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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Indy vs. Narnia vs. Iron Man
Looking at the box office and the public opinion of these three big summer movies so far, I notice some surprising developments.
1) Iron Man beats Indy in audience polls: Pretty much everyone knew that the new Indiana Jones movie would be a box office bonanza this weekend. What everyone didn’t expect was that the movie would fall a little bit flat with moviegoers. The film earned a solid but unspectacular B from audiences polled by CinemaScore. Typically, you need a B+ or higher to have good “legs” at the box office, like Iron Man has.
My prediction is that Indy will fall off faster than expected, becoming a circa $300 million “disappointment” like Attack of the Clones - never mind that Crystal Skull made back all its money in worldwide grosses this weekend. Ultimately, though, Iron Man is the better liked movie. (I don’t quite agree. More on that below)
2) Narnia underperforms: Here’s the movie performance that’s harder to figure out. To begin with, Prince Caspian opened with $56 million - not bad at all, but that’s about $10 million less than the first movie, and sequels usually open better than their predecessors. To make it all the more confusing, the CinemaScore of the movie is an A-, which indicates people like it pretty well, but for some reason, the sequel took a big drop in its second weekend.
I think that reason is that Indy played more like a family movie than many people thought it would. People my age (mid-30s) were taking their kids to show them what they grew up on. If I were Disney, though. I’d move the third Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, out of summer post haste, and save it for the 2010 holiday season.
Now, some questions for you guys:
What did you think of the new Indy movie? My review is here. I saw WAY too many non-critic reviews that said “It wasn’t as good as Raiders.” Ummmm - you mean you expected it to be? Personally, I liked Indy and Iron Man about the same - both are extremely entertaining, with terrific performances by the leading men - but both movies have significant flaws. I’d give Indy the edge because I think Iron Man’s weak villain hurts that film more than Crystal Skull’s sci-fi climax hurts Spielberg’s latest.
And what about the new Narnia? Have you seen it? If not, why not? Are you interested in seeing more?
PS In case you missed it, my tribute to the late Sydney Pollack can be read here.
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