Christopher Orr describes the new big-budget Disney flick John Carter as having "a clear understanding that, at the end of the day, we are there to have fun." Stephanie Zacharek wonders if that's possible anymore:
I had fun at John Carter. Just not $250 million worth of fun, which leads us to the central and vexing problem: Moviegoing pleasure can no longer be casual. We’re now acutely aware of how much every movie cost, how much every studio – in this case, Disney – has riding on every given project. “What does Disney need to make its money back?” becomes the overriding question, when what we really should be asking is, “Did you see how John Carter slashed his way out of that big, blubbery whatsis and came out all blue and shit?”
Information Is Beautiful created a fascinating interactive chart that displays the profitability of recent films. Relatedly, Chris Lee ponders the rise and fall of Eddie Murphy's career:
With the notable exclusions of Dreamgirls and the Shrek movies, you’d have to go all the way back to 1999’s Bowfinger, costarring Steve Martin, to find a Murphy movie that (a) didn’t suck and (b) also managed to turn a profit at the box office. So given the dire commercial prospects facing his latest film, can Murphy ever emerge from movie jail? Can he recover from the impending “let us never speak of this again” failure of A Thousand Words?
The Dish 