By Todd Allen

Amazing Spider-Man has gotten off to a decent launch.  You can look at it two ways: the actual weekend is estimated at $65M (depending on the actual totals, it’s just about at Brave’s opening weekend total, $5M below The Lorax) or you can look at it having made $140M in a short week.  Opening on a Tuesday during a holiday week is a little odd to compare to the rest of the year’s field.  That said, Avengers passed $140M on the second day of release.  Hunger Games took three days to pass $140M.  So Spidey is looking strong, but not… well… amazing.

If you expect the reboot to be the super money making machine that the Raimi trilogy was, this makes you a little nervous.  Next week is essentially a free week with only the new Ice Age installment opening wide.  Two weeks away, The Dark Knight Rises is looming.  There’s a legitimate question whether Dark Knight Rises will put up or even surpass Avengers numbers and shatter the hopes of all films in it’s wake.  And maybe it won’t, but Spidey really needs to get his money in the next 12 days.  I suspect we’re looking at something in the $250M – $300M domestic range.  That should turn a profit, but I’m sure Sony and Marvel would like this to be more like the $400M Hunger Games brought in, but I just don’t see that happening with this launch and Dark Knight looming.

Overseas is looking bright for Spidey, though.  $200M in the can already.  Remember, Spider-Man 3 did $554M foreign vs. $336M domestic.

Here’s the top 12 (keeping an eye on Avengers) per Box Office Mojo:

  1. The Amazing Spider-Man $65,000,000
  2. Ted $32,593,000
  3. Brave $20,162,000
  4. Savages $16,162,000
  5. Magic Mike $15,610,000
  6. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection $10,200,000
  7. Madagascar 3 $7,700,000
  8. Katy Perry: Part of Me $7,150,000
  9. Moonrise Kingdom $4,642,000
  10. To Rome with Love $3,502,000
  11. People Like Us $2,256,000
  12. The Avengers $2,170,000

Plenty of new material this week as the SF/F material of the last couple months has started falling off.  Ted and Brave both did well suffering only~40% drop-offs.  Madagascar 3 only dropped ~35% and has weathered Brave.  Of course, Ice Age will compete for their market next week.

Savages is in a situation like Amazing Spider-Man, in that maybe you’d like to see it do a little better than it did, but you cant’ really complain, per se.

Avengers is sticking around at 12.  Last week the actual numbers had it finishing at #10 above the disappointing People Like Us and with less than $100K between those films in the estimates, it’s certainly possible their order could reverse again this week.  Avenger lost another 632 screens and while it’s $1,929/screen average is almost double that of People like us, it isn’t a top 10 per screen average anymore.  It’s certainly the best of the rest of the films over 1000 screens, though.

Amazing Spider-Man’s 4300 screens pulled even more heavily from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (tanking hard), Snow White and Thor, and Prometheus.  Men in Black 3 wasn’t even on the weekend estimate chart, so Spidey seems to have consolidated the genre screens.

1 COMMENT

  1. I’ve been a life-long Spider-Man comic book fan and this new film has zero appeal for me to go catch it in a theater. All the clips and pics seem flat for the most part (I did like the scene with the kid being saved in the car).

    Garfield is a great actor but …could he look anymore Twilight-ty emo for this film with the poofy poodle hair and poodle eyes? Such desperate calculation clung to this film in so many ways like the X-Games redesign of the costume. The wise-cracking police officer version of Captain Stacy (how terrible to drop the comic’s more restrained and insightful characterization) has been a cliche for decades. That clip of Garfield with the doorman which starts with an establishing shot of the building to pan down to the street. All I could hear was the funky bass from SEINFIELD as they cut to the “humorous” exchange which …wasn’t humorous. Added to all this are the awful Lizard scenes (and from what I hear another terribly cliched character).

    Seems they were unsure what to do and chased after trends instead of creating their own while mixing Dark Knight gritty with (500) Days of Summer. My guess is the producers had their fingers all over this and a director they could ride over. So they end up with a film that is sorta’ okay, sorta’ nothing and will be forgotten in the wake of the rest of the summer films, especially RISE OF THE DARK KNIGHT.

  2. I too have no desire to see this one in theaters. I have no great loyalty to raimi, but to do another origin story so soon after the last one. I dunno leaves me cold. It may very well be one of those franchises where the sequel is better than the previous film.

  3. It’s not a bad film. But it isn’t an amazing one. It’s entertaining, but I doubt it’ll ever make anyone’s “top 10 superhero films” list. Not even with the way Garfield’s butt looks in the costume.

    A good party game to play with the DVD would involve identifying which previous film they got this scene or that plot device from. (Hint: the climactic threat is taken from which X-Men film?)

  4. Jason–I know two well-known comic book writers who have already said that they would put this film in their “top 5 superhero films of all time” list.

    Seems like a lot of people want to dislike the movie, but people who go into it with an open mind love it. (I have not seen it yet, but I hope to soon.)

  5. A family group I saw it with declared it the best Spider-Man ever… I think they liked the web slinging action and the teen angst scenes.

    I liked the same virtues, but the film, even with its adjustments, had a plot of lazy coincidence, just like the original comics, which would make a repeat viewing tedious.

    My 2 cents.

  6. I read it cost around $220 million to make so it’s got a ways to go to break even. I suspect it will make it though. Unlike my beloved John Carter movie.

  7. @John

    Either those well-known writers saw qualities I didn’t see, they didn’t notice the script problems I saw, or they simply have different standards for “top superhero movie”.

    I paid $10.75 to see it, which (I assure you) indicates that I thought I’d like it. (Accusing anyone who doesn’t like a film of “wanting to dislike it” assumes that we’re all petty fans with an agenda. Please don’t.)

    I was entertained by it, and I’m not trying to talk anyone out of seeing it. It was definitely better than Spider-Man 3. But I’d also advise people going to see it to be tolerant of things that happen just because the plot requires it, or because it worked once before… rather than because it makes sense. And (IMHO) that takes any movie out of the running for any “top” list.

  8. “Jason–I know two well-known comic book writers who have already said that they would put this film in their “top 5 superhero films of all time” list.”

    ASM isn’t terrible, but that’s just ridiculous.

    Iron Man.
    Spider-Man 2.
    Batman Begins.
    The Dark Knight.
    The Avengers.
    Superman: The Movie.
    Superman II.
    Batman (Burton’s version).
    X-Men.
    X2: X-Men United.

    If any well-known comic book writer seriously puts ASM ahead of any of those flicks…well, that explains why the writing in comics today is the way it is.

    And anyone who wants to argue that can answer me this question. What the heck happened with Uncle Ben’s killer?

    Mike

  9. >> I know two well-known comic book writers who have already said that they would put this film in their “top 5 superhero films of all time” list.>>

    It’s on my Top One Superhero Films Ever list. I think it’s great. And I think I’ve got some decent cred as both a writer and as a Spidey writer.

    I’ve seen nine of the ten films Mike Bunge thinks are better, and disagree on all of them (though AVENGERS comes very close).

    And one he doesn’t list — THE INCREDIBLES — would be included in my Top Three.

    >> And anyone who wants to argue that can answer me this question. What the heck happened with Uncle Ben’s killer? >>

    I don’t want to argue with you, since you’re entitled to your opinion, but that’s easy to answer: Spider-Man hasn’t caught him. Much like Joe Chill was on the loose for years. It’s important to AMAZING FANTASY #15 that Peter catch the burglar in order to recognize him and learn the lesson, but in this version, he knows it’s the guy already, and has learned the lesson. The film played it in a different way than the comic, but that’s not a failing, that’s a matter of Peter learning that this isn’t about revenge, it’s about responsibility.

    [There was actually a scene filmed where the murderer is dealt with, but they cut it; they seem to have retooled the film a lot to make it more focused and cleaner. I assume we’ll be seeing him again in a sequel.]

    I’ve seen the film twice already (as have my daughters, who were eager to see it again when I took their mom), and I think it’s a really, really well-made film. I love the way Steve Kloves does a lot with indication rather than explication, and Marc Webb backs up my idea that you can teach character directors to do action far more easily than you can teach action directors to do character.

    Andrew Garfield was great — Maguire was good, but Garfield outdoes him solidly. Martin Sheen was perfect. Emma Stone is enchanting, Denis Leary was terrific. And the script plays so well with themes of heroism and responsibility without putting it on signboards; everything about the Peter-Gwen relationship builds on one or the other of them being heroic or caring, and putting themselves out to aid others. Gwen’s relationships with her father and Peter are paralleled nicely, Connors is striving to end weakness but shows at every crucial turn that he’s morally weak…

    It’s a damn good movie. Everyone who’s dithering about seeing it on the big screen, go. You’ll be glad you did.

    kdb

  10. Et tu, Kurt?

    I liked Amazing Spider-Man (or ASM for short, while the Raimi’s were SM1, etc.) but…I’d seen it all before. I saw it all 10 years ago. And I’ve seen pretty much the same tone and action in all Marvel superhero movies for the last five years.

    Yes, the take a bit different from Raimis. But all of Marvel’s movie struggle with the “reality level” — from the saturday morning cartoon level of the FF films to the more sophisticated but still awkward X-men and Hulk franchises. The Raimi films (and the 70s and 80s superhero movies) had a more campy way of dealing with it, a holdover form the Batman TV show perhaps.

    And of course there’s the grim ‘n’ gritty world where psychos wear masks — the Nolan-verse, the Vaughn-verse.

    ASM had the standard Marvel level of reality but then threw in corny stuff like the crane operators helping out. I stil find that kind of tonal shift annoying.

    That said, I’m super jaded. And I do understand why audiences like ASM: Garfield and Stone are enchanting and audiences love Spider-Man.

    PS: any questions about reality levels are swept aside in any film in which Robert Downey Jr. appears on screen.

  11. I think the “reality level” of the Marvel-based movies vary quite a bit, as might be expected from movies made by different studios — but the audiences I saw it with applauded the crane scene. I don’t think it’s a tonal shift so much as another way of showing that what “with great power comes great responsibility” really means is “with power comes responsibility.” Even a crane operator’s a hero when he can do something and chooses to. It expands the idea from “the hero must save us” to “we all choose how to act, what to do.”

    That’s the lesson of Spider-Man, and it’s not just a lesson _for_ Spider-Man, it’s the core idea: Step up. Do what you can.

    Peter does, Gwen does, Captain Stacy does, the crane operator does. Richard Parker did, Curt Connors doesn’t. He folds when threatened. Ben Parker steps up. Richard, Ben and Stacy all give their lives doing it. But they do it, and it’s the right thing to do.

    As someone on Twitter put it, quite nicely: The Avengers save the world because they have to. Spider-Man saves the city because he should. The Avengers movie is packed with fun, but AMAZING SPIDER-MAN has a core idea, and the whole film is built strongly around it.

    I haven’t seen that in many superhero movies before. And I haven’t seen it done that well.

    I’d love to have seen it all ten years ago. But I think this one brought more to the table and did it so nicely they just made it look easy.

    kdb

  12. I think I’m going to wait to see it until it’s on DVD. Everything I’ve seen of ASM so far looks great, but I just can’t work up much excitement. Blame it on Post-Avengers Superhero Movie Excitement Burnout. (This way I’ll be able to avoid 3D too, so, bonus.)

    Kurt makes a very fine pitch for it, though.

  13. The crane operators bit wasn’t just corny, it was absurd. A construction project that covers several city blocks in a row was a half-baked cheat to tick the public-gets-behind-the-hero checkbox. Sure, audiences go for scenes like that, but they should also make sense.

    Connors’ motivation for turning the whole city into lizards was puzzling (er… so they could regrow their missing arms like him?). It was obviously just invented to give the film a large scale threat on a tower for the climax. There were a lot of things to like in the film, but transparently formulaic plotting like this undermined it for me.

  14. Was I the only one left feeling that there was a massive amount of the film dropped on the cutting room floor at the last minute?

    The Trailers has a higher than usual percentage of stuff that didn’t make it into the film. Curt Connors family were cut from the film completely. What happened to scenes of Connor’s boss confronting him in the sewers? Why did I see a photo of Peter giving Connors the formula by writing it on a blackboard instead of the way it happens in the film? Were the Lizard Cops really only supposed to appear in two scenes?

  15. I actually liked the Crane Operators bit. To me it was one of those Chris Sims bits in a movie that you sort of chuckle at and just go with – and feel better for doing so.

    And yeah, I would put the movie in my top 5 in a heartbeat.

  16. The movie was just okay and dragged in many places. I can see a kid too young for 2002 Spider-man getting into this film, but for everyone else it’s too soon to spend that much time on the origin again.

  17. Soooooo…..does JK Simmons reprise his role as J. Jonah Jameson or not? That’s the main reason I’m dithering at the moment.

    If not, when is Sony going to greenlight a JJJ solo film…?

  18. “It’s important to AMAZING FANTASY #15 that Peter catch the burglar in order to recognize him and learn the lesson, but in this version, he knows it’s the guy already, and has learned the lesson.”

    Lord, I can’t believe I’m going to argue with Kurt Busiek about writing, but…

    The dinner scene at the Stacy’s makes it clear that Peter HASN’T learned his lesson. At that point, as is explained by Captain Stacy, Peter is just out for revenge. In this movie, Peter doesn’t learn his lesson in responsiblity from the man who raised him from childhood. He learns it from some dude he had dinner with one night.

    There’s other stuff to get into besides that, of course, but I don’t want to needlessly trash an okay film.

    Mike

  19. “Curt Connors doesn’t. He folds when threatened.”

    Except, you know, for the whole saving Spider-Man’s life at the end.

    Sorry, couldn’t resist.

    Mike

  20. A review at Grantland considers the appeal of superhero movies, and the boredom that comes with repetition:

    The fact that Parker is initially a bit careless with his powers, that his saintly uncle dies because of his carelessness, that this will be the bitter moral lesson that allows him to become a hero. That with great power comes great responsibility. The Amazing Spider-Man would be a good, maybe even great movie, if they hadn’t just made it. [. . ]

    On some basic level, popular filmmaking has a lot to do with comforting its audience: reaffirming specific myths over and over again; reassuring viewers that they are doing the right thing, that their lives do not lack for meaning. To complain about a certain quality of sameness in American movies is to willfully misunderstand many of the basic facts about why they are made. [. . .]

    But we as moviegoers can still make a meaningful distinction between this decade’s glut of superhero movies and the same exact superhero movie, made twice. For an additional $220 million. Emma Stone is our next Julia Roberts. If we’re just going to recycle roles out here, at least give her Pretty Woman.

    A reviewer at Slate had similar complaints about repetition. Both Marvel and DC are fond of recycling origin stories, of course. If someone wanted to write a close-ended superhero story, one good approach would be to do his origin, jump ahead five years to a dramatic battle, and then jump ahead another n years to his life-defining battle.

    Are superhero origins so packed with emotion and drama that reading reworked versions of them has the same impact that, say, watching yet another performance of Hamlet does? Or should the viewer or reader demand something new?

    SRS

  21. I just paid my ten bucks to watch amazing last night, and that movie is weak sauce. Its the Amazingly tedious and derivative emo Spidey.
    For the record, i’m not a masochist, if i spend ten bucks i want/hope to be entertained.

  22. I’d pay good money to see JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson for 90 minutes.

    I note that he has reprised his role in various Marvel cartoons, but not the current film.

  23. I still like Spiderman 2 best (it’s my number one comic book film) but this one is a solid 2nd. It needlessly complicated the origin just a bit and the thing with him chasing the burglar kinda lost me for a bit but other than that it was really good.

  24. So Synsidar are you saying we should expect all hero movies to work like the current Batman franchise or that at least that is different than rehasing the same story premiese over and over?

  25. So Synsidar are you saying we should expect all hero movies to work like the current Batman franchise or that at least that is different than rehasing the same story premiese over and over?

    Critics assess the aesthetics of a movie. In the case of Spider-Man, if the movie rehashes the origin, there’s not really anything new for the non-Spider-Man fan to get involved with. The theme’s the same, the developments are the same. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a theme that might resonate with someone who’s never read a story using it before, but if he has, it’s about as meaningful as a romance with the theme that “Love conquers all.”

    Comic book fans and readers don’t read stories for the same reasons that critics and aesthetes do. When Marchman hammered Wein on BEFORE WATCHMEN recently, he was reacting to the aesthetic sins that were committed, not how readers react to the characters. When Moore co-produced WATCHMEN, he was probably expecting readers to react to the political elements–the criticism of Reaganism and American exceptionalism–and the deconstruction of superheroes. But, instead, many readers reacted enthusiastically to the “grim and gritty” elements–people dying, heroes being antiheroic. So, decades later, “grim and gritty” is a superhero fiction subgenre and many people are probably reading WATCHMEN for the wrong reasons. (I bought another copy two weeks ago, after donating my first one 22 years ago, and appreciated it much more.)

    If movie producers return so often to a hero’s origin because the subject matter plays better with an audience, and finding non-origin plot material with the same impact is harder, then that’s an aesthetic problem. But wait, say, seven years to rehash the hero’s origin–there might have been enough turnover in the movie-going audience to produce another hit. That’s the reasoning comic book publishers would use.

    SRS

  26. >> The crane operators bit wasn’t just corny, it was absurd. A construction project that covers several city blocks in a row was a half-baked cheat to tick the public-gets-behind-the-hero checkbox.>>

    It’s not a single construction project; it’s multiple projects. That’s specifically referenced.

    >> The dinner scene at the Stacy’s makes it clear that Peter HASN’T learned his lesson.>>

    I was referring to the end of the movie. Much like Peter’s learned the lesson at the end of AF #15, he’s learned it by the end of the movie — in both cases, the lesson is the substance of the story, not something to tick off halfway through.

    But Peter still doesn’t need to catch the guy to learn the lesson, because the stories play out differently. In the comic he doesn’t see the face of Ben’s killer until he catches him (making the capture essential to the lesson); in the movie, he knows it from the start (making the capture inessential to the lesson). But I bet we’ll see him again.

    >> In this movie, Peter doesn’t learn his lesson in responsiblity from the man who raised him from childhood. He learns it from some dude he had dinner with one night.>>

    I don’t agree. He learns it from multiple sources, because it’s the development that occurs throughout the movie, and doesn’t need to be done the same way as it was in the comic.

    In the original comic, by the way, he doesn’t learn it from Uncle Ben — it’s the narrator who gives the line. Ben Parker never gives Peter a moral pep-talk, and Peter learns the lesson from experience.

    Much as he does in the movie, except that (a) it’s played out over more time, since they have more room, and (b) Ben is part of it, passing along the belief of Peter’s father.

    [One criticism I have of the movie, by the way: Peter’s mother is dead too, and nobody seems to give a crap. It’s all father father father; almost never “parents.”]

    “Curt Connors doesn’t. He folds when threatened.”

    >> Except, you know, for the whole saving Spider-Man’s life at the end.>>

    He’s not being threatened at that point. He’s already lost, and there’s no “get” for him in folding. But yes, it’s a moment of redemption for him after he’s been beaten. Saving Peter at the end fits his character as we’ve seen it. He’s not a bad man, he’s a weak man. He genuinely wants to help others — but if you threaten his own chance at salvation, he folds. Once there’s nothing left to lose, he acts like a decent man again.

    If he ever has something to lose again, though, I wouldn’t count on him…

    kdb

  27. “I was referring to the end of the movie.”

    Would you be satisfied with the way this movie butchered the origin if this was the first Spider-Man ever made? Even toward the end, Peter says he has to stop the Lizard because “I made him”. That’s personal guilt and nothing like the general responsibility to do good that’s at the heart of the character. And again, Peter’s supposed to learn this lesson NOT from the death of his Uncle Ben and his role in it…but from the death of some guy he barely knows? I can see what you’re getting at, but this film takes the purity and power of Spider-Man’s origin and dillutes it.

    “He’s not being threatened at that point.”

    But he’s clearly threatened by Osborn’s guy to move to human trials or else and Connors chooses “or else”. Then, after experimenting on himself in search of his own salvation, he hears that the Osborn guy is going to do the experiment at the VA. What does Connors do? He tries to stop him, even as he feels his own body start to mutate. And I think the voices Connors hears after that pretty clearly indicate that it is as much artificially induced madness as moral weakness that guides him from then on. Again, I see what you’re getting at, but the story isn’t as well written as you’re making out.

    And just in case you’re still reading, what did you make of the film totally bollixing the Gwen/Peter dynamic? That she knows he’s Spider-Man and doesn’t hold it against him, even though he was connected to her father’s death, wipes away the emotional and dramatic foundation of what made their story in the comics so compelling. Think they’re going to come up with something just as good?

    And what about the comparison of Gwen to Mary Jane from Spider-Man I and II? In those flicks at least, Mary Jane as a character had an existence, a back story and future goals that didn’t revolve around Peter. As wonderfully performed as she is by Emma Stone, Gwen’s not much more than a girlfriend/plot device in ASM. Mary Jane was someone who got swept up in Peter’s life in the first two films. Does Gwen have a life outside of Peter’s needs in this one?

    Mike

  28. My iPad won’t copy and paste here, so:

    1. I don’t think the movie did butcher the origin. I think it adapted it.

    2. Yes, he tries standing up to that guy, and then when he’s threatened — having his toys taken away — he proceeds to human trials on himself. I think that scene is another moment where he buckles, where need overcomes principle and he does something dangerous and stupid because he’s too scared to live with the consequences of taking a stand.

    3. I don’t think the film bollixed the Gwen relationship, either. I also don’t think it was beating its wife. It doesn’t present the same story as the comics, but that’s not a fault; it’s based on the comics, not simply a replication of them. Nor do I think Gwen is an empty character with no goals who tutors Flash, is pursuing a career in science (and doing better at it than Peter, so far) and who takes her own stands and sticks with them. I think she’s got more of a life and future goals and family and so on than she did in the comics, even.

    But we should probably drop this. You didn’t like stuff that I liked, but that’s not a crime or a moral failing. Asking me what I think of how the movie did awful things when I don’t think they were awful mainly just says that you don’t like ’em.

    I think the movie’s terrific. I like this Gwen. I think this Connors has more depth than the comics version, too. I think fixing your mistakes isn’t just about guilt, but about responsibility. And I think it’s a great script.

    So it goes. I’ll see it a bunch more times and study how they pulled off what I liked. You won’t. One man’s fish is another man’s poisson, or words to that effect.

    kdb

  29. “Yes, he tries standing up to that guy, and then when he’s threatened — having his toys taken away — he proceeds to human trials on himself.”

    “Nor do I think Gwen is an empty character with no goals who tutors Flash, is pursuing a career in science (and doing better at it than Peter, so far) and who takes her own stands and sticks with them.”

    Yeah, we clearly see different things here, but I just want to address these points. Why doesn’t Connors just let Oscorp do human trials on other people, which is what was threatened? Testing on himself rather than allow that to happen is not at all “moral buckling”. As it’s established in the film, he clearly believes such testing is incredibly dangerous and unwise and doesn’t even consider using himself as a guinea pig, despite his deep longing to be whole. But when other people are threatened, he takes the risk to save them.

    As for Gwen, why does she like science? I can come up with some explanations for why Mary Jane in SM I and II wanted to pursue a career on stage, given her family background. Why is Gwen so into science that she’s got a job as Oscorp before graduating high school?

    Also, you didn’t really answer the question. Would you have been satisfied with this “adaptation” of Spider-Man’s origin if this had been the first Spider-film ever made?

    And one more thing, this isn’t just about opinion. You loved the movie. I kinda liked it. This is about you making some fairly sweeping statements about the quality of writing in the movie that, frankly, I don’t think stand up to examination.

    Mike

  30. He does t just allow it because he’s a weak man, not a bad one. He knows it’s the right thing to do, but then he’s threatened over it and he folds, doing the wrong thing.

    I don’t think for a moment he takes the risk to save them. I think he takes the risk because he fears losing his chance to cure himself, which is the threat made to him. Only once he has his arm back does he make an effort to save the vets.

    Why does comics Gwen like dancing? I don’t think her interest in science needs an origin. Given that they’re at Midtown Science High, I’d bet even Flash has some interest in it; it’s a magnet school.

    I think I answered the question as asked — you asked if I was satisfied with the way the movie butchered the origin. I don’t agree that it did, so that was my answer. But would I have been satisfied with this as the first Spider-Man movie? Id have been over the moon.

    And I still think we should end this. You don’t agree with me, fine. But I think the writing is terrific; I’m content that we disagree.