I'm tempted to go see it again on an IMAX screen. I wanted the screen to cover me entire peripheral vision. It's mental. I may go see it again at my cinema but sit right at the front.
I don't think it's about quality. Plenty of those sequels opened significantly lower than the original, and many of them are very well liked. It just seems that higher grosses from sequels are rarer when it comes to animated films.
I suspect a large part of this comes down to the fact that kids grow very rapidly. Something which they love one year... well four years later their tastes will have changed. So it's more difficult to keep hold of the audience which liked the first movie.
This is true of a lot of things.
Plenty of people may complain about sequels and remakes of 30 year old movies, while they celebrate the third Spider-Man franchise in the space of a decade. They'll complain about Divergent finale being split, while they watch Mockingjay five times over.
Look at the bigger picture, there are plenty of successful, well-liked animated family movies which had a sequel which didn't outgross the original.
All grosses adjusted for inflation.
Ice Age: $255M
Ice Age 2: $250M
Monsters Inc: $378M
Monsters Uni: $279M
Kung Fu Panda: $252M
Kung Fu Panda 2: $172M
Madagascar: $253M
Madagascar 2: $210M
How to Train Your Dragon: $230M
How to Train Your Dragon 2: $177M
Cars: $313M
Cars 2: $201M
Happy Feet: $252M
Happy Feet 2: $69M
Seeing a trend?
No, sorry the film was hilarious throughout. Anyway the film is still very upbeat, at least for kids - who won't necessarily understand all of the deeper undertones. Do you somehow think the movie would have done better if the trailers had been super-serious and sad?
Also, I think this TGD trailer is going to set a new standard for me - this will be the first ever trailer I've actively avoided. The teaser was enough for me, and I need to test myself to see how well I can hold up against Star Wars marketing...
What are you saying about IO? That the trailers were funny but the movie wasn't? Inside Out was one of the most hysterical films I've seen in years. Everyone in the audience was practically wetting themselves.
I'm seeing it again tomorrow. Aaaaand then over the weekend Solace, Macbeth, Sicario, Regression, The Walk, Pan, Hotel Transylvania, and Suffragette. Hectic.