I'm not going to tear down a film like Angry Birds because the potential MMW audience probably wanted to wait until streaming or got blockbuster kid's movie fatigue from the dual successes of Frozen and Lego, not to mention Peabody and Sherman coming out earlier that month. By all means, it was a dumb movie, but dumb in the special harmless goofy laugh sort of way. I don't need every animated movie I see to be a Cerebus Rollercoaster. But on that note, it seems that with the overabundance of CGI films, the audience is far more picky than it was years ago. Legends of Oz came and went in a two week period of a pathetic opening and an even more pathetic attempt on The View to get an audience the following Monday. While somehow Nut Job was considered successful, that was due to a low budget. And even little kids hated Norm of the North.
But the issue isn't so much "everyone's going to be tired of CGI and want to see a film with practical puppet effects and characters" so much as no one's really seeing comedies anymore because they aren't blockbusters. Keanu should have been a more successful film due to Key and Peel being Key and Peel. But everyone either waited for Civil War or went to see Jungle Book again. Things that don't look awesome in 3-D can wait to hit streaming and phones, and that's hurting the smaller budget films like MMW. I'd say that was one of the many factors the fair weather casual fans who looooooved The Muppets skipped that one instead of piling into the theaters for the next installment.
That said, if we're talking about a television audience, that's the mixed bag. I can see a certain level of "I only watch sophisticated things on cable and Netflix and CW's super hero programs" that didn't quite like how the show wasn't warm and full of feels but were too turned off to catch those episodes where they had said feels. Then there's the lowest common denominator that wasn't up to rethinking characters they stopped caring about when they it 12 only to kinda like them again. The kind happy enough to keep Survivor still on the bleeding air. Then there's the fact that only a handful of Neilsen families even bother to watch TV anymore and everyone's just going off of DVR's and/or streaming both legal and illegally. I've never felt the climate of television was right for Muppets on a mainstream primetime program for years. They had a gamble to make it fit, and somehow that's the one thing they thought was cynical. And I'm sure a good number of them are on pins and needles for the next "Biggest Loser" to laugh at the fatties in it.
But the issue isn't so much "everyone's going to be tired of CGI and want to see a film with practical puppet effects and characters" so much as no one's really seeing comedies anymore because they aren't blockbusters. Keanu should have been a more successful film due to Key and Peel being Key and Peel. But everyone either waited for Civil War or went to see Jungle Book again. Things that don't look awesome in 3-D can wait to hit streaming and phones, and that's hurting the smaller budget films like MMW. I'd say that was one of the many factors the fair weather casual fans who looooooved The Muppets skipped that one instead of piling into the theaters for the next installment.
That said, if we're talking about a television audience, that's the mixed bag. I can see a certain level of "I only watch sophisticated things on cable and Netflix and CW's super hero programs" that didn't quite like how the show wasn't warm and full of feels but were too turned off to catch those episodes where they had said feels. Then there's the lowest common denominator that wasn't up to rethinking characters they stopped caring about when they it 12 only to kinda like them again. The kind happy enough to keep Survivor still on the bleeding air. Then there's the fact that only a handful of Neilsen families even bother to watch TV anymore and everyone's just going off of DVR's and/or streaming both legal and illegally. I've never felt the climate of television was right for Muppets on a mainstream primetime program for years. They had a gamble to make it fit, and somehow that's the one thing they thought was cynical. And I'm sure a good number of them are on pins and needles for the next "Biggest Loser" to laugh at the fatties in it.