WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: A Bright Weekend for a Dark Knight

I was telling a friend of mine that THE DARK KNIGHT had beaten SPIDER-MAN 3 this weekend to claim the title of best 3-day opening weekend of all time. His response, big deal. Apparently, he’s heard enough of box office record breakers. It seems that every weekend some new movie has claimed the title of best R-rated, live action July opening for a non-sequel in a language other than English. It’s a shame really because all these box office boys calling wolf makes it hard to spot the real deal when it happens. And the records set by THE DARK KNIGHT this past weekend are definitely the real deal.

THE DARK KNIGHT, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger, set one record before it even began its Thursday night midnight screenings. Playing on 4,366 screens across North America, THE DARK KNIGHT had the widest release of all time, besting the previous record by PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END, which launched on 4,362 screens. The film then broke another record before its official launch date. Pulling in over $18.5 million from its Thursday midnight screenings, THE DARK KNIGHT bested the $16.9 million taken in from midnight showings by STAR WARS EPISODE III: THE REVENGE OF THE SITH. And that didn’t even include the extra screenings movie houses added at 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM to accommodate for the demand.


Going into its first official day of release with its head held very high, THE DARK KNIGHT then took in an unprecedented first day tally of $66.4 million (including the overnight screenings). These numbers bested the record for one-day take previously held by SPIDER-MAN 3, which took in $59.8 million on its first day in theatres. Prognosticators expected THE DARK KNIGHT to do well before the weekend started (you’d have to be pretty daft not to have figured that out) but it was not expected to shatter record for all-time best opening weekend. SPIDER-MAN 3 claimed that title last summer when it opened to an awesome $151.9 million but the bar has now been bumped up that much higher as THE DARK KNIGHT estimates have come in at $155.4 million.

I can’t say whether the excitement over THE DARK KNIGHT comes from an overwhelming interest in Batman movies, an audience that has grown exponentially since Nolan’s last Batman pic, BATMAN BEGINS (which, comparatively made a scant $47 million on its opening weekend) or whether the Heath Ledger fascination factor made the difference but whatever the reason THE DARK KNIGHT led the way for Hollywood’s most successful non-holiday weekend in history. The overall box office tally this weekend was roughly $250 million, besting the previous 3-day weekend record set on the weekend of July 7-9, 2006, where PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST led the way to a total of $218 million.


Yes, folks, movies other than THE DARK KNIGHT played in theatres this weekend. Musical MAMMA MIA! found its own following, taking in $27.6 million, narrowly besting the opening weekend take of last year’s sleeper hit, HAIRSPRAY. SPACE CHIMPS couldn’t pull any monkey love away from WALL-E, earning a scant $7.4 million.

NEXT WEEKEND: THE DARK KNIGHT faces some reasonable competition but should remain victorious. Well, I guess every X-phile could leave their basement for THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Or maybe people are truly desperate to see grown men, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly act like prepubescent punks in STEP BROTHERS … I mean, we’ve NEVER seen that before!
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THE LAST LAUGH: REMEMBERING HEATH LEDGER

It may not have been the kind of day that marks people but I still remember where I was when I first heard that Heath Ledger had died. It was nowhere special. I was just sitting at my desk at work when my brother called to tell me what he had just seen or heard or read on the news. It didn’t make any sense to me. It couldn’t possibly have been true. He must have been mistaken or the reports must have been overblown. And while the details surrounding Ledger’s death in the press certainly were blown out of proportion, my brother was definitely not mistaken about what he had seen, heard or read. The 28-year-old actor and father died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on January 22, 2008. A dark night, indeed.


I walked home stunned and, after pouring myself a generous glass of red, I settled into my couch to watch BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I was compelled to do so. I somehow felt that by watching this modern classic that transformed Ledger from another pretty face in the crowd to a bonafide contender would keep him alive for a couple more hours. You know what? It did. Watching Ledger as Ennis Del Mar is like witnessing the miracle of life. The manner in which he mutters instead of talking, his tongue unconsciously twisting inside his mouth and the hushed self loathing that permeates through his squinted eyes stripped him of his charmer looks and revealed a calculated talent capable of creating great, new depths of character. Though Ledger had been seen on Hollywood screens for nearly ten years (ever since his eye catching turn in the Shakespearean teen adaptaion, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU), it was his Oscar nominated performance in the revelatory BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that made him a real star.


After his first taste of Hollywood success, the native Australian saw his career heading in a direction he wanted nothing to do with. When he saw his giant mug plastered across America and the world as the face of the medieval joust comedy, A KNIGHT’S TALE, he put on the brakes. He was offered the lead in the SPIDER-MAN series but turned it down because it simply wasn’t him. He wanted to make movies that spoke to him. The first signs of his emerging talent showed themselves in his brief part as a suicidal police officer in MONSTER’S BALL. He carried himself with such sadness and disappointment that I wondered how much of his depression was based in reality. The years that followed brought disappointments despite his best efforts but BROKEBACK opened his doors wide open. In the little seen, CANDY, Ledger shows that no movie is too small as long as the story is strong. His turn as a heroine junkie is somehow just as romantic as it is heartbreaking. Showcasing his delicate ability to balance duality yet again, Ledger plays Robbie in Todd Hayne’s Bob Dylan masterpiece, I’M NOT THERE. Again, Ledger makes the unlikable somehow still sympathetic. And just as all of the world’s eyes were turning toward him, he passed, leaving only one role left to be seen.


Of course, that last role will become infamous. It will be nearly impossible to take your eyes off of Ledger as the iconic Joker in Christopher Nolan’s second Batman feature, THE DARK KNIGHT. There is no way to know if the world would be buzzing as much as it is about Ledger’s performance had it not been his final one but the world is watching and that’s what he wanted. The Joker himself would probably find the whole thing quite amusing. Young kid makes good and finally learns to infuse his passion for the craft into the Hollywood machine but doesn’t live to see it unleashed. Oh, the irony. I like to think that Ledger is smiling too about the whole thing. After all, he went through such trials to divert our attention to the performance and not the person and, without him here, we will be forced to do just that.

Heathcliff Andrew Ledger
April 4, 1979 to January 22, 2008

HANCOCK

Written by Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan
Directed by Peter Berg
Starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman


John Hancock: Call me an asshole one more time.

It isn’t fair to write a film off in the first few minutes but you can sometimes get a pretty good sense as to what you’re in store for from the way the film introduces itself. The film opens on an L.A. freeway, where four punks are being chased in their van by countless police cruisers while they fire their semi-automatic weapons into the air. Where’s Spider-Man when you need him? (Right, I forgot – Spidey’s a New Yorker.) Cut to a passed out bum on a park bench. Who is this man? Of course, we know it’s our hero, Hancock (Will Smith), because we know a thing or two about the film before sitting down to watch it. Director, Peter Berg, takes this for granted though and it soon becomes apparent that convention and presumption will drive this unconventional tale. In HANCOCK, Berg, and Smith team up with writers, Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, to debunk superhero iconography as well as the genre itself. The goal, and a noble and exciting one it is, is to rip the superhero out of the sky, strip him of his glory and send him hurdling toward the earth. Only Hancock is pulled down to an earth that is an awful lot more like a movie than the world I know.


It wouldn’t be so terrible to set this enormous Hollywood action film in typical scenarios if Berg weren’t trying so hard to give the film a decidedly un-Hollywood look. The aesthetic is often shaky and unstill, crossing back and forth between odd close-ups and frames finding their focus. Berg seems bent on giving HANCOCK a gritty, guerilla filmmaking tone but the erratic style is at odds with the predictability of the plot. The borrowed independent style works in its original context because independent films are, ordinarily, about something deeper. Removing the gloss from a Hollywood feature only allows the viewer to see how little there is underneath it all. In HANCOCK’s case, the man beneath the lacking luster is a reluctant hero who would rather waste his days drunk in a dive than diving into the action itself to save the day. There is some loose discourse on realizing your destiny but little else. Again reluctantly, Hancock agrees to some help from a struggling public relations person (Jason Bateman) and is set on the path to making the most of his life and abilities. Hancock is such a complex character (lonely, disinterested, depressed) that it would seem ripe with possibility but this is mostly squandered in favor of half funny humour and sometimes hokey special effects that it feels at times like a over produced Nike ad.


Luckily for HANCOCK, the film is still somewhat enjoyable thanks to the strong performances of all its leads. Smith continues his streak for picking complicated characters with broad appeal and he also continues his streak of pulling them off. After a heartbreaking turn that pushed his dramatic abilities in THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS and his commanding yet vulnerable turn that pushed his presence in I AM LEGEND, Smith plays a character we don’t ordinarily see him as. His impossible-not-to-like face is covered in stubble and his physique is hidden by baggy, dirty clothes but his eyes are what give away his disenfranchised soul that shows his hurt for being shunned by society and disinterest in placating to that same society. Smith is joined by the modern master of comedic timing, Bateman and Charlize Theron, as Bateman’s wife, who is simultaneously frightened and intimidating. This trio of talent is HANCOCK’s salvation. Their grasp of their characters in unfailing and they pull the elements of the film together despite how flimsy the elements are to begin with.


HANCOCK is occasionally astounding but mostly mundane. Above all, it is a disappointment. This original premise has been sloppily slapped together and most of its potential was squandered in the process. It didn’t show me that superheroes are people too. If anything, it just made me miss the real deal. If the goal was to truly bring the superhero down to earth, then there was still a long, long way to go before this guy would have touched the ground.

SPIDER-MAN 3

Written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi



Mary Jane Watson: Everybody needs help. Even Spiderman.

As far as I’m concerned, you can drown those pirates at sea and banish that ogre to a land even further away because there’s only one sequel that matters this summer. SPIDERMAN 3 has finally swung through oncoming traffic and in and around the tallest buildings to land in theatres as the flagship film to launch the box office into summer. Legions of Spidey enthusiasts have had their tickets for weeks while critics have been waiting to review the latest installment in one the most successful and well-received film franchises in history. With expectations this high, its hard to imagine how Spidey could possible satisfy anyone fully. Yet despite the increasingly loud whispers of disappointment waiting to welcome SPIDERMAN 3, this critic slash Spidey enthusiast had himself one heck of a web slingin’ time and he’s not afraid to say it.


In the third, and what is sadly not likely the last in the Spiderman series, your friendly neighborhood Spiderman (Tobey Maguire) finds himself on top of the world. New York loves him; Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) loves him; and subsequently, Spidey ends up loving himself a little more than he should. High on his own ego, he decides to make everything perfect in his life and ask MJ to marry him. Simple enough a concept but things get a little sticky when he has to deal with his uncle’s killer escaped from jail, his best friend’s obsession with getting revenge on him for his father’s death, having to compete with a new photographer at the Daily Bugle and MJ’s increasingly disastrous acting career. Oh, wait. I forgot that he also has to deal with The Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and Venom (Topher Grace), the newest enemies to emerge in New York City, a city where freaks apparently flock to. It’s a lot for one man to handle, let alone one man with super human powers. Ultimately, it proved to be too much for another super human to handle, namely returning director, Sam Raimi. Taking over script duty with his brother Ivan, found a lot of interesting themes like revenge and ego woven into the Spidey web but so much going on leaves so little to fully develop. Scenes that would seem pivotal, like when Venom and Sandman decide to team up, end up feeling rushed while scenes that are entirely disposable, like when Spidey’s alter ego, Peter Parker, finds his “Saturday Night Fever” groove strutting down the streets of NYC, seem to go on forever.


While the first SPIDERMAN film, written by David Koepp (rumoured to be returning for SPIDERMAN 4) brought me to tears more than once, there is plenty to enjoy in SPIDERMAN 3 that allows forgiveness for the script problems. People seem to have forgotten that Spidey is here to entertain us. Sure it would be nice to be affected by the words being spoken as well but when the action is as tight and the special effects as vast as in SPIDERMAN 3, it is a pleasure to tune out for a while and enjoy the ride. With three enemies to fight off at any given moment, Spidey finds himself constantly reevaluating his approach. With the New Goblin (James Franco), Spidey has to fend off a very aggressive attacker that he doesn’t truly want to hurt. The Sandman, who enters and exits in a flurrying sandstorm that is a visual kaleidoscope of grain, is at times an insurmountable force. The fact that Spidey can’t effectively hit him only further shows how much energy is wasted on revenge (as he was the man who actually killed his uncle in his pre-Sandman days). And Venom is just plain frightening. Being under the control of the tar-like substance that transforms cocky photographer, Eddie Brock (Grace), into this fanged fright, amplifies all of your aggressive, negative behavior. For Spidey, fighting Venom is like fighting all the parts of himself that he tries so hard to leave behind.


When SPIDERMAN hit theatres a few in 2002, its energy was infectious. Hopes were high and the goods were delivered. Genuine admiration was formed for the hero but like any hero, people eventually want to tear them down out of jealousy. How quickly we forget the love and allow our expectations to be set so high that no one, not even a man who glides gracefully through the sky, could surmount them. Better than the second, not as good the first, SPIDERMAN 3 is falling prey to the audience’s need to be constantly wowed with something bigger and better that eclipses accomplishments that are already awesome. Sure Raimi got himself tangled up in his own overcomplicated web but there is no one who can spin it like he can. And if Raimi, Maguire and Dunst don’t return for future installments, you’ll all be wishing you hadn’t squashed this spider so quickly.