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BABYLON - Damien Chazelle's Golden Age of Hollywood Epic Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Cocaine (Christmas)


TheLeon

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  • 3 months later...
On 12/23/2022 at 7:59 AM, TheLeon said:

Got my ticket for this evening! 


I haven’t had a chance to watch it, but I have a question: does the movie begin with a thank you intro?

 

I ask because earlier this year I had a brief conversation with Chazelle after he and his wife Olivia spoke at a theater owner meeting where one of the things they asked about was what filmmakers and producers could do for theater owners/operators besides make great movies.

 

I told him about how hugely positive the reaction of our customers were to the intro Cruise did on Top Gun Maverick, so I suggested if they had time to maybe do something like that. He was genuinely interested in the idea and we spoke for a few more minutes about exactly what customers were saying.

 

Just curious if he actually did it 

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@sblfilms Margot Robbie and Diego Calva do a little intro that is pretty much exactly the Cruise one (except there are no real jet planes used in Babylon, spoilers). Thank you for coming to the theater and seeing it the way it was meant to be seen, blah blah blah. Although I ended up having to cancel that ticket and instead went at noon on Christmas Eve, so my “energized crowd” was exactly one other dude. :lol:
 

As for the movie itself, I had a total blast, but I can definitely see why the reviews are so mixed. Someone said it’s like Chazelle threw every idea he had into this one in case he never got to make another movie. That can come off as either dazzling ambition or a self-indulgent mess depending on how well you think he pulled it off. 

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Movies for grown ups and movies for families with young kids might be a casualty of Covid. The two types of films that have consistently struggled on this side of reopening. You can find quite a selection of solid performers for pretty much every other demo, but not those.

 

Will be interesting to see what the studios do moving forward. Clearly those groups love streaming, and yet, the studios haven’t figured out how to make money selling streaming subs. We are in for a Rocky rest of the decade as the studios experiment more, but I think we are on our way to truly a “tent poles only” release strategy for studios. Theaters are going to need to keep evolving.

 

I’ve talked about this before, but it is clear to me the future of movie theaters is as one component of an entertainment complex, no longer the sole attraction. Here in Texas we have a bunch of great operators doing the combined “Family Entertainment Center” complex and they made money all throughout Covid as even when there wasn’t much product available, you could still go play arcades, bowling, laser tag, etc.

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I have no idea why they released it at Christmas, but at the same time I don’t know when it would have actually  made money. Maybe they just had no idea how to market it to a wide audience, so they just hoped with an end of year release it could be an awards play. It’s insane he was allowed to make this movie with that much money and (seemingly) no notes. I wonder if they thought it could be a similar hit to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, because they’re similar on paper. 

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tbh they also don’t know how to market these types of movies. i’ve barely heard anything about what the movie even IS. but i did hear that there was an elephant pooping on the camera or something. 

 

like can the average movie goer tell you what the fabelmans is supposed to be about? 

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Went & saw this with my best bud yesterday, was just the two of us in the theater so we got to just vibe out with this ginormous film. It is definitely a piece of art meant to be seen in a theater for sure. I got from it a feel of 'Boogie Nights' in a way, mourning the loss of cinema as it was known to be a certain way and losing oneself when attempting to transition to a new modernity. It was also a bit of an allegory for life turning on you and how your reaction dictates your fate. The music throughout was a standout and while you can always say that the camera loves Margot, here the camera makes love to a tragedy caught in a cyclone of insanity. Perhaps her best performance I have seen of her actually.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Finally got around to watching it. Not his best film, and maybe his worst, but it’s quite the spectacle and kept my attention for its entire three hour run time.

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