Re: CAPTAIN AMERICA-shooting July 2010:Casting, Rumors, Pics till rele
I really like the new trailer but I still think this film will have a very hard time on the international market. I've been following discussions about it on German sf/f forums and almost everybody's extremely sceptical if not downright hostile towards it. I don't personally know anyone who doesn't roll their eyes at the mention of a Captain America movie, except for some people who are big Marvel comics fans in the first place.
Then again, Germany is a country where any kind of patriotism has been frowned upon for decades. Maybe other countries won't have as much of a problem with it.
I still think people are overthinking such things. The international market just wants splosions and the content of the movie doesn't much matter. Just look at how well that Transformer twaddle does internationally. The foreign BO often makes up for a movie that's a domestic flop because it's deeply flawed in some way - Tron Legacy for instance. The same phenomenon will probably rescue the critically panned Cars 2. Sometimes I wonder if audiences are just seeing movies for the air conditioning. I guess it's pretty miserable in Nairobi this time of year.
I remain unconvinced that the subject matter of a movie counts at all when you look at international box office. What counts is not having a lot of confusing backstory and characters to catch up on. That's what keeps Star Trek at well over 50% domestic in the box office, whereas for most blockbusters, the domestic/foreign split is flipped. Event though Abrams did his best to keep Star Trek XI context-free, there's no way to divorce it utterly from its history the way movies like Avatar or the Transformer series can be.
Germany is just one market and maybe the fact that the Germans are the bad guys will inhibit box office in that country, but they won't give a flip about that stuff in Indonesia etc and that should more than make up for any shortfall in one nation.
Keep in mind that a lot of the international box office comes from people for whom WWII isn't really a part of their history, or even if it is, the audience - whose parents weren't even alive during WWII - isn't going to care. WWII is just some exotic fictional milieu, and why would it be more or less attractive than an alien world, virtual computer environment, giant kid's toys come to life, or mythological dieities tromping around on Earth? None of these mean anything to the audience outside of the theater and they are all equally valid backdrops for action and splosions.
Of course if the international box office does fall short for this movie, all it means is that they are stupidly depriving themselves of the best summer blockbuster of the year. Either way, I plan to enjoy the heck out of seeing Captain America. I haven't bothered with any of the other summer movies - this will be the first one I see this summer, and if Conan turns out to be a shambles, it will also be the last. Unlike the international audience, I am a tough sell. And San Francisco has natural air conditioning.
...Ever hear of Don Blake? Sigurd Jarlson? Eric Masterson? Jake Olson? Thor's had more secret identities than most.
