WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: STAR TREK Lives Long and Prospers

They’ve been taunting us for months now and while that sometimes comes across as obnoxious or pompous but in the case of the STAR TREK reboot, it seems that it was just pride all along.


There was no certainty that relaunching a decades old franchise and aiming it at a generation that really had nothing to do with it past having to sit through organized marathons with their potentially costumed fathers. Yet here we are, $72 million later, and there is no question that the decision to come back was a good one. The film is being heralded highly by both critics and audiences alike, which means that STAR TREK may not disappear so quickly into the overcrowded summer night. Outside of North America, STAR TREK performed solidly, pulling in an additional $35 million. Playing on over 5,000 screens, many expected a bigger figure.


STAR TREK may not have launched as monumentally as last weekend’s WOLVERINE but something tells me STAR TREK will be able to parlay its excellent word of mouth into a much thinner decline than the 68% WOLVERINE plummeted this week. WOLVERINE does not have the benefit of being loved by many if any, had to deal with the inevitable fanboy drop-off and went head to head with another highly anticipated feature that was essentially attacking the same demographic. WOLVERINE almost held its international box office crown though, pulling in just under $30 million outside of North America.


The Top 10 saw only one other debut, NEXT DAY AIR, which fizzled out in sixth place. Meanwhile, three intriguing indies performed reasonably well in limited release further down the chart. The highest charting title is also the title with the lowest average between the three. Reuniting Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna from Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, RUDO Y CURSI, debuted on 70 screens but only managed an average of $3K. Meanwhile, debuting on just 12 screens, LITTLE ASHES, in which TWILIGHT hunk, Robert Pattinson plays gay, brought in the highest average of any limited release, $6.4K. And falling somewhere in between the two, Atom Egoyan’s latest, ADORATION, brought in an average of $4.3K on just 10 screens.

NEXT WEEK: Tom Hanks tries to take down Starfleet and the Roman Catholic church in ANGELS AND DEMONS. And on the indie front, the Jennifer Aniston/Steve Zahn comedy, MANAGEMENT will start small and the oft-delayed THE BROTHERS BLOOM will finally see the light of day.

ADORATION: An interview with writer/director, Atom Egoyan

“I remember thinking this was the simplest film I had ever made, that it was so straight forward.” Even Atom Egoyan, one of Canada’s most internationally recognized and celebrated filmmakers, can admit that his films are not always that simple to follow. “Now that there has been some distance though, I can see that it is challenging; it asks the viewer to trust what I’m doing.” Having debuted at last year’s Cannes film festival, audiences are finally about to get the opportunity to judge ADORATION for themselves..


As we have come to expect from Egoyan, ADORATION is a multi-layered piece of filmmaking. Adolescent Simon (Devon Bostick) cannot come to terms with the death of his parents in a car crash that took place when he was a child. He decides to rewrite their history as part of an oral presentation for his French class, in an effort to regain control over his own lack of understanding. He chooses to tell his classmates that his mother and father had been involved in a foiled attempt to blow up an airplane en route to Iran. Passing the story off as truth sparks a fiery debate on the internet that spirals out of control and Simon soon discovers that his lies cannot reconcile the truths of his past.


The truth is a central theme in ADORATION. This is especially intriguing given that the terrorist back-story Simon appropriates as his own actually took place in 1986 in London. Then you throw in the world wide web of potential deceit the internet allows for and you are left with an excuse for those who hear it to add their own layers to this already falsified truth. “You can start any journey on the internet and be pointed in a specific direction,” Egoyan says of the opportunities modern technology affords. “At one point, you will have to leave it though and chart a physical relationship with what it is you’re searching for.”


Egoyan’s works cannot be watched complacently. One must engage with the film, and subsequently the filmmaker himself. For Egoyan, this process begins as early as the writing process, when even he needs different coloured index cards to keep up. “It’s all very carefully planned but you cannot absorb everything that’s happening as it’s happening.” In our current film culture, where the viewer is often led from beginning to end by the hand, a film like ADORATION forces us to see that we mustn’t just follow what Simon says in order to find the truth.