Welcome back Beardlings to the Weekend Box Office Breakdown, where we take look at the box office grosses of the 5 most popular movies of the weekend!
As always, here are the numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
Despicable Me 3 – $75,410,275 – New Release
Baby Driver – $21,000,000 – New Release (Wednesday Release)
Transformers: The Last Knight – $17,000,00 – 62.0% Drop
Wonder Woman – $16,100,000 – 35.4% Drop
Cars 3 – $9,524,000 – 60.4%
Lots of good stuff to talk about this week, as per usual. Starting off with Despicable Me 3, it was a good weekend for Gru and his little yellow pals. This is the third best opening weekend of the four movie franchise, which may sound bad but it’s going up against the insane $115 million opening of Minions and it is only $8 million away from Despicable Me 2, considering it’s competing against Cars 3, that’s a pretty solid opening weekend.
Next up is Baby Driver, and I am so so happy that this film made some serious money. I was lucky enough to get out on Wednesday night and go see it and I loved every minute of it. (Read my review here.) Baby Driver is a fantastic movie and if you haven’t seen it, take the holiday and go check it out. This is also great for Edgar Wright as this is his biggest domestic opening weekend by a large margin, the next closest one being Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which had an opening weekend of $10.6 million. Not only that, this is already close to being his highest grossing film (domestically) as it’s 5 day total of $30 million is damn close to the domestic lifetime total of the aforementioned Scott Pilgrim vs the World which grossed $31.5 million. Good on you Mr. Wright, I think you’ve got a winner here.
Now, about the last three entries in the Top 5 this week: I think the numbers clearly illustrate the contrast between good movies that people are clamoring for and mediocre (or worse) movies that no one really asked for. Yet again, Wonder Woman dropped less than 40%, dropping only 35.4% this week and that is even with Wonder Woman being dropped from 529 theaters. Compare those numbers to Transformers: The Last Knight which dropped 62.0% in it’s second week even despite being added on at 63 theaters. Audiences are speaking out with their wallets and it’s clear that people want Wonder Woman and are luke-warm on Transformers. As for Cars 3, I would say that part of it’s 60.4% drop is due to people being straight up uninterested but Despicable Me 3 also stole some of it’s audience this weekend.
Also of note this week is that The House, the new Will Ferrell/Amy Poehler comedy, didn’t even crack the Top 5, making only $9 million. Ouch…..
Next week Spider-Man: Homecoming drops and I have no doubt that it will dominate the box office probably raking in upwards of $100 million. My predictions for next week are as follows:
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Despicable Me 3
Baby Driver
Wonder Woman
Transformers: The Last Knight
What do you think of this weeks box office numbers? How do you think next week will shake out? Sound off in the comments!
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Here we are again at the end of the weekend which means its time to talk about how things went at the Box Office and just like every week, there’s definitely some interesting things to break down! Lets get into it, starting off with the Weekend Box Office Estimates courtesy of BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Transformers: The Last Knight – $45,300,000 – New Release (Released Wed 6/21)
Cars 3 – $25,175,000 – 53.1% Drop
Wonder Woman – $25,175,000 – 39.0% Drop
47 Meters Down – $7,435,000 – 33.6% Drop
All Eyez On Me – $5,850,000 – 77.9% Drop
The big release from this past weekend, and quite honestly the biggest story maker from this past weekend, is Transformers: The Last Knight which pulled in the lowest opening weekend box office numbers of the entire Transformers franchise. Now one could argue that releasing the movie on Wednesday instead of Friday had an impact on its weekend earnings, and it most certainly did, however if you look at the box office grosses from Wed-Sun it comes to $69,095,489 which is still just a hair under what the original Transformers pulled during it’s opening weekend back in 2007. This may signal that American audiences are tired of the popcorn movie, “pretty to look at but not much there”, summer fluff that is Michael Bay’s Transformers. It should also be noted though, that while America didn’t go see Transformers: The Last Knight, everywhere else did, as it made a whopping $196.2 million overseas.
Next big story from this week, again has to be Wonder Woman taking a really small drop as compared to what summer blockbusters normally do. And not only that, but seeing it make the same money in its fourth week of release that Cars 3 did in it’s second week of release is nothing short of astounding. People weren’t really clamoring for a third Cars movie but they are damn sure going to see Wonder Woman. As is stands now, Wonder Woman has already beaten the domestic gross of Man of Steel ($291 million) and is closing on on both Suicide Squad ($325.1 million) and Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($330.4 million) as it has hauled in $318.4 million. I would be willing to bet money that Wonder Woman will surpass the domestic totals of all the other DCEU films by the end of next weekend.
Also of note this past weekend is that 47 Meters Down not only had a very small drop in it’s box office from first to second week in release, but that it moved up a slot in the top 5, from the 5th slot to the 4th slot, as the Tupac biopic All Eyez on Me took a huge 77.8% drop from it’s first to second week. It seems word of mouth is keeping 47 Meters Down afloat but everyone that wanted to see All Eyez on Me did so in its first week of release.
Looking ahead to next week, the box office results seem to be anyone’s guess. Baby Driver is getting incredible reviews and releases on Wednesday (I’m planning on seeing it that night, YAY!) but it’s going up against some strong competition in the Will Ferrell/Amy Poehler comedy The House and the other third installment in a family-friendly, animated franchise to come out this summer, Despicable Me 3 (maybe people will actually go see this one, unlike Cars 3).
That’s it for this week folks, be sure to check back next weekend for another all new Weekend Box Office Breakdown!
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Welcome back Beardlings to a new edition of the Weekend Box Office Breakdown! I know it’s been awhile since we’ve discussed the weekend box office numbers but the results from this past weekend was interesting enough to warrant resurrecting this series (with a new format). Without any further ado, lets get into it!
The Numbers:
Cars 3 – $53,688,680 – New Release
Wonder Woman – $41,268,850 – 29.5% Drop
All Eyez On Me – $26,435,354 – New Release
The Mummy (2017) – $14,510,960 – 54.2% Drop
47 Meters Down – $11,205,561 – New Release
There are a number of interesting things going on here but lets start at the top with Cars 3. $53.7 million is a lot of money, like a LOT, but when looking at it in comparison with the rest of the Cars and Pixar films in general, one can’t help but draw the conclusion that the Cars 3 opening weekend numbers are a bit of a disappointment. Back in 2006, Cars had an opening weekend gross of $60.1 million and then the follow up in 2011, Cars 2, grossed $66.1 million – a decent 10% improvement over the franchise’s first entry. But then we get to Cars 3 taking a 10%+ drop over the original and that’s just not good, studios usually want sequels to make more than the original because, well, duh… Aside from being the lowest opening of the Cars franchise, Cars 3 also has the lowest gross for a Pixar movie in the last 10 years, since Ratatouille (not counting The Good Dinosaur which, while being a Pixar film, never quite felt like a “Pixar film”). Now, I’m not saying Pixar is in trouble due to a lackluster opening by Cars 3, just that maybe no one was really asking for Cars 3 and we’re all just waiting ever so patiently for that Incredibles sequel we’ve been promised (come on June 2018)!
Next up is Wonder Woman and oh my what a weekend for the Princess of Themyscira. Most big summer block busters drop around 50% or more week over week but not this one. Wonder Woman dropped only 43.3% from its first to second week and now only 29.5% from its second to its third week? That’s not just incredible, that’s down right Amazonian! (Yes, I like easy puns, leave me alone.) Just for the sake of comparison Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 dropped 55.5% from its first to second week in release and then 46.9% from its second to third week. Wonder Woman is definitely showing that it has legs at the box office and on screen (HA! Easy puns….).
As for the rest of the weekend box office, All Eyez on Me pulling in $26.5 million is rather impressive in my eyes given the 22% Rotten rating it has on Rotten Tomatoes and that I saw next to no marketing for it. Although I will readily admit that I am far from the target demographic for that particular film. The Mummy (2017) continues to disappoint domestically while staying #1 in the foreign box office. Actually, after this weekend, 80.6% of it’s $293.9 million gross box office take has been from the foreign markets. Not sure what that means for the future of Universal’s Dark Universe (interconnected movie franchise featuring updated versions of all the old classic Universal monsters) but hopefully they stay the course and right the ship.
And lastly, we come to 47 Meters Down, which made me say “Aww hell no!” when watching the trailers. $11.2 million might feel like a disappointing opening but given that it’s production budget was only $5 million this movie is probably close to breaking even as it stands, even when considering its marketing budget. Going forward, most money this movie makes is just gravy which is good for the movie but also great for the distribution company, Entertainment Studios, as this is it’s first feature film.
All in all, seems like a great weekend at the box office with plenty of life left in the summer movie season and a handful of great summer movies yet to come!
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I’m a parent and like any parent in our modern times, my wife and I let our kid watch entirely too much television. Although given how much TV I watched as a kid, that’s really not a symptom limited to the last ten-ish years. Anyway, because the TV is the Great Babysitter, we watch a ton of kids movies and watch a lot of the same kids movies over and over again to the point where I honestly think the true test of a kids movie is how many times a parent can stomach watching it or at least having it on in the background before finally giving in to the urge to drop the Blu-ray into the toaster and set it to dark – I’m looking at you Frozen! For me there are a select handful of movies that I have yet to get tired of – Moana, Tangled, Zootopia, and Big Hero 6 – the last of which is the subject of today’s review.
Now I’ve seen Big Hero 6 all the way through at least a dozen times and I’ve watched it in pieces more times than I care to remember, so why did I pick today to sit down and write a review on it? Well tonight my daughter picked it out to watch for our Daddy/Daughter Pizza & Movie night (my wife was out to dinner with a friend) and as the movie reached it’s climax, something struck me – the villain in Big Hero 6 is the only one that I can think of that actually gets what he wants after carrying out his big plan.
Before reading further, there will be full SPOILERS so if you haven’t seen Big Hero 6, hang on to this page, watch it, and come back!
Me after donuts show up in the office kitchen…..
Big Hero 6 follows boy genius Hiro Hamada as he struggles with depression following the death of his bother Tadashi, as he discovers that a masked villain has stolen his invention (microbots) and may be responsible for Tadashi’s death. As Hiro begins to investigate, he is joined by his friends who all don hi-tech super suits in an effort to fight the new threat.
Before we talk about the villain, let’s talk about our heroes because they’re all pretty cool, starting off with our main hero, Hiro. As I said above, Hiro is a robotics genius who graduated high school at 15 and got involved in the world of underground bot fighting. After getting arrested for betting on bot fighting (because not fighting isn’t illegal, but betting on it is), his brother Tadashi shows off the robotics lab at his college AKA “nerd school”. While at the school, Tadashi shows off what he has been working on – Baymax, an autonomous medical robot. Hiro immediately falls in love with the college but to attend, he has to come up with something to present at a the school’s fair driving him to create the microbots. Microbots are tiny little robots that swarm together and can be formed into any shape when being manipulated by your thoughts using a neuro-cranial transmitter.
Hiro, as a character, has a lot going for him – intelligent but young and brash and fueled by tragedy. That’s a lot for a writer to sink their teeth into and it is explored wonderfully throughout Big Hero 6. One of the most striking scenes in the entire movie, is when the masked villain is unmasked and revealed to be Professor Callaghan, mentor to Hiro, Tadashi, and all of their friends at the college. Feeling rightfully betrayed, Hiro removes the chip in Baymax that drives all of his medical programming, leaving only the “combat” chip in place and orders Baymax to kill Callaghan. This is Hiro at his absolute lowest. He has taken a machine that was designed to heal and turned it into a killing machine all to avenge his brother who created the machine in the first place. In this moment, his friends and teammates have to rally around Hiro to stop him from doing something he will regret and show him a better way. This moment, that caps off the second act of the movie, is mirrored in the third act when Professor Callaghan goes down a similar path.
Over the course of the movie we find out that Alistair Krei, CEO of a major corporation, was responsible for the death of Callaghan’s daughter, Abigail, when she was the test pilot for a new piece of tech. At the school fair, at which Hiro demonstrates his microbots, there was a fire and an explosion (that results in the death of Tadashi) and in order to escape, Callaghan used the mircobots to survive and then sees the microbots (combined with the anonymity provided by his own apparent death) as an opportunity for revenge on Krei. This brings us to the end of the third act and the climax of the movie in which Callaghan uses a benevolent machine to try and exact revenge on the person who cost him his daughter, mirroring Hiro’s action at the end of the second act. This fantastic writing as it not only shows how Hiro has risen above the need to avenge his brother but by setting it up so the two character arcs mirror each other, it make Callaghan a sympathetic villain and those are always the best villains.
Going back to Hiro, I’ve struggled to determine his contribution to the team of heroes since he doesn’t really have his own signature weapon or any distinction to his super suit. He really just attaches to Baymax (who has wings and a jet pack and karate skills and a rocket punch) and rides around on him like a kid playing piggy back. After all the times that I’ve watched this movie, I’ve realized that this is an incredibly shortsighted view of Hiro. Yes, what I said about him is true but a cool, stylized weapon or special power isn’t what he brings to the team, it’s his intelligence and leadership skills that make him and his team great. In that battle at the end of the second act, all of our heroes are just players on a team who can’t even come up with a plan of attack but in the climax of the film, in the final battle Hiro is the one that gives them that plan, gives them a direction, and rallies the team to defeat Callaghan.
As for the rest of the Big Hero 6 team – Wasabi, Honey Lemon, GoGo, and Fred – Fred and Honey Lemon are most definitely the stand outs but for much different reasons. It is very easy to over look the true nature of what Honey Lemon is doing in this movie. Her weapon is this purse that she pulls small orbs from that she can then throw to satisfy different needs – smoke bomb, explosive, create a hard protective shell, etc. – and while that is cool on it’s own, it over looks the best part. On the side of her purse is a touch screen featuring the periodic table of elements. Whenever she needs to create a new orb to handle the task at hand, she inputs a chemical formula to create exactly what she needs. Let me rephrase that – she, in the middle of a battle, runs chemistry calculations in her head, formulates the exact chemical reaction she needs, and punches it up on her purse of doom. Holy crap, that is super cool and completely glossed over in the movie.
Next up is Fred. Fred is impeccably voiced by none other than T.J. Miller, of Deadpool and Silicon Valley fame. I haven’t seen much of Miller’s filmography but he is becoming one of my favorite comedic personalities. In Big Hero 6, Fred is the non-scientist character who hangs around the scientist characters in the hopes of a lab accident turning him into some sort of monster or super hero. Of course, Fred achieves his dream of being a super hero, with out a disfiguring lab accident, along with the rest of the group and the way in which his character acts is just so joyous and pure. He is every little boy and girl that has grown up wishing to be a comic book hero and he has been granted his wish and you can feel that joy and pureness of spirit come through in Miller’s voice work. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen Big Hero 6, go back and revisit it, if for no other reason that to listen to Miller’s dialogue.
Wasabi and GoGo do each get some moments to shine – specifically when GoGo takes over driving duties in the car chase scene and when Wasabi is almost crushed by the shipping container as well as many other great comedic moments – but I just don’t feel that either of these characters are quite as strong as the others.
Now, as I said in my intro, something struck me about this film and that is that the villain, Professor Callaghan, actually gets what he wants by the end of the movie. He is driven by the grief of losing his daughter and, rightfully, blames Alistair Krei for not pulling the plug on an experiment when it was clear that it might not go as planned and in his inaction, Abigail Callaghan died or at least seemed to. The experiment was designed to test transportation technology by transporting a manned capsule from one portal to another, with Abigail as the pilot. Of course the experiment goes sideways and Abigail is lost in the “subspace” or whatever dimension exists between the two portals. To exact his revenge, Callaghan wants to kill Krei by sending him into that same subspace just like his daughter was, so he gets the portal, takes it to Krei Tech HQ and with the help of the microbots, tries to carry out his plan. He is, of course, stopped by our team of heroes but that’s where it gets interesting.
After Callaghan is defeated, Baymax senses a life sign inside the portal. Realizing that it’s Abigail in suspended animation in her capsule, Baymax and Hiro go in and retrieve her. Later on, we see a paramedic talking to Abigail so we know she is alive and well, which brings me around to my point – Callaghan may have set out to get revenge on Krei but what he really wanted was his daughter back, he even says exactly that at one point, and even though he did the wrong things for the wrong reasons, he got exactly what he wanted. By the time the end credits roll, we, the audience, know and Callaghan knows that Abigail is alive and thus, for once, the villain actually kind of wins the day (even if he was “defeated”). Callaghan may be going off to prison for the rest of his life but you can be damn sure that he doesn’t care because he knows that his daughter is alive and safe. It’s a brave move by a Disney movie to kinda, sorta justify the actions of the main antagonist (and frankly that may be why its kind of glossed over in the film).
In the end, Big Hero 6 is a fantastic movie that I don’t think I will tire of anytime soon and is well worth rewatching if its been a while since you’ve seen it. In my opinion, this film earned its Academy Award for Best Animated Feature back in 2015.
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A few years ago, when Marvel Studios announced their Phase 2 line up and Guardians of the Galaxy was listed, I distinctly remember thinking to myself – “This is it, this is Marvel’s first flop, no one’s gonna know who these characters are. I don’t even know who these characters are and I am a huge comic book fan.” Then we saw a GIF of Rocket Racoon laughing maniacally while shooting a machine gun and I completely changed my tune. Maybe Marvel was on to something here and sure enough, they were. Now here we are, almost three years after director James Gunn and an amazing cast managed to capture lightning in a bottle and they’ve done it again, for the most part.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is another solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it gives us more of what we got in the first Guardians – sharp, dry humor, great characters and a cast with amazing chemistry – but it also suffers from living in the shadow of its predecessor and maybe being afraid to step out beyond that shadow. Guardians 2 brings that same type of humor we all enjoyed the first go round but it feels a little too forced this time. It seems like rather than letting jokes naturally and organically fall out of certain situations, the writers tried to make sure they had a “joke every minute” and tried to wink at the audience a bit too much. This is especially true with Drax.
Dave Bautista was probably the biggest surprise in the first Guardians, no one really expects a pro-wrestler turned actor to actually be good (although Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has set the bar pretty high not to mention the few roles John Cena has shined in) but Bautista crushed it as the super literal straight man foiling the wisecracks served up by Star-Lord and Rocket. While Drax has some great moments in Guardians 2, he also has a lot of lines that just fall flat and even feel completely out of character for him and out of sync with the rest of the movie. Drax does have a character arc in this movie and in the end some of those jokes are paid off but in the moment they feel more than a bit mean spirited.
The other stand out from the original Guardians, the one and only Groot, is on full display again in Guardians 2. In a lot of ways, Baby Groot, steals the show – I think the moment that I laughed at the hardest was a series of jokes revolving around Baby Groot. Disney and Marvel know what they have in Baby Groot and they use him to his full potential here, only skirting overusing him. If you don’t like Baby Groot, I don’t trust you as a human being.
Aside from Baby Groot and Drax, all our other favorites from Guardians are back – Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, Zoe Saladna’s Gamora, Rocket as voiced by Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker’s Yondu, and the lovely (even if painted blue and purple) Karen Gillan as Nebula. One of the best things this movie does, is it actually manages to give each returning character something of an arc and some real tangible character development over the course of the 136 minute run time. Even though some of those arcs are move prevalent than others, it is still incredibly refreshing to look back at a movie and see care and attention paid to all of the major characters. No one (except maybe Mantis but more on her in a minute) felt left out, underdeveloped, or ignored. More of that please, Hollywood!
For Guardians 2, we get two new characters in Kurt Russell’s Ego and Pom Klementieff’s Mantis. As I said a few lines above, Mantis doesn’t have a whole lot to her character. She does have the empathic powers as we have seen in the trailers, which she uses well in the movie, but past that, her character is really just there to service the plot and move it along. For Ego though, it’s a much different story. Kurt Russell is fantastic in this movie. As the “elder statesman” of the cast, Russell brings a certain gravitas to the movie, a bit of older, wiser Hollywood that elevates the whole movie. I have no doubt that with a lesser actor in the role, the movie as a whole would have suffered greatly. Between this movie and the Fast and Furious franchise, its great to see Russell making something of a come back. I grew up watching him in amazing films such as Backdraft, The Thing, Overboard, and Stargate (guilty pleasure, shut up) and seeing him return to prominence is awesome.
A word on the marketing of this movie. It struck me as my wife and I were sitting through the twenty minute slog of previews the comes before any big budget movie these days, that I really had no idea what the plot of the movie I was about to watch was. I obviously knew the characters, what style of movie to expect, and what kind of humor to expect but I honestly had no real clear idea in my head of how the movie was going to play out. In the modern era of movie marketing where we get a teaser trailer, two or three full trailers, and a plethora of TV spots, each coming with new and exciting footage, it gets pretty damn easy to piece a movie together in your mind, especially if you have even a basic familiarity with the characters and their back story. Kudos to the marketing staff for this movie for completely side stepping that problem and giving us effective marketing without spoiling the movie.
I will also say that some of the first act felt somewhat disjointed with multiple story lines happening all at once. Everything did eventually come together but some of the cuts were a bit rough and jarring. But despite some less than perfect pacing and humor that isn’t as fresh as it was in the first Guardians, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 measures up to the Marvel standard and is another fine entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What did you think about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2? How do you think it compares to it’s predecessor? Where does it stack up amongst it’s fellow Marvel films? Let me know in the comments below!
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