The guys (Kareem, Ken, and Pat) conclude their review of movies they grew up loving from the 90’s and 2000’s. Tangents include being insufferable kids, Sean Connery’s Scottish/Russian accent, the Megan Fox, Tia Leoni, and Michael Bay three-way, and more.
Show Notes
Topic 1: Duration:30-45 mins
1. Main point – What single movie has influenced you in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s.
Strength in numbers
Marvel put together its most beloved superheroes to take on Thanos and all the box office records. And the long, systematic strategy of producing individual heroes’ stories between the releases of the Avengers series helped build hype for the collective effort. The plan worked: all of the Avengers movies rank in the highest-grossing top 10 for Marvel.
And when it comes to ratings, they score high too. Avengers: Endgame earned a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, and the lowest-rated film of the series, Avengers: Age of Ultron, still managed to get a 75% rating.
Avengers: Endgame, which was the final film of the series, made nearly $750 million more than the second-highest box office performer, Avengers: Infinity War. While Avengers: Endgame may have ended on a down note, it’s the favorite film of the Avengers franchise for most critics, as well as the highest-grossing movie of all time, beating out Avatar, Titanic, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
From <https://www.reviews.org/tv-service/marvel-vs-dc-big-budgets-rotten-ratings/>
Historical perspectives:
Big Business Entertainment:
Film budgets skyrocketed due to special effects (expensive digital effects) and inflated salaries of name-recognition stars (and their agents). Big business increasingly took control of the movies and the way was opened for the foreign (mostly Japanese) ownership of Hollywood properties. To save money, many more films were being made in non-US locations by mid-decade.
A number of the studios were taken over by multi-national conglomerates as their entertainment divisions:
- United Artists (acquired in 1969 by airline tycoon Kirk Kerkorian and temporarily abandoned) was bought and merged with MGM in 1981 to form MGM/UA; the company’s film library was bought out by media mogul Ted Turner in 1986 for his cable TV channel, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.; then, in 1990 MGM was purchased by Sony Entertainment of Japan – home to both Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures (see below)
- 20th (or Twentieth) Century Fox was taken over by oil tycoon Marvin Davis in 1981 and then entered into a 50% shared ownership with Australian publisher Robert Murdoch in 1985, becoming part of Fox, Inc. The film production unit was renamed simply Fox Film Corporation in 1989, and by the end of the century became known simply as Fox
- Columbia Pictures was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 1982; (Tri-Star Pictures was also created – a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS); Tri-Star Pictures bought Loew’s Theaters in 1986; British film producer David Puttnam briefly headed Columbia Pictures for a few years beginning in 1986; the Sony Corporation of America purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. and Tri-Star Pictures from Coca-Cola for $3.4 billion in 1989, re-naming itself Sony Pictures Entertainment; in 1992, Sony Pictures Classics became an autonomous company within Sony Pictures
- Paramount became a wholly owned subsidiary of Gulf + Western Industries, Inc in 1966; in 1989, Gulf + Western was reconfigured and renamed Paramount Communications, Inc.; then in 1994, Paramount merged with Viacom International
- MCA/Universal (which had officially merged in 1962) became a powerful TV production company, and started its organized studio tours – one of LA’s most popular tourist attractions; they were acquired by Matsushita Electrical Industrial, Co. in 1991; in June 1995, The Seagram Company Ltd. (VO) purchased a majority equity in MCA from Matsushita; then in late 1996, MCA Inc. was renamed Universal Studios, reclaiming its heritage as one of the industry’s oldest and most prestigious movie studios
- Walt Disney Productions remained as one of the few studio-era survivors, with Michael Eisner as chairman and CEO beginning in 1984; it set up Touchstone Pictures in 1984 to make feature films that appealed to adult audiences; Buena Vista was Disney’s distributor
- Warner Communications merged with Time, Inc. – announced in 1989 (and completed in 1990) to become Time-Warner, Inc., a component of the media empire AOL-Time Warner
A few independent film companies, such as New Line Cinema and Miramax, began to make more experimental and offbeat films to fill the gaps provided by the major studios.
Because costly film decisions were more in the hands of people making the financial decisions, not the film makers, movies were made only if they could guarantee financial success, thereby pandering to a few select, well-known star names attached to film titles without as much attention paid to intelligent scripts. With this kind of pressure, the most popular film stars demanded higher salaries, up front, and well as a percentage of the film’s gross take, earning as much as $20 million. Budgets and actors salaries skyrocketed out of control, and powerful agents for agencies such as Creative Artists Agency (CAA) negotiated outrageous deals.
From <https://www.filmsite.org/80sintro.html>
New Technologies: Home Entertainment-Video, Cable TV, and Sound
Cable TV networks, direct broadcast satellites, and 1/2 inch videocassettes (in the VHS format) in the 80s encouraged broader distribution of films. Sales and revenues from pre-sold theatrical features for videocassette reproduction and cable TV distribution contributed increased percentages for studios’ earnings – sometimes outpacing box-office profits. [In an influential decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Universal v. Sony Betamax (1984) that home video-taping for personal use was not a copyright infringement.]
Many studios entered the business of producing films for commercial TV networks, and the release of their films for the home entertainment-video market became a profitable rental-sales business. The pre-recorded video of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959) brought sales of over a million copies when it was released in 1986. And then to illustrate the burgeoning video industry over the next few years, 1988 sales of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) surpassed 15 million!
Tri-Star Pictures Motion Picture Company, one of Hollywood’s major producer/distributors, was created in 1983 as a joint venture of CBS Inc., Columbia Pictures, and Time-Life’s premium cable service Home Box Office (HBO) (founded in 1972). HBO and Showtime both functioned as producer/distributors in their own right by directly financing films and entertainment specials for their own pay-television cable stations. HBO became a leader, developing the first made-for-pay-TV movie The Terry Fox Story (1983). It became the first cable network to win an Oscar, for Best Documentary Feature for Down and Out in America (1986), and an Emmy, for Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (1987). By the 1990s, all the major pay-TV cable networks had expanded their output, creating original series, films and mini-series, along with producing documentaries, stand-up comedy, and sports programming.
[In 1989, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications, becoming the major media giant Time-Warner.] The spread of access to cable television (and satellite broadcasts) threatened traditional one-screen theatres and film attendance. On the other hand, multi-plex movie theatres with multiple screens spread across the country during the 80s, while the number of drive-in theatres drastically declined.
Multi-track Dolby stereo sound, the THX sound system (named after George Lucas’ first feature film), and Dolby SR (“spectral recording”) (all designed to produce higher quality sound, noise reduction, surround-sound and other special effects) were introduced in the 70s and 80s, and advertised as a special feature for films such as Amadeus (1984) and Aliens (1986). The first movie to be shown in a THX-certified auditorium was Return of the Jedi (1983). [In 1992, a new technology dubbed Dolby Digital was introduced to movie-goers in Batman Returns (1992), and then DTS Digital Sound made its debut in Jurassic Park (1993).]
From <https://www.filmsite.org/80sintro.html>
Segue (can be a sound effect, short musical clip, or a phrase)
Topic 2: Duration:30-45 mins
1. Main point
- Discussing the movies themselves
-please attached lists-
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Topic 3: Duration:30-45 mins
1. Main point
- Coming to a consensus on worst comic movie of the last 20 years
Closing remarks/recap
CAPES, CHOAS, AND COLLECTIBLES – Reviwing content for our 2025 Comic-Con panel – Tangential Giants Podcast
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