“Flash” Flies By; “Elemental” is Leaden; Lost That Loving “Feelings” - Week 7 and 8

It’s a shame that just as the movie seasons are coming back in our post-pandemic world, the current writer and SAG strikes might make them go back to the dark ages. 

You see, in years past, we would frequently have some “show down” weekends where two “big” films open at the same time and only one could reign supreme. Currently, studios are too scared (or don’t have enough big films) to warrant that kind of competition, so they steer clear of each other. If one big-budget movie plants its flag on a certain date, other flicks scurry to find another light. It took till Week 7 before we had our first battle of the season between two nine-digit budgeted films and the result was… maybe they should’ve combined efforts?

The Flash didn’t go by in the blink of an eye. It earned $55 million in its first weekend. While that’s less than Fast X and Transformers, I’m still sort of surprised it did that well. While spin-doctors tried to sell fans that the film was “the greatest comic-book film of all-time,” there was obvious gloom attached to this project. Let alone the “dead man walking” mentality with all of these final DCU films, there’s tons of off-camera issues with The Flash… even more than the obvious “Should this guy be in jail?”  

For example, did you know there were 45 different writers attached to The Flash during its development process?! I mean, based on the constantly changing tone of the film, I’d only have gone with 27. Meanwhile, Gal Gadot has gone from being the best thing in every movie she’s in to only having 10-second cameos in Fast X, The Flash, and Shazam. Time to fire all your agents. Also, Warner Bros. so loves to highlight their own movies and properties so much (this is the company that included characters from It, A Clockwork Orange, and Game of Thrones in the “kid movie” Space Jam 2), that they even threw in a scene from the never filmed movie 90’s movie Superman Lives with Nicolas Cage and a shot of the 80’s Supergirl Helen Slater whose movie currently sits with an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Oh yes, fans will be so excited to see the star of The Legend of Billy Jean on the big screen again.  

Well, the buzz (err, whirring) of The Flash didn’t last for long as it dropped almost 73% in its second weekend. It’s currently at $87.5 million and looks like it’ll walk, not run past the $100 million mark before exiting theaters. Maybe Warner Bros. will have time to add in a scene from the unreleased Batgirl movie before it’s sent to Max next month.  

Elemental was unable to turn the Disney animation tide around with a weak $29.6 million debut. Most pundits still think the problem rests with families paying for Disney+ know they can wait to watch the movie at home, but you can watch EVERY MOVIE at home these days after a month or two. People wanted to see Super Mario Bros. and they made it the biggest film of the year. At the end of the day, Disney didn’t convince people they wanted to see fire and water mix.  Good news, though… I’m sure the live-action remake will do way better in 25 years!

I was trying to think of when was the last female-led theatrical-released comedy before writing about No Hard Feelings (btw, you can tell I’m a guy with that much categorizing verbiage as “female-led” and “theatrical-released… it’s like I’m talking about a batter who hits .335 against left-handers in day games, but at night his percentage drops to .317… we spend so much time on nonsense), and I was going to go with last year’s Sandra Bullock flick The Lost City, yet I’d completely forgotten about this year’s 80 For Brady and Book Club 2. Never forget the box-office power of “Oh hey, I know them!” 

Regardless, No Hard Feelings didn’t do much better than 80 For Brady’s opening with a $15 million debut weekend. That’s better than Seth Rogan and Charlize Theron’s Long Shot and some other “just” comedy movies have fared over the past few years (there’s a reason “streaming” companies have been debuting a lot of these types of films), yet this probably won’t give studios more incentive to put comedies back in theaters anytime soon. No hard feelings, J-Law! 

As for the “old timers,” Spider-Man has swung past The Little Mermaid but Guardians 3 may be just beyond his reach. It’s going to be close!

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - $352.1 million

#2. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - $316.7 million

#3. The Little Mermaid - $270.1 million

#4. Fast X - $144.6 million

#5. Transformers: Rise of the Beats - $123.1 million

Spidey Swings; Transformers Fizzles - Week 5 and 6

Two more highly anticipated sequels (well, one high and one you probably need to be high for) were released in theaters over the past weekends. Suffice to say, one was very sticky while the other one made you feel stuck. 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swung into theaters with a $120.7 million debut. That’s about a (checking notes) $85 million improvement from the first film's start. Holy Moley, that’s what you want from a sequel! People actually excited to go back instead of an “I guess I’m supposed to” attitude… Sounds about how I’m feeling about seeing The Flash tomorrow, but I degrees.

“Across” not only blew past the first “Into the Spider-Verse” debut, it’s already passed the original’s total gross in ten days! A second weekend of $55.5 million (off a 54% drop) left $225 million so far in Miles Morales’ web. I may have needed my son to tell me who Metro Boomin was a couple months ago, but even I can figure out this film’s doing pretty well. 

[minor spoiler about the end… skip to the next paragraph if trying to avoid] I wasn’t aware how much of a “Part 1” this film was going to be when seeing it on opening night. Everything starts building toward a big epic conclusion and you’re like “Let’s do this!” and then a “To Be Concluded” hits the screen. A guy in my theater yelled during the silence of our collective gasps: “You can’t just don’t that!” When you make the “third longest” animated film of all-time and people still wanted more, you did something right. Next March can’t get here soon enough!

While one sequel soared over the city, another got stuck in traffic. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts raised $61 million over its first weekend. While this is lower than most of the Transformers debuts (by a lot), it’s about $15 million more than The Last Knight started with in 2017. Improvement!   

Rise of the Beasts did add Michelle Yeoh, Ron Pearlman, and Pete Davidson to the list of famous Transformers voice actors. Now, why haven’t they ever cast Alexa and Siri as Transformer voices? That makes a lot more sense than having humans record artificial voices. Then again, maybe the characters in the movie would all just start treating them like Alexa and Siri saying things like “Rachet, add milk to the shopping list” and “Arcee, what’s the weather like outside?” Nevermind. 

As for the rest, The Little Mermaid just kept swimming but she’s about to be lapped by a spider. The film has hit $229 million high notes.  

If you saw the ads about how Fast X was already available for home streaming after only three weeks in the theater, you don’t need me to tell you much. While Universal still says there’s TWO MORE films coming in this series (and I’m onboard for all of them, don’t get me wrong), Fast X has slipped into neutral with $138 million.

Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has enjoyed cruise control and even had a bigger weekend than Fast X despite opening two weeks earlier. “I am Groot” means $335 million so far and a $350-360 million total still looks in play.

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - $335 million

#2. The Little Mermaid - $229 million

#3. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - $225 million

#4. Fast X - $138 million

#5. Transformers: Rise of the Beats - $61 million