doctoru2

I hope I haven't missed this response, but is it possible WHD and WWZ are flipped? On Friday, WHD made $4.6M and WWZ made $6.3M. Switching the Sat. numbers above makes sense as both would see a slight increase from Friday. Otherwise, WHD saw a huge increase (almost 48%) while WWZ has an unexpectedly large Sat. drop (8%).

Actually, it was Avatar/Sherlock Holmes/Alvin. Avatar's second weekend was over Christmas and saw a miniscule 1.8% drop from the weekend prior. It made $75.6M. Sherlock Holmes opened to $62.3M and Alvin, which had technically opened the Wednesday prior, made $48.9M. This was a record weekend at the time. All three films broke $200M, with Avatar clearly going on to far greater heights. But it shows that the marketplace can expand when the movies warrant it. Furthermore, those three films opened in 2009, arguably the height of the economic downturn. While one might argue that this was the holiday season, Minions and TH3 are also during the holidays. Therefore, I think both will do very well. Also, Sandra Bullock is set to have a voice role. This suggests that there is dialogue. The premise is that the minions serve an "evil overlord". This is why they worked happily for Gru (of course, they also seem to have a soft side, but I digress). Bullock's character wants to be the first female super-villian. In a way, I guess it makes this more of a prequel.

Hmmm... feasible argument if Iron Man wasn't based off a pretty successful comic book and cartoon adaption runs.

Ugh. I had the misfortune to see that disaster of a movie last weekend. One of the worst films I've seen in theaters. As for IM3, not as good as IM, but better than IM2. As I'm not a comic book fan of this series, the "twist" as people call it, didn't bother me - it was a bit intriguing. And always great to see Guy Pearce in a movie.

My bad - I didn't see that. Still, I wasn't expecting anywhere near $90M, so hey, not bad. I never saw Quantum of Solace. Is this one good?

It is possible for the Sunday numbers to be higher than expected. Sunday is Nov. 11th - Veteran's Day. Many schools and public institutions will have off Monday, Nov. 12th as a result. This may increase the Sunday numbers and inflate the Monday numbers as well. "Skyfall" may indeed break $90M as a result.

Barney Ross: This sums up why most of us loved Ledger's performance. Nicholson was fantastic in Burton's take on the story. Nicholson naturally hammed up his role, but was dark when he needed to be. As Nolan's film was far more serious overall, Ledger found that nice balance of still hamming it up (after all, that is what the Joker is), but also to be incredibly violent and malicious. Joker is so insane that per the story, he was amazed when neither normal citizens nor criminals were willing to blow each other up. Ledger convinced us of that - he truly became the Joker character. As great as Nicholson is, there were still times I felt like I was watching Jack in a lot of make-up. I never felt that way about Ledger.

I do.I live near San Fran. and I have seen TONS of ads for it on the TV stations I watch. I saw almost nothing for "Apparition" (and when I finally did, it was 2 days before it came out). Plus, the ads play up Raimi's name substantially - thus tranforming it from a "no name" to a "name". Lastly, the trailer has the "fun" aspect of a possession, demon, evil, supernatural, etc. - many of the same things that propelled "The Devil Inside" to almost $34M debut back in January. I don't expect "Possession" to get that high, but I certainly can see why it's tracking for #1.

I think your dream has two of these at least somewhat close.

They are teasing you for being "old", but apparently you aren't old enough. It's The BeAtles.

If TDKR has some late legs that just carry it, bravo! I'd love to see another $500M film this year! But I'm just not sensing the universal love for this film that TDK (and Avengers) have. Still, I can very well be wrong. I'm still stunned that "Hunger Games" made $400M! I do feel TDKR will surpass that film (unless there's an unexpectedly huge second weekend drop). That's three $400M grossing films in one year (and possibly four, if "The Hobbit" really shines). Incredible!

I see your point, but the trailers seem to suggest this is an alien movie, so I do not think the Florida situation will be a factor. "The Watch" will not be any competition for TDKR, but it may be a pleasant alternative and still perform reasonably (around $25-30M). The last comedy was "Ted" and that's starting to age a bit.I fully recognize that the shooting in Colorado is having a box office impact on all movies, especially TDKR. I do think the opening weekend probably would have been a bit higher had it not been for that.That said, after seeing TDKR, despite the glowing comments from some people here, I'm not sure the WOM is anywhere near as it was for TDK. In other words, I don't think TDKR would get to $500M, even if the tragedy in Colorado never occurred.But $400M is an incredible sum and one that should not be dismissed. With the international box office expanding, this film should still make $1B worldwide, just as TDK did.

Right - so why have that in there at all? it was a waste of time. Use those extra minutes to cover some of the other gaping plot holes.

I agree. In fact, most movies have plot holes.However, we can forgive plot holes and stay in the world of the movie as long as the continuity is so bad that it breaks that wall. As Baumer wrote, we stay in the "movie zone". Once we start questioning too many things, we lose that zone, we can no longer suspend beliefs and the movie loses its enjoyment.This happened for me with TDKR, but not with TDK or BB or "Avengers". That's the difference. There were weaknesses in all of those films, but not enough to deter from the enjoyment of the movies. In contrast, TDKR had so many issues that it just detracted from the movie considerably. While it's easy to dismiss those of us who feel this way as saying we are too nitpicky, the fact is, a lot of us have these issues. This is why I don't think the WOM will be as good with TDKR as it was with TDK.

Not only was this brilliant but I'll add a 16th comment. While I respect those who adore TDKR, I am at a loss as to why they feel this way. Almost everything about TDK was better, barring a few exceptions, such as Batman's voice and best Bale performance. So while I enjoyed TDKR, I just can't see it being better than a 7/10 or B/B- type of movie for me.

Not to detract from your point, but how was Holmes miscast? I thought she was just right for the role. I liked her a lot more than Maggie Gyllenhall.

So do I. :)But hey, do we need to have a "IMO" after every single post? You inexplicably like Keaton as Batman, while I couldn't think of a worse choice for the role (and still can't). Nothing either of us says will convince the other, so accept. And in the end, does it matter? Between Keaton and Bale, we both got the actors we felt could best portray the role.Edited punctuation.

I never liked Keaton in either role. His acting talents are strong and that's why he wasn't a bigger distraction than he already was. I could not accept him being debonair and able to sweep ladies off their feet and I never accepted his body being able to do what is required of Batman. Kilmer and especially Bale have the physique necessary for Batman and both are very handsome men able to play the Bruce Wayne character. But Keaton? Nah.

Yeah - I hated what Nolan did to his voice. Bale, like Keaton, and even the cartoon series, has Batman speak more gruffly. Nothing wrong with that - it's a way to disguise his voice. But in TDK, Nolan and crew did more tricks to his voice to sound even more gruff - and it failed, IMO.My favorite spoof of this horrid voice is this video (still makes me laugh):http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yv8aT0UFc

Maybe I need to see these movies again, but I was one who hated Keaton as Batman. Bale, to me, is the ideal Bruce Wayne. He is ridiculously handsome and debonair - the way I've always envisioned Bruce Wayne to appear. But Bale also is in great shape with the strength to pull off the acrobatics and fights performed by Batman. Keaton's scrawny frame and "Mr. Mom" vibe never convinced me. After Bale, I did like Val Kilmer (for the same reasons I liked Bale). However, will readily take Keaton over George Clooney. Clooney is great in many roles, but Batman wasn't one of them.

Being older than most of you, I can assure you, "Batman" was extraordinarily hyped back in 1989. The movie experience was different back then and this type of hype was rarely seen. The 60's TV show started playing on normal channels again for a bit, songs were made (including a Prince song that was a big hit, but due to some bizarre reasons, was not in the film), etc. Nicholson was definitely loved then (and is still loved now) and his Joker was arguably the big reason the film had such great legs. Ledger's hype was deserved. I was worried that no actor could do the role justice after Nicholson's great performance. But Ledger delivered big time. Then, add in his untimely death, and the role became almost iconic (even career-defining). Hence, it's tough to compare the two, but I assure you, "Batman" had TONS of hype.

I readily accept your comments about "Avengers" and other movies. And that too was my point - that RT is not really the best place to "judge" a movie. It gives a quick snapshot of the overall impression.A "great" movie on RT usually floats around 85-90% "fresh". And a truly rotten movie is usually below 40%. There are, of course, exceptions. If your goal is to say that overall TDKR has similar RT rating to TDK, I accept that. I will not accept the IMDb argument at this time (as I know this is biased high).

Thank you for looking that up. But how many of the other 200 reviews were more "this is good, but..." area? There are things I liked about TDKR. However, there's no way it was better than TDK or even BB. That gray area is what can skew a film. I've even seen RT consider a review "rotten" when I felt the review was rather positive overall. Hence, there's also a subjective nature to RT.

I have no idea what you wrote there. Nor did I say I "love it to but". I said I liked it overall and then went into why RT would count that as a positive review, even though I had criticisms. And that leads to my point. I've read plenty of "positive" reviews on RT that were actually rather scathing of a movie. However, RT considered it an overall positive review. So that makes it yet another "fresh" review, even though there was plenty of criticism. RT has really just two categories - fresh or rotten. And unless the critic gives it a grade or stars, RT will judge whether the review is "fresh" or not. So even a 2.5 star movie could be considered "fresh" even though the critic attacks the film. As for IMDb, I stand by my comments. The vast majority of those ratings were done BEFORE the movie came out. It's not unusual, I've seen this for every highly anticipated movie. Fans of the series rank the film a 9 or 10 even though they haven't seen it. Hence, early on the film is skewed very high. But once really people start seeing the film, the rating will drop.

There is? Sorry! I worked hard at not revealing any spoilers. In fact, one could look at other sites and find the exact names of all characters and such. I hid the one character name that could possibly considered a spoiler.