The front yard inflatables are down, Valentine’s Day stuff is already in the stores, and today is ACTUALLY MLK Day, so that must mean the 2024 Holiday Blockbuster Pool has come to an end!
Not going to lie. It felt like a six-horse race where only five could win at the beginning of the pool and by the end it was only a five-horse race. That said, the placing of those horses made all the difference!
Of course, there can always be surprises and when studios spend a lot of money on movies like an anime Lord of the Rings or a Robert Zemekis/Tom Hanks project, you’d think maybe they knew what they were doing. Apparently not.
Let’s give a “Bon voyage!” to the films that didn’t in 2024 before celebrate the true Top 5 of the Holiday Blockbuster Pool.
The “I Wouldn’t Say I’m Missing It, Bob” Section:
- Maybe people confused it with Conclave and were wondering why Ralph Fiennis wasn’t kicking more butt in his papel robe, but Liam Nesson’s Absolution movie was guilty of being forgotten.
- I couldn’t even tell if Juror #2 was actually released in theaters or not because of the “amazing” Discovery Warner Bros. policy of thinking it’s better to lose money by NOT releasing movies than actually releasing them, but at least we know who’s guilty of that.
- Elevation was a fine Quiet Place knock-off kind of film that’s marketing was so quiet it seems no one knew it even came out.
The “Surprising Successes” Section:
- It may not have been THE Best Christmas Pageant Ever, but a $40 million gross on a low-budget family film is certainly up there. The BEST part is how Box-Office Mojo lists its genre as “Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Mystery Romance.” Uh, I could spend all day trying to think of films that could reasonably fit all six of these categories and I guarantee you The Best Christmas Pageant Ever would not be one of them.
- A Complete Unknown did a great job of giving people something else to see than singing lions and multicolored aliens over the holidays and is at $58 million so far. Now if only the real Bob Dylan could have closed captions under him when he spoke, all of our lives would’ve been better for it.
- The real star of the onslaught of Oscar bait films released on Christmas Day was Nosferatu! It’s already at $90 million and will certainly surpass $100 million before its run is over. Outside of the first two Scream films, I can’t recall too many “hit” horror films over the holidays… much less horror indie films. Maybe we can just make it a rule that Willem Dafoe has to be in all holiday-released horror films, there’d be more hits.
The “And That’s The Bottom Line Because Stone Cold Said So” Section:
- I mean, what it in the what was The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim?! There’s a current LOTR hit series on Amazon Prime. There’s the legacy of SIX LOTR films that have grossed billions. This film MADE $9.1 million… TOTAL!!! I can’t even connect the disconnect that made anyone think this was a good idea or people wanted to see it.
- How much must The War of Rohirrim have sucked that Kraven the Hunter is mentioned second here. The curious and those hoping for a “So Bad It’s Good” movie at least propelled this final atrocity of the Sonyverse to $25 million. As to its legacy, I think only Russell Crowe’s aggro Russian mob boss performance will be studied as to how to make everyone in the audience want to punch you in the face every moment you’re on screen.
- Really, as much as we don’t want to live in a world where making $97 million is not a success… It kind of is when your film cost $250 million to make. Red One hoped to be the next Jumanji and set-up a whole world with follow-up films and jokes and fun for families for years to come. It just didn’t pull it off. Mopey, serious Rock is the least interesting Rock persona and he needed way more than just Chris Evans to help lighten the load here.
And now, we’ve finally arrived… Here are the Top Five Films of the 2024 Holiday Blockbuster Pool!!!
#5. Gladiator II - $172.1 million
Never let your main character’s death in the first movie (oops, Spoiler Alert) stop you from making a sequel. Who cares if the plot is like post-it notes stuck together in out of order ways, it’s all about the battles and the fights and this had plenty of them. No one said go see Ben Her for the pensive drama… It’s all about the chariot race! I can’t wait for Gladiator III in… checking calendar… 2048. Holy crap, that’s like just a year before Blade Runner 2049! We are in the strangest of timelines.
A slow start didn’t stop this lion from starting to roar! The Tik Toks, the social medias, the interwebs (I don’t know about any of this stuff) and the rest got people to give this film another chance after opening weekend and it’s been singing ever since. I think it’s likely it will pass Sonic 3 by the time all is said and done, but this is MLK Day and that’s when we say this pool is done, so it’ll have to settle for #4 in the pool but #3 in our hearts.
I think the biggest takeaway from another smashing success in this Sonic series is where do we put Jim Carrey’s performances. Can he be nominated twice for Best Supporting Actor for both his roles as Ivo Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik? Do they combine into one Best Actor nod? Has anyone ever played both the grandson and grandfather in the same film? Does this impact (and should it) how we judge any actor performing multiple roles in a single film? Like they were great as the bad sister, but too milktoast as the good sister. I had a whole hour and 50 minutes to think about these questions (and more!) during the runtime as I sat through this film with my nephew. The only question I didn’t have to ask because the answer was self-evident: Will there be a Sonic 4?
While I think most people agree that Moana 2 is no Moana 1, the box-office results say Moana 1 was no Moana 2! Seriously, Moana 2 has made $200 million MORE than Moana 1. That’s a huge increase and it’s clearly Disney’s biggest musical hit since Frozen 2 in 2019. Sure, the songs were meh, but the animation looked beautiful, the kakamora coconut monsters were adorable, and Moana’s like a superhero now. Look, my wife once made the mistake (she was banned from ever picking up movies at RedBox unsupervised again) of bringing home Cats Vs. Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Moana 2 is a thousand times better than Cats Vs. Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and I’m fine dying on that hill.
If you stop to think about it, the biggest musical of the 21st Century should be the biggest hit musical movie of the 21st Century. It just doesn’t always work that way… but it certainly did this time! Wicked performed and outperformed many expectations on its way to becoming the third biggest movie of the year. The casting, staging, set design, cinematography, etc. all worked to bring the musical to life in a whole new way and still hit all the right notes. We’ve now had back-to-back live action musicals top the Holiday Blockbuster Pool (Wonka was just last year and yet that feels five years ago already). We might even make it three in a row with Wicked: Part Two being released in 2025. We will save that tale for another time, however, and let Elphaba and “Ga”linda carry the crown they deserve for besting the 2024 Holiday Blockbuster Pool!
