Horizon Star Lashes Out at Modern Viewers: 'Learn How to Watch Real Cinema'
Guardians of the Galaxy alum explains why 3-hour-long movies are a golden standard that works.
Kevin Costner ’s Horizon: An American Saga just saw its first chapter premiere — and the opening weekend was nothing short of disastrous. In the first weekend, the movie only earned back $11M out of just around $100M of its production budget… Which is not suboptimal but rather catastrophic in terms of box office success.
But Horizon stars — especially, one of them — reckons it’s the fact that modern audiences aren’t used to long formats anymore. And that, he says, has to change.
Horizon Star Slams Modern Moviegoers
Previously known for his part in Guardians of the Galaxy, Michael Rooker changed his outfit for Kevin Costner’s Horizon movies. In An American Saga, Rooker portrays Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan — and he believes in this film series with burning passion. Recently, the actor sat down with TMZ and addressed Chapter 1’s dismal opening weekend and shared his opinion on why it happened like this.
“We’re used to 90-minute movies. Everything is 90 minutes. Give me a break. Get over that sh*t. Let’s watch a movie that actually tells a story where you learn about the people and grow to like them or hate them. It’s not all fast and cut-cut-cut. <...> [Modern movie fans] got to get over that crap. They got to learn how to watch real cinema,” Rooker explained.
Big Names Stand With Costner’s Horizon
Horizon stars aren’t the only ones frustrated by Chapter 1’s opening weekend. As we previously wrote, even Stephen King addressed this issue, specifically, the people who started mocking Kevin Costner for his latest movie’s box office failure. The King of Horror lashed out at those people on his X (formerly Twitter).
“[In German,] Schadenfreude is ‘taking pleasure in another’s misfortune.’ It perfectly describes many reactions I’ve read to Costner’s Horizon. Why in God’s name would anyone luxuriate in the failure of a film that isn’t a sequel or part of the, God save us, ‘Marvel universe?’” King said.
So in this case, it’s not about stars’ frustration: even Stephen King, the celebrated book author, recognizes the tumors of modern cinema and how they played into Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1’s poor opening weekend performance. And honestly, we’re completely with King and Rooker on this one. Real cinema needs to get the attention and appreciation it deserves, not the hate and ridicule it gets.
Source: TMZ