A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

What's their excuse?

I mean, I saw this piece of crap for free, what was everyone else thinking?

The sci-fi smackdown "Alien vs. Predator," featuring the creatures of the "Alien" and "Predator" franchises, debuted as the No. 1 weekend movie with $38.25 million, studio estimates showed Sunday.

"Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement," with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews reprising their royal roles, opened in second place with a three-day gross of $23 million, pushing its total since premiering Wednesday to $37.2 million.
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"This continues the trend of combining franchises to very strong box-office results," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "If you're a fan of the 'Alien' movies, you want to see this movie. If you're a fan of 'Predator," you want to see this movie."

Geez, when you put it that way, why not just put every character from every genre movie or TV series ever made in one movie and call it a day? The budget would be pretty outrageous, but think of the opening grosses for something like Alien vs. Predator vs. Godzilla vs. Kerr Avon vs. Batman vs. Min Mei vs. Yoda vs. Spider-Man vs. Sam Beckett vs. The Gorn Captain from 'Arena' vs....well, hopefully you get the idea.

Audiences shelled out $16.8 million to see "Alien vs. Predator" on Friday, but the movie's gross fell to $12.5 million Saturday, a steep 26 percent decline. Most new movies do better business on Saturday than Friday.

That's a sign that "Alien vs. Predator" could follow the pattern of "Freddy vs. Jason" and other horror tales, which tend to open well then plunge in subsequent weekends.

Still, "Freddy vs. Jason" topped out at a healthy $82.2 million domestically. Budgeted at $60 million, "Alien vs. Predator" would turn a solid profit for 20th Century Fox if it matches the gross of "Freddy vs. Jason."

Movies like AvP are, truthfully, more or less critic-proof (Van Helsing, for example, took in over $51 million its opening weekend), so the fact that no press screenings were offered made little difference. Word of mouth, on the other hand, is pretty lethal, and most people inclined to see AvP at all most likely did so the first weekend. It may make a $20 or $30 million profit, but it won't approach Van Helsing's $120 million total gross.

Of course, Van Helsing cost $160 million to make.

All this just proves that, no matter critically panned a movie is, geeks (a category in which I include myself) are going to see just about anything Hollywood throws at them. I'd make some comment about the need to become a little more discriminating, except I know that - were I not a film reviewer myself and got to see it for free - I probably would've been one of those guys in line to see AvP opening night.