Box Office Winners and Losers Summer 2013

***WARNING-NONE OF WHAT I SAY IN THIS ARTICLE IS A COMMENT ON THE QUALITY OF THE MOVIES.  IN FACT, I HAVE YET TO SEE MOST OF THESE SO I’M CURRENTLY NOT IN A POSITION TO OFFER MY OPINIONS ON THEM ANYWAY.  ALSO, ANY BOX NUMBERS I USE ARE EFFECTIVE AS OF AUGUST 23, 2013.  THANK YOU AND ENJOY THE ARTICLE. ***

Winners

Iron Man 3- Iron Man 3 didn’t match up to the figures of last year’s Marvel’s The Avengers; the numbers however, are still nothing to scoff at.  Iron Man 3 still managed to make $408 million domestically and over $1.2 billion worldwide which are figures that no other movie has been able to touch this year.     

Despicable Me 2- I have to admit that I underestimated Despicable Me 2.  I had it pegged to do just well enough to validate another sequel but they proved me wrong in a pretty big way.  With a worldwide gross of over $800 million it managed to out-earn all of their competition with the exception of Iron Man 3 (see above).  

Horror movies- So far it looks like a good year for horror movies (at least financially) and the summer was no exception.  The Purge ($84 million worldwide/$3 million budget) and The Conjuring ($220 million worldwide/$20 million budget) not only made back their budgets many times over, but managed to put some of their bigger budgeted counterparts to shame in the process (see Losers).    

Fast and Furious 6- Two years ago Fast Five surprisingly proved to be a massive hit, and from a box-office standpoint Fast and Furious 6 actually managed to top its predecessor.  Finishing at about $786 million worldwide it’s safe to say that we’ll be seeing more of these movies for better or worse. 

World War Z- Admittedly I’m probably being a little generous with this one.  While a worldwide gross of $526 million isn’t overly impressive for a summer blockbuster, the fact that World War Z managed to avoid a Lone Ranger level disaster was a pretty major victory for the film. 

Losers

The Internship- Vince Vaughn hasn’t had a hit movie in almost four years and The Internship did absolutely nothing to change that.  The Internship did so badly on opening weekend they made only half as much as their far smaller budgeted competition The Purge.  In retrospect, Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s follow-up to The Wedding Crashers was probably about a few years too late to leave any impact.   

Ryan Reynolds- Poor Ryan Reynolds just can’t seem to catch a break.  He went 0 for 2 in the summer of 2011 with Green Lantern and The Change-Up.  Two years later things might have actually gotten worse for him.  After headlining the “disappointing” Turbo ($142 million worldwide /$135 million budget) and the just plain embarrassing R.I.P.D. ($59 million worldwide/$130 million budget), I don’t think movie producers will be in any hurry to make him the lead in their next summer blockbuster.    

After Earth- Not even the star power of Will Smith could save After Earth from the stigma of being an M. Night Shyamalan movie.  While the studio might’ve made their money back overseas, After Earth only made a paltry $61 million domestically which looks to be lowest for a Will Smith movie since Ali back in 2001. 

White House Down- A movie directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012) and starring Channing Tatum should’ve been a no-brainer.  So what went wrong?  The popular theories are bad scheduling, unenthusiastic reviews, and that the audience basically seeing the same movie three months before with Olympus Has Fallen.  Whatever the reason, it appears to be highly unlikely that White House Down will make back its production budget ($150 million budget/ $134 million gross worldwide) before the DVD release. 

The Lone Ranger- There are so many reasons this movie shouldn’t have been made I don’t even know where to start.  Television show adaptations rarely translate into box office gold much less TV shows that are over fifty years old.  Also, westerns are typically modest hits at best so making one with a price tag of $215 million (not including several years of pre-production and expensive marketing) is not only ill-advised but just plain stupid.  Here I thought Disney had learned their lesson after the similarly disastrous John Carter.  Just in case you’re curious, the worldwide gross is around $230 million.    

Pacific Rim Review

                         

            I’ve often heard some movies be described as “so awesome your head might explode.”  I never really understood what they were talking about until I went to the theater to see Pacific Rim.  Like so many summer movies before it, Pacific Rim uses style over substance, but unlike many summer movies from before it has style in spades.  It would be easy for people to write this off as another Transformers rip-off (I’m talking to you Battleship) but Michael Bay will never make anything close to this.  Guillermo Del Toro has had a lengthy absence from the directors’ chair (his last movie was Hellboy II) but the wait was well worth it. 

            In the near future, coastal cities come under attack by giant alien monsters called Kaijus, who appear out of an inter-dimensional portal in the Pacific Ocean.  To fight the Kaiju, the humans build massive robots called Jaegers, which are each controlled by two pilots since the mental load quickly proves too much for anybody to control the Jaegers alone.  While the Jaegers appear to be winning at first, Kaiju attacks become more frequent and dangerous.  Eventually, the Jaegers are being destroyed faster than they can be built and the government decides to disband the project in a few months in favor of building gigantic walls along the coasts (which goes about as well as you might expect).  The leader of the Jaeger program Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) decides to use the four remaining Jaegers to make a last stand against the Kaijus.  To help with his plans, he recruits former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam), who is still recovering emotionally after the loss of his brother/co-pilot in combat.  He is partnered with rookie pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who also happens to be Pentecost’s adopted daughter with her own traumatizing history with the Kaiju.  Meanwhile, research scientist Dr. Newton Gieszler (Charlie Day) is studying the Kaiju brain in the hopes of finding a way to establish a mental link with them with the reluctant help of Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman).

           But enough with the plot, let’s talk about the action.  The fight scenes between the Jaegers and the Kaiju are nothing short of spectacular.  They gave me an at-the-edge-of-my-seat feeling they I don’t think I’ve had in years.  Every time I watched a fight I was in a state of what I can now only describe as incredulous glee.  The visual effects are also unbelievable and just like with last year’s Life of Pi, if this movie doesn’t walk away with a Best Visual Effects Oscar for their efforts I will lose my faith in the Academy.

           The only real problem with Pacific Rim is that the human characters aren’t very interesting.  Their development mostly ranges from mediocre to clichéd.  One person in particular who stuck out like a sore thumb was Ron Perlman.  Here he plays a black market trafficker of Kaiju parts named Hannibal Chau (I dare you not to laugh at that name).  His sole purpose in this is to provide useless exposition and apparently be a glorified cameo for Del Toro (kind of like how Bruce Campbell always gets shoehorned into Sam Raimi’s movies).     

           While Pacific Rim has some problems with the script but I loved the special effects and fight scenes so much that I was more than willing to let that go.  As a matter of fact Pacific Rim is probably been my favorite movie so far this year (though I expect that will change soon enough with award season kicking in soon).  I’ve got my fingers crossed for a sequel.  

Grade: A-

Next Review: Turbo  

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone Review

                             

                              

            The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is painfully unfunny and completely wastes a talented cast.  There are occasional moments that reminded me why I thought magic was cool as a kid.  It also reminds me why I stopped thinking magic was cool in the first place.

            

            The “story” begins with young Albert celebrating his birthday and for a present his mother gets him the magic kit of renowned magician Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin).  Magic quickly becomes an obsession for him and he makes fast friends with classmate and fellow magic enthusiast Anthony.  They eventually grow up to become Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) with a headlining act at the Bally’s Hotel in Las Vegas.  After working together for ten years however, they’ve both gotten sick of each other mostly due to Burt’s arrogance.  If that wasn’t bad enough their act is being upstaged by local (and quite possibly psychotic) street magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey).  In an effort to regain their audience, Burt and Anton attempt a stunt similar to Gray’s but because of Burt’s laziness things go horribly wrong almost instantly and Anton is hospitalized.  Anton furiously severs ties with Burt, who gets fired by the hotel soon afterward.  Broke and out of work, Burt is quickly reduced to working as an in-house entertainer at a home for retired Vegas performers.  There he meets his boyhood idol Holloway who of course inspires him to resurrect his love for magic.  

            There are some potentially promising scenes (that mostly fall flat) but for the most part the script for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is completely unbearable.  Most of the jokes are unfunny and very noticeably outdated.  I’m pretty sure this is one of those scripts that gathered dust on a shelf for several years since most of the subjects they’re lampooning haven’t been relevant for some time now.  Jim Carrey’s character is an obvious satire on street performers like David Blaine and Criss Angel.  This could’ve been funny back in 2007 when people actually gave a crap about those guys but instead comes off like a badly written Robot Chicken sketch.  Burt and Anton are also a less than subtle parody of the magic duo Siegfried and Roy who are even more dated than Carrey’s character since neither Siegfried or Roy has performed onstage since their infamous tiger attack almost a decade ago.   

Even worse the movie finds it necessary to shoehorn a love interest for Burt in the form of his attractive but bland assistant Jane (Olivia Wilde).  Even if I were willing to overlook the fact that Wilde is almost literally half Carell’s age, they have no chemistry whatsoever making the romance feel even more forced than it was already.  It also doesn’t help that Burt spends most of the movie acting like a sexist douchebag (for most of the movie he deliberately calls her Nicole) making her falling for him all the more implausible.

            The only thing that makes this tolerable is Alan Arkin who sadly isn’t in the movie much.  Thankfully, however his presence in here provides a short-term relief from the rest of the film.  He actually manages to make a couple of scenes with Carell slightly funny (which with this script is like squeezing blood from a stone) and pulls off his own amazing magic trick by being the only cast member in this train wreck to not completely embarrass himself.  

            Almost every frame of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a gigantic waste of time and an even bigger waste of potential.  They take a great cast and do absolutely nothing with them.  Even worse, the script uses jokes so old they make those lazy spoof movies look innovative by comparison.

Grade: D

Next Review: Pacific Rim