ghost Luke
So Luke died, and is a ghost. But he can still pick up physical objects with his non-physical hand. And he can use the Force to lift his X-Wing out of the ocean. Sounds like being dead is all upside.
18. Pretending Rose wasn’t a main character
Congratulations racist, sexist harassers: Your complaints were heard.
19. Maz Kanata
They got the amazing Lupita Nyong’o to play maybe the most pointless character in this whole trilogy. The only thing of note she does in this movie is give Chewbacca a medal in an egregiously annoying bit of fan service.
20. Chewbacca gets a medal
I’m not sure how Maz giving Chewie a medal for no reason whatsoever is supposed to make up for his snub in the original “Star Wars” film. This bit feels so shameless.
21. The Resistance did not actually win the war
So in the final battle of “The Rise of Skywalker,” the Resistance manages to take out Emperor Palpatine’s fleet, and one First Order Star Destroyer. So, uh, that means the rest of the First Order military is still out there. And the First Order military is apparently large enough that it conquered the entire galaxy in just a couple days. Which means that with the fleet of randoms that they assembled in this movie still, the Resistance still has a long road ahead it if it wants to liberate the galaxy. So, what I’m saying is that basically the entire war takes place during the epilogue of “The Rise of Skywalker,” when we see random Star Destroyers getting blown up. Yikes.
22. Finn wants to confess something to Rey but never actually does.
In the first half of “The Rise of Skywalker” there’s a recurring thing about how Finn, thinking he and his friends were about to die, wanted to tell Rey some big secret he’s been holding in. And then we never find out what that secret was because I guess Finn just forgot about it.
23. Still no space battles
While “The Last Jedi” had lots of space action, the two movies in this trilogy that JJ Abrams were responsible for are strangely lacking any at all. We couldn’t begin to guess why “The Force Awakens” and “The Rise of Skywalker” would have every starship battle take place in a planetary atmosphere, but we do know it’s weird. “The Rise of Skywalker” in particular has a battle involving the two biggest fleets we’ve seen in any of these movies, but that fight happens in Exegol’s atmosphere rather than space. And there’s a sequence at the beginning of the movie where Poe repeated does hyperspace jumps directly from one planet’s atmosphere to another. Why would a “Star Wars” movie try so hard to avoid outer space?
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Actually Makes 'The Last Jedi' and 'The Force Awakens' Worse
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – How Exactly Did Emperor Palpatine Return From the Dead?
‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
(This article contains some spoilers for Rose Tico’s role, such that it is, in “Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.” I would say these are not major spoilers.)
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is a pretty weird movie. At times it feels like it was written by an algorithm that was constructed in order to try to appeal to some theoretical “core fan” or something. Like the folks at Disney built a “Mindhunter”-type profile of the most average possible “Star Wars” fan, but it was based on the assumption that those people who got so mad about “The Last Jedi” that they harrassed Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose Tico, off social media are somehow representative of normal people.
Which is silly. The average person who likes “Star Wars” is not participating in the online discourse at all, much less joining in on harassment campaigns. But “The Rise of Skywalker” nonetheless feels very much like parts of the film were constructed specifically to cater to those harassers — and the way it takes Rose, who was a main character in the last movie, and dumps her into a minor background role is Exhibit A.
Now, when Rose was first introduced back in “The Last Jedi,” it wasn’t necessarily the cleanest fit. She spent most of the movie with Finn (John Boyega) going on a side adventure that had no real bearing on the main plot and thus, unlike the characters who were in “The Force Awakens,” never actually got to establish herself as part of the new trilogy’s ensemble. She never got to be part of the group, and thus felt kinda extraneous.
That’s not an unfixable problem. John Boyega promised that the main crew of this new trilogy would spend a lot more time together in “The Rise of Skywalker,” so really all that needed to be done was to include Rose in that crew. After all, extraneous or not she was inarguably one of the film’s main characters and even got to deliver a line of dialogue summing up what amounts to the moral of the story. And at the end of “The Last Jedi,” Rose and Finn have basically become a couple, so it would make sense to bring her along on Finn’s adventures with Poe and Rey.
Also Read: Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
Except that doesn’t happen, like at all. In “The Rise of Skywalker,” Rose basically gets the same treatment Jar Jar received in “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” Relegating her to a very minor role — barely more than a cameo — the film tries to present her like she was never actually one of the main characters in this new trilogy. And her interactions with Finn suggest nothing more than professional courtesy, an especially weird thing to do considering the last time we saw them, they were kissing.
I can’t pretend to know exactly what the thought process was behind this decision, but there are not all that many reasons why they would push Rose out of frame like this. The big one, as we all know, is that a bunch of freakin’ nerds conducted a months-long harassment campaign that drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media after “The Last Jedi” came out. Actually, that’s the only reason I can think of. That doesn’t mean it is the only possible reason, obviously. “The Rise of Skywalker” is full of shockingly inexplicable creative decisions — we’re talking about a movie with a huge fleet of Death Stars here. But if there’s some other reason why she’s only in a handful of scenes, it’s not something we could ever intuit.
One gets the feeling that “The Rise of Skywalker” is trying to undo the setup provided by “The Last Jedi,” sort of like how that film set out to defy your expectations based on how “The Force Awakens” kicked off the trilogy. Abrams and co. will insist that’s not the case, but Rose serves as pretty solid evidence.
Also Read: The 22 Worst Parts of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'
And that’s annoying! I can understand, in a general sense, criticisms of how her character was handled in “The Last Jedi.” What I can’t understand, in the third movie of a trilogy and ninth movie of a series, is simply refusing the play the cards you’re dealt. You can’t just toss one of the main characters aside just because a couple dozen angry internet nerds didn’t like her in the last movie.
Or I guess you can, since that’s exactly what happened with Rose in “The Rise of Skywalker.” And that’s not great, Bob.
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December 28, 2019
Andrew Dunbar, Theon Greyjoy’s Body Double on ‘Game of Thrones,’ Dies in His 30s
Andrew Dunbar, who worked as a body double for Alfie Allen’s Theon Greyjoy and a background actor on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has died. He was in his 30s.
Dunbar died suddenly at his home in East Belfast, Ireland, on Christmas Eve, according to the Daily Mail. No cause of death was made public.
“To say we are shocked and saddened at the passing of Andrew Dunbar is an understatement,” the Ireland-based talent agency The Extras Dept. said in a statement. “We have so many fond memories of the years Andrew worked with us. He was so versatile we could cast him in anything, he was such a talented performer he would always end up being featured, and he was so adored that he was always requested by productions again and again.”
Dunbar appeared on the final three seasons of “Game of Thrones,” beginning with Season 6’s “Battle of the Bastards.” In addition serving as a body double for Allen’s Theon and as a background performer in other “GOT” roles, he also appeared “Line of Duty,” “Derry Girls” and SYFY’s “Krypton.”
In an Instagram story, Allen noted Dunbar’s passing, writing, “Extremely shocked and saddened to hear of his passing. To lose a loved one so young, I can only imagine what his family are going through. RIP Andrew xxx.”
Pamela Smyth, who oversaw crowd makeup for “Game of Thrones,” also remembered Dunbar in a statement to Belfast Live. “Even among the thousands of extras that came through the crowd room on Thrones – Andrew always stood out,” she said. “Always professional and mannerly with a big broad beaming smile. A beautiful soul – he will be missed by all the GOT family.”
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Barack Obama Shares His Favorite Books of 2019
Former president Barack Obama shared his annual list of his favorite read of the year on Saturday, recommending 19 books from throughout 2019.
The president’s list includes a mix of fiction and nonfiction, ranging from Jia Tolentino’s bestselling essay collection “Trick Mirror” to Sally Rooney’s soon-to-be adapted “Normal People” and National Book Award winners “Trust Exercise” by Susan Choi and “The Yellow House” by Sarah M. Broom.
Obama also recommended books for sports fans, “A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney’s Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule” by Jim Rooney and “The Sixth Man” by Andre Iguodala.
Also Read: Barack and Michelle Obama's Initial Netflix Slate Includes Nonfiction Series From 'Big Short' Author
These suggestions builds on Obama’s 2019 summer reading list, which he shared in August. That list included works from veteran authors like Colson Whitehead, Téa Obreht and the late Toni Morrison.
The list has become a tradition over the past couple of years, with Obama taking to social media to share some of his favorite reads each December.
“This has become a fun little tradition for me, and I hope it is for you, too,” he wrote on Instagram. “Because while each of us has plenty that keeps us busy–work and family life, social and volunteer commitments–outlets like literature and art can enhance our day-to-day experiences. They’re the fabric that helps make up a life–the album that lifts us up after a long day, the dog-eared paperback we grab off the shelf to give to a friend, the movie that makes us think and feel in a new way, works that simply help us escape for a bit.”
Obama also promised to share some of his favorite movies and music from 2019 in the coming days.
Also Read: Michelle Obama Just Got a Grammy Nomination
See the full list below.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama) on Dec 28, 2019 at 1:17pm PST
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Carley McCord, New Orleans-Based Sports Reporter, Dies in Plane Crash at 30
New Orleans-based sports reporter Carley McCord was among the five people killed on Saturday when a small plane crashed into the parking lot of a post office in Lafayette, Louisiana, the Associated Press reported.
McCord — who covered the New Orleans Pelicans and the New Orleans Saints and freelanced as a sideline reporter for a number of networks, including ESPN and WDSU — was on her way to Atlanta for the Peach Bowl game between Louisiana State University and University of Oklahoma when the plane went down shortly after takeoff.
KATC TV3 reported that the Lafayette Fire Department identified McCord as a victim, and her husband, Steven Ensminger Jr. confirmed her death to the AP.
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McCord’s father-in-law, Steve Ensminger, is the offensive coordinator for LSU. Before the start of Saturday’s game, he took the field in tears with members of the team and watched them warm-up.
“We are devastated by the loss of such an amazing talent and valued member of our WDSU family,” WDSU president and general manager Joel Vilmenay said in a statement. “Carley’s passion for sports journalism and her deep knowledge of Louisiana sports, from high school to the professional ranks, made her an exceptional journalist. As we reflect on her impressive body of work, we offer our deepest condolences to her family.”
Kevin Jackson witnessed the crash and told KLFY-TV he heard a “massive explosion” and saw a “big old ball of flame” when the plane crashed.
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Confused About ‘The Witcher’ on Netflix? Showrunner, Henry Cavill Explain How the Timeline Works
(Warning: This post contains mild spoilers for Episodes 1-4 of Netflix’s “The Witcher.”)
It’s been a week since Netflix launched the first season of “The Witcher,” which a lot of folks see as the streaming giant’s attempt to have its own “Game of Thrones.” It’s certainly debatable whether a show based on the pretty weird Polish fantasy novels and short stories can pull people in the way that HBO’s more straightforward series did, and adding to that discussion is that, well, the first couple episodes of “The Witcher” are a lot to take in if you aren’t already familiar with this universe.
But if you haven’t read Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s works about Geralt of Rivia, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and star Henry Cavill are still confident you won’t be confused by “The Witcher,” despite the fact the show has three different timelines running at once, which is a) a serious departure from the novels and stories and b) something that is not immediately obvious to the viewer.
Actually, Hissirch is hoping this will help more than hurt, seeing as the different timelines allowed her to introduce main characters monster hunter Geralt of Rivia (Cavill), sorceress Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and young princess Ciri (Freya Allan) all at once, which is also a major departure from the books.
Also Read: Why Netflix Is Betting You'll Want 'The Witcher' Season 2 - Before You've Seen Season 1
“What was important to me is starting off and making sure that we understood who Geralt was and who Ciri was, and then, in Episode 2, who Yennefer was,” Hissirch told TheWrap. “And one of our early decisions we made was actually just to introduce Geralt and Ciri in Episode 1 and to hold Yennefer for Episode 2 for that exact reason. There’s only so much you can take in. And I want to make sure that what I call the ‘bells and whistles of fantasy’ — the monsters and the magic and the violence and battles and sexuality — all of those things we expect from high fantasy, that those don’t take up the room of actual character development. We need to let the characters live and breathe in this world a little bit. That was one of the reasons we structured the story that way.”
Hissirch said she chose to use multiple timelines without explaining that there were multiple timelines because she “wanted viewers who weren’t familiar with ‘The Witcher’ to be able to watch the first episode and believe they could be happening on the same timeline.”
“There’s a couple of hints in the first episode that we’ve got some interesting things happening with time, but unless you’re paying a lot of attention or know what you’re looking for, they could easily pass you as little bits of dialogue,” she said. “Because I didn’t want to force a viewer, especially a new fan, to be working that hard, I just want them to enjoy the first episode. It’s sort of as if you’re thrown into the deep end already with all the characters and all the places, I didn’t want to have to enforce that they were working on different timelines, too.”
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“To me, it becomes really evident, obviously, by Episode 4,” she continued. “This is the place where I think all audiences will go, ‘Oh my god. OK, now this is making a little bit more sense,’ where Queen Calanthe — who we see kill herself in Episode 1 — is younger and back to life in Episode 4. And hopefully, god, if I was watching this, I would want to go back to the beginning and see how they’ve been telling me this from the beginning. And I hope people will go back and rewatch and see what other little Easter eggs are planted in there.”
Cavill — a self-professed huge fan of “The Witcher” novels — told TheWrap that he thinks what Hissirch has done “fantastically well” in bringing the origin stories of Yennefer and Ciri into the show immediately might actually help a non-reader viewer understand things quicker.
“In the first book, it’s all a collection of Geralt’s short stories, which originally were written as separate short stories, and have been collected in the first book and a narrative string is between each story which travels all the way through and you actually meet Yennefer at the end of this book,” Cavill said. “But in this case, Lauren has done an amazing job and Anya has done an extraordinary job of bringing Yennefer to life before we meet her in the books.”
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The book series is certainly not structured in the sort of neat and tidy way a television show is — the early stories that Cavill mentions are basically a series of episodes that focus entirely on Geralt. We learn things about Yennefer’s past, for example, through Geralt’s perspective, rather than because there’s a story in that collection about her origin. So the show is taking that sort of information to build an actual present narrative for Yennefer instead of essentially having her only exist when she’s near Geralt. It’s probably a helpful way to do this in the long run just because it lets viewers get to know her better this way.
“I think the people that haven’t read the books, that’ll actually be a lot easier for them to get into because they have the Yennefer and Ciri storylines, which are amazingly performed, from the get-go,” Cavill added. “With the Geralt storyline, it’s a slower burn. If you’ve read the books, then yes, you have the privilege of knowing the why, the what and the how. But with his storyline, it’s a slower burn and you discover him bit by bit, more and moreover the season and through future seasons.”
Still, Hissirch is prepared for viewers who know nothing about “The Witcher” franchise to have the experience of “being thrown into the deep end” — but says that “is part of the experience of entering a fantasy world, which is it is a world that doesn’t resemble ours.”
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“The place names aren’t familiar, the people’s names sound weird. Nothing is really familiar,” she said. “The most important thing to me in Episode 1 is that you understand what a witcher is, once you have that knowledge, then you can kind of be along for the ride and things that seem confusing in Episode 1, hopefully, by the time you get to Episode 2 and Episode 3, you go ‘Oh my God, I totally understand what these things are now — but I understand why it wasn’t told to me immediately upfront.’ I think the journey is definitely part of that experience.”
Now when it comes to you viewers who did read the books and want to see the strictest adaptation possible, Hissirch has this message: “What I would say to people is, we’re adapting the source material, we’re going back to the books, we’re trying to honor the books — but it is an adaptation.”
“For purely logistical reasons, we can’t go page through page of the book and put it on screen,” she said. “We only have eight hours in this first season and we have to pick and choose the best ways to introduce these characters and the stories we tell about them — and also keep in mind what we’re hoping to set up for the future. We’re in a lucky enough position now that we know there is going to be a Season 2 of ‘The Witcher,’ so some of what we’re doing is laying down the building blocks for future seasons of stories we know we want to tell. And I always hate the losing from the source material, that’s the hardest thing. Adding things can be fun and I think we do a lot of them, but there are certain complications to stories that we did have to lose on screen, usually for time and to make space to be with characters as they are growing and changing and developing.”
Also Read: 'The Witcher' Gets Early Season 2 Renewal at Netflix
“Really, the biggest change we make to the source material is making sure that Ciri and Yennefer are also well-represented in this story,” she added. “It was really important to me to establish ‘The Last Wish,’ which was the first book that I read and the book I really fell in love with, but Ciri’s not alive yet during that book. So I didn’t want to wait until Season 2 or Season 3 to wait to introduce her, I wanted her to be a part of Season 1. So we made the decision to play with time and have these three different timelines so that we could tell each of their stories in a really thorough and full way.”
“The Witcher” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
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