Hello again, my fellow geeks!
Wow, last weekend Marvel proved that they actually do have the golden touch and, for the moment anyway, can do no wrong as their 170 million dollar gamble, Guardians of the Galaxy, proved to be anything but by blasting apart the August record with 94.3 Million dollars in its first 3 days of release. It was the rare film that actually improved from Friday to Saturday and only had a slight drop on Sunday.
By comparison, last months Transformers: Age of Extinction opened ahead of the July 4th holiday, was the fourth film in a proven franchise, starred a legit action movie star in Mark Wahlberg and cost 250 million dollars and made about 6 million dollars more in the same amount of time.
I know most of the people reading this will have already seen the film and I’m pretty sure will agree: it works on pretty much every level. I was as giddy as a teenage boy as the film unfolded. It was tight, funny and action packed in unexpected ways. I had complete faith in writer/director James Gunn and my faith was rewarded in spades. He delivered the feel good summer blockbuster of the year in my opinion and based on the reviews and the reaction from people leaving the theater after seeing it for the 2nd and 3rd time, there are a lot of people who share that opinion.
I don’t really think there is anything coming out this weekend that can knock Guardians out of the number one spot, but there are a couple of films that are going to try.
First up is the reboot of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (PG-13 101 Minutes) the long in developement and somewhat long-awaited new Turtle flick that was causing controversy before cameras even rolled. First there was the story that the Turtles wouldn’t be from earth anymore and would instead be aliens. Then there were leaks about different story points and then we got into heated arguments about the look of the Turtles. Now, I say we but I am saying that in the sense of “we” the geek community. I watched the cartoon in the late 80’s and I saw the first film in theaters and that is where my involvement ends. I understand that everyone has their thing and we all have that special property that we found at a certain time in our lives that took on a larger role in our geek selves than it did for other people and for a lot of them, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was and is that thing. That being said, lets all step back and take a look at reality here, okay? It’s called Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtles. Those four words don’t usually go together. In fact, I would wager that until this property, those four words had never been spoken in that particular order. My point is, lets take a breath and remember what we’re looking at. It’s a story that by its very nature, is ridiculous.
The early reviews have been….um….mixed? That is the kindest way to put that. If this is your kind of movie, then you will probably enjoy it. If you are not into Turtles…well, there is always our second feature of the week: Twister 2…or rather INTO THE STORM (PG-13 89 Minutes) which is about a notch and a half above a SyFy Original Movie. In fact, the very first time I saw images from the film I thought it was a SyFy movie. It just has that feel. In fact, I think the only thing that elevated it to theatrical feature is the effects budget, which had to be most of the films total budget.
In any event, it doesn’t look like a good movie per se, but it does look like an entertaining movie. And in the dog days of August, sometimes that’s enough.
Both films are opening with advanced screenings tonight at 7 and 8pm in select theaters and tomorrow pretty much everywhere there is a movie screen.
If you can only see one movie though, just go see Guardians of the Galaxy again.
That about does it for this week, but next week we join Sly and Arnie for one last round-up of over the hill action heroes in…PG-13?
Yeah. My thoughts exactly.
Until then, Keep the Projector Threaded.