Box Office: Street Cats, Kinky Sex, Lego Superheroes

This weekend's box office charts are deceiving in their rankings. Lego Batman and the Fifty Shades sequels topped the weekend but both opened well below their predecessors while #3 was a huge success. John Wick's second outing doubled its original's opening weekend gross suggesting that the fanbase grew exponentially once the 'first chapter' was available for home viewing. This kind of thing we used to see far more of in the early days of VHS but now in the age of franchises, generally you don't see that kind of word-of-mouth "discovery" growth. You're either a behemoth or you're not. 

Three more items of note that don't really show in these charts...

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Say What? Lara Croft 2.0

Amuse us! Add a caption or dialogue to this image set of Alicia Vikander on the set of Tomb Raider (2018)

2016's Box Office Scorecard. Big & Minor Hits (Some Flops due to Budget)

Each day for the past two weeks we've been looking back on the year that was from different angles. Today, the biggest hits of 2016 in two different categories (franchise vs original).

It will surprise no one that the year's biggest hits continue to prove Hollywood right (sigh) in pursuing nothing but animated and superhero pictures and franchisable intellectual property and neglecting the nurturing of movies for adults. On the bright side quality pictures do occassionally break through audience resistance to original concepts and voices, often with the help of awards at year's end. So next time you hear people complain about awards season, remind them that we might never get movies made for adults if there weren't shiny gold statues to chase.

How many of these 35 pictures have you seen and which will you hit next? 

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Box Office Christmas: Star Wars, Hidden Figures, and More...

Star Wars is just going to be a thing every Christmas as ubiquitous as Santa one supposes. Rogue One continued to dominate the box office though if you ask your editor here it's kind of... dull (*dodges tomatoes*) and people wouldn't care much about it if it wasn't "a Star Wars". At the very least it's a bummer that it turned out to be just an exact prequel to the original Star Wars -- it really ought to have had an Episode III½ header -- and not a stand-alone adventure with some fresh ideas about that galaxy far far away.

Box office charts with a few points of discussion after the jump. What did you see this weekend? 

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Doctor Strange and the Comic Book Movie Dilemma

by Deborah Lipp

I have a pet peeve about comic book movies, and Professor Spouse is sick of hearing it, so I’m imposing on you all. When Professor Spouse and I got back from seeing Dr. Strange, I said, “I have one* complaint—it’s an origin story.” She said, “I knew you would say that.” 

*Well, only one complaint that is the subject of this essay.

The fundamental problem in comic book movies is the shift into a different medium, though in many ways the mediums are a natural fit...

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