TM had the advantage of coming first after a long box office absence. It's the story of Gary, Mary and Walter rediscovering the Muppets. MMW is a full-fledged Muppet movie. Even Frank Oz and Brian Henson have recognized this and that speaks volumes. They know better what makes a Jim film than you or I do and that's pretty much what they've stated.
Ultimately people like what they like, but preferring TM to MMW is kind of like preferring a remake to an original. It doesn't take a hardcore fan to see that. And ending Muppet films after the last one would have been a horrible mistake. Who in the world would support that??!!
MMW actually made me like TM
less. TM was a good film to relaunch the franchise, sure, but the thing was all over the place. It tried too hard to get too much into a 90 minute film and it turned out like an overstuffed suitcase with sleeves hanging out. The film didn't reach a conclusion
until the end of the credits. The editing was sloppy, sure... but there was
no reason to conclude the movie at the end of the credits. The Mahna Mahna montage ending was cute, but it was intrusive. Essentially TM comes off as an anniversary special project. Well meaning, a good movie, but it tries to get too many things and feels unfocused. And the emotions were
just a bit manipulative.
As someone who takes pleasure in calculating and predicting box office figures, I think the answer here really is there isn't one. It happens.
There are certainly reasons why this person or that person didn't see MMW, but I don't think that speaks for the entirety of moviegoers. For whatever reason, a lot of people skipped this one. It has broken even so it's not doing poorly and with the home video market it will prove to be a good investment.
But we're now in a different age of movies. Even Johnny Depp's golden touch has been tarnished. It's clear that modern auds just want to see CG cartoons and emaciated teenagers pretending to be vampires or futuristic scifi heroes. Cinema has lost its gravitas. My hope is that it will all bounce back.
I get the feeling that we don't appreciate movies like we used to. There's a HUGE gaping disparity between bad films that do great and good films that do poorly. Like the audience listens to critics who were disappointed by a film, yet ignore those who flat out HATE a film. We hate sequels unless we're told to like them, then we hate them anyway. Like I said before, I wouldn't even mind if the critics savaged this film. Their reviews were pretty idiotic and unprofessional, coming off less credible than a teenager on Facebook. They were disappointed the movie wasn't sad most of the time to make something slightly uplifting at the end, and that the driving force humans of the first film weren't in here this time.
Now whatever maddening reason this movie didn't do well, it's a blow to Muppet fandom. Especially since it's competition was out a good 2 weeks before (and Muppets did beat them that week), and that
idiotic Young Adult trash novel managed to get an audience of screaming tweenagers who fell for a flat female protagonist that if a man came up with, they'd call it sexist and backwards. Disney tried, but this should have been held over for another month. Maybe it would have managed to break even quicker. I'm actually more annoyed by the small support from the international sales. It should have
at least grossed 90 mil
with the overseas sales.
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