The current trend in sequel box office returns is tied to perception. Gone are the days of diminishing returns as a rule, these are the golden times for franchises. How the general public feels about the franchise is now king, and the thing about feelings are, they can be changed.

Case in point, GI: Joe: Retaliation.

The franchise had a below average first film that left a sour taste in the mouths of cinema-goers. It did have a strong opening weekend and final total gross so a sequel was inevitable, but something had to be done to ensure the public perception didn’t bury the new film before it had a shot.

Warming the hearts of movie executives everywhere, GI: Joe Retaliation proved that franchise perception can be fixed and sequels to poorly received films have a shot to come out as strong as its predecessor without waiting on word of mouth or reviews to set in.

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I had a soft spot for 2009′s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and I have a soft spot for this, even with its flaws. If you remember the end of the last film (and never mind if you didn’t), Zartan is impersonating the President of the United States in one step of Cobra Commander’s grand plan for world domination.

I think this is supposed to take place right after the last film, but no matter. All you need to know is that the President is not the real President, and the Joes are not aware of it. They’re busy raiding a nuclear arms facility in Pakistan — a mission devised by Zartan (Arnold Vosloo/Jonathan Pryce) to wipe out the Joes when they call for transport after the mission.

All of them, save for Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), Roadblock (The Rock), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona) are killed. Fortunately Snake Eyes (Ray Park) is away on another mission training with Jinx (Elodie Yung) and quite possibly the worst actor in the entire film, RZA as the aptly named Blind Master.

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What the Hell is going on? Who’s in what car? Which one is the bad guy? These are the questions that arose during the first fifteen minutes of A Good Day to Die Hard‘s car chase. That the action confuses more than excites is a bad, bad sign.

The movie opens in a Russian prison where billionaire Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) is awaiting trial for…um…potentially snitching out the bigwig Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov). From the outset, it’s not clear who is actually the bad guy — Chagarin explodes when Komarov refuses to give him a certain file, so maybe he’s the bad guy, but then Komarov is a billionaire — and one who plays chess in prison at that — doesn’t that automatically mark him as the bad guy?

But then we switch to a night club, where Jack (Jai Courtney) assassinates Anton (Roman Luknar). Is Jack the bad guy then? Apparently not, since we’re now in America, where John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at the airport, heading to Russia to bail out Jack, who’s his son. Evidently Jack works for the CIA, which now condones public killings.

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Yes, the first G.I. Joe was pretty to look at, but dumb. Much like its star. Of course, even if it was not everything it could have been, the gang at Paramount must be an optimistic bunch and so, there’s a sequel on the way.

This time the movie is called G.I. Joe: Retaliation and it stars Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis and Jonathan Pryce in a story featuring COBRA’s infiltration of the U.S. Government and the Joes saving the day.

It’s directed by John M. Chu and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Those are some pretty accomplished people, maybe this won’t be as bad as we think? Maybe.

At any rate, there’s a new trailer for the movie for you to check out. Look for the movie itself to arrive on March 29, 2013.

Check out the trailer after the break.

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We like this. So should you. Bruce Willis is back at it again as everyone’s favorite anti-hero John McClane in the latest installment A Good Day to Die Hard. This time around he fights with the Russians and blows a lot of stuf up.

Plus, he’s accompanied by his son and even his daughter makes an appearance. Now if they could just get Holly back for this it might be really fun. Although, Bonnie Bedelia hasn’t aged quite as well as Willis so that might be an issue for some. Still, it would be fun to see her come back. All in the family and all that.

Anyway, here’s the trailer. Look for A Good Day to Die Hard to hit theaters on February 14, 2013. Yes, Valentine’s Day.

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Trailer day continues with the first one from the upcoming Die Hard sequel, currently entitled A Good Day to Die Hard. In this one Bruce Willis’ John McClaine and his son John Jr. travel to Russia to battle the bad guys.

Have to say it, this one looks pretty fun. Check out the trailer after the break and let us know what you think.

Look for A Good Day to Die Hard in theaters on February 14, 2013.

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If you’re a fan of sci-fi stories set in a dystopian, Dickensian future of rampant immorality and violence, or have simply been wondering why M. Night Shamalayan doesn’t meld Twelve Monkeys with Rambo and bring back Bruce Willis to help him do it, you’re in luck. Looper stars an intense Joseph Gordon-Levitt, nearly unrecognizable in prosthetics, contacts and distractingly heavy makeup that renders his face nearly 2D, as young Joe, a 25-year-old looper in the year 2042, and Willis himself as Joe 30 years into the future, in the year 2072.

If it weren’t futile, I’d try to give a summary of Looper‘s extremely intricate, convoluted and possibly hole-ridden plot. Suffice it to say that it involves fate, paid killers, Chinese mafia, secret bunkers, telekinesis, good-hearted prostitutes and the toddler tantrums to end all toddler tantrums. And that after the screening I attended, critics stood around in heated discussion for quite a while, trying to work it all out.

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Last week I said this was not going to be a big weekend, even with three new films nothing really had good Box Office potential. Even though the final tallies proved that this was indeed a lack luster weekend no film actually had a horrible haul.

The ‘big’ winner of the weekend was The Expendables 2, the sequel to the action extravaganza that dared to load as many action superstars as possible into about an hour and a half ‘splosion. The sequel was probably originally expected to do bigger business than it’s predecessor with its bigger cast and PG-13 rating.

Somewhere along the way expectations tempered and the film’s $28.7 Million take is probably close enough to expectations. Even though it is near expectations, it was still on the lower end, so at this point word of mouth has to be the saving grace for this testosterone fueled franchise.

Second place went to The Bourne Legacy which brought in just over $17 Million. Its drop was on par with the previous films in the franchise, but because the first weekend was weaker the film still lags. That said for a pretty big overhaul, the film has performed pretty well, and there is clearly life left in this series.

Scrapping into third place is the stop motion animated film ParaNorman. The supernatural animated picture hit the stop motion animated glass ceiling with a decent $14 Million which is not great, but hardly bad either. It is nice that the film is playing to some business, but it would have been nice to see the film breakout a little more.

Next weekend sees yet another ‘meh’ weekend at the Box Office, in fact we are starting to see the beginning of the end of summer doldrums where tent pole type films with little box office potential or momentum get a release and bang around for the left overs of the summer season pie.

The concept behind The Expendables is admirable, mix together as many bad ass action super stars from the last three decades of film into one franchise. The cast list of the first film read like a who’s who of the greatest action talent, even going so far as to feature Arnold and Willis in cameos.

The second film, out this Friday, uped the ante with the original cast returning along with full roles for The Arnold, Bruce Willis and even Van Damme. As great as that group is how do you top it? Total Film had a chance to talk to the film’s producer Avi Lerner to ask that very question:

We’ve approached Clint Eastwood to be one of the guys, we’ve got a character in mind for him. We’re talking to Harrison Ford. [And we want] Wesley Snipes when he comes back from prison. I’ll give you one more name, we’ve got Nicolas Cage to play [one of the characters]… And we’re going to bring Mickey Rourke back, if he won’t be too crazy. I like Mickey. And of course, all the existing stars [will return]”

Wow, talk about reaching for the stars. Who knows if they will actually nail any of those guys, but it is good to see the producers won’t consider any action icon to big to approach. Which begs the question, when will they give Mel Gibson a call?

You can check out The Expendables 2 this week and stay tuned to The Flickcast for any testosterone riddled casting updates in the future.

Normally I like to leave the opinion stuff for the end of the article, but it is important to lead with it here. This is the new Looper trailer, and I wont watch it. Trailers tend to give away too much stuff, but most of the time we don’t realize it does, and there is still some level of surprise while watching the film.

This new trailer doesn’t spoil the upcoming film, but it does give away a few plot points that would be better discovered during the course of the movie. I am not making any assumptions here, these are actually the opinions of Rian Johnson, the film’s director:

If you’re already set on seeing Looper, I’d avoid any trailers from here on out. They don’t ruin the movie, but they tip a few little things that are fun to discover in the context of the movie.

And:

Just to clarify – I approved all the trailers, they’re great an they won’t ruin anything big. But the small things they tip are fun to discover in the movie.

Those tweets are direct from the director himself, and they are keeping me from watching the trailer. However, I posted it because I realize not everyone is already sold on this film, and apparently the trailer is very good.

You can catch the new trailer after the jump, and if you are new to Looper, but want to catch a more kosher trailer, you can do so here.

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Action Stars? Check. Explosions? Check. More Action Stars? Check. Foreground Flames for no reason? Check. Still more Action Stars? Check, check, check.

Yep, the new Expendables 2 poster hits on just about every note you could possibly expect in an action movie poster. It exudes masculine, muscle-bound machismo more so than any poster for an actual feature film I can recall. Which is exactly the right tone they should be setting in their marketing.

Looking at this poster reminds me of a thought that crossed my mind while watching The Avengers. Projects like these ought not to exist, when we were growing up the concept of an all out action franchise staring just about every icon of the genre was a pipe dream. Now it is a reality.

People still want to worry about the rating, but with the way the MPAA has softened their stance on violence in the last decade I am sure the ‘spolsions and shootin’ wont be too neutered. It is also key to remember Stallone shot the first Expendables to be PG-13 as well, most of the R-rated content was the result of re-shoots.

Take a look at the full poster after the jump, and be prepared to be blown away by pure awesomeness August 17th.

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When we heard that GI Joe Retaliation was pushed back to May 2013 we were bummed. The trailers did a great job of getting everyone excited about a new GI Joe film, which is a minor miracle in and of itself. The original word was to do a ‘proper’ 3D post convert, which kinda sounded like BS, and it turns out it was.

Deadline is reporting that mediocre to poor test screening results and cold feet from killing off the first film’s star Channing Tatum in the first act are the principal reasons for the delay. Which is funny, because one of the aspects that fans were rallying behind with the new film was the balls to kill of the characters that didn’t work in the first film.

Now we are in an odd place. On the surface, this can be seen as a good move, allowing the filmmakers time to make better a film that many of us were looking forward to. On the other hand, if this is all the work of the studio who wants nothing more than to shoe horn a rising star into a franchise that he already proved ill-equipped to lead, we may have lost something fun.

No one will know for sure until next May, but at the very least this film will go down as an interesting what if moment in film.

I originally was going to write that Moonrise Kingdom was, at 94 minutes, among Wes Anderson’s shortest films, but after researching the running times of his previous work, it actually is right in the middle–shorter than The Life Aquatic (119 minutes) and The Royal Tenenbaums (109 minutes), but longer than Rushmore (93 minutes) and Bottle Rocket (92).

I think the difference is in the pacing (though all of Anderson’s films seem longer to me when they’re not on the big screen), because it didn’t feel lagging at any point. As good as Bottle Rocket and Rushmore are, I felt both started strong and then quickly slowed down, only to start rolling again in the third act. Moonrise is funny, engaging, and delightful all throughout.

The time is 1965, the place is a secluded New England island where the narrator (Bob Balaban) gives us a quick rundown of its history and the typical way of life–nothing much happens, and the mail is flown in every so often via waterplane. The inhabitants are the Bishops: Walt (Bill Murray), Laura (Frances McDormand), their sons, and their daughter Suzy (Kara Hayward); and the Khaki Scouts, something like the Junior Woodchucks but without the guidebook.

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Stephen Sommers first GI Joe film was a spectacular miss. It had a lot of the right elements in place, but they just failed to come together in any meaningful way. Thankfully some one still sees the potential in what direction Sommers was taking the franchise.

The sequel GI Joe: Retaliation is on the way and it looks like it excised many of the original movie’s problems, as well as many of the original movie’s characters. Here is the official synopsis:

In this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence.

Notice how that synopsis is not very long? This film looks to not be burdened by over complicated plots, and as the new trailer suggests it instead relies on some potentially awesome action. GI Joe works best as a franchise when the action is first and foremost.

In addition to better action the film also boasts a much improved cast, anchored by Dwayne ‘The Rock’  Johnson, who typically excels in these types of roles, and Bruce Willis who is Brice Willis.

Check out the full new trailer after the jump.

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Right off the bat let me say Rian Johnson’s Brick was one of my top movies of 2006. With this first film, a hard-boiled detective thriller set at a High School and made for $500,000, Johnson proved to be a director to reckon with presenting a familiar tale in new and very interesting ways.

Now, he’s back with his third film, Looper, and there’s finally a real teaser trailer for it to take a look at. In it, we see Joseph Gordon-Levitt confront his older self, personified by Bruce Willis, and get introduced to the time-travelling story of hit men who kill people from their own future.

In the film with Gordon-Levitt and Willis are Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, and Emily Blunt. So, in addition to Johnson’s writing and direction, you’ve also got quite a cast as well.

Add all of that up and Looper looks to be quite a movie indeed. Can’t wait to see more.

Check out the trailer after the break. Looper hits theaters on September 28.

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