The Matrix: Franchise Review (Original, Reloaded, Revolutions, Resurrections)

Here’s a unique review for you. Instead of one review of the latest entry in The Matrix franchise, I’m here to deliver you a review of the entire franchise as a whole. No, this isn’t going to be four detailed reviews of each film. While this post is long, given that I’m talking about an entire franchise, I’ve decided to pick and choose which points to highlight. Strong emphasis on the original film and a decent-sized conversation about this most recent one, but the main goal here is to highlight why the first one worked so well and compare those notes to the sequels that have come after it rather than give a detailed dive into each of the four movies.

Because here’s the thing. I had not seen any of the Matrix sequels until last week. I saw the original not too long before it came out. Not in theaters because I was only 10 when it was released, but I remember watching it on TV at my friends place at some point in the early 2000s, probably around sixth or seventh grade, give or take. But I never got around to watching the other two after they were released. I was more of a casual movie fan until I moved out for college, so some of those 2000s movies and earlier escaped me, especially ones liked the Matrix sequels that everyone seemed to hate. Catching up just wasn’t high on my priority list.

But nevertheless, one cannot watch and review a fourth movie in a franchise without having seen the previous three. I was going to get caught up before “Resurrections” was released in theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas. But I failed. Yet I made the commitment to watch all four before “Resurrections” left HBO Max, which was on my birthday, January 21. With literally minutes to go before it disappeared, my task was complete. And thus being in a Matrix mood, all of thoughts on the four movies have been swirling around in my head and need to escape, not just thoughts on the final one. So this is why I am approaching this review in this way.

Before I completely bury my lede here, I will say that none of the Matrix sequels live up to the original film. In fact, they get progressively worse. This latest iteration especially feels useless and overly convoluted. They spend the whole movie trying to justify this new movie’s existence. And it seems quite evident based on scenes in the movie itself that Lana Wachowski had no desire to even make this film, but she was forced into a corner by Warner Bros. themselves, who were going to make a sequel with or without her. So she uninspiringly threw one together and the result is a really ugly mess that was also a massive failure at the box office.

But to fully understand exactly why this one was a mess, there needs to be an understanding of what exactly made the first movie succeed and why none of the sequels were able to recapture that magic that the first movie presented.

"The Matrix"

I found it a rather immersive experience diving into that original film again. With the benefit of hindsight, the plot itself is nothing remarkable. We’ve seen many times, before and after 1999, the story of humans versus artificial intelligence. As technology continues to evolve, there seems to be a consistent, overarching fear that one day the technology is going to get more advanced than humans can handle and completely take over. And that fear is often reflected by authors and filmmakers in various media, including books, TV shows, and movies. Even back in 1999, “The Matrix” had its own inspirations, like the 1995 anime “The Ghost in the Shell.” And when it comes to humans vs. artificial intelligence, a lot of inspirations can perhaps be traced back to 1982’s “Blade Runner.” Fast forward 23 years and this particular niche has been oversaturated to the extreme.

But even with that, what makes “The Matrix” so immersive is how they set up the world. There is a well-executed balanced between the world building and the stylized action. The audience is essentially put in the shoes of Neo, our main character, who feels like a normal human being living a normal life until suddenly a lot of trippy things start happening. He learns that the world he knows is essentially fake, a virtual creation of the artificial intelligence, who have almost completely wiped out the human race. They’ve kept humanity in these little pods that inject the virtual world into their minds while their real bodies are rotting on the side of a cliff. Neo learns about all this while also getting the bombshell that he is to be the “Chosen One,” to save the remaining or escaped humans from the machines.

When I re-watched “The Matrix” last week, I actually watched it twice. Sure, some of the superfans probably know it like the back of their hands, but having not watched it in years, there’s a whole lot of lore that they throw you into. It’s a lot to take in at first and thus you feel for Neo as he’s trying to figure out what exactly is going on and what exactly he’s supposed to do. But as everything connects in the end, it’s really a fun experience going through it again and having all of those final dots be connected. It’s not just a bunch of fun action sequences, but it is an absolutely fascinating world. And the way in which they slowly layer everything upon itself is incredibly well put together. As Neo learns about all this, he becomes smarter and stronger, meaning the action sequences mixed in get progressively better and more entertaining. And there is a level of intensity and fear with those action sequences with all the uncertainty revolving around them. It’s one thing to watch people punch, kick, and shoot at each other. It’s another to not know how things are going to resolve. If you fear for your protagonist’s safety, you become a lot more emotionally invested in the sequences.

And speaking of the action sequences, what “The Matrix” is best known for is that stylized action. Given the setup of this virtual world, the typical laws of the universe don’t exactly apply like they would in the normal universe. So as our Chosen One learns more of his abilities, he also learns how to defy the laws of physics, adding a new layer to the action. And on top of that, the slow motion work along with those physics-defying sequences made this a milestone event in the world of action and sci-fi. To the point where it was copied and parodied just about everywhere and became a bit stale. Yet the original movie never ceased to be entertaining.

"The Matrix Reloaded"

Yes, I said that this review was not going to be a detailed synopsis of all of the four movies, but detailing the first one feels very important here to establishing why the sequels never lived up. These elements that I brought up here that make “The Matrix” so great aren’t followed like they should. There’s a formula that the Wachowskis laid out for themselves in the first movie that they were never able to go back and follow, whether or not they were invested in doing so. And that ultimately is why the sequels are disappointing. “The Matrix” can stand on its own as a singular film, but Neo doesn’t save the world in that first movie. He gets to the point where he now has the ability to do so, and promises the enemies that he is going to defeat them, but there is a cliffhanger there that sets up for a grand and beautiful franchise that ultimately is never realized. So much potential that is completely wasted.

Now I don’t want to come in and jump on the bandwagon of hate as if I’m morally obligated as a movie fan to do so. I know people who have really loved all three movies. And I also know that some fan reaction is very black and white. If a movie is not the epic masterpiece that you wanted it to be, people often unfairly discard it as trash. See any of the Star Wars sequels. None of the recent movies are the worst movie in the world, but sometimes when you care about a franchise so much, “average” and “decent” are not acceptable. The disappointment turns into hatred because your expectations were so high. “The Matrix Reloaded” still has the fifth highest opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie. And it held the record of highest R-rated opener for 13 years until “Deadpool” came around in 2016. Fans were massively excited for it, yet were massively disappointed. Were they justified in their hate or were they being unfair?

Obviously you know my answer to that question now, but that’s an honest question that I had going into the sequels. I wasn’t just falling in line to what I was supposed to think. I genuinely thought it was possible that I would enjoy the sequels given that I don’t have the same level of superfandom attached to “The Matrix.” And my expectations going in were different. If you expect to get disappointed, then you can’t get disappointed, right?

And honestly “Reloaded” isn’t that bad. It obviously had big shoes to follow. And while it didn’t manage to be an “Empire Strikes Back,” a sequel to an iconic, groundbreaking film that somehow managed to be better than the first, you can tell that the Wachowskis really tried hard to up the ante and make this a bigger and better film. To which I give a tip of the hat for an honest effort.

The ultimate issues lie in the topic of balance. And I made such a big effort in speaking of “The Matrix” being a well-balanced and properly layered film because, in my opinion, that’s where “Reloaded” falls flat on its face. All four Matrix films overload you with exposition. And exposition is not an inherently bad thing as some people make it out to be. But “The Matrix” balanced that exposition in a way that made you progressively learn about this world along with the main character. “Reloaded” gives you immensely heavy exposition dumps squeezed into small periods of film time. And in between those immensely heavy exposition dumps are action sequences that are the biggest and longest action sequences that you might find in any action film, which can be both a positive and a negative.

Yes, the 17-minute care chase sequence might be the most entertaining car chase sequence you’ve ever watched. Yes, the scene in the playground at the beginning with Neo and the hundreds of Agent Smiths is an absolutely insane fight. And yes, the staircase sequence with Neo vs. the French guy and all of his cronies is fantastic. But I think it’s quite possible that they were a bit too much. It was a bit action heavy and minimal on plot. Minimal, yet dense, as I described. The Wachowskis could’ve spread the exposition out more cleverly across the film in doses that were easy to take. In doing so, cut down some of those action sequences to make a better balanced film. And if you tell me that’s preposterous and you don’t want the car chase any shorter, then might I remind you that “The Matrix” wasn’t an action-heavy film. The action sequences were spread out and well executed. The focus was on quality action, not quantity of action. And that’s why it worked so well.

The other part of the action sequences that I noticed is that the stakes weren’t as high. That’s also why I mentioned in my summary of the first film that you can become a lot more invested in a movie if you fear for the life of your protagonist or the opponent seems too strong to overcome. Because in “Reloaded” Neo has essentially reached God status. In more context than one. I think him coming to Zion and having a large crowd of people on their knees begging for his help was a bit heavy-handed. It was as if he was literally their Jesus Christ. But outside that, in the context of action sequences, he’s basically Superman. He can fly, he can easily fight off any opponent in hand-to-hand combat, and he can’t miss any target with his gun. And he can also make any bullets drop in midair. And when your opponent is this invincible, the reward isn’t as high when he wins. Despite the action being incredibly well put together, it becomes like the lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels, also released around this time. It’s basically like choreographed dances and not fights. And that’s not as intense in comparison.

In short, bigger doesn’t equal better. I think the Wachowskis’ main problem is that they tried to go too big instead of building on the incredible mythology. It also suffers from being only half of a movie, because they literally filmed the two sequels back-to-back and release them in the same year. In current time, that’s not a huge problem. You can jump straight to the next one on HBO Max and treat it like one giant, five-hour movie (267 minutes total). But I think it would’ve been more rewarding if they focused on making one individually good movie because on its own it’s just a bunch of massive action sequences strung together  with a partial plot.

That said, if you want to treat it like one massive Matrix sequel, that makes it… worse.

"The Matrix Revolutions"

Because “The Matrix Revolutions” is a giant mess. I can concede that “Reloaded” is very watchable and entertaining. And maybe that’s a higher opinion of it than some people have. But I was not invested in “Revolutions” at all.

I don’t really care to do a massive deep dive into all of the problems of “Revolutions,” but the biggest issue for me is that it becomes a massive video game. The type of video game that I don’t really care for. I know gunplay is a thing in every Matrix movie, but it was stylized gunplay that mixed very well with its martial arts hand-to-hand combat. The whole middle section of “Revolutions” had no stylized action at all. It was a massive battle with all the machines invading Zion and the defenders of Zion endlessly shooting their machine guns at them. And in most of these middle sequences, Neo is not involved. He went off on another quest that we finish the movie with. I’ll get to that in a second, but a Neo-less Matrix movie without the stylized action sequences and a bunch of new characters that I definitely don’t care about is not the sci-fi wonder that I wanted. This felt like a Michael Bay action film and not a brilliant sci-fi movie. In “Reloaded,” they tried to include elements of the first movie, they just had it mostly imbalanced. In “Revolutions,” just about everything that made “The Matrix” work was disregarded. And that was rather mind-boggling to me.

The sole interesting part of the movie that felt like a Matrix movie was the final act of the movie where Neo arrives at Machine City. And when your only good moment is the final act, that’s a problem. I can pick apart “Reloaded” pretty easily, but at least it kept me entertained for all three acts. The only good action sequence in this movie is when Neo gets plugged into the Matrix again at the end and has his final confrontation with Agent Smith. And to that scene’s credit, it’s incredible. But one good scene at the end is not nearly enough to make up for the fact that the rest of the movie was a massive dumpster fire.

But even with that one really good sequence, I had many questions about the resolution of the film. I don’t want to do a deep dive into all my questions, and spoiler alert for the movie if you’re like me and hadn’t seen it yet are wanting to, but here’s some quick highlights of my confusion. Trinity dies pretty unceremoniously. They crash landed into Machine City and that killed her. Granted, I think there are parts of all four movies that focused way too much on that romance, but it’s still a bit anticlimactic the way they wrote her off. But a bigger bullet point is how Neo so easily made peace with the Machines. He basically just went in and asked them if they could have peace and they agreed? 200 years of fighting these things and all they had to do was kindly ask them to not fight? That’s weird. And final point, while the Agent Smith fight was really good, I’m a bit confused as to how it actually ended. He let Agent Smith take him over and then all the Agent Smiths exploded. Maybe that one is explainable, but it still left me puzzled. And I think that there could’ve been a better resolution.

So anyways, Neo is dead. We think. Trinity is dead. But the Agent Smiths went boom and Neo asked for peace, so peace we have and a conclusion we have been led to. Maybe. Because it still ended in a slightly ambiguous way with the Oracle’s conversation with the Architect. Maybe Neo is gone for good? Maybe he’ll come back? Maybe the peace will remain or maybe the Machines will decide to change their mind and go to war again?

I don’t think it was a very satisfactory ended, but it needs to be emphasized that it was still an ending. An ending in which the Wachowskis never intended on coming back to. And I do believe they said that in interviews. Matrix 4 was never in the plans for them.

"The Matrix Resurrections"

Which awkwardly leads us to this new movie, “Matrix Resurrections.” And, oh boy, if I thought “Revolutions” was a dumpster fire, I was in for one in “Resurrections.” Even though I hadn’t seen the previous two Matrix movies in this franchise, I will be honest and say that I never was excited for this movie. I know a lot of people that were super hyped. And I know a lot of people that watched the trailer and were blown away. While I admit that “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane was a perfect song choice for the trailer, the trailer never excited me. It never looked good. It never looked interesting. It’s just a thing that existed. My analysis was that Warner Bros. saw the major Keanaissance take place with how massively popular Keanu Reeves has become since the John Wick movies and decided that they were going to make another Matrix movie. Studios reviving old franchises is becoming a very trendy thing today in the wake of the Disney Star Wars era and others. And it can work. But if a studio decides to mandate a franchise revival from filmmakers who never wanted that franchise to be revived, that’s a big issue.

And when push comes to shove, that’s all that “Resurrections” feels like. As it turns out, both Neo and Trinity are alive and living normal lives in a revived or rebooted version of the Matrix. But not just that, Neo works as a video game creator. He’s made three video games called “The Matrix” and now Warner Bros. is forcing him to make a new Matrix video game. And there is an extensive discussion in their office about the necessity of making another Matrix game and all the implications of a reboot or a sequel to this.

Look, maybe some people liked how Meta that was. But for me, I was like… what? And it’s not just subtle or slightly referential. This is all-out Deadpool making fun of Fox and pop culture inside of his movie. And for Deadpool it works. That’s the point of Deadpool. But turning The Matrix into Deadpool did not feel like it fit in anywhere. It felt like Warner Bros. approached Lana Wachowski and said, you’re making this movie or someone else is. So forced into a corner, she wrote a Matrix movie. And she decided to spend the first act of the movie calling out Warner Bros. on their absurdity inside of her film. And somehow that screenplay with all of that in it got the green light from Warner Bros., which is both hilarious and mind-boggling.

In hindsight, this is not the first 2021 Warner Bros. movie to make full Warner Bros. meta references. That was all of “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” Also in hindsight, maybe Warner Bros. should’ve asked someone different than the Wachowskis. Granted, I will admit that I need to go revisit "Speed Racer” and “Cloud Atlas,” but this sibling duo is fully responsible for “Jupiter Ascending,” one of the worst movies ever. And, as I’ve pointed out in detail, they didn’t seem to fully understand what it was about their original Matrix movie that made it work so well. And if they did, they didn’t execute well. So in my opinion, the Wachowskis are not good filmmakers. They made one great movie, “The Matrix,” and a lot of trash ever since. So this sequel just seemed like a project doomed to fail. A studio mandated sequel from poor filmmakers who didn’t seem interested in making this in the first place.

That’s all that really needs to be said, but outside the confusing meta sequence with The Matrix being a video game franchise that Neo programmed, this is the longest Matrix movie at 2 hours 28 minutes and the movie spends approximately the first two hours trying to justify its existence and never succeeding. It’s two hours of massive exposition dump and a plot that mostly revolves around Neo trying to save Trinity from the Matrix. Because once he’s gotten out, he now tries to figure out how to convince her to escape when her new Matrix life is being happily married (to someone who isn’t Neo) with kids. Add to that a whole slew of new characters that are even more uninteresting that the ones they introduced in “Revolutions.” There’s also a recast Morpheus that is kinda in the movie and a few useless cameos, most notably the Frenchman from “Reloaded,” who is only there for the most useless moment of nostalgia vomit, not even getting two minutes of screen time.

And don’t ask me how Neo and Trinity are now alive. I guess the Machines just decided that they needed to be alive and in a pod again. Which totally undermines anything from the trilogy itself, given that we now know that the stakes are even lower. If you die, you can just be brought back. So there’s not even a fear of death.

There is only one action sequence that is even remotely entertaining. And it comes at the two hour mark. And even then, it’s a slightly forgettable action sequence in comparison to other action sequences that we’ve had in recent movies. I didn’t expect the movie to revolutionize the action genre like the first movie, or be any sort of milestone in filmmaking, but I was hoping for some action sequences that at least felt close to the John Wick movies, given that I theorize that’s why this movie exists, or at least be somewhat reminiscent of the original Matrix movie. At the very least, give me a big, fun action sequence like that in “Reloaded.” Nope. Whatever expectation there was for at least a minor moment of entertainment never panned out.

The only solace I gain from this whole debauchery was that it was a massive failure at the box office. It opened to $10.7 million at the domestic box office and has made $36.7 million domestically at the point of me typing this up. For context, the previous three movies opened to $27.8 million, $91.8 million, and $48.5 million, respectively. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, given that was 1999 and 2003, that is the current equivalent of $50.1 million, $139.4 million, and $73.6 million. Their final domestic totals were $173.9 million, $281.6 million, and $139.3 million, which again translate to $313.7 million, $427.7 million, and $211.6 million. To follow that up with a $10 million opening perhaps a final total that reaches $50 million domestically is nothing but an absolute disaster. And its worldwide total ($148.6 million right now) hasn’t even yet matched its production budget ($190 million). And usually you need to make two to three times your production budget to get a profit.

There’s no way around it. “Resurrections” failed to resurrect the franchise at the box office. Some watched on HBO Max (myself included), but I promise that didn’t make up the difference. I don’t even need numbers to know that. And COVID isn’t really an excuse given that “Spider-Man: Now Way” just made $1.7 billion worldwide so far. What this really means is that we’re not getting a fifth Matrix movie. The Wachowskis don’t want to do it and there’s no way Warner Bros. can justify a sequel with that financial output, not to mention that the majority of fans seem to also hate it. I can, with confidence, say that the Matrix franchise is now over. To which I unfortunately say…

Good.

We can safely pretend that the first movie is the only one that happened and that the rest never existed. That’s probably how it should’ve been, which is unfortunate given how much potential there was to keep going. If only someone competent was in charge.

Movie Preview: January 2022

Another year has come and gone. As such, it’s time to preview the year in film that is before us, which is something that I did not do last year. The state of the box office was still at a point where I had no idea what was going to come out, so there didn’t seem to be much of a point in my yearly preview. While things are still very fluid and in a state of recovery, I feel confident enough in the state of the industry to bring that post back.

Obviously this is not that post, but given that we’re in the new year, I wanted to let you know what the plan is. Every year that I do that post, it’s always a challenge to figure out how to balance the January preview as well. This year the January preview is coming first.

Granted, there’s not much to preview this January. Even before COVID, January was always a weird month. The box office would always be dominated by holiday holdovers and awards hopefuls expanding, while the new releases felt like movies that were just kinda dumped on the schedule given that January is not typically the optimal month to release something new. Add the Omicron concerns into all that and we have a pretty barren landscape. Now “Spider-Man: No Way Home” proved that people are still willing to go to the theaters if it’s for a movie they’re excited about. That movie has now made $1.4 billion worldwide, without a China release, in the midst of massively rising COVID cases. So that provides studios with plenty of confidence. Yet the movies that are in trouble with Omicron are the releases that people maybe weren’t so excited about. The typical January release. Sure, they’ll brave the storm for Spider-Man? But for a movie they weren’t so excited about? Not so much.

That’s a bit of a longer intro than I normally do. But given the circumstances and the lack of movies in this post, I felt it was a necessary. There’s not much to type in the body of this post, so perhaps I’m making up for it here? Anyways, let’s jump in. As always, release date info is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The release dates listed are the domestic release dates, so United States and Canada, and are subject to change at any point.

January 7 – 9

Universal’s "The 355"

The winner of this weekend running away will be “Spider-Man: No Way Home” for a fourth straight weekend. As of Wednesday, the 5th, it has made $631.8 million domestically, good enough for eighth place on the list of highest grossing movies at the domestic box office. It just recently passed “Incredibles 2” ($608.6 million), “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” ($620.2 million), and “The Avengers” ($623.4 million). Next up are “Jurassic World” ($652.3 million) and “Titanic” ($659.4 million). It can pass both of those movies with $27.6 million from Thursday through Sunday. Box Office Pro is currently projecting $27.5 million on the 3-day alone, with a $663.3 million by the end of Sunday. And that’s with a projected 51 percent drop.

The only new release in the market that is hoping to break the top 5 is Universal’s new action thriller The 355. Actually, Universal is probably hoping for a lot more than just a total that sneaks into the top 5, but they might have to live with that. Box Office Pro is projecting this at just $3 million, enough to barely get it to third place, above “The King’s Man,” “American Underdog,” and “Matrix Resurrections,” while below the projected $12 million of “Sing 2.” On paper, “The 355” sounds like a winner. It has a huge cast of females, with Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing all portraying female intelligent agents from different countries – United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Colombia, and China – teaming up together to stop a terrorist group from starting World War III. Chastain actually proposed this idea of a female-led spy thriller to Simon Kinberg while they were making “Dark Phoenix.” And thus this movie’s production began, with Kinberg here as the director and Chastain as one of the stars.

The ultimate challenge for “The 355” is making it stand out. The advertising has heavily pushed the Bourne connection with universal and they’re trying to make it the next big spy franchise. But there are a lot of these that have come out over the years. And unfortunately it may seem like one of the many generic Netflix action movies that have come out over the years, perhaps leading people to wait till whenever it hits a streaming service before they see it instead of rushing out to theaters. Hence the projected $3 million opening. The early critical score of 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 77 reviews counted certainly won’t help things.

January 14 – 16

Paramount's "Scream"

While “The 355” is most definitely not going to dethrone Spider-Man at the top of the box office, the biggest challenger to Spider-Man this month comes here in the second weekend of January and that is the release of Scream. For what it’s worth, the one genre that has been able to consistently succeed in the month of January is the horror genre. Even low quality horror movies with terrible reviews have often been able to attract enough audiences to make back their budget. And “Scream” is the fifth movie in a very popular horror franchise that hasn’t had a theatrically-released film since 2011. This could definitely work in its favor. And although “Scream 4” had diminished returns compared to the first three, “Scream” is attempting to go the “Halloween” route by releasing a soft reboot/sequel to the original with the original cast and an identical name to the original. The strategy worked like a charm for “Halloween,” to the tune of one of the highest opening weekends ever for a horror movie. It remains to be seen if lightning can strike twice here with another horror franchise. “Scream 3” holds the biggest opening weekend with $34.7 million.

A $30 million opening weekend would definitely be a huge win for the franchise, especially since the bar is low for financial success with horror movies having much lower budgets than normal films. That’s why there’s still been a consistent stream of horror movies released throughout the entire pandemic. They don’t need to make a lot. Since there’s no other wide releases this weekend, I’ll quickly point out that “Scream 4” opened to $18.7 million. And while “Scream 3” holds the franchise record for opening weekend, when you adjust for ticket price inflation, “Scream 2” passes it up for a 2022 equivalent of $65.7 million (The unadjusted total for “Scream 2” is $32.9 million). Worst case scenario for “Scream” seems to be a $10-15 million opening, unless it completely bombs. A total in that range could theoretically still beat Spider-Man, but that would make for an awfully close race if that’s the case. And this is a holiday weekend, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day coming on Monday, so there could be good holds.

January 21 – 23

Universal’s "Redeeming Love"

There may or may not be two new wide releases coming to theaters in the third weekend of January. And by that I mean that the release schedule has two movies scheduled for wide release, but looking at the two movies, I’m not so sure how wide either of them will end up being. If I were to make a bet, I would say that the movie most likely to do well and/or be the widest new release is Redeeming Love. Mainly because it’s being distributed by Universal. And because the trailer on YouTube has 1.7 million views, compared to the other movie’s trailer having 201,000 views. You might be able to guess that “Redeeming Love” is a romance movie. And you’d be right. But it’s also a historical film. It’s a romance set in the 1850s during the Gold Rush, where the lead female has had a very bad history of abuse, so the idea of loving and trusting someone is difficult for her. It’s based on a best-selling novel by Francine Rivers. Those factors could all be in the movie’s favor as an early Valentine’s Day date option, even if the director or lead stars aren’t anyone too notable.

The other movie theoretically scheduled for release is The King’s Daughter, not to be confused with “The King’s Man” from last month. This is a real movie that’s coming out and it even has a trailer released, with a decent number of views, as just pointed out. The question here comes with the fact that the distributer is Gravitas Ventures and they’ve only released one movie that has made over $1 million in its entire run. And that’s a movie called “Queen Bees” from last year. It started in 500 theaters and finished with $1.6 million after an opening weekend of $375,000. Looking at those numbers, that feels about what “The King’s Daughter” will do. Although in its favor is a cast that’s led by Pierce Brosnan and William Hurt. The premise might throw you for a loop, though. It’s about King Louis XIV’s quest for immortality leading him to capture and steal the life force of a mermaid, whom his daughter discovered. Whether that makes you more or less likely to see it is for you to decide. It’s also notable that this is a movie that was filmed way back in 2014, so it’s been on the shelf for a very long time.

January 28 – 30

And that’s it. At the time of me typing this, there are no releases scheduled for the final weekend of January. So yeah, January is currently just “The 355” and “Scream,” with those two smaller films coming in the third weekend.

If you’re curious as to why this weekend is completely empty, Sony’s “Morbius” was previously slated for this dated. In light of Omicron, Sony pushed that movie to April, in hopes of Omicron having died down a bit. Also, there was supposed to be a “Sesame Street” movie on January 14 by Warner Bros., but they temporarily took that off the schedule, presumably waiting until cases die down before putting back on the schedule.

Also, the movie “Cyrano” might eventually come out at some point. That’s a new musical starring Peter Dinklage that has been getting a lot of critical praise. It had its Oscar-qualifying run in December and has also had screeners given out to critics and awards voters. But as far as its release to general audiences, it was initially scheduled for a limited release at the end of December and an expansion in January, but United Artists has changed their plans on that a few times. It’s currently scheduled for a limited release on this final weekend, but that could also be up in the air. This is the type of release where it might be most beneficial to wait a bit until Omicron dies down. Smaller releases have the biggest chance of being ignored. Or they might be waiting for Oscar nominations to come out, which is early February, with the hopes that Peter Dinklage gets a nomination, or it getting something in some category, then using that to gain interest. But despite the critical buzz being very high, the awards buzz seems very quiet. But whenever “Cyrano” comes out, I’ll give an update.

Spider-Man: No Way Home Review (SPOILERS)

The movie event of the year has arrived with “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and there’s only one way to talk about it.

SPOILERS!

No, this is not going to be a detailed plot summary. You can go to Wikipedia for that. And no, I’m not going to cover every last aspect of the movie. But when the main plot of the movie involves details that the filmmakers and the studio went to great lengths to try and hide from the audience, it’s hard to write a non-spoiler review. Even the critics I follow who have attempted that have awkwardly danced around every main plot point of the movie, resulting in a review that only makes sense for those who have seen the movie. And given that I’m not actually a professional critic writing for a site that demands a review ASAP, or a YouTube critic who needs to get a review out ASAP in order to compete for views, I can do what I want. Heck, I’ve spent most of this year writing short reviews on my Facebook page instead of writing them on this blog. And whether it be Facebook or this blog, I decided that I didn’t even want to attempt a non-spoiler review. I’m just going to wait for a few days and get my thoughts out properly via a spoiler review right. So that’s where we are.

If you haven’t seen the movie, you probably didn’t click on this link. But just in case you did, major spoilers coming in…

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CHARLIE COX HAS RETURNED AS MATT MURDOCK, AKA DAREDEVIL, MAKING HIS CINEMATIC MCU DEBUT!!!!

HOLY FREAKING COW!!!

That one I didn’t see coming. Apparently there were photo leaks that revealed this. I heard of said leaks, but managed to avoid them. I assumed they were of Andrew and Tobey, but didn’t care to check. I had no idea a Matt Murdock cameo was in the cards. Sure, it was only for a quick scene, but it was a scene that worked really well given that Peter and Happy Hogan both were in need of a really good lawyer to clear their names. And who better than to be that lawyer than the best lawyer in the MCU?

Sure, as inconsequential as it may have been, for me this was a huge moment because the MCU has completely ignored the existence of the Netflix Defenders shows up until now. There are even constant debates that happen on Twitter as to whether or not they are even part of the MCU. And the answer has always been that they are as MCU events are referenced in every show. But it was Kevin Feige or anyone in connection with Marvel Studios running those shows. It was ran by Marvel Television, which now ceases to exist as it folded into Marvel Studios in 2019. So it’s kinda like the Marvel property from Fox. Marvel Studios has ownership of all of the property and characters and can choose to do with it as they please, but up until now they have yet to do so. And I honestly didn’t think they ever would. But now that they have, there better be more. The best case scenario would be to do a revival of the shows on Hulu or Disney+. But at the very least, bring back the characters in some capacity. And I actually don’t care for “Iron Fist” or “Luke Cage,” but I really want more of “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones” and “The Punisher.” So please, Marvel and Disney, make it happen!

OK, fine. The real spoilers here are that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire are indeed in this movie, reprising their roles as the previous movie iterations of Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Yes, we have a movie with three different cinematic versions of Spider-Man are fighting five different cinematic Spider-Man villains. And we even has Jamie Foxx as Electro make reference to Miles Morales, or rather him wishing there was a black Spider-Man. Which you know is going to happen eventually. Yes, that did happen in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” but I’m talking a live action Miles Morales. So yes, lots and lots of Spider-Men, although not as many as “Spider-Verse,” but that’s besides the point.

And all of this makes “No Way Home” the “Avengers: Endgame” of the Spider-Man universe. Which is what all of the fans wanted. And is exactly what they got.

Now I made a Facebook post a few weeks ago expressing my concerns that I wasn’t sure that this movie was going to be able to live up to all the hype the internet was giving it. I was fearing that many people were going to walk out disappointed in this movie because it wasn’t the movie that they had predetermined that they wanted. And I was ready with a potential argument that said take wasn’t fair. People shouldn’t judge a movie by what they thought it was going to be. They should judge a movie by what it is. And they shouldn’t call the movie a massive disappointment based on it not including things that Sony never promised were going to be there. That’s exactly why many hated “The Last Jedi.” All their fan theories that they’d spent the previous two years coming up with were wrong. Rian Johnson took them all and threw them out the window, creating a Star Wars movie that was very different than everyone was expecting and many people hated it because of that. They should’ve seen that coming based on Rian Johnson’s previous discography, but they didn’t.

But the thing that shocked me the most about “No Way Home” was that everyone’s fan theories were right. People had massive expectations. Unrealistic expectations, I thought. Yet not only did “No Way Home” do the impossible and meet those, in many cases the expectations were exceeded. I was completely dumbfounded at what I was witnessing on the screen. There was so much to take in and I’m not even sure my one viewing of it thus far was enough to absorb it all. This is a movie that demands to be seen many times and is one that I’m excited to see many times, even though I don’t know when that’s going to happen with all the other end-of-year content that I’m rushing to keep up with. But whenever I see it again, I am positive that I will enjoy it more and more.

Yet sitting here in retrospect after one viewing, the most interesting discussion point swirling around in my head is that of fan service. Because that’s what this movie is. Nothing but 100 percent pure fan service. Similar to that of nostalgia vomit. Although related, I think the two things are slightly different. But in both cases, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. I think sometimes the term fan service or nostalgia vomit can be seen as a negative thing, but I don’t think it inherently is. You can serve someone up a giant slice of their favorite pie and they can absolutely love it because it’s exactly what they want. Serving the fans. Giving them what they want. That’s not a bad thing.

But it can be if there’s no emotion or care taken in the process. And for the handful of people who read my comments on “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” they might be mildly confused as to why I was so harsh on that movie and am praising “No Way Home” to the high heavens… for both doing, on paper, pretty much the exact same things.

Without retyping a review of “Afterlife,” the gist of my thoughts there are that it is that the movie lazily slapped together all the leftovers from Ghostbusters. They didn’t write any characters worth caring about. They didn’t come up with a plot to get invested in. They didn’t do anything unique with the property or have any sort of emotional core to the film. It was just an emotionless Ghostbusters highlight reel, even recycling pretty much the same exact ending as the original with the same exact villains. Doing all of this in a way that somehow completely missed the tone of Ghostbusters. The original movie is light, comedic, and self-aware. Almost borderline irreverent. “Afterlife” was dark, dramatic, overly serious, and treated the original content with a high amount of respect and reverence, almost as if it was a sacred movie not to be joked around with and taken lightly.

So yeah, the movie was a gross plate of nostalgia vomit that missed the point of the original movie. “No Way Home” might be recycling heroes and villains from previous Spider-Man movies without bringing in anything new, but every character had a specific purpose in being there. They weren’t brought in simply for the sake of you going on a two-hour long Easter egg hunt. They all played a role in helping shape Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, essentially completing his origin story in developing him into the Spider-Man that we all know and love.

I mean, who knew that the three movies were actually a three-part origin story for Peter Parker? We all assumed they skipped the origin story in “Homecoming,” just throwing us into the fire, assuming we all knew Spider-Man already. Sure, we jumped over the spider bite thing, but over the course of these three movies, we see him develop from an immature kid who wants to fight bad guys into a true hero that understand the traditional Spider-Man slogan of “with great power comes great responsibility.” And it took two previous Spider-Men coming in to help knock that into him, following his own “Uncle Ben” moment. Which, again, we assumed he already went through as there is no Uncle Ben in “Homecoming.” Turns out Aunt May is his Uncle Ben. She rather beautifully delivers the line and gets killed by Green Goblin, throwing him into an understandably state of dark turmoil, of which there are two people who know exactly what he is going through and are there to help him. Andrew and Tobey’s Spider-Men.

This movie could’ve brought in all the Spider-Men and simply had a lot of web-slinging fun with them fighting all the bad guys that the multiverse brought together. And that may have been a lot of fun if they took the proper approach. It would be like the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover in the Arrowverse, which was an absolute blast. But no, this movie decided to be something more. They brought in Andrew Garfield, straight from a very dark place following the death of Gwen Stacy, and allowed him to relate to Tom Holland, helping him not go down the path that he has just been on. And they brought in Tobey Maguire, not de-aged from “Spider-Man 3,” but a version of his character who has aged 15 or so years. And they used this original Spider-Man who we all know and love as a mentor. And man is Tobey Maguire good as a mentor. He knows when to give Tom Holland some space and not immediately interfere. And he knows when he needs to speak and encourage him. He can allow Tom to vent and express his anger, but then perfectly come in and encourage. And yet he can jump in and block him from killing Green Goblin at the end without much hesitation.

These are the moments that I loved. Andrew and Tobey aren’t used as mere fan service. They don’t show up just to battle in an epic CGI fight at the end. They’re supporting characters in the movie with a specific role to build Tom Holland’s character arc.

Like with our heroes, the villains also have a specific purpose. The movie could’ve just brought them in, made them the evil, soulless bad guys that needed to be fought. And that could’ve been fun. But instead it reminded us that these five villains are all well-written, well-acted villains who have a reason behind what they’re doing. And instead of bringing them in as things to fight, their stories are continued. And in the case of Jamie Foxx’s Electro, they give him the opportunity to redeem himself and be a menacing Spider-Man villain with a wonderful arc, which wasn’t exactly the case in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” a movie that I’ll defend, but not a movie wherein Electro was the standout performance. In this movie he is. And I’m guessing that even haters of that movie will be impressed.

The major conflict with these villains, which was presented in the trailers, comes with the conundrum of what to do with them. Doctor Strange tells Peter that they all died at the hands of other Spider-Men and that was their fate, so they need to immediately be sent back and not be tampered with. But Tom Holland decides that he needs to at least make an attempt to redeem them all. Give them a second chance before sending them home. So he uses Geometry to trap Doctor Strange in the Mirrorverse and sets out to fix all of these villains, which he quickly realizes is a task where he’s in over his head, especially when it comes to Norman Osborn.

And man. Willem Dafoe was fantastic in the original movie. But I think he’s even better in this movie. And part of that is he’s given more time as Norman Osborn, reminding us that he’s a good person at heart who is just lost and confused. And he’s even more lost and confused in this movie as in another dimension from what he’s used to. He’s a very likable and relatable character. Until the Green Goblin personality takes over and becomes something beyond terrifying. They even quickly discarded that Power Rangers mask at the beginning and let Willem Dafoe act using his facial expressions, which is a lot more intimidating that than mask of his. Yeah, there’s five villains in the movie. But Green Goblin is the real villain here. Admittedly Lizard and Sandman are sidelined a bit, even though they both do good in separate. And Doc Ock and Electro are more complex characters than crazy villains. But Green Goblin is terrifying and I think this is perhaps Willem Dafoe’s best performance. One that I think deserves to represent this movie and get an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. That’s never going to happen because the Oscars are allergic to big blockbusters, but it’s definitely deserving.

My only little qualm with this movie is that I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic. I wanted the movie to end with Tom Holland accepting the fact that everyone in the world knows him and being fine with that. I wanted it to end with him showing the world that he is a true hero and not a menace to be stopped like J. Jonah Jameson is claiming him to be. But instead we decided to write a whole plot point where the whole multiverse is about to explode with an endless number of villains and heroes coming to interact with this Peter and the only way to stop it is to cast a spell where everyone forgets who he is. For what they chose to set up, it’s a valiant act from Peter who willingly submits to this at the end of the movie, wherein he wasn’t even ready to accept that at the beginning of the movie. But come on, this is the multiverse. We can do what we want. And Doctor Strange is magic. We can choose to write spells for him that can solve this in better ways.

One, the hopeless romantic in me that I referenced doesn’t like the movie ending with him saying goodbye to Zendaya’s M.J., because the two of them are so adorably cute. And both have definitely grown as actors ever since “Homecoming” launched them into superstardom. But two, you KNOW this is an ending that’s like those season finales that get resolved within the first ten minutes of the next season premier. No way in Hades do they keep these two apart. Peter, M.J., and Ned are going to quickly go back to being best friends who know each other. The world loves them too much. So why end a nearly perfect movie by setting up a cliffhanger that we all know is going to get quickly resolved? A cliffhanger that is remarkably similar to Peter Quill and Gamora having to learn to re-fall in love, something I assume is going to happen in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” following where “Avengers: Endgame” left those two off. They weren’t going to keep Gamora dead and keep those two apart.

Anyways, that’s not really that big of a concern to me. Just something I wasn’t 100 percent pleased with. And when I was 100 percent pleased with the rest of the movie, that’s something worth bringing up. Ultimately, this movie handles itself much like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” another multiverse adventure with multiple Spider-People that’s a lot more than just empty fan service. Both movies are fan service that have a purpose and work even better because of it. In fact, I may put this one slightly ahead of that movie due to its better use of the Spider-Man villains. It’s not better than “Spider-Man 2,” but is my favorite of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. Where is it in my MCU rankings? Well… to be determined. Not my top overall, but pretty high. The top movie of Phase 4 so far and one of my favorite overall movies of 2021. So yeah, pretty high praise from me. A potential all-time favorite that I’m going to enjoy coming back to many times in my future.

The number grade here is irrelevant, in my opinion. The thoughts are what matter most. But in regards to a grade, I think a strong 9/10 is what I’d give. I’m not quite ready to give it a perfect score. But if I did decimal grades, which I haven’t done in years, this is a 9.5 or a 9.8. But not quite a 10. “Spider-Man 2” would definitely be a 10/10, for context. So yeah, 9/10 is good.

Movie Preview: December 2021

The holiday season is well underway at the box office with November bringing several heavy hitters that are looking to continue to hold well throughout December, such as “Eternals,” “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “Encanto,” especially those last two, which just began their runs right before Thanksgiving. “Eternals” rode into theaters with a wave of mixed reviews, the worst in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but still took the month with $151 million total domestically. In a unique turn of events, November didn’t quite hit the heights of October, but yet normal hasn’t been an often-used word in the last two years. December is definitely going to change that with a little movie called “Spider-Man: No Way Home” that you may have heard of. While we will explore the box office potential of “No Way Home,” there will also be other movies released that we’ll look into.

As always, box office data and release date information are courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The release dates listed are based on the domestic release dates, so United States and Canada, and are always subject to change. Normally this post is organized by weekend, but December doesn’t really follow typical conventions when it comes to release patterns, so instead we’ll go by the day of release as opposed to the weekend of release.

December 10

20th Century Studios' "West Side Story"

Point in case with December being unconventional in regards to the release schedule, there are no wide releases on December 3, the first weekend of December. So the box office will be dominated by Thanksgiving holdovers. In limited release, the animated documentary “Flee” from Denmark will likely play well in New York and Los Angeles following very strong praise out of Sundance. It has potential to be triple nominated in animated feature, documentary feature, and international feature at the Oscars, which would be a unique feat. Netflix also released their major awards player “The Power of the Dog” in select theaters for an Oscar-qualifying run in conjunction with its release on Netflix. And Focus Features has a movie called “Wolf” about a boy who thinks he’s a wolf. But again, no wide releases on December 3.

Moving forward to December 10, the first major release of the Christmas season is Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated remake of West Side Story. 2021 was supposed to be the year of the movie musical. And while many have been released, we’ve yet to see one to truly pop. “In the Heights” experienced high praise, but was ignored by audiences with just $29.9 million domestically. “Dear Evan Hansen” was plagued with very divisive reviews and wound up worse, making just $15 million. And “Tick… Tick… BOOM!” has received strong praise, but has yet to crack Netflix’s top 10 and didn’t get a theatrical release. That seemingly leaves the door open for “West Side Story” to actually take the corner on the market and become the musical from 2021 that everyone sees and remembers. But will audiences show up?

The Spielberg name gives it automatic brand name recognition. While there might be a general sense of negativity towards the idea of so many things getting remade, Spielberg wanting to remake “West Side Story” has led it to have more positive buzz as many may give Spielberg the benefit of the doubt, which is a treatment that not every filmmaker gets. The original movie was the 1962 best picture winner. On top of that, it won 10 total Oscars and would quickly go on to being one of the most beloved and iconic movie musicals in existence. So even if this wasn’t a Spielberg movie, the IP of the original would be more than enough to give it recognition over the other movie musicals that may have been overlooked this year. The frosting on the cake may be the early Twitter buzz, which appears to be quite positive following its premier for critics just recently. If this ends up being a huge crowd pleaser, that could lead to a very long, healthy box office run, topped off by a shower of awards recognition.

The elephant in the room is that it’s being released in the shadow of “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Now December is a month that has proven to be a time where multiple big blockbusters can co-exist, so that may not be an issue. But it’s at least worth bringing up given the insane amount of hype that’s following “Spider-Man.” More on that in a second.

First, we need to quickly also bring the release of National Champions. I actually brought this up last month, but mentioned that it was theoretically being released because at that time it did not have a trailer or a poster, so I wasn’t sure it was a thing that was going to actually exist. Well, shortly after that post, it got a trailer and a poster. And a new release date for December 10 instead of Thanksgiving. A release date that I’m confident it will hit this time, given that the title of the official trailer from STX lists “In theaters December 10th.” This is a fictional movie about a college quarterback, winner of the Heisman and projected first round pick, who decides to boycott the national championship game in protest of college athletes not being recognized as paid employees. Again, fictional story here. But referencing real life issues. Even if it connects with viewers, I can’t imagine it will make more than last month’s “King Richard,” a fellow sports drama with lots of buzz and great reviews that opened to just $5.4 million.  

December 17

Sony Pictures' "Spider-Man: No Way Home"

On to the main event. The reason why many of you may have clicked this link. And who knows, maybe you scrolled right past everything else just to read this. In which case, fine. Spider-Man: No Way Home. A movie that seems guaranteed to be the highest grossing movie of the year, at least domestically. And will easily shatter and decimate any and all COVID records at the box office. In case you haven’t been connected to the internet in the last few months, the buzz and the hype surrounding this movie has been almost unparalleled. To the point where Sony can’t release trailers for any of their other films without fans swarming them with questions of when the next trailer will be released. Andrew Garfield hasn’t been able to promote his movie “Tick… Tick… BOOM!” without every reporter asking him if he’s going to be in this movie, which he currently denies and no one from Sony or Marvel has even promised fans. The trailer broke records for views in its first 24 hours, beating “Avengers: Endgame.” And advanced ticket sales have sold more than any other film released except for “Avengers: Endgame.”

So yes, unquestionably this has attained event-level status on the level of a “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” or the aforementioned “Avengers: Endgame.” How did it accomplish this? Well, by promising a crossover event that has hit all the right notes among Spider-Man fans. While Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire haven’t been promised, but are possibly being saved as a surprise, the multiverse has been opened in this movie, what has been promised are the villains from their movies, which include Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Sandman, Lizard, and Electro, as introduced in the most recent trailer. And if they’re all in the movie, then the potential possibilities are endless with a movie that combines all the current live action Spider-Verses. The only issue the movie might have is being able to live up to the insane amount of hype that fans have given it. Regardless of that, the movie is guaranteed to attract a lot of people to see it. How those people end up responding is to be determined.

So how much will this movie make? It’s worth noting that Spider-Man has had a very strong history at the box office. Raimi’s original 2002 film became the first movie to ever open above $100 million with $114.8 million. Seven years later, “Spider-Man 3” became the first to ever open above $150 million, with $151.1 million. A major Spider-Man crossover event has the potential to reach those heights. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, those two openings adjust to $181 million and $201 million, respectively. A range that I think “No Way Home” can reach. The elephant in the room is that COVID still exists. While this is sure to fly past the current COVID record of $90 million set by “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” how high can a movie really open in the world of COVID? Without COVID, I would comfortably predict $200 million. But that’s not the world we live in. The reality of things still makes predictions volatile. For the sake of comparison, “Homecoming” opened to $117 million, while “Far From Home” opened to $92 million. “No Way Home” should at least top both of those movies.

In news not related to Spider-Man, while no movie is directly competing in terms of a wide release opening on the same day, Guillermo del Torro’s Nightmare Alley will begin its limited release roll-out on the 17th, as will George Clooney’s The Tender Bar. Both movies are hoping for awards consideration, but are currently viewed as more outside contenders. Awards or not, a new movie from those two directors could be sleeper hits at the box office as they eventually expand, especially when it comes to a new del Torro movie.

December 22

Warner Bros.' "The Matrix Resurrections"

While no movie is opening directly on the same day in wide release as “Spider-Man,” three major movies will be entering the market five days later, on Wednesday the 22nd. Leading the charge will be The Matrix Resurrections. Speaking of influential films, “The Matrix” from 1999 is definitely one of them. And speaking of movies that aren’t so influential, the two sequels that came after aren’t exactly as highly regarded. And while they have their supporters, the Wachowski Sisters have experienced many bumps in the road in their efforts to re-capture lightning in a bottle again. Despite that, a return to The Matrix via “Resurrections” is generally something that Matrix fans are excited about, especially after the trailer dropped. Warner Bros. is also hoping to cash in the success of Keanu Reeves after the John Wick franchise launched him to an additional level of stardom. With the history of the franchise, though, positive reviews will be essential here. Even with those, the other obstacle is that this is an HBO Max hybrid release. The final HBO Max hybrid release as Warner Bros. is ditching that strategy in 2022. The highest HBO Max hybrid release is “Dune” with $41 million. With Christmas Eve on Friday, and that being a day that people don’t go to theaters as much, the comparison there is tricky. Like with many Christmas releases, the long run will be the metric to look out for.

Competing directly with “Spider-Man” for Christmas-time theatrical adventures is going to be tough for any of these movies. And while “The Matrix Resurrections” might have the fan base for that not to be a huge problem, our second wide release on this particular day, that of The King’s Man, may not be so lucky. This movie serves as a prequel to the previous two “Kingsman” movies, 2014’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service” and 2017’s “Kingsman: The Golden Circle.” This is essentially an origin story of the Kingsman organization, set in the early 1900s. The challenge that this movie had from day one is that it’s not returning any of the characters from the main franchise film, instead relying on the style of those two movies to sell it. While the Kingsman movies are popular, are the popular enough to support off-shoot films with different characters, relying on the IP alone? With that already as a challenge, this was supposed to come out November 2019, but got pushed back twice… before COVID hit. It has since bounced around like a ping pong ball perhaps more than any film affected by COVID. At this point, do people care? A third Kingsman movie with returning characters may have been a more effective direction than what they’ve chosen with this movie.

While “The Matrix Resurrections” and “The King’s Man” face the challenge of competing for similar audiences as “Spider-Man,” the third movie released on this day is the one in the best position to provide the best counterprogramming and that’s Sing 2. With a whole month between this and “Encanto,” this movie might have the market on the family audiences, thus being perfectly positioned to be the go to movie for parents with kids on Christmas as well as the days and weeks right after. Lest we forget, “Sing” was actually a huge sleeper hit for Illumination in 2016. It was released right before Christmas that year, a month after Disney’s “Moana” released at Thanksgiving. And while “Moana” was a big hit for Disney, “Sing” wound up making more money, at least domestically. And with “Encanto” hitting on the lower end of projections for Disney this year, history could very well repeat itself as all the animals are back and are looking to put on another performance for the kids to enjoy.  

December 25

Lionsgate's "American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story"

Yes, three days after our previous section, rather than the next weekend, we have two more releases. And yes, that means they’ll be opening on a Saturday, which is definitely not normal. Although in the current circumstances, Christmas Eve is typically not the movie-going day for people, while Christmas Day definitely is. So it makes sense. Neither of these two movies are going to break the bank, but they do provide additional options for adult audiences. The first is American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story. This tells the unique story of Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, who did not have success initially in the NFL. He went undrafted in the 1994 NFL Draft and wasn’t given a chance by a team, forcing him to go play in the Arena Football League for a few years before finally making it as a backup quarterback for the St. Louis Rams in 1998. He was forced into the starting lineup in 1999 following an injury to starter Trent Green and the rest is history. He was the MVP that season and led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory over the Titans. This movie is that story, with Zachary Levi playing Kurt Warner.

And the final wide release of the month will be A Journal for Jordan. This is another drama based on a true story, with Michael B. Jordan playing Sergeant Charles Monroe King, who was killed in action in Baghdad. Before that, though, he kept a journal for his infant son, Jordan, sharing his love and advice of how to grow up without a father. The movie is directed by Denzel Washington and if it plays well, it could a sleeper pick for awards potential. Although it didn’t play at any festivals and hasn’t screened yet for critics or voting members, so it might be a bit late in the game for a true awards push. Its bigger play might be as counterprogramming for the big blockbuster affair, an option for adult audiences who are less interested in Spider-Man or The Matrix. Both this and “American Underdog” probably aren’t looking at major opening weekends, but could be sleeper hits over the holiday.

According to my typical structure, New Year’s Eve falls on a Friday and thus I would normally put that weekend into this month. But there are no new wide releases currently scheduled for that weekend. “Licorice Pizza,” which opened in November, is currently scheduled for a wide expansion on Christmas Eve. “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” another potential Oscar hopeful, will start its limited run on Christmas. There are also probably a handful of other Oscar hopefuls that will likely plan on doing the same thing, like “Cyrano,” which was going to open wide on Christmas, but opted for a limited release before expanding in January. We’ll cover more of those when we cross into the new year next month.

Movie Preview: November 2021

It was a very successful October at the domestic box office, the biggest of the pandemic so far, with totals that are beginning to look like they did before the pandemic. Prior to people spending the Halloween weekend mostly away from theaters, we had four straight weekends with a new movie opening with at least $40 million, a feat hadn’t been accomplished since early summer of 2019. The biggest story of the month was “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” with a staggering $90 million opening, the best of the year so far. In fact, that opening was better than the first “Venom,” which didn’t have a pandemic to deal with. It was also the second highest October opening ever, behind only 2019’s “Joker” with $96.2 million.

While the pandemic itself is still very much around, meaning things are always on thin ice to a certain extent, October was another great sign for box office recovery, leaving studios more confident than they have been in letting their big blockbuster releases go through. That leads us into the holiday season, of which November has at least two big titles on the docket and a very crowded Thanksgiving weekend that will provide plenty of options, so let’s dive in and explore what this month has to offer.

Box office data and release date information, which is always subject to change, is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones scheduled for a wide theatrical release in the United States and Canada.

November 5 – 7

Marvel Studios' "The Eternals"

Leading November off will be Marvel yet again, with Eternals. This is the third of four movies this year from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all coming in the second half of the year. While their biggest release is waiting in the wings for December, that being “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” there is a lot of confidence in “Eternals,” especially after “Shang-Chi” in September proved yet again that the Marvel brand is strong enough to power just about any superhero to a huge box office run. Not many people knew about the character of Shang-Chi prior to September, but now his movie is the highest grossing movie of 2021 at the domestic box office. With “Eternals,” we have a full team of lesser known Marvel characters all making their theatrical debut, much like “Guardians of the Galaxy” in 2014.

The Eternals have been around in the comics since 1976 and are a group of extraterrestrial humanoids that were intended to be the defenders of Earth. They were created by another alien race known as the Celetials and have lived on Earth secretly for 7,000 years. Their reason for showing up now is to protect Earth from their evil counterparts, the Deviants. Portraying the Eternals in the movie are Gemma Chan (Sersi), Richard Madden (Ikaris), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Lia McHugh (Sprite), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos), Lauren Ridloff (Makkari), Barry Keoghan (Druig), Don Lee (Gilgamesh), Salma Hayek (Ajak), and Angelina Jolie (Thena). The movie is directed by Chloé Zhao, fresh off her best picture and best director wins for “Nomadland.”

“Eternals” is definitely the biggest release of the weekend, with projections currently being in the range of $80-100 million, which may be softened a bit with early mixed word of mouth, but it’s not the only release of the weekend. Challenging it will be the buzzy awards drama Spencer, which sees Kristen Stewart playing the beloved Princess Diana, a performance that has been almost unanimously praised coming out of the festival circuit, making her the very early favorite to win best actress at the Oscars. Obviously the awards season has just begun and a lot can happen. But Stewart seems to at least be a lock to get her first nomination, an honor that is a long time coming. While casual movie fans still know her best from “Twilight,” she’s built up quite the impressive résumé in the indie realm over the past decade, making her a favorite in the industry. While critical praise and awards buzz doesn’t necessarily lead to box office success, “Spencer” is nevertheless looking for a lengthy, more backloaded run, meaning a huge opening weekend isn’t prerequisite to this movie’s success.

While I normally don’t bring up Netflix releases in this post due to there being so many of them, as well as it being sometimes hard to predict what is coming out when, a couple of exceptions will be made in this post and the first one is with Red Notice. I was a bit surprised myself when, at the beginning of one of last month’s big movies, there was a trailer for “Red Notice.” My initial thought was, “I thought this was a Netflix movie, not a theatrical release.” The answer is that it’s both. It will be playing in select theaters starting on November 5, then will be released on Netflix on November 12. That means we can include it here. Don’t ask for a box office prediction. Netflix doesn’t even report those numbers. But the movie is a big, giant action film starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot doing things that Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot typically do in action films. Looking at local showtimes in my city, this is playing in most theaters around me, which means this is getting a wide theatrical release. So check it out in theaters if you want. Or wait a week for it to show up on Netflix

November 12 – 14

Universal's "Clifford the Big Red Dog"

The second weekend of November will also most likely be dominated by “Eternals” as November is not quite as crowded with major releases like October was. But entering the market this weekend will be the live action, theatrical debut of Clifford the Big Red Dog. This was actually scheduled for September of this year. And I brought it up in my September preview as a movie that got taken off the schedule due to worries about the Delta Variant of COVID. But with how much success there has been since, Universal was confident enough to put it back on the schedule. While it’s debatable as to whether there’s any demand for a live action “Clifford” movie, it’s nevertheless worthy of noting that this is a very popular IP. It started as a series of children’s books in 1963 and was adapted into a successful animated TV series that aired on PBS Kids starting in 2000.

Does that mean family audiences are going to swarm into theaters for “Clifford? That remains to be seen, but family movies have done fairly well during the pandemic. “Clifford” will also be getting a hybrid release as it will debut on Paramount+, meaning a potential box office comparison can be made to last month’s “The Addams Family 2,” which had a PVOD release along with its theatrical release, yet still opened to $17.3 million. I could see a world in which “Clifford” comes close to that number. Although the biggest draw for family audiences will be on Thanksgiving with Disney’s “Encanto,” so this could be unfortunate timing for “Clifford.”

The other wide release this weekend is another awards player, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. This is a movie that was the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. While not a perfect Oscar predictor, this is a significant note because since “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008, the winner of this award has at least gone on to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars in every year except 2011. Five times in that span, the winner has gone on to win best picture, including “Nomadland” from last year. So that’s a lot of positive mojo for “Belfast.” Branagh has described this as his most personal film, and semi-autobiographical, as it centers around a young boy growing up in the tumult of Belfast in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Cirian Hinds, Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, and Judi Dench are among the names that could score an acting nomination from this film. As with “Spencer,” and other award hopefuls, a major opening weekend isn’t required for “Belfast.” These award hopefuls are looking to play the long game throughout the season.

November 19 – 21

Sony Pictures' "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"

After “Eternals” looks to rule at top of the box office for two weekends, the other major November release that will take its throne will be Ghostbusters: Afterlife. A history of the “Ghostbusters” franchise isn’t necessary here as most on planet Earth are well aware of this franchise’s existence, but nevertheless it’s a fun fact to point out that the original movie was in the top 5 for 19 straight weeks during its initial release in 1984, eight of those at No. 1. It’s been a major part of pop culture ever since. Unlike the 2016 reboot that put a bad taste in many fans’ mouths, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” has been treated as a direct continuation of the original two movies, essentially the “Ghostbusters 3” that never came about. It’s also had strong “Stranger Things” vibes as it stars Finn Wolfhard leading another cast of kids exploring otherworldly things, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the movie’s awareness. It premiered at New York Comic Con in October and had mostly positive vibes from that crowd as well as a strong early score from critics, both of which suggest that this could be a really strong audience pleaser that plays well throughout the holidays.

Rounding out this weekend will be another trio of awards hopefuls. I’ll get to the other two in a second, but King Richard is one that deserves its own paragraph. Not only is this an awards hopeful that, along with the others, is looking for a leggy box office release throughout the season, but it’s also a movie that could play very well with casual audiences as a heartwarming sports drama. The King Richard referenced in the title is that of Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena Williams. The popularity of the Williams sisters is what could lead this to be a major draw. And it’s been a minute or two since there’s been a sports drama in theaters for people to see. Richard Williams is played by Will Smith, a performance that has been buzzy enough that could lead to his third Oscar nomination and a chance at his first ever win after previously being nominated for “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Warner Bros. is the studio releasing “King Richard,” which means it will also be available on HBO Max.

The other two awards releases this weekend that I referenced are A24’s C’mon C’mon and Netflix’s The Power of the Dog. These two get combined together in a paragraph because they are actually limited releases this weekend as opposed to being a wide release. And with “The Power of the Dog” being a Netflix release, its theatrical run might simply be an Oscar-qualifying run. Nevertheless, “C’mon C’mon” is directed by Mike Mills, director of “20th Century Women” and stars Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist who forms a bond with his young nephew as they embark on a cross country road trip. “The Power of the Dog” has Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead, along with Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst, and is a western set in the early 1900s involving two brothers (Cumberbatch and Plemons) as ranchers and the drama between them when one of them brings home a new wife. Both movies have had very strong early reviews out of the festivals as they currently are both above a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.  

November 24 – 28

Walt Disney's "Encanto"

As referenced in the intro of this post, Thanksgiving weekend is a crowded one with five wide releases and one major limited release. Although how big all of them will be is a different story. There’s two major ones and the one that will be leading the way is Disney’s Encanto, the second of two films this year from Walt Disney Animation Studios, following the release of “Raya and the Last Dragon” in March. “Encanto” is a big musical from Disney, with music from Lin-Manuel Miranda. The story follows a family who lives in an enchanted town in the mountains of Colombia. The lead of the story is a girl named Mirabel, the one person in the family who doesn’t have a magical gift.

In regards to the box office prognosis for “Encanto,” this will be a good test for Disney because it’s the first animated movie they’ve released exclusively in theaters during the pandemic. In a normal world, this Thanksgiving weekend is one that Disney has really liked and has found lots of success on, having released the likes of “Tangled,” “Frozen,” “Moana,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Frozen 2” all on this weekend in the past. Not only do they have the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend to play their movie, but also the entire Christmas season following that. “Moana” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” both opened with $56 million for the 3-day and over $80 million for the full 5-day weekend. Pixar’s “Coco” also opened in that same ballpark in 2017, albeit a tad bit lower with a $50 million/$70 million total over the 3-day/5-day. Can “Encanto” hit those pre-pandemic heights? If not, it would be understandable, all things considered. But regardless, this should hold very well over the holidays.

The other big release of the weekend is the return of the Resident Evil franchise with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. This here is another testament that you should never believe Hollywood when they claim something is the final chapter. It makes the title of the most recent movie, “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” seem a bit silly. Although to their credit, this is a full reboot of the franchise as opposed to being a sequel to other Mila Jovovich-led movies. This does not star Mila Jovovich, who played Alice in all six movies, nor does it have Paul W.S. Anderson in any role, who directed four of them and was a writer and producer on all six. Kaya Scodelario is the lead female here with Johannes Roberts, director of “47 Meters Down” and a handful of other horror films, as director of this reboot. The goal here from the filmmakers is to make this version more of a horror film that is truer to the actual video games. Is that enough to get people excited to come back and see another Resident Evil movie? The second through fifth movies all opened in the $20 million range, but the most recent one opened significantly below that with just $13 million. So we’ll see where this one hits.

While “Encanto” and “Resident Evil” are the two headlining movies, the three others currently scheduled for wide release are movies that I’m not 100 percent sure how wide they actually will be or how much of an impact they will make on the box office. Of the three, I am most confident in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci at least making an attempt to be a major player. As the title suggests, this is a movie that tells the story of the fashion house of Gucci, with Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci, Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci, and Jeremy Irons as Rodolfo Gucci. Heading into the season, this was thought to be a potential major player in awards season, but the buzz has lessened quite a bit and it didn’t even bother to make a run at the festivals, which is a slight red flag. It doesn’t help that Ridley Scott’s other movie, “The Last Duel,” was a non-starter at the box office despite great reviews. “The Last Duel” opened to just $4.8 million from 3,065 screens and plummeted in both ensuing weekends. Ridley Scott will be hoping for a better outing this time around, although confidence in the industry isn’t necessary super high, meaning this could go even lower.

The other two scheduled for wide release I will both include in this paragraph, because, again, I’m not even sure how wide these will be. Freestyle Releasing will be releasing For the Love of Money¸ the trailer of which just was released a week ago and has just 17,000 YouTube views. It's directed by Leslie Small and is about a single mother who leaves the family’s billion dollar business to raise her child, only to get pulled back in when some shadowy gangsters threaten her daughter. STX Entertainment will also theoretically be releasing National Champions, a sports drama following a star quarterback who ignites a players strike hours before the biggest game of the year in order to fight for fair compensation and equality. I say this is theoretically getting released because I can’t even find a trailer for this movie, nor does the IMDb page have a poster. But the IMDb page does exist (that’s where I got that description) and also claims it’s getting released on November 24. So I don’t know what the deal is here. It has a big cast with Timothy Olyphant, J.K. Simmons, and Kristin Chenoweth. If it is coming out, maybe STX will start advertising it at some point during this month.

And finally, a movie that is definitely coming out, albeit on Friday the 26th and in limited release, is another buzzy awards drama, Licorice Pizza. If you’re confused at what that title is in reference to, Licorice Pizza was the name of a chain of record stores in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Licorice Pizza being a reference to the old vinyl records. “Licorice Pizza” the movie is the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson, director of “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master,” and “Punch-Drunk Love” among others. He’s an eight-time Oscar nominee, so whenever he releases a new movie, the industry pays attention. “Licorice Pizza” is a coming-of-age drama following a young teenage couple navigating life and love in the 1970s Los Angeles. Cooper Hoffman, son of the late actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is in the lead role along with Alana Haim, the youngest sister in the band Haim, who Anderson has directed several music videos for. Supporting Hoffman and Haim in the movie are the likes of Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, and Benny Safdie. Early buzz on this is that it’s very much a crowd pleaser, which is often not the case for Paul Thomas Anderson, so that could help this even more.