Box Office Trends: September

So for some reason, people always seem to be obsessed with comparing the box office numbers of this year to other years, as if that's somehow relevant. Box Office Mojo, one of my favorite resources/time wasters, always makes it a point to say whether business is up or down from the same weekend last year- because we all know the third weekend in September never changes in national movie-going affinity. Duh.

So I figure I'll only recap the months-that-were by relating the performances of one movie to another: inflation and changing economics in Hollywood will probably render these numbers meaningless in a couple years, but the relative grosses of different movies is a good indicator of contemporary taste, if nothing else.

1. Staying Power

3:10 to Yuma has to feel good about its long-term chances. It opened with a modest $14 million, but never dropped more than 36% week to week, which is pretty extraordinary, no matter the release pattern.

Consider this: 3:10 and Shoot 'Em Up both opened on September 7th- Shoot 'Em Up pulled in a lower than expected $5.7 m. But while 3:10 only took modest hits and stayed in the top five all month long, Shoot 'Em Up dropped 54, 69, and 80 percent in consecutive weeks, and will probably stop being tracked before October's out with a meager $17 million.

Hopefully James Mangold's winning western will continue to stay around this fall, and make a Million Dollar Baby-style push over $100 million after Oscar nominations are announced.
2. The Game Plan vs. The Kingdom

I wasn't really sure which one of these to root for last weekend, which is to say I was rooting for neither, but America has decided: we'd rather see The Rock have an allergic reaction to strawberries than see some hypothetical Saudi Arabian terrorists get blown up. The Game Plan made $22 m to The Kingdom's $17 m. This almost makes me feel better, in a way.

Also, as I said I love b.o.m. for reference, but they employ the worst professional film critic I have ever read on the internet. Ever. Most of the reviews for The Kingdom felt uneasy about the sort of xenophobic, country-full-of-terrorists undertones, but this guy (Scott Holleran) thinks it wasn't racist enough. The title of his review? "The Kingdom: Action Blaster Suggests Osama was Right."

3. Good Luck Chuck opened higher than Stardust

Yep. And people ask me why I'm an atheist.

Other than that, people liked zombies, and sort of liked Jodie Foster shooting people, but September is traditionally a slow month, I hear. A bunch of award hopefuls did okay on a handful of screens, but October will be the big test, when everything goes wide.

Trailer Report: The Kingdom, Hitman, Harold and Kumar 2

Hey, what did I do immediately after posting "Why I haven't seen Shoot 'Em Up yet"? Saw Shoot 'Em Up, of course. It was pretty hilariously ridiculous, it turns out. A review is kinda passe at this point, though, since it's been two weeks.

Instead, here are the trailers we saw in front of it:

The Kingdom


Remember, take your vacation in Saudi Arabia- where all cars have the potential to explode!

Uh, yeah. First of all, Trailer Voice Guy is annoying enough when he's just talking. It's even worse when he's reading things to me (mainly because I know how to read!). Also, I'm sure Saudi Arabia loves us for this one (Saudis: They kill women and children!). I love the carefully juxtaposed images of Muslims praying with random cars exploding- not xenophobic at all. Nope, not at all.

Hitman


This movie featuring no treble whatsoever! I'm not trying to knock Timothy Olyphant here, but seriously- did Vin Diesel have a scheduling conflict? Or is he all like "I'm a serious actor now, I was in a Sidney Lumet movie!" Because nobody saw Find Me Guilty. I checked.

Harold and Kumar 2

It's like they weren't sure what type of movie Shoot 'Em Up was, so they stuck two action movie trailers, and a couple of comedies: we got this short teaser and the trailer for Mr. Woodcock, which I'm not even going to take the trouble to embed. Because this blog is better than that.

As for this HK2, I liked the original, but you can only get so much "foreign people look different" humor on credit- eventually you have to earn that sort of thing.

Why I haven’t seen Shoot ‘Em Up yet

Here’s a thought that occurred to me the other day. Ultra-violence in mainstream films is over. Done. I even have an extended, not-really-apt-at-all analogy to prove it.

Let’s say, for example, that we wanted to compare making crazy, bloody, knowing self parody action movies is to black comedians making jokes about how white people are different than black people. I know, I know- you’re surprised you didn’t think of this comparison on your own.

This makes Richard Pryor akin to Quentin Tarantino, in that they both got really famous for doing it first, with the breakthrough “That Nigger’s Crazy” album and Reservior Dogs, respectively.

Naturally each art form also has it’s more financially successful, not quite as good front runner in Eddie Murphy and Robert Rodriguez.

And recently, both have had daring, stylistic newcomers who made unprecedented sorts of money by doing something new and fresh: Dave Chappelle and Zack Snyder, the director of 300.

But then, both things reached the point where it’s just getting annoying, which iswhy contemplating seeing Shoot ‘Em Up is like flipping by comedy Central and seeing Eddie Griffin doing his pedestrian, tired white people versus black people shtick. Or maybe like any of the Wayans brothers (There you go- Shoot 'Em Up is the equivalent of White Chicks! My genius remains unparalleled!). It’s over, it’s done. We’ve had enough.

It’s even to the point where the former greats of both particular spheres put out nothing but flops, as evidenced both by Eddie Murphy’s recently losing streak (except for Norbit. Sigh.), and Tarantino and Rodriguez’s flailing Grindhouse. We’ve had enough.

I probably spent way too much time trying to make this comparison work. Hey, it’s Saturday. So I just can’t muster up the energy to go see Shoot ‘Em Up, because who cares at this point. It's funny how the interest in violence can wane over six months, but honestly: according to Entertainment Weekly, 18,712 people died in a movie this summer. So all those gunshots are pretty passe for me at this point, Clive Owen or no Clive Owen.

Weekend Box Office

Just for the record, my friend Dave, who'll be contributing a bit to this blog in the near future, emailed me this at 3:42 pm on Wednesday:

"3:10 to Yuma and Shoot 'Em Up are getting good reviews. I'll go with 3:10 to Yuma to win the Box Office battle this weekend with about $14-16 million."

Well, Box Office Mojo is estimating it at number one with $14.1 Million.

So let that put to rest any doubt about Dave's credibility. Personally, I sort of wondered if Shoot 'Em Up might replicate the success of 300, which made $27 million on a traditionally slow weekend in March with a similar all-violence ethos, but I guess people want there to be a little bit of a plot after all. It was a distant sixth with $5.45 mill.

So, let that raise doubts about my credibity.