Treble

This hasn't done very well at all, mostly because of domestic indifference: Total Lifetime Grosses Domestic: $118,681,326 24.4% + Foreign: $367,300,000 75.6% = Worldwide: $485,981,326

Yeah, the PS2 controller was only the size of a dinner plate, so it was slightly less intense a workout

Soooo bought. Set up an alert at Play-Asia. I imported the PS2 game & drum set back in the day - so much fun

If you click the 'join in' link above, there's a top ten form to fill in that has all the applicable releases in the drop down

So every year, /film have an internal competition where they rank the summer blockbusters in order of their guesstimate on US domestic Box Office take, with three 'dark horse' picks. The full rules are below, but it's fairly self-explanatory. They've moved it early this year, as excluding Infinity War would be daft. You can see the full site (with their picks) here and can play along/join in the leaderboard here. So, let's do our lists! If you want to do this, make sure you add in a few lines of justification/argument for your running order - a page full of lists is boring Also the cutoff has to be before Infinity War is released and the money starts coming in, so the deadline for entries AND EDITS is 25th April! You can work out your score after 9th September. I'm useless at any kind of prognostication, so I fully expect to be trounced 01. Avengers: Infinity War 02. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 03. Deadpool 2 04. Solo: A Star Wars Story 05. The Incredibles 2 06. Mission: Impossible – Fallout 07. The Meg 08. Ant-Man and the Wasp 09. Ocean's 8 10. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! Dark Horses (ordering doesn’t matter) The First Purge Skyscraper Tag So Infinity War gets the nod for a couple of reasons: it's got the highest ticket pre-booking ever recorded in US BXO history, and comes of the back of the Black Panther phenomenon. A lot of people will go just to see the BP character in action again. I actually don't think it'll beat BP, but still expect it to do $620m+ US JW:FK on the other hand is a little divisive. JW made a ton of cash just at the start of the big monster movie revival, and the JP franchise had been dormant. Now there's a feeling of familiarity, and the fact the first wasn't outstanding, and I predict it'll have a slight but significant dropoff from the first. I'm guessing in the $575m ballpark Deadpool 2 will have a harder time than the producers expect, I think, and could and anywhere from 3rd to 6th. The trailers don't hint at much originality or divergence from the radical first film, and feels comfortably familiar already. It's also entering a packed arena (DP1 had the floor to itself in its weird Valentine's Day release). I think it might do upper $500m... say $525-550 Solo is a weird one. I think a lot of people might be put off by the lead, the fact it's a prequel and not part of the main canon. Conversely, a lot of people will be drawn by the brand and the characters. I think this will have legs; that it'll review well and carve out a niche for itself. I expect R1 numbers, so around $520m I may be a total fool putting Incredibles 2 this low. My reasoning is that there's such a big gap between the first and the second that it'll resonate most strongly with adults, and their kids will be a little more tentative. I'm probably being a massive dork, and it'll outsell everything. Still, I going to say a $450-$500m odd domestic take and a clean-up globally and on streaming/home release M:I - F is another tricky one to judge. The presence of Cavill and the promise of revisiting old storylines will boost appeal, but I honestly think if it gets merely 'good' reviews it could slip to eighth. If it reviews well, it'll get a steady take... could be anywhere from $250 - $350m, depending on that. I honestly think The Meg is gonna clean up. JW will get people worked up; 47 Meters Down will have primed people for it; The Stath is back to big-budget actioners. Oh, and it's got a gigantic, fuck-off shark! $200m at least for this, unless it's horribly bad. (p.s. I think this will do MEGa numbers globally, too) There might be a bit of Marvel fatigue by the time Ant-Man and the Wasp comes out - not a huge amount (and he's a popular character) but the first did $180m and I'm expecting around the same sorts of numbers for this. I think both Mamma Mia 2 and Ocean's 8 will do decent bank, and working out which will win-out is almost a fool's errand. I've pegged Ocean's slightly higher as - if it reviews well - the female focus, packed with stars doing their thang, will have slightly more appeal than MM2. Although I don't discount the appeal of musicals amongst a few very specific - but large - demographics. Around $100m each for these. Dark Horse wise, Tag has a great cast and a weird premise. If it resonates it might creep up to $80m? If some of the other underperform, that might be enough to get it a foothold. Skyscraper has The Rock who is often very popular. Not always though, and for every Jumanji there's a Baywatch; for every San Andreas there's a Hercules. Also, Rampage isn't exactly pulling in the mad notes right now. This one's very much the sombre steed. Finally, The First Purge may be the biggest in the franchise so far: it looks to offer big thrills alongside even MORE political commentary than before. If it can please both the thoughtful political thriller crowd and the mindless violence brigade, it could creep into tenth spot.

Yep. JW is late June, The Meg is August. I personally reckon The Meg's gonna do maaaaaad money. $200m US, $450m overseas, for a global take of $650m

Good point, and I think what I put down applies more to their Hollywood-ised interpretations than the novels. When I think back on the HP books I think of the core group and the charm and solidity of their relationship. In the films, it's obviously all about the action and the drama.

It's absolutely fascinating to me, and I think there's a big ol' book you could write on it. Forefront in my mind when you compare kids eighties movies (particularly - but not limited to - Amblin) and modern 'kids' films (which are basically YA adaptations) is the treatment of freedom. There's a sense in The Goonies (and ET, and dozens of others) that all the wars are won, the borders secure, and all wars are Cold ones. The Baby Boomers are making the films, and their parents survived WWII to make their kids - and their country - safe. The parents of that era were laxer with their kids' safety (or more trustworthy of their sensibilities, whichever view you subscribe to) than in any other point in maybe the previous 200 years or more. So child development was about using your freedom and your wits to surpass your elders, whilst simultaneously feeling like the whole world was a safe sandbox, where your childlike fantasies could be indulged. Modern kids films reflect our era of paranoia and terrorism. In the YA films (even the likes of Harry Potter) the elders have failed them, they are not safe in their own home/city/country and are besieged by corrupt governments (Hunger Games and the like) or terrorists. When you think about it, Voldemort is the absolute uber Western terrorist. He was an outsider at school who torments and brutalises anyone who is not 'pure' (or 'is other') and comes back to the school to kill all its pupils. Intentionally or not, Voldemort is the new villain archetype of the millenium; Dumbledore the adult archetype: well-meaning adult who, nonetheless, has failed his students by withholding information and freedom. The YA films are filled with tiredness, relectance and a sense of kids being beleaguered. They have to shoulder adult roles they are too young for, and have any innocence purged via trials they shouldn't have to face. TL;DR: eighties kids films reflected the (heavily bordered) freedom Gen Xers had; 2010s kids films reflect the era of domestic terrorism Millenials have to put up with.

In other news, I booked in to see this on Thursday 26th. Today, I realised I'd be too excited to concentrate on work that day and booked it off.

A couple of things that might reassure you. Firstly, the only MCU crossover that failed was the one that introduced too many new characters: Age of Ultron. All the principle goodies in this have already been introduced* Secondly, Feige says Thanos gets the most screen time (and I assume his entourage will, by proxy) so the only properly new characters will get the lion's share of the runtime. But yeah, every crossover comic I ever read was garbage. * unless we get that Cap Marvel cameo/intro, natch

No, they all struggle because of their Rs They can do 'Larra' or 'Lorra' but seldom make it to 'Lara'. Some pronunciations are just useless, wherever you are. Why do we think it's acceptable to pronounce Duel and Jewel the same way? I'm with the Yanks on that one. Conversely, the hard R in US English makes the word 'Mirror' a hideous, slippery mess of a noise.

Apparently we should be pronouncing Gradius as 'Graddius' (rhymes with 'Thaddeus') because Konami meant 'Gladius'. Fuck that sky high.

Not sure how this even happens, for a British English speaker o_0 Think about how you'd pronounce these: Glue Sprue True Flue Rue

I guess you have to ask yourself, will Rian Johnson ever made a truly great film? I'd say all his stuff's been 'good but flawed' so far.

2017-04-14- Horizon Zero Dawn ( PS4 ) 2017-03-15- Everybody's Gone to the Rapture ( PS4 ) Not much more to say about Horizon than @Benny did in his excellent GOTY review. I normally hard-pass on open world games, but I love Guerilla Games, love the fact they made it 'Metal Gear battling G1 Transformer Alt modes', and loved the story. It's not quite the sum of its parts, but it's still immense. As for their other PS4 game... If you only played it on release, or haven't played it at all, go back and play Killzone: Shadow Fall. With a locked/stable frame rate and reasonable checkpoints patched-in, it's a very good game. Not Killzone Mercenary good (by far the best Killzone game still) but a lot of fun. Hmm, EGTTR was a let down. I'm a fan of this genre, and played/liked all of these: ...but this one felt sluggish and predictable. You know the story from the first sentence, so it relies on character to drive the plot, and I don't think it nails it. Also, there's no change in tone during your investigation: it's all just the same scenery, with nothing new or strange to interact with. A good yarn wrapped in a dull package, IMHO.