The Great Geek Manual

Screenwriter John August has posted an excellent editorial on strain the movie Spider-Man 3 places on a viewer’s suspension of disbelief. The jist of the piece is that, as much as we all love action movies, it’s time for writers to take a hard look that the role coincidence is given in their scripts.

Like several million people worldwide, I saw Spider-Man 3 this past weekend. And like a substantial percentage of these viewers, I got frustrated by the number of unlikely coincidences in the movie.

There’s nothing wrong with coincidence, per se. Almost every movie is going to have some incidents where one character just happens to be in the right place at the right time. In fact, many movies are built around a “premise coincidence.” In Die Hard, John McClane just happens to be in the building when the villains attack. That’s okay. McClane’s being there is part of the premise. Likewise, in the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker just happens to get bitten by the radioactive spider. No problem: it wouldn’t be Spider-Man otherwise.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

The weekend’s Spider-Mania is past, and as expected, Spider-Man 3 smashed box-office records.

Keep in mind, all of this was accomplished by a film that reportedly cost US$258 million to produce.

Worldwide weekend opening: $375 million

Three-day Domestic Opening: $148 million
Previously held by last summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, with $135.6 million.

Three-day Foreign Opening: $227 million
Previously held by 2005’s The Da Vinci Code, with $155,000.

Biggest Domestic Opening day: $59.3 million
Also previously held by Dead Man’s Chest, with $55.8 million.

Biggest Domestic IMAX opening: $4.8 million
Previously set by 300 in March, with $3.6 million.

I can’t help it. I just find this amusing. It seems to me that Hollywood would have learned by now that an advanced premiere, especially in a foreign country, costs millions of copies in the digital age. Once upon a time, the movie premiere was a marketing necessity, but today it’s just stupid.

China’s infamous movie pirates have done it again — “Spider-Man 3″ is already being sold on Beijing’s streets almost two weeks ahead of its U.S. premier.

Costing just over $1 (50 pence) apiece, the pirated DVDs appear to be of the actual movie, complete with a picture of the hero in a new, black spider suit which he wears for some of the film.

There is even a warning on the back, printed in Chinese, against pirating the product.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

The trailer for the highly anticipated third installment of Pirates of The Caribbean trilogy is finally online. Picking up where Dead Man’s Chest ended, Will, Elizabeth and crew set sail under the command of Captain Barbossa to the end of the world to save Jack Sparrow’s life, only to have to fight a battle of survival pitting pirates from the four corners of the globe against the East India Trading Company, which has allied with the sinister Davy Jones.

See the Trailer Now at Yahoo! Movies