What did people see?
No one who knew how much people were waiting for a sequel to 2004’s The Incredibles expected it to fall short of Finding Dory‘s record for the highest opening weekend box office for an animated film, 135 million. But as predictions of 135 million gave way to predictions of 150, and those were replaced by estimates of 170, no one could’ve predicted that Incredibles 2 would end up with 182.7 million dollars at the end of its first weekend. In addition to being the highest for an animated film by a mile, this is also the 8th highest opening of all time. Moreover, it is the highest opening weekend ever for a family film, with the 7 movies above it all
Among superheroes, it’s behind only Black Panther and the 3 Avengers titles, and ahead of The Dark Knight sequels, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War. Between this, The LEGO Batman Movie, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it’s reasonable to hope that animated superhero movies will start to get more common in theatres. I, for one, am excited for Big Hero 7.
The Jeremy Renner based-on-a-true-story comedy Tag made 15 million dollars. With a 28 million production budget, the movie will easily make a profit, but still isn’t quite the smash hit Warner Brothers was hoping it’d be. Superfly opened to a similarly decent but unimpressive 6.87 million. The infamous John Travolta-starring biopic Gotti opened to a miserable 1.72 million, barely edging out the critically bashed Indian blockbuster Race 3, which opened to 1.69 million in the US, and almost as much in India.
What did people like?
Gotti, in addition to the abysmal Metascore of 25, received the rare distinction of a 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating based on 26 reviews, with the concise critical consensus “fuhgeddaboudit”. Race 3 hardly fared better, with just one positive review out of 9.
Tag was better received than many expected, but I personally had had high hopes for this movie, which ended up with a 56 on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Audiences were similarly underwhelmed, as seen by the B+ CinemaScore.
Incredibles 2 garnered all the critical acclaim this weekend, complimenting its box office gross with a Metascore of 80 and a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is, however, worth noting that this only ranks it at #11 and #12 respectively on the two websites, among Pixar’s collection of 20 films. This is not to say that Incredibles 2 isn’t a great family adventure, but that Pixar has set its standards high enough that a movie needs to be truly brilliant to even make it to their top 10. That said, Incredibles 2 still did become the 7th Pixar movie to score the rare (yes, rare) CinemaScore of A+. That kind of word-of-mouth is going to ensure it has legs, so that even though Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom releases this coming Friday, it won’t be able to stop Incredibles 2 from reaching the coveted 1 billion dollar mark. Did someone mention superhero fatigue?
