Except You Started With A Billion
Okay, okay, maybe "Feeling like ten million dollars" instead. Sheesh. Also Dog Buns! Haven't you lot heard of poetic licence?
ANYWAY I would like to lecture you about the Law of Diminishing Returns, which is described by my "Brewer's" as "The principle that an increase in expenditure beyond a certain point will no longer produce a proportionate yield". Also known as throwing good money after bad. Art!
"Let it eat him first," thought the other characters, selfishly yet honestly.
Yes, this still is from "Jurassic World", which Conrad has already lambasted - or was it bamlasted? - in a previous Intro. This collection of plot-holes strung together is from 2015 and was an effective reboot of the collective 'Jurassic' franchise. One reason for it's success at the box office is that they waited for 14 years before making it, rather than banging it out after 3 or 4 years, as is usually studio practice. The figures as follow assume a $25 million Promotion & Advertising and Distribution budget, of 1/6 of the total budget, as it's far too difficult to find these figures out on open source internet.
BUDGET: $150 million
PROMO & DIST: $25 million
BOX OFFICE: $1.671 billion
STUDIO CUT:$835 million
PROFIT: $660 million
Art!
He got his break in " Jurassic Parks & Recreation"
Rather ironic, considering.
Here an aside. This film dates from 2015, not 1993. Why were the park's security people not equipped with Javelin anti-tank missiles? because one of those would effectively terminate even the biggest dinosaur by blowing a hole the size of a fridge-freezer in them. Why no FPV drones to act as spotters or wranglers or (equipped with a block of plastique embedded with ball bearings) anti-avian kamikazes? Art!
30 tons of metal converted to scrap. So long, dinos.
With figures like those you'd better believe that the Hollywood suits recognised a cash-chasmosaurus when they saw one and a sequel was instantly planned. This came out a mere 3 years later, reflecting that studio practice I told you of previously. Art!
BUDGET: $170 million
PROMO & DIST: $30 million
BOX OFFICE: $1.310 billion
STUDIO CUT:$655 million
PROFIT: $455 million
Yes, a whacking bit profit, but down from the original by about 25% and on a bigger budget, too. Taking the pitcher to the well too often is the aphorism that springs to mind here. I don't think the plot helps either, as it seems to be a direct copy of "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" with mercenaries seeking to steal the dinosaur secrets for nefarious - excuse me - Nefarious Purposes. Because a ten-ton monster that stands twenty feet high can be trained to be a guard dog. Or something. I dunno, It's In The Script. Art!
BUDGET: $185 million
PROMO & DIST: $35 million
BOX OFFICE: $1.0 billion
STUDIO CUT:$500 million
PROFIT: $280 million
From 2022, with production being delayed by Covid, not the studio wanting to give audiences a bit of breathing space. The plot for this one sounds as if the writers were drunk, and the ones who weren't drunk were high, and the straight and sober ones were stuck overseas in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a notorious communications and internet black spot. Interestingly enough, "Forbes" claims that the Caca Virus bloated the budget to $328 million due to delays and rescheduling, which - if true - would reduce the profit to $137 million.
There are plans afoot to make another in this franchise for 2025, which seems very unwise to Conrad, for once again the Law Of Diminishing Returns is at work here. Speculatively, the budget with P & D would be $240 million, meaning it would need to clear $500 million just to break even. Art!
Don't be like Chris, punters and studios! Don't -
"Totensontag" - It's My Bag
For those of you not into Teuton religious holidays, this event is a Protestant one that honours the deceased, "Toten-" being Teuton for "Dead" and "Sontag" being their word for "Sunday".
It's also a hex-and-counter boardgame I got probably at least fifteen years ago and have never played. Art!
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| You may now pay £60 for this first edition version |
The cover blurb states: "November 19 1941. As the sun rises over a new day in the Libyan Desert, the men of Reconnaissance Battalions 3 and 33 are greeted by a horrifying sight. Massed columns of British armour are rolling around the open flank of Panzerarmee Afrika - a new attempt to relieve the besieged city of Tobruk has begun!".
November 19th was Totensontag for 1941, lest you be unaware. Art!
The rules pamphlet is only four (small) pages long, unlike TGWIE's two thirty-page A4 Rule and Play books. So I may be playing this one in the near future.
NB The battles of Sidi Rezegh would require a whole blog to explain and describe, and if you're not good I'll jolly well do just that.
"The War Illustrated Edition 197 5th January 1945"
This is a little addendum after I rashly claimed that the previous photograph would be the last one from this edition. What can I say, the title persuaded me. Art!
I thought this was hilarious when one considers who is selling oil to India and China today. Of course - obviously! - this is in early 1945 when India was still part of the British Empire STAND UP FOR KINGIE and China was the hapless and outclassed ally fighting the Nipponese. The caption explains that this pipeline network, and the valve farm here, had only just been declassified, presumably because the Japanese were no longer able to explosively interfere with it. Art!
It took a fair bit of digging to find this map: the 'Assam-Burma-China' pipeline, inevitably called the ABC pipeline. What you can't see here are the contour lines indicating mountainous terrain, because you're dealing with the fag-end of the Himalayas here.
It's A Way Of Life
We recently covered the most dangerous places in South Canada, due to weather or geographical conditions, courtesy of Kyle "Geography King", whom I would urge you to check out. He's not short of geography to King about, thanks to South Canada being so enormous. The last topic he dealt with was volcanoes, a species of frothing molten Hades that we here in This Sceptred Isle never have to deal with. Other places - Art!
Here it is at ground level. Great excuse to not go to work. This, we are told, is the seventh time this year the volcano has erupted. Too much of a good thing and all that, hmmmmm? Art!
Beware of angular Christmas puddings.
Bring On The Bad Traffic
This is one I made earlier, in fact yesteryon, when I wanted to prove how madly inaccurate the traffic algorithm for Blogger had become. Art!
By today (Saturday evening) it had returned to Sensible Mode. Art!
O well.
Finally -
Phew, Conrad's second visit of the year to Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell went well, I hit the sinful big city early enough for there to be a paucity of Christmas crowds. Did a bit of shopping, which I'm not going to detail, and got remaindered Chicken Kievs at the Co-Op, which I naturally baked and put into buns. Which is why I now have a t-shirt decorated with blobs of garlic butter. They squirted, the dirty bafunes.
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