Coming This Weekend
On June 18, Jonah Hex and Toy Story 3 will be released nationwide. I think the box-office will be decimated by Toy Story 3. Disney-Pixar has never failed to produce box-office gold, from The Incredibles to Ratatouille to Wall-E, and the original Toy Story was the first collaboration of the two powerhouses. With an insane number of marketing tie-ins, from Visa Debit Card to Kellogg’s, Lego and video-game collaborations, and a fully-integrated fun zone set to open at Hollywood’s historical El Capitan Theatre, Disney-Pixar is going for the box-office jugular. In terms of audience, it’s a given that every young child will see this film, but when you consider that many college students grew up on the original, it’s a safe bet that they will hit the theaters strong this weekend as well. Father’s Day may weaken the number of potential movie-goers on Sunday, but I think it’s a small threat at best. I’ll try and get a review out ASAP.
The other offering this weekend is Jonah Hex. Many are not aware that this is actually a movie based on a DC comic book character. While I love superhero films, I am very, very skeptical about this film, and this is coming from the guy that liked 2007’s Ghost Rider. Marvel has been the king of comic book movies for years, kicking the crap out of DC in terms of sheer volume of movies. Marvel boasts Spider-Man, Daredevil, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, and many more heroes, while DC only has only featured Batman and Superman. Jonah Hex is an extremely obscure DC character, a western-era hero, so its very odd that DC would put feature this character ahead of other potential fan-favorites (like The Flash or Wonder Woman), at least Ryan Reynolds will be seen as Green Lantern soon enough. Based on the trailers, they already got the character wrong (Jonah Hex has no powers in the comics, but now they’ve made him supernatural); John Malkovich is usually a dependable villain, but Megan Fox could either be a positive or negative. Sure, she’s hot, but acting talent is usually void in her case (Jennifer’s Body anyone? Yes I saw it and yes, I’ll never get that hour-and-a-half of my life back). Say what you want about Transformers 2, Michael Bay knew how to play to her strengths, and that involved 15-minutes of her running in slow motion. Let’s put a question mark on this one. Review coming soon.
