C'mon dude, Shack's right.

DV is spiralling inwards into a pseudo arthouse director. Sure, the sequel is relentlessly faithful, but since the original BR was complete in itself, 2049 was entirely unnecessary. Therefore, the director could have easily gone in a more commercial direction (as it stands, there's already plenty of attention paid to franchise building sub-plots eg: replicant uprising). Perhaps most importantly, the running time should have been cut to 120 minutes - which would have freed up the whole story from it's glacial pace.

Or, the budget should have been slashed, and let DV navel gaze to his heart's content.

He's absolutely not right....would you rather take your shot with a good to great Villeneuve movie or would you rather take your shot with a good to bad "commercial" director movie? Your chances of making a great movie drop dramatically the lower down the commercial rabbit hole you go. And, the vagaries and tastes of the marketplace are often unpredictable, so you're *not guaranteed* financial success even if you go commercial. You want to go to market with the good to great director, not the commercial one.

With Villeneuve, you are virtually guaranteed a movie that large segments of the audience will adore. Okay, it wasn't a super smash hit opening weekend, but you'll recoup chunks of money over time with a well-loved property (original box office bomb Blade Runner is literally case in point). The gargantuan movie company may only eke out a meager profit....I guess you and Shack can hold a candlelight vigil for the shareholders and producers.

I mean shit, look at Sicario. Villeneuve was given $30m to make a friggin narco thriller. Was that a big box office hit? No. Do you think Lionsgate was happy or sad they gave Villeneuve $30m to make a narco thriller that nabbed them 3 Oscar nominations and now has a sequel coming out next year? Making a film that people love pays dividends, even if those dividends don't arrive on the first Friday through Sunday.

If you go the commercial direction as movie mogul Shack wanted them to do, which TONS of reboot/late sequels have done, you're now rolling the dice with the market place with a potentially shit product. And let's look at a movie that's in the news lately with Leto playing a part in a proposed sequel....Tron Legacy. Disney went balls to the wall there in a completely commercial direction. They poured a boatload of money into that property both in production and marketing, and what are they left with? A movie that was tepidly received, a spinoff animation series that nobody wanted/was cancelled after 1 season, and now talk of the sequel is greeted with "huh? why?" Disney poisoned the well going commercial.

So to circle back....



The idea that anyone at all is getting fired for hiring Denis Villeneuve to make a movie that: has a 81 on Metacritic; is currently 50th on the IMDb top 250; will turn a profit for them; will probably get Oscar nominations; and opens up a WORLD of possibilities of future projects because the Blade Runner world has been successfully revived....anyone who thinks that is out of their god damn mind.

"Out of there god damn mind" is a bit of a stretch, as I have no doubt people will be fired over the movie, no one visibly important though. But that's the beauty of movies, the job is already done when you're judged. But some people will have trouble finding work for sure. It was definitely a misguided choice on the studio's part to give a man who could have made this film for 50 million, 150 million (granted they at least bought the reviews.) There is a "fuck you how awesome are we" vibe to the film that was nauseating (We have 10 minutes that only strengthens our movie, but we're gonna cut it out because everyone will watch it before hand, we just have too much greatness for the film)

But I disagree with Shack that it had potential to be ridiculously huge. It had potential to over perform, but its budget made that impossible. I think Bladerunner might kill it as a tv series though.

But it has nothing to do with Director choice. OMG if Ridley directed this it would have been so sweet to have the man just ruin his entire legacy twice in one year. Karma's a bitch. That's what you get for blueballrng an Aliens sequel everyone wants.

Perhaps you have different definitions of those two words than I do?

Anyone that just uses the word adore, I ignore.

Like A: It's creepy to look at other members of the audience when you're in a theater and B: no one ever uses the word adore, yet I took the entire movie to not watch the film, but actually stared at them when they all were completely adored. And then said to himself, it's not unanimous, it's large though.

Working on a new movie standup routine in case no one can tell.

Other audience members are running for a door.

You're like Jerry Seinfeld if Jerry Seinfeld was a bad comedian.