Forum - View topicNEWS: Edge of Tomorrow's U.S. Box Office Climbs to US$74 Million in 3rd Weekend
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1232 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I don't think that's a fair assessment. I haven't read the book, so I can't argue that it has philosophical underpinnings, but I know the author has said that he wrote the book to help him deal with the death of a teenaged girl he knew who died of cancer. If a novel written in response to an author's own experience can't be considered at least a little bit genuine, how cynical are we?
As they should be. Hollywood is very demographic oriented, though, and major movies are marketed accordingly. Thus, the young men who are expected to see Transformers in droves were expected to see EoT, too.
Most of the ones that get adapted are. The Hunger Games was all over the plae before it got a movie. |
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enurtsol
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*cough*cough*cough |
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GATSU
Posts: 15332 |
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Agent:
I hope at least her family got paid for it, and the dude paid for her treatment, because at the moment, it seems none of the proceeds from that film will go to any cancer treatment and/or assistance charities and/or organizations.
But that's not the author's own experience. He's exploiting someone else's misery for a quick buck.
Yes, but statistically, girls also see those shitty Transformers films in large numbers.
Did most people know about Lemony Snicket or The Perks of Being a Wallflower? enurtsol: Ok, and I don't like Full Moon O Sagashite, either. What's your point? Though in its defense, it's about a girl who wants to be able to achieve one dream before she dies, which is not so different from the purpose of Make-A-Wish. But I don't like when cancer is just used as one of many interchangeable masturbatory YA fanfic themes, and not treated with more respect. You just know the audience which saw TFIOS will not give any more of a damn about the disease after having seen the film than before they saw it. For them, it's just another disposable rom-com. |
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sunflower
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Then maybe people will go see Snowpiercer, which is awesome and is also being released this weekend and is a film worth supporting! |
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hooliganj
 Posts: 113 Location: Longhorn Central |
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The money made by the film studio is probably not going anywhere special, but it's a different story for the author, John Green. Two charities in particular benefited directly from the success of the novel. First, Green offered the family of the girl some of the proceeds from the novel, but they rejected it, and instead asked him to set up a charitable foundation to benefit the families of cancer patients and victims, called "This Star Won't Go Out" after a poem the girl had written. Green continues to make regular contributions, and sells merchandise to benefit the foundation. Second, Green has been running his own charity for years, even before the success of TFIOS, called the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. Since the primary source of fundraising is Youtube, it may be easy to dismiss a project like that as internet shenanigans, but the Foundation has raised and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for 3rd world education and literacy, rebuilding infrastructure in Haiti, and research to end various diseases, including cancer.
John Green is definitely better off financially now than before he wrote the book, but I doubt if there was any point in the writing process where he thought "this is the one that will make me rich!" He didn't set out to exploit anyone's suffering - his own or others'. He just wrote a good story, based around a subject that he thought would be emotionally resonant because he had felt the effects himself. I know this because I've read the book, and it is not exploitative in the least. As with any book there are flaws - the dialogue is a bit overwrought, the characters might be a bit too witty and clever, and Green can milk the tears from a sad scene more than just about any author working today - but overall it's a good book, and despite being a tear-jerker it's a fun read. To bring this back to the original topic, I haven't seen Edge of Tomorrow for the same reason I haven't seen The Fault In Our Stars. They both look like good movies, but my budget only allows for maybe 3-4 trips to the movies per year, and 2 of those are Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. There's a lot of competition and only so much money to go around. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15332 |
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hooligan: Fair enough. Still, the studio should spring for a related charity, too. But that's a different gripe.
True, but he's still basically an outsider who's commodifying someone else's misery for a buck. |
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