By Odin’s beard, Thor: Love and Thunder opened with some lightning. A godly $144.2 million three-day debut (even topping Top Gun: Maverick’s three day start) was second only to the previous Marvel start of Dr. Strange 2’s $187 million. Audiences came out in droves and I became the grown-up waiting to see if kids were going to throw away their Happy Meal toy as those Thor McDonalds figurines were pretty cool. Certainly, this was going to be the film that dominated the rest of the summer!
Then… week two happened. A 68% drop, almost identical to Dr. Strange 2’s tumble, and the thoughts of this film having nothing to worry about went away faster than Chris Hemsworth’s Big Lebowski bod. Sure, a ten-day total of $234 million is a problem every studio wishes they had, yet the trend of these latest string of Marvel movies isn’t what Disney was looking for. This looks like the third movie in a row that they’ll be streaming on Disney+ sooner than anticipated. How is the world going to find all that awesome content of Zombies 3 and the new season of High School Musical: The Series when the first things promoted on the app are Dr. Strange, Lightyear, and Thor?! If I can’t find my Moana Sing-Along because of this, heads are gonna roll!
After months of trailers that hinted at nothing but mysteriousness, Universal started releasing more revealing trailers for the film Nope. As someone already interested in seeing the film, I didn’t need this as I enjoy not knowing everything before going into a theater. My son even said “Each trailer makes it seem like a different movie.” Now that the film’s opened, Universal must’ve been seeing what the tracking (audience anticipation) was for the movie and they needed to boost those numbers.
Nope opened with a $44.4 million debut. For a regular R-rated horror-film released in the summer, that’s pretty damn amazing. It’s even in-line with what The Conjuring did in 2013. For a follow-up film to Us, the last Jordan Peele written/produced/directed movie which debuted to $71 million three years ago, it’s hard not to see that as a disappointment. Obviously, the goodwill from Get Out dissipated after the confusing Us and people weren’t so quick to get back back in the saddle (pun definitely intended).
Personally, I prefer interesting to boring, and Nope is interesting (as opposed to Morbius just being boring), yet even right now when I was checking on the spelling of something from the movie, the first 10 news items listed about Nope were all about “This explained,” “What this means,” and “Why this was.” It’s only been five days since the movie was released and these are the main articles about it?! You know what would’ve been a good time to explain all this. Maybe, I don’t know, during the movie? Just a thought. There is a space between over-explaining and not-explaining when it comes to films.
As for the rest of the summer movies, Minions looks like it’s going to hold off Thor but not catch Jurassic World: Dominion. Likewise, the dinos are not going to catch Dr. Strange and no one is catching Top Gun: Maverick. Does this mean our Top 5 is set? Are there no surprises out there? There may only be one Bullet left on that Train unless there are some Super Pets that can help.
The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:
#1. Top Gun: Maverick - $635.8 million
#2. Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - $411.3 million
#3. Jurassic World: Dominion - $365.7 million
#4. Minions: The Rise of Gru - $298.2 million
#5. Thor: Love & Thunder - $276.7 million
