When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die — and quite a few characters learned that lesson the hard way across the show’s eight seasons.
But given the drama’s propensity for killing off major players (often in creative and brutal ways), we actually expected a higher body count as Thrones closed in on its final hour. Frankly, we were a bit shocked that the remaining Stark children all made it out alive. And those supporting characters whose arcs had seemingly run their course in Season 8? We assumed they were goners, for sure. (Looking at you, Ser Brienne!)
Ahead of Thrones‘ final season, Team TVLine had braced for the worst and prepared obituaries for 36 characters, both major and minor. Valar morghulis and all that, right? In the end, though, we only published 16 of those memorials, including tributes to Daenerys Targaryen, Lannister twins Jaime and Cersei and, yes, even the Night King.
Now that our watch has ended, though, we’d also like to honor the characters who survived the series. They may not have perished at the hands of a wight or in a pile of King’s Landing rubble, but their accomplishments are worth recognizing all the same.
Without further ado, scroll through the attached gallery — or click here for direct access — to see the eulogies we would have given Arya, Tyrion and more than a dozen others, then drop a comment and tell us: Which character’s survival surprised you the most?
Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” is flying high with an estimated $105 million in North America during the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend.
It’s the sixth-highest Memorial Day weekend total ever, topping the 2011 mark of $103.4 million for “The Hangover Part II.” The top total came in 2007, when “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” took in $139 million in its first four days. “Aladdin” is also dominating moviegoing internationally with $121 million in 56 markets.
“Aladdin” has outperformed Disney’s pre-opening domestic projections, which were in the $75 million to $85 million range, taking in $86.1 million in its first three days. The reboot of the original 1992 animated movie — which generated $502 million in worldwide box office — stars Mena Massoud as Aladdin, Will Smith as the Genie, Naomi Scott as Jasmine and Marwan Kenzari as Jafar. Guy Ritchie directed “Aladdin,” produced by Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich.
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Comscore’s PostTrak general audience survey found that 67% of patrons said they would “definitely recommend” the film to their friends. Notably, 39% said their affection for the original was their primary reason for seeing the film, a high percentage that reflects moviegoers’ love for the “Aladdin” brand and the characters in the film.
“A very strong 22% said they would see the film again in theatres — much higher than the norm of 14%,” noted Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst.
Comscore estimated that total domestic business for the four-day weekend was $226 million. That was about $1.8 million shy of the total for the same frame last year, when “Solo: A Star Wars Story” launched with $103 million. The top Memorial Day weekend took place in 2013 when “Fast and Furious 6” launched and North American moviegoing totaled $314 million for the four days.
“A very solid Memorial Day weekend was led by the bigger-than-expected performance of Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ conjured up huge numbers of moviegoers looking for the perfect family-friendly treat over the extended holiday weekend,” he said.
Disney distribution chief Cathleen Taff told Variety that she’s particularly pleased that “Aladdin” has racked up a 93% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an “A” Cinemascore. The site recently revised its scoring in that measurement to limit responses to verified ticket buyers.
“‘Aladdin’ is performing exactly the way we were hoping,” Taff added. “We should see strong performance in the coming weeks as we get into the summer season.”
Sony’s launch of horror-thriller “Brightburn” should pull in about $9 million for the holiday weekend to finish fifth and United Artists-Annapurna’s teen comedy “Booksmart” will open in sixth at around $8 million. Both were positioned as counter-programmers to “Aladdin” and finished slightly below forecasts.
Lionsgate’s second session of “John Wick: Chapter 3” should be runner-up with $30.5 million following its surprisingly strong opening of $56.8 million. The actioner will wind up the holiday weekend with $107 million domestically.
Disney’s fifth frame of “Avengers: Endgame” will finish third in the $22 million range, increasing its haul to about $803 million domestically by the end of Memorial Day. “Endgame” trails only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in domestic gross, with the space saga having grossed $936 million.
Warner Bros.’ third weekend of “Pokemon Detective Pikachu” will follow in fourth with about $17 million. The family adventure will finish the weekend at the $120 million mark in North America.
Overall moviegoing for 2019 has hit $4.34 billion as of Sunday, down 10% from the same point last year. The lag is due to a dismal performance during the first two months of this year.
“Aladdin” is the third biggest launch of 2019, following the record-setting $357 million for “Avengers: Endgame” and $153 million for “Captain Marvel.”
Twenty-five years ago this month, Disney, what we know now as a corporate, cultural monolith that dominates the global box office and a major entity in the upcoming streaming wars, was venturing into new territory. The company was releasing their first original, straight-to-video feature and their first sequel to a “Disney Renaissance” tentpole: The Return of Jafar.
The first of two sequels to the highest grossing film of 1992, The Return of Jafar also served as the pilot for the Aladdin television series, which ran for 86 episodes over three seasons. Disney tasked Alan Zaslove and Tad Stones with bringing Al, Jasmine, Genie and Apu to the small screen, and both were more than up to it, having been the creative forces behind Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. But before the first scripts were written and lines were drawn, Stones wanted to bring one more character in to join the ensemble.
“I said, ‘I want the parrot in there,’” Stones recalled to Animation World Networkof his initial pitch to Disney. “I thought the best character in the movie was Gilbert Gottfried’s Iago.”
Stones wanted, of all characters, the loudmouth, brash Red Macaw on the show. To do that they would first need to turn Iago from a sarcastic, sleazy, conniving henchman, to a sarcastic, sleazy, conniving hero. Then of course, there was the fact that Iago was still in the lamp with Jafar, both tossed out of Agrabah by Genie in the first film’s climax after the wise-cracking magical being granted Jafar his final wish of becoming an all powerful genie — a last minute trick pulled by Aladdin, playing off the villains own egotism. To accomplish both feats, Stones said that he, Zaslove, and the rest of the writing team, “came up with a convoluted story that explained everything and that ended up being The Return of Jafar.”
Taking place one year after the events of the original film, Return of Jafar finds Aladdin and Jasmine still blissfully in love, the former street rat and his monkey now living in the palace. Jasmine’s father, The Sultan, is planning to make Aladdin his new royal vizier, the position once held by the sinister Jafar. If life wasn’t already good enough for Al, Genie returns from his journey around the world, realizing that what he really wants to do with his newly earned freedom is to live a life surrounded by his friends.
Unbeknownst to the Agrabah Avengers, Jafar has escaped, and with the help of a lowly thief, Abis Mal (Jason Alexander), plans on getting revenge on Aladdin and his friends.
Even though it’s Jafar’s name in the title and it being a sequel to Aladdin, ROJ is really Iago’s story. The films main arc is Iago turning over a new feather; joining Aladdin and his friends to take down his former boss. He saves Aladdin early in the movie, releases Genie after he’s captured and emasculated by Jafar (in the movie’s only good musical sequence), who then saves Al from being beheaded; and it’s Iago who lands the final blow on Jafar, knocking over his oily black lamp into the pit of lava Jafar created, doing so after swooping in — Han Solo style — to stop Jafar from landing a fatal blow to Aladdin. Without Iago, there’s no story.
A sequel to Aladdin was about as sure fire a hit you can get in 1994, the continuation of a major hit that made Disney enough money from merchandise and video sales to fill a couple Caves of Wonders. However, there was some hesitation from the House of Mouse.
While always intended as a feature-length story, Return of Jafar was initially supposed to premiere on TV, billed as a special to promote the new series. There was also some worry that the straight-to-video approach would diminish the animated features.
“At the time I was told that Peter Schneider, who was in charge of Feature Animation was at a meeting with Michael Eisner,” Stones said in a separate AWN interview. “Peter said, ‘You shouldn’t do sequels, their quality hurts the Disney reputation,’ and Michael said, ‘I’m not sure we should be doing these either.’” Those fears dissipated once the first week’s sales numbers came in.
The Return of Jafar sold 1.5 million copies in its first two days of release, more than 4.6 million by the end of its first week. In total, The Chicago Tribune reported that 15 million copies were sold, bringing $300 million dollars to Disney, off a $3.5 million dollar budget (Aladdin cost $28 million). This all happened without Robin Williams, the late actor had a falling out with Disney because of the over commercialization of his character in Aladdin’s marketing. He was replaced with Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson); Williams would return for the third film, Aladdin and The King of Thieves.
Seeing a new way to make tons of money, Disney started churning out straight to video features based on all of their theatrical titles until 2008 (we’ve even made a list of them). While Stones admits that he isn’t a fan of the movie (“I don’t even own a copy,” he said to AWN) it’s still an important film in the history of Disney and animation as a whole. A movie that started a successful trend and one we got because of one man’s love for a loud, obnoxious parrot.
Fox411: In a resurfaced interview from 2007, Fergie said director Quentin Tarantino bit her while filming the double feature slasher movie 'Grindhouse.'
Whether or not Quentin Tarantino wins the Palme d’Or this year, at least he’s not coming home without a trophy.
Tarantino surprised audience members Friday when he turned up to receive the trophy — a red dog collar — in person. He cheered pit bull Brandy, which is owned by Brad Pitt’s character in the film.
CANNES — The awards show for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival competition is underway.
Presenting the tie for Cannes’ Grand Prix — awarded to a pair of politically charged features, Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Bacurau” — outspoken liberal filmmaker Michael Moore told the crowd, “Trump is the lie that enables more lying.”
Cannes favorites Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne — who have won the Palme d’Or twice before, as well as two other awards — took the best director prize for “Young Ahmed,” the portrait of a Muslim teenager living in modern Belgium who attempts to kill his teacher after being brainwashed by a radical imam.
Best actress went to “Little Joe” leading lady Emily Beecham, who plays a scientist who begins to suspect that the plant she has genetically modified may have adverse side effects.
French writer-director Céline Sciamma earned the screenplay award for “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” a lesbian-themed period film that explores the notion of the female gaze, both now and throughout the tradition of Western art.
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Elia Suleiman’s “It Must Be Heaven” earned a special mention from the jury. A droll commentary — from a director whose Jacques Tati-like screen persona hardly ever speaks — on his country’s troubles, as reflected through his travels to Paris and New York, Suleiman’s film was the rare comedy in this year’s competition.
Jury president Alejandro González Iñárritu presided over a jury that included French author-artist-director Enki Bilal, French director Robin Campillo, Senegalese actress-director Maimouna N’Diaye, American actress Elle Fanning, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski, American director Kelly Reichardt, and Italian director Alice Rohrwacher.
The Camera d’Or, awarded by a special jury headed by Rithy Panh to the best first film from among 26 debut features across all section of the festival, went to Guatemalan director Cesar Diaz. His drama “Our Mothers,” which premiered in Critics’ Week, focuses on an anthropologist looking for his father, after finding a clue amid the investigations into the country’s civil war.
The prizes are being updated live below…
COMPETITION
Palme d’Or: TBA
Grand Prix — TIE: Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables”; Kleber Mendonça Filho, “Bacurau”
Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, “Young Ahmed”
Actor: TBA
Actress: Emily Beecham, “Little Joe”
Jury Prize: TBA
Screenplay: Céline Sciamma, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
Special Mention: Elia Suleiman, “It Must Be Heaven”
OTHER PRIZES
Camera d’Or: “Our Mothers,” Cesar Diaz
Short Films Palme d’Or: “The Distance Between the Sky and Us,” Vasilis Kekatos
Short Films Special Mention: “Monster God,” Agustina San Martin
Walt Disney’s Aladdin is well on its way to breaking the studio’s unofficial Memorial Day weekend curse. Save for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (a record $153 million Fri-Mon debut) in 2007 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (a halfway decent $77 million Fri-Mon debut) in 2017, pretty much every Disney Memorial Day release (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Tomorrowland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Solo: A Star Wars Story) has died a bad death here and/or abroad. Now one decent opening day isn’t a curse lifted, but a $31 million Friday gross, including $7 million in Thursday previews, is a good start for the much-discussed live-action musical/romance.
Walt Disney spent $183 million on a live-action version of Aladdin and, as promised, cast almost every significant role with a Middle Eastern, Asian or Indian actor or actress. They cast Will Smith as the Genie because Robin Williams died five years ago and Disney needed a big star with an equally distinct movie star persona. The film screened for critics and received relatively mixed reviews, with plaudits going to the cast and the production values and demerits directed at the new (and 45% longer) version of the prior screenplay. General audiences saw commercials and trailers for what looked like a good time at the movies, read the reviews and then more-or-less showed up. Occam’s Razor.
As expected, the years of online handwringing (Billy Magnussen is in the movie for about 120 seconds as foppish comic relief) and manufactured controversies (no, Guy Ritchie was never going to cast Tom Hardy as Jafar) didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The Internet laughed at or scream at Will Smith’s Genie, but general audiences (young and old) showed up anyway. The marketing campaign was a bit too coy, at least until the last minute, but the core pitch (“a big-budget live-action version of Aladdin”) was good enough to overcome hesitant marketing. Once reviews confirmed that the movie was halfway decent, with splashy production values and a charismatic cast, audiences showed up accordingly.
As long as the movie was somewhat coherent, delivered on the razzle-dazzle and nostalgia while highlighting a lead romantic duo (Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott) who were charismatic, beautiful and able to generate chemistry and mutual heat, this was merely a matter of hoping enough folks actually wanted to see a live-action Aladdin. Once the reviews, even the pans, assured people that the movie delivered on its core pitch, along with a somewhat rare over-the-top Will Smith movie star turn, the fix was in. So, despite years of proclamations of doom, and yeah this could have gone in a different direction, Walt Disney’s Aladdin may be flirting with a $100 million Fri-Mom Memorial Day weekend.
Aladdin earned 22.5% of its opening day via Thursday previews, which is right in line with the Pirates sequels and X-Men: Days of Future Past. The last several years’ worth of Memorial Day biggies have generally earned multipliers between 2.724x (At World’s End and X-Men: The Last Stand) and 3.33x (Dead Men Tell No Tales). If it plays accordingly, we’re looking at a Fri-Mon debut between $84 million and $103 million. It could theoretically play leggier, like Alice Through the Looking Glass (3.45x in 2016) or Men in Black 3 ($69 million from a $17.6 million opening day for a 3.9x multiplier in 2012), which means a Fri-Mon debut weekend between $107 million and $121 million.
Sony and Screen Gems released Brightburn yesterday to middling results. The James Gunn-produced and David Yarovesky-directed chiller, essentially turning the Superman origin story into a horror movie, earned mixed-positive reviews but didn’t get much in the way of buzz heading into the weekend. As such, the $3 million Friday, including $950,000 in Thursday previews, isn’t a surprise. We can expect a $7.5 million Fri-Sun weekend and a $9 million Fri-Mon debut for the $7 million-budgeted Elizabeth Banks vehicle. This one had the bad luck of ramping up its marketing just as Disney fired Gunn from Guardians 3 over some unearthed tweets. Disney hired him back, but Sony delayed Brightburn from Thanksgiving 2018 to Memorial Day 2019.
That wasn’t fatal, as it’s not like a cheapie like this needed a saturation campaign. Honestly, after the first teaser played well enough online, the overall marketing frankly got kind of quiet. To be fair, Sony may have just spent the bare minimum needed to get a $7 million-budgeted movie into the black (it’ll probably tap out at $20 million domestic). Come what may, this wasn’t the summer counterprogramming event it was presumed to be after that first teaser. That said, the Mark and Brian Gunn-penned movie is a fascinating little deconstruction, examining toxic masculinity through a superhero origin while ironically taking the Superman mythos closer to their roots as a Moses parable. It’s worth a watch.
United Artists Releasing, uh, released Booksmart into 2,505 theaters yesterday. The Olivia Wilde-directed teen comedy, sold (somewhat accurately) as a Superbad for girls, has earned mostly rave reviews and strong buzz going out of its SXSW debut this past April. But when it’s just as easy to for folks to stay home and binge episodes of (the excellent) Pen15 on Hulu, getting audiences into theaters for an R-rated, female-centric future classic like this is no easier than it was with The Do-To List in 2013 or The Edge of Seventeen in 2016. As such, a $2.5 million Friday should lead to a $6.7 million Fri-Sun frame and an $8.1 million Fri-Mon debut weekend. That’s not great.
The marketing was mostly digital, so this won’t be a catastrophe, but the overall low number is still a tragedy for this kind of movie. I know I say this all the time, but if you want more movies like this in theaters, you actually have to see them in theaters. We’ve seen the consequences of moviegoers mostly ignoring nearly all of Fox’s 2018 slate in the relative decimation of the studio in the aftermath of its sale to Disney. Fox2000 is shuttering, the amount of films Fox will release has decreased by half, and Disney is mostly mining them for catalog properties and IP. Once again, vote with your wallet, not with your hashtag.
The recent Beauty and the Beast reimagined the animated classic in live-action — and hoped to redraw its heroine in the process. As Disney continues to give every beloved animated classic a shiny live-action remake (or in the case of The Lion King, photorealistic animation wash), the company has taken the opportunity to correct the issues of the originals that don’t stand up under a modern eye.
There’s a reason why the Jim Crow scenes are absent from the latest Dumbo and why Maleficent gave a twist to ol’ true love’s kiss. On the heels of more female-focused movies like Frozen and Moana, it would appear that Disney also felt the need to update Beauty and the Beast. Emma Watson’s version of Belle wasn’t just a pretty bookworm in the new version, she also invented things, and without a corset.
The change wasn’t entirely successful. Belle’s “empowerment” missed the mark of what made Belle such an appealing heroine in the first place: she was a heroine with specific interests and wants, who played an active part in the movie. Disney sought to update her to make her more of a heroine of the 2010s than a heroine of the 1990s by giving her more to do. Unfortunately, hobbies are not the pillars of a character arc.
In comparison, Aladdin, Disney’s latest live-action remake, gets the “fix” right, giving Princess Jasmine an arc that doesn’t feel like set dressing. It stays true to the character and what made her appealing, but also gives her more agency and a story that is not entirely reliant on Aladdin.
Why the Disney princesses meant so much, but don’t hold up
The Disney heroines from the early Disney Renaissance — Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine —represented a new type of Disney heroine. Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora, the princesses of Disney’s Golden Age, were passive. While they had some wants of their own, they didn’t pursue those goals. Things happened to them; they reacted.
Ariel was the first Disney princess character who unapologetically went after what she wanted. Whether viewers today interpret that as living with humans or getting with Eric, Ariel was still active in her own story. She sought out the sea witch, and she made the deal that cost her her voice. By contrast, Snow White wished for a prince, but most of the movie is the Huntsman chasing her, the Queen pursuing her, and the prince kissing her. Every plot point is something done to her.
With Disney’s history littered with passive princesses, Ariel, a 16-year-old defying her father for true love, going after her dreams, and getting her happy ending, felt revolutionary.
Belle and Jasmine followed Ariel’s lead. Both expressed desire for something more. Belle sang a whole song about wanting adventure. Jasmine despised the idea of an arranged marriage and longed for life outside the palace walls. And both took active roles in making that change happen: Belle made the agreement with the Beast to take her father’s place; Jasmine snuck out of the palace in order to see more of the world. These were not the classic Disney princesses.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, budding bookworms, would-be collectors, and little rebels found themselves drawn to the new princesses, earning them special places in the hearts of nostalgic fans. Today, these princesses fall short of where modern female audiences want them to go. All three movies, ultimately, are love stories. Instead of the heroines fully getting what they seek, they fall in love. In the end, Ariel lives on land, but by tying herself to a man; Belle never gets adventure in the great wide somewhere and instead marries the Beast; Jasmine goes beyond the palace walls for the duration of a song and then returns to her royal lifestyle to be with Aladdin.
The endings are romantic and, in context, fulfilling, but when we look at the standard that the newer, modern Disney heroines set, it’s easy to see why a modern audience isn’t as happy with the final romantic couplings coming at the expense of the heroine’s dreams.
The new Disney heroine has specific wants. Her journey is about going after her dreams and learning from her flaws. If the movie has a love interest, it is rarely about him. The Frozen sisters and Moana are the two big tent poles, but the driven, flawed Disney heroine goes back as early as Mulan.
The Disney heroines who become role models today have clear goals that define their stories from beginning to end. The most direct case in point: Moana. Like Belle and Jasmine before, she dreams of a great wide open, but unlike them, she spends the entire movie learning how to sail and navigate, and eventually how to save her island. She tries, she fails, and she experiences moments of insecurity before she finally rises up and realizes what she needs to do.
What Beauty and the Beast did wrong, and Aladdin did right
Instead of sharpening Belle’s nebulous “adventure in the great wide somewhere,” the 2017 Beauty and the Beast tacks on other hobbies. In addition to being a budding adventurer, she’s also a proponent for literacy and an inventor. None of this setup is negative — female protagonists can have varying interests. In fact, they should have varying interests.
But Belle’s interests don’t shape the plot, which more or less sticks to the original. Beyond one scene, Belle’s inventing prowess is never brought up again; other than a brief trip to Paris by way of a magical book, her desire to see more of the world is never explored; her love of reading, her most notable trait, gets regressed — instead of bonding with the Beast by inspiring him to read, he mansplains Romeo and Juliet to her and she finds it charming.
In the end, she marries the Beast and seems content to live the rest of her life in a cushy castle. But what of her literacy campaign for the small town? No mention of her inventions? Not even a throwaway line about seeing the great wide somewhere for their honeymoon?
For those initially drawn to Belle because of her love of books and her dreams of adventure, seeing the random science hobby tacked on because her original personality wasn’t “feminist” enough is another falling rose petal. After all, it wasn’t Belle’s quirks and personality that dated the original Beauty and the Beast, rather the fact that those quirks and personality did not get a resolution worthy of her character. Nothing about Belle’s resolution changes in the live-action take.
The 2019 Jasmine could very easily fall into this trap, but Aladdin elevates the princess by giving her a parallel arc with the hero. Instead of accumulating hobbies, Jasmine’s original wants are fleshed out: she doesn’t want to just voice her opinion, she wants to be in a position of power where her voice will be heard.
“It felt right that we should challenge Jasmine in this incarnation,” director Guy Ritchie told Polygon during the press tour for the film. “She needed the equivalent of a challenge that, say, Aladdin has, but in her own way.”
This Jasmine doesn’t reject an arranged marriage because she wants to fall in love; she rejects an arranged marriage because then a foreign husband will assume the position of sultan, when really she is the best person for the role. No one will care for her people like she does — certainly not a man who only wants to marry her for her beauty, and the power and money that come with the title of sultan. Jasmine wishes to be a good ruler for the people of Agrabah.
In the new Aladdin, the reason she’s outside the palace isn’t to escape an arranged marriage, but to familiarize herself with the people of Agrabah. She despises the fact that her father keeps her locked up, not just because she wants to see more of the world, but because she cannot help her people unless she knows what they need.
The setup echoes the original Jasmine, but brings specificity to her general desires. Aladdin gives her a goal that — like a Moana or an Elsa — she works towards and eventually sees through.
In the beginning, pressure from her father, Jafar, and the general state of Agrabah society for thousands of years weighs on Jasmine, and while she wants more, she is still hesitant to defy them. Sneaking out of the palace, meeting Aladdin, and eventually facing Jafar are all moments of genuine bravery. The plot of the original Aladdin focused on Aladdin finding the courage to be true to himself; the redux also has Jasmine finding the courage to stand up for herself and, eventually, for who she loves.
As Jafar’s power grows out of control, Jasmine belts out “Speechless” — the only song added to the movie — and gives a rousing speech to rally the people around her to defy Jafar. The moment feels earned. Her personality and interests aren’t just there to check items off of a list; they drive the princess’ story forward and give it a resolution worthy of her. Instead of her father letting her marry Aladdin, she proves herself as a worthy leader and, with her newfound confidence, makes the active choice to go after the man she loves.