The Iron Claw: Zac Efron and director Sean Durkin to film a movie about the Von Erichs

[Timbo Slice]

Best young actor going today in my eyes, and he understands wrestling as a whole, too, dude’s a unicorn 

[NotJayTabb]

Between this and GLOW, I like that Chavo Jr has carved himself out a little niche of being the wrestler to turn to for training when you're trying to make a film/series about wrestling.

[Dav'oh]

On 11/11/2023 at 4:07 PM, Timbo Slice said:

Best young actor going today in my eyes

The acting paradox: if you can tell someone is a good actor, are they really a good actor?

[pmo]

4 hours ago, NotJayTabb said:

Between this and GLOW, I like that Chavo Jr has carved himself out a little niche of being the wrestler to turn to for training when you're trying to make a film/series about wrestling.

Certainly doesn’t hurt that he grew adjacent to the Von Erich’s and probably interacted with them at times.

[SirEdger]

Also looks based on an interview by Zac Efron that Kevin Von Erich himself loved the movie. So, a very good sign about it.

[Robert S]

21 hours ago, SirEdger said:

Also looks based on an interview by Zac Efron that Kevin Von Erich himself loved the movie. So, a very good sign about it.

Is that a good sign? To me that reads they pulled like a lot of punches they could (and should) have thrown. I remain of the opinion that any Von Erichs movie where you don't leave the theatre thinking "well, it's kind of fitting the Fritz's wrestling character was a Nazi" is missing a big chance.

[El-P]

3 minutes ago, Robert S said:

Is that a good sign? 

Probably not. It probably means that the movie is more on the side of the myth rather than the truth, like most biopics are anyway, and probably very much cleaned up, with a heavy dose of Hollywood sappy pathos. The Von Erich story is dirty as hell.

[NintendoLogic]

Maybe there's a post-credits scene Kevin didn't stick around for where Fritz is on his deathbed and the sanitized story in the movie was a hallucination caused by his brain tumor.

[Timbo Slice]

It’s an A24 movie so you have to assume they aren’t gonna be quick to hide the horrors of the family. Can’t really see them really caring what Kevin thought in pre-production, let alone finished product. 

[El-P]

4 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Maybe there's a post-credits scene Kevin didn't stick around for where Fritz is on his deathbed and the sanitized story in the movie was a hallucination caused by his brain tumor.

Holy fuck ! 

[Robert S]

12 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Maybe there's a post-credits scene Kevin didn't stick around for where Fritz is on his deathbed and the sanitized story in the movie was a hallucination caused by his brain tumor.

Or Kevin's brain is so fried that he did not realize what the movie really was about and just thought "hey, that's my brothers and me on the screen".

[JRH]

Apparently MJF is the executive producer on this film. Now EP can mean a lot of things, but it's going to be weird seeing Maxwell Jacob Friedman's name in the opening credits (if it has opening credits). If this film is succesful, I wonder if it'll lead to other wrestling biopics. Maybe Martha Hart will get that screenplay about Owen out of mothballs.

[flyonthewall2983]

On 11/14/2023 at 12:11 PM, Robert S said:

Is that a good sign? To me that reads they pulled like a lot of punches they could (and should) have thrown. I remain of the opinion that any Von Erichs movie where you don't leave the theatre thinking "well, it's kind of fitting the Fritz's wrestling character was a Nazi" is missing a big chance.

Whether it does or not it will no doubt make an interesting double feature with the other film A24 has coming out,The Zone of Interest.

This will be an interesting season for movies in what’s been a pretty fascinating year for releases anyway. Seems to me like this will have some threads in common with Ferrari, itself maybe the threshold between this and Oppenheimer in terms of the more personal themes of each.

[Ricky Jackson]

Pretty good reviews and, for those invested in the will-it-be-a-success-or-not debate from a few weeks back, projects to be about a $7.5 million opening (end of Monday). So not too shabby. Aquaman is around $40 million for comparison 

[Johnny Sorrow]

I just got back from seeing it. It's very good and very sad. I was in tears at the end. It's very well acted, the cast is fantastic.

[WingedEagle]

As familiar as I am with the story through books and the Observer, you'd have to pay me a pretty hefty sum to sit through that for a couple hours.

[sek69]

It's been something to see people not aware of the story prior to watching the movie not only be surprised that everything in the movie happened (more or less), they had to cut poor Chris because the story was already too bleak. Lots of reviews having a variation on the "believe it or not all this actually happened" contained somewhere within.

[DMJ]

The Rotten Tomatoes score is terrific and with a budget of a little under $16m from what I found on the internet, Iron Claw will most likely turn a profit within a couple of weeks. Another few million this week from the post-Christmas attendees and another couple million next week plus streaming rights should do the trick.

Not getting any recognition from the Golden Globes is a bit troublesome as a movie like this, though, as its downer premise and the fact that its about wrestling does make it seem like a "niche" movie. People forget that the success of The Wrestler had a *ton* to do with the incredible critical buzz it had, the kind of buzz that very few get in any given year. Aronofosky was/is an auteur whose movies were/are "must see" and, up till that point, universally revered by critics. Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei especially were getting Oscar buzz. The content, about the gritty world of indie wrestling, had not been captured in a major film yet (compared to now when one could argue that the gritty stories of the territories and small-time wrestling promotions have been captured by multiple series, including Heels, GLOW, and Dark Side of the Ring).

But who knows? Some movies get snubbed by the Globes and manage to land a nomination from the Academy. If that happens and word-of-mouth continues to be generally positive, the movie could end up being a bitter hit than it might seem based on first-week numbers.

[KawadaSmile]

Everything Everywhere All at Once got some well deserved nods. Maybe Iron Claw can repeat that same trick? Would be shocking and hilarious to see Troy Bolton have the same number of Leading Actor Oscars as the GOAT Nic Cage and that FRAUDSTER DiCaprio. 

[Blehschmidt]

Went and saw it this morning. Ignoring the Chris exclusion, other than the timeline being a bit wonky and the guy who played Flair obviously having never seen a Flair promo in his life, I thought it was really well done. 

 

[NintendoLogic]

Good Lord, this is Young Rock tier.

[sek69]

To be fair, how could anyone possibly play Ric Flair other than Ric Flair?

[Blehschmidt]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

To be fair, how could anyone possibly play Ric Flair other than Ric Flair?

I agree that no one was going to nail it 100%, but that guy literally put the emphasis on all the wrong words, had none of the cadence, and didn't even get the Woo right. It's like he didn't do a single bit of character study for the role. 

[KawadaSmile]

I need to watch that in context. It's an awful Ric Flair impression, but the dude looks the part and what he's saying can be relevant to the plot so him NOT going full Nature Boy could be Actually Good

[Timbo Slice]

Wrestling fans are gonna get hung up on the timeline getting fucked up and the perspective being Kevin’s not showing the true highs because he (obviously) doesn’t like reminiscing about it too much and the Flair impression but it’s a good movie that shows a fucked up story in as positive a light as possible. Wish Fritz got shown as the devil and asshole he really was, but processing trauma is different for all of us and Kevin being a main source meant he was gonna hedge there, at least until the end. 
 

I’m just happy it’s gonna be a success.