And continuing our Avengers post-mortem, The Wall Street Journal dug up a pretty interesting little tidbit today in a piece examining why Marvel’s newest film is pretty much printing money.
3) Multi-Generational Appeal: Characters like Captain America have been around since the 1940s; Thor, The Hulk, and Iron Man have been around since the 1960s. “The Avengers” felt fresh to kids, and was comfort food to adults. Half the attendees were over twenty five years old. 40 percent of the audience was female, so the film didn’t just appeal to boys.
I should say so. As I was sitting in the theater on Thursday night waiting for the movie, I couldn’t help but notice just how evenly split the gender ratio was. Good on you, Marvel. You’ve got yourselves a franchise we all can enjoy.
I think we all expected Marvel’s The Avengers to do pretty well on its opening weekend. I don’t think we expected it to do quite this well.
Hulk, smash.
That’s what Captain America tells the Incredible Hulk to do in “The Avengers,” and that’s what the Marvel Comics superhero mash-up did at the box office, smashing the domestic revenue record with a $200.3 million debut.
It’s by far the biggest opening ever, shooting past the previous record of $169.2 million for the debut of last year’s “Harry Potter” finale.
If these numbers hold, it would be the first time in cinema history a film has opened north of $200 million domestically. That’s not even factoring what it made in overseas gross. It’s two-week run beyond the US brings the film to a staggering $641.8 million worldwide.
Tonight we’re playing around with a potentially new feature on the blog in which I dig into my background as an ex-music major.* Each week, the goal is to dissect one song from a soundtrack (usually StarWars) and break down just why its effective. Or just what I like about it. First on the docket, the main title theme from Star Wars.
*Why ex? Sadly, computer science pays better.
Despite being one of his most well-known pieces, this is actually a departure from many of the musical devices Williams is most famous for. A good comparison would be listening to this and then listening to the theme from the NBC Nightly News theme…
So many of his pieces feature very contemporary bursts and accents over the top of the melody. In NBC’s theme, you can hear the mid/high brass and mid/high woodwinds at the beginning coming in with these quick hits of texture while the strings provide the melody (the ‘da da dah dat da dat dah’). This is something Williams is famous for, those little touches.
The main title theme from Star Wars is just as powerful, but for different reasons.
This is much more of a strong fanfare that Williams himself describes as being symbolic of the heroic components of the Star Wars saga. Wookieepedia has a wonderful little writeup of how the structuring of the melody itself ties into that concept.
If you’re familiar with basic theory and notation, you can see that this piece opens by jumping up a fifth, or reaching and grasping for something on high. Unable to quite attain that goal, it moves into a descending triplet as the music gathers its strength and momentum for another go at that goal. It succeeds by jumping a full octave above that initial note and then repeats as a sort of reassurance that the music truly achieved that goal. That’s just the symbolism in the first three measures.
This is a piece that is carried by the distinct line between the melody and the harmony. The sections not responsible for the harmony almost become the percussion section, driving the fanfare along while the melody soars over the top. While the strings get their moments, Williams allowed the brass to truly shine as the horns and trumpets set the tone for the soundtrack and the film as a whole. Nothing quite says grandeur like a trumpet reaching those highs.
For Williams, this is almost an odd composition when compared to his larger body of work just because of how straight-ahead it is. It’s a credit to him that he put his usual conventions to the side to write the piece that needed to be written, though. Star Wars needed to start with a bang, and the driving, powerful fanfare that blares as the logo appears accomplishes just that.
USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.
Writer John Jackson Miller is just one of many guys who digs that galaxy far, far away, and he’s going way, way back in it for his new five-issue Dark Horse Comics series Star Wars: The Lost Tribe of the Sith, launching Aug. 8.
The comic removes three aspects that are some of the most essential of the Star Wars films — technology, starships and Jedi knights — and focuses on the Tribe, an ancient group of Sith believers stranded on a remote planet for 5,000 years. (The Sith, by the way, tap into the dark side of the Force.)
The Lost Tribe of the Sith project began three years ago with the Fate of the Jedi novel series, which found this group escaping their prison in the time of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker and threatening the galaxy.
The official site has gotten their hands on a whole boatload of Expanded Universe shininess including a nifty Essential Guide to Warfare art timelapse video, an essay from the Fate of the Jedi authors, and a cover and preview from the new Darth Maul: Death Sentencecomic from Dark Horse.
Most importantly, however, is the entire second chapter from one of the year’s most anticipated novels: Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels.
Brace yourselves, the news drought appears to be ending today.
The official Celebration VI website has confirmed that Princess Leia herself will be in attendance this year. Also in the fold are two incarnations of Boba Fett, Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan.
Expect more news to drop, as today is the Somewhat Randomly Selected Day of Star Wars Celebration That Has Been Highly Influenced by a Pretty Awful Pun.
This week on Tosche Station Radio, we’re excited to feature our first ever interview on the show.
Kicking off the show, we highlight what’s new on the blog. We asked you to tell us what kind of attractions you would like to see at a Star Wars theme park and you delivered some delightful suggestions. New blogger Maggie posted a spoiler-free review of the Avengers, Marvel’s latest entry into their successful film franchise. We’re not jealous that she was in the UK to see it a week early or anything. Meanwhile, we’re holding a contest. We’re sick of Mara’s awful catsuit, so we’re asking costumers and artists to replace it with something more appropriate.
In Fixer’s Flash, Nanci’s been reading a neat young-adult novel called Across the Universe and is looking forward to completing the series. She’s also been rewatching firefly, something Brian ought to do. She also announced that she’s launched a new blog of her own devoted to her writing projects. Go check it out! Brian’s been keeping himself busy with Marvel’s comics and a rewatch of their films leading up to the Avengers. Unfortunately, he’s been too busy with midterms to do much beyond that. Boo midterms.
Who likes antiquated gender stereotypes? Moviefone does! Staff writer Jessie Heyman thought it would be a good idea to post a horribly condescending article that reads like it’s from 1972.
As your boyfriend probably told you, “The Avengers” is hitting theaters this Friday. And you, dutiful girlfriend, are attending. But you hate action movies and you’ve never even read a comic book. (Of course, that’s not a slight against the girls who actually do read comic books — i.e. real fans, actual people with varied interests — but for this, let’s just go with the stock view of ladies, ladies!)
Still, there’s no need to fret. Beyond the fact that Joss Whedon’s action film is Awesome (note the capital A), we’ve created a streamlined girl’s guide to ward off any confusion or mid-movie what’s-going-on whisperings.
Including cocktail introductions a la “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and boyfriend impressing tidbits, below is everything you need to know about “The Avengers.”
They’re now hiding behind a hastily thrown up “satire” shield in a later edit, but we all know this was a terribly written, horribly executed article. This piece was so awful I’m not even going to link to it and inadvertently give them traffic. You can find it yourself if you want your eyes to bleed or if you want a trigger to Hulk out.
Now, I’m not a woman, but I imagine most women would object to sticking with the “stock view of ladies.” I imagine many would object to the contrived list of things to say to your manly action loving significant others while watching the movie. I imagine most women are going to object to this frakking awful article as a whole.
The truly hilarious thing is that this just perpetuates the tired and sexist stereotype that comics are for guys and that women should stay out of that domain. Hell to that. Most of my Marvel-savvy friends are women, one of which introduced me to the world of comics. She’s one of the most passionate, genre savvy fans you will ever find.
So shame on you Moviefone. You’ve got some apologies to dish out.
And continuing our Avengers post-mortem, The Wall Street Journal dug up a pretty interesting little tidbit today in a piece examining why Marvel’s newest film is pretty much printing money.
USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.
Brace yourselves, the news drought appears to be ending today.