You have our express permission to sob. It had been predicted for some time that Guillermo del Toro's new movie, Pacific Rim, wasn't going to be the big box office juggernaut that those signing the cheques were presumably hoping for. Yet in the face of generally very positive reviews, the movie made $38m at the US box office this past weekend, with early reports suggesting that its non-US take was healthy. It's far from the disaster that some had been gleefully predicting.
That said, and this is comfortably one of the most depressing stories we're written all year, when the final numbers were totted up, it trailed Grown Ups 2. The Adam Sandler-headlined sequel pulled in $42.5m, although both films trailed Despicable Me 2, which topped the charts with $44.7m in its second weekend.
In truth, perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise. Grown Ups 2 is a sequel to a successful movie, packed full of named stars. Pacific Rim is a lovingly crafted blockbuster, packed full of talent. Furthermore, it may well be that Grown Ups 2 falls away quite quickly, leaving Pacific Rim room to have a good second weekend. Opening weekend and final take are two very different numbers.
Yet we can't help but feel a little depressed about it all. Sure, a movie's quality is rarely a measure of its commercial success. But it doesn't feel like a good day for movie theater when the clearly very lazy movie beats the clearly very crafted one.
We're off for a cry.
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