Steven Spielberg's THE BFG, after Roald Dahl's book

The BFG may be remembered for a climactic sequence involving British royalty and flatulence.

http://laist.com/2016/06/29/spielberg_rules.php

not liking the cgi of this giant in the trailers at all.

the giant looks like shit

yeah, this looks terrible

my mom really wants to take my daughter to see this (and she already read the book in school) so... unfortunately this looks like it may be my daughter's first exposure to Spielberg, and the first Spielberg movie I have to sit through in a theater since Empire of the Sun

what

I'm pretty selective about what I see in theaters, since my opportunities are few and far between

didn't mean to sound like I didn't like Empire of the Sun, I did (less so on rewatch - oppressive score mars a lot of it, which is otherwise impressive)

Yeah, you're missing some quality big-screen Spielberg.

I'm not a fan of the BFG book at all. For some reason I don't remember reading it growing up, but I've since read it with my kids, and it just bores me. It and "The Witches," tbh, which shares with it a certain structure, or lack there of, namely some authority sitting a kid down and just rambling at length about what giants (or witches) do. And then after a hundred pages of that, he introduces some random caper. We're going to crash Buckingham Palace/the witch convention! Love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book (the sequel is another rambling mess), love James and the Giant Peach, love Mr. Fox, love Matilda, before it inexplicably goes all Carrie for no good reason. Love the Twits. In fact, I'd love to see a feature-length Twits, just a movie of horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

weird, I read a fawning review of this from Cannes, my first exposure to the film, but everything i've read since has called it total trash.

the title is stupid, too. why not The Big Friendly Giant? "The BFG" makes me think 'The Big Fucking Gun.' (Doom?)

makes me think of BFD tour

Big Farting Giant.

Everything I've read has pointed out what was obvious (to me at least) when I read it, that there's no plot, or certainly not enough for a feature. But then, Anderson pulled off "Fantastic Mr. Fox" with aplomb, and there's almost as little to go on there. So maybe it's just Spielberg as a poor match for material? Or Disney's meddling?

like JiC also a big fan of Dahl but def didn't read it as a kid. was actually totally unaware of it until the movie

xp

never knew the book

reviews are hardly all pans

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-bfg/critic-reviews

Wld say that the BFG is easily one of the three most popular Dahl books in the UK (along w/ Matilda and Charlie)

http://www.arthouse-gallery.co.uk/WebRoot/BT3/Shops/BT3958/56E3/FED2/3F7B/4201/40C5/0A0C/05B8/3494/the_-bfg-could-you-make-me-dream-it-art-print-by-quentin-blake_m.jpg

A film that drew on Quentin Blake's wonderful BFG illustrations might have something going for it, but the grotesque travesty of Tintin already demonstrated Spielberg's utter indifference to hand drawn image-making.

yes bfg is very popular in Britain, most kids into Roald Dahl books will have read it - myself included. There was an animated tv movie of same that came out in 1989 where the bfg is voiced by "national treasure" david jason.

but the grotesque travesty of Tintin

o stuff it ward

line-drawing animation not being released to multiplexes in 2010s

missing Ward's point there, I think

I mean the Peanuts movie was CGI but it was clearly deferential to its source material. What I saw of Tintin in the previews was appalling, with zero consideration given to the look of the source material.

Love the Twits. In fact, I'd love to see a feature-length Twits, just a movie of horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

lol would watch

you can always look at the source material to yr heart's content.

does that make the movies better

to save time i no longer answer dumb questions

shocked to find out that how a film looks has no relevance to whether it's any good

^^^

Morbz do you answer rhetorical questions?

i liked tin tin a lot

fine, you didn't like the look of it. I like the aesthetics of both the Tintin books and the film. It's possible to!

xp

morbs otm!

I liked Tintin a lot, too, and my kids still quote it. But I never read it as a kid, and they don't seem to be into the books either.

bfg in the blake illo posted above just looks like a dude. neither good nor bad, but with potential for either. bfg in the spielberg flick looks kindly to the point where it becomes a bit sickening, like with rivulets of golden goodness oozing down his pantleg. can't stand the look of it. and hated tintin.

so you guys are saying we... shouldn't see this kids movie?

there's at least 3 posters itt (that I know of) that have kids fwiw

and Morbz is basically a child at heart, an eternal font of wide-eyed joy and wonder

4yo and proud iirc

I would def watch a good roald dahl adaptation

well he never topped "Lamb to the Slaughter"

yeah if you have a fragile ego that's based on things you consume, you shouldn't see this Kids movie, god knows what will happen to you.

don't know why i capitalized kids there

so you guys are saying we... shouldn't see this kids movie?

― queen elseq of ærendelle (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, June 30, 2016 7:53 PM (33 minutes ago)

fyi kids deserve to get to watch non-shitty movies just like anybody else

No they don't, they should be stuck watching grown up fare like Captain America or X-Men with the rest of us. If they really want kids stuff they should stick to kids music, like Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande or Justin Bieber.

Guys shut the fuck up and get back on point

This looks shit and feels wrong

and morbs is to be ignored on spielberg

It does seem utterly pointless. I love Spielberg, but he is not the guy I want making mo-cap movies I don't want to see.

Like, save it for Jackson or Zemeckis.

JiC otm - confine spielberg to mummified oscar bait we can all safely ignore

he's only made a few of those

do you want your mummy? xp

spielberg is fine a lot of the time, but his sensibility seems a bit at odds w/ that of dahl

also dahl's books, which at their best are like episodic bedtime stories (barely) held together by the presence of the narrator's voice, don't usually make for great films imo, i love matilda but watching it on film it's hard not to notice that the story kind of doesn't make much sense

exactly

they do ask, "Mommy, who made this crap?"

most kids will watch any crap that's noisy and fast

no

but old people will watch anything with Spielbergo's name on it

you're old!

b-b-but I won't watch anything with Spielbergo's name on it!

*shakes cane*

keep on with the 3rd-rate De Palma retro, gramps

it's either more De Palma or this Monte Hellman western Criterion twofer I got

(xp) ^ new username

the simplest explanation is that disney took a november movie and stuck it on the 4th of july 2 weeks after one of their biggest sequels ever and then completely abandoned any serious push once they realized it'd just encroach on the very pretty total BO of its very sustainable fish

sure the grotesque cgi man might have something to do with it but disney is supposed to be able to sell anything, they've proven that they'll leave a movie in the dust in favor of a catchier brand and the opportunity to brag about breaking records at shareholder meetings. they're not going to make a killing selling BFG plushies so nbd.

also lol xp this is a very popular kids book? has dahl completely dropped off in relevance in the last 20 years? this was always one of his biggest books when I was a kid

it is almost totally unknown in the US afaict. no parents know it, no kids know it.

also lol xp this is a very popular kids book? has dahl completely dropped off in relevance in the last 20 years? this was always one of his biggest books when I was a kid

Teacher of adolescents says: yes, Dahl is not nearly as popular as he used to be. And when he is read, he's read mostly in the very early now, at an age that would find creepy Rylance-face absolutely terrifying.

I am USian, idk what you're talking about

xp bummer

my children's librarian mom didn't know it, I'd never heard of it, my daughter didn't know it, I have not talked to any other parents in the Bay Area who know it

but my daughter does know Roald Dahl, has read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and seen the adap. w Wilder), the Twits, several others, including some in school (she just finished 2nd grade)

xp

I fear that The BFG is this year's Tomorrowland--a big, ambitious would-be blockbuster by a respected auteur whose underperformance will only serve as proof to the suits that they should be investing in "franchise" films and nothing else.

that comparison is a stretch. Doing a big budget Dahl adaptation is hardly a daringly original move

I suppose it's better than adapting the collective jerk-off fantasies of the reddit hivemind though

that's Spielberg's next movie

xpost

Fair to say that I was reaching with that analogy in that Spielberg = Bird, but a Dahl adaptation in 2016 is hardly a sure thing either (Tim Burton's Willy Wonka remake had the original, and Johnny Depp, to coast on). But I think the lesson--anything that isn't a superhero or Star Wars--will end up being the same.

Formatting oops, there: was trying to say that Spielberg does NOT equal Bird.

Its flopped apparently

man how did I miss that Stephen Chow directed the 7th highest grossing film of 2016

it is almost totally unknown in the US afaict. no parents know it, no kids know it.

it was one of my favorite books as a child in the united states. then again i did buy it at obscure bookseller crown books

Armond White is so odd… all of his reviews are pitched as against some strawman that he seems to have created out of thin air. He could write "Unlike CITIZEN KANE, which has earned the unending enmity of all film critics everywhere…" and I wouldn’t bat an eye. I guess another way of saying this is that A.W. seems genuinely delusional.

Spielberg /could/ make any movie he wanted if he wanted to finance and distribute it himself (he’s a billionaire!). But then not many people would see it (relative to most Spielberg movies); he needs to marketing and distribution support of major studios to get his films widely seen. And thus he needs to work /with/ them, which means constraints, however minor, on what he can do and how he can do it.

as for

But tastes shift and the failure of “The BFG” this weekend hints that Spielberg may be a different kind of filmmaker, one who’s no longer attuned to the zeitgeist.

he's had several flops before! even in his prime! remember 1941?

when i read armond white i can't help but think he's either trolling or completely insane

if he actually thinks that bfg is meant to represent Obama o_0

Everyone is trying to figure out why this flopped

It's called "The BFG"

"hay kids do you wanna see the BEE EFF GEE"

"wat"

yeah, that must be why no one's ever read the book either

kids HATE abbreviations. can't stand em

i can imagine a kid or an adult thinking that name sounds stupid as fuck when other kids movies have cool names like "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Minions" and "The Boxtrolls"

And no one in america has heard of this book

When I worked at Waldenbooks some 25 years ago, there were two Dahl books that were required to be shelved face-out rather than spine-out. One was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the other was The BFG. (And, when the movie came out, James and the Giant Peach.

Come to think of it, The Boxtrolls was very dark and very, very Dahl - right down to the relative lack of plot - and it did great. Maybe something as simple as making it live action with no stars was the problem.

if people could easily figure out why some films flop and some do really well, everybody would be running a film studio.

i already told you why it flopped, it's not that hard !

was the boxtrolls brought up as a joke? it didn't do well

i did find this mildly disappointing, tho i loved Rylance's malapropisms.

And the farting.

xpost

The Boxtrolls earned a gross of $50,769,750 in North America, and $57,418,465 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $108,188,215 against a budget of $60 million.

As of July 13, 2016, The BFG has grossed $42.5 million in North America and $11.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $54.4 million, against a budget of $140 million.

boxtrolls is really good though.

but it also didn't have the studio backing or expectations this did

Yeah, I liked Boxtrolls fine - like I said, it's a very Dahl-esque property itself - but it puts things into perspective when a perceived box office disappointment does better than a would-be Spielberg blockbuster.

it's always so misleading when they write it "(total worldwide BO) against a budget of (probably excluding marketing costs)"

I've seen analysts generalize that studios take in about 2/3 of domestic and 1/2 of foreign, and I've seen others generalize that as a liberal figure, though every movie is different and there's no way to know for sure. but using those figures, yeah, it might've broken even, probably not if marketing isn't included in that budget. maybe it made a few million. but that still isn't a successful number, especially as a kid's movie that probably didn't sell any merchandise

not saying bfg isn't a wreck boztrolls just isn't a success story

studios don't know how to market movies that aren't already popular IPs anymore

boz scaggstrolls

This was tedious.

Two lovely sequences--an early one of the BFG improvising a series of disguises of himself around London, and a shadow-illustrated dream sequence that occurs about mid-film--aside, this was quite bad, snail-paced and tonally all over the place. Not at all surprised it flopped.

You don't need to see a Spielberg movie these days to know this.

At worst a trailer will confirm.

I liked Tintin when I saw it, but I think this review nails a bit part of what's wrong with The BFG:

It would be inexplicable within the recent arc of his career if not for the precedent of Tintin, which gave him an appetite for impossible camera moves that can really only be sated when the sets are virtual, as they are for much of The BFG. I can't help thinking of Spielberg's story about how the alien-abduction sequence in Close Encounters of the Third Kind wasn't working until he went back and added shots of the screws on a vent cover turning by themselves; he thrives in that margin of error, like when he let a sick Harrison Ford shoot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark and stumbled upon one of the most iconic moments in cinema. The amount of previsualizing necessary to make something like The BFG shrinks that margin considerably, and all foresight and no hindsight makes Steve a dull boy.

*BIG part

187 posts and i count three people who actually watched it! not including me since i bailed after 40 mins.

cgi is fine, except some confusion about scale - the bfg grabs sophie and hides her in his giant hand; later a giant twice the size grabs her in a hand no bigger; later still this same hand holds the entire torso of the bfg. you'd think the cg models would be the same. rylance is great. idk about the story since it hadn't started yet, 40 minutes and a third of the way through. last straw for me and my 4 year old daughter was the scene with the bad giants putting the bfg on a dustbin lorry and pushing him down the hill towards another giant on car rollerskates - i asked her do you like this and she said no, it's scary. yes, and pointless and tiresome. maybe she's too young and I'm too old, there might be a two or three year window where this might be amusing, if it was 30 or 40 minutes shorter and felt like it was actually going somewhere.