“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