By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Wrap-Up
The X-Files was Xcellent, but Xhibits early signs that it won’t be a mega-hit. The $31 million take was nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn’t a black, gooey substance that’s going to take over the planet. The box office take dipped from Friday to Saturday (from $12.6 million to $10.2 million) suggesting that many of the must-see viewers saw on Friday and that the overall market beyond that group is limited. The other summer hits to date, The Truman Show ($10.1m/$12.5m), Godzilla ($12.7m/$17.3m) and Deep Impact ($13.2m/$15.9m) all, as you can see, went up from Friday to Saturday, as does almost every single film every week. (The one recent anomaly is Can’t Hardly Wait, which did it for the second week in a row. Why? Could be showings lost to Mulan and The X-Files on Saturday this week. I’ll have to look further into it.) With this in mind, I’m eyeballing a big drop-off next weekend and a significant fight to pass the $100 million mark in the domestic future.
In second, it was Mulan, with a solid, maybe even surprising, $23 million. More on the movie below, but I got e-mail from a reader who reminded me (too late to print) that the last three “disappointing” Disney films all opened with more than $20 million. Mulan is no disappointment. Truman and his show dropped to third, falling almost exactly as hard as it did last week (38 percent to 37 percent), for a $12.2 million take. Six Days, Seven Nights (dubbed by one friend, Three Days Too Long) fell 36 percent to fourth place, with about $10.5 million. And A Perfect Murder fell by the six more percentage points than the difference in Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow‘s ages, 35 percent, to $7.3 million and fifth place. Can’t Hardly Wait couldn’t hardly hold onto its teen audience, dropping 51 percent to $3.9 million and sixth. In seventh, Hope Floats to seventh with $3.1 million while hopes for Godzilla to pass Deep Impact faded as El Lizardo dropped 52 percent (after falling only 37 percent last weekend) to add $3 million, only $300,000 more than Deep Impact’s $2.7 million ninth place showing. And The Horse Whisperer continues its soft ride downhill, adding another $2.4 million to its $60 million-plus total.
THE GOOD: Mulan shocked me. This film is easily the best traditional work out of Disney since The Lion King. (Toy Story has its own groundbreaking category.) And while it shares some of the same breathtaking elements of The Lion King (a unique culturally-based color palette, a powerful villain and a clear and heartfelt theme that doesn’t get lost in the sidekick merchandising), Mulan really creates its own place in Disney’s history. (And frankly, it really pisses me off to see so many critics complaining that “it’s just another Disney film.” I think they went in with blinders on and forgot to do their jobs. See the movie first, the history second.) I may be pushing it a bit, with The Truman Show in mind, but right now, Mulan is the best film of the summer of 1998 to date. Lots more on why this Wednesday.
THE BAD: The X-Files is not a bad film. In fact, it’s pretty damned good. But it does suffer from the Star Trek Syndrome. Protecting core characters, themes and setting up the future (they should have fought that!) hurt the film. And for me, the “opening up” of the series for film, did nothing but show us some big sets, bigger explosions and some fast helicopters. Smart characters talking to each other about ideas is what makes the show so good. Screen size doesn’t matter. In this case, the mob sentiment that “it was a great season ender/season opener” is dead on. I think that even X-philes will admit, they didn’t get much more from this film than they would have gotten from the same story being told on the TV series.
THE UGLY: I’ll admit it. I’m intimidated by the passion that people have for The X-Files. Hitting this film like a piñata makes me the next inanimate object to get strung up. So, no more specific descriptions, for better or worse, until more of the world, especially Australia, gets their chance to see the film.
THE BEYOND CONTEST: So, you checked out our The Beyond page and you want to see the film, but it’s not in your town yet. Well, I can’t distribute the film to your local bijou (though it’s done a fairly remarkable $33,975 in just 36 showings in its two weekends of Midnight showings so far), but I can get you your very own eyeball from the film. Here’s what you have to do. Send me your description of the most disgusting moment you’ve ever seen from any movie ever. One hundred words or less. The 10 most disgusting entries get an eyeball gorged directly out of the head of a The Beyond cast member. (Or something like that.)
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Mulan + The Truman Show = The True Mulan Show. Jim Carrey stars as the fierce Asian girl who was adopted by The Disney Company at birth and whose every move is watched by a team of two million animators who animate her life as she lives it. The movie begins when Mulan gets a hold of a copy of GQ, realizes the animators aren’t nearly well-dressed enough to be gay and that she is not, in fact, in San Francisco at all, but on the Disney backlot. When Mulan finally makes contact with Michael Eisner, he convinces her, as he has most everyone else (especially himself), that he actually is God, and she returns to her unreal life.
JUST WONDERING: If Michael Eisner is God, why aren’t ABC’s ratings better? Likewise, if Chris Carter really knows the answer that’s out there, why did The X-Files end up on Fox?
BAD AD WATCH: Disney giveth and Disney taketh away. As much as I loved Mulan, Disney’s three page spread for Armageddon knocked me out. First, it has plenty of lightweight critics in its first page of all pull quotes. Why Disney would be trying to turn Armageddon into a critic’s movie is beyond me. Empowering critics to make their thumbs, up or down, of importance on a critic-proof film makes no sense. Then, they top it off with a two page spread with nothing but the title, the opening date and a word from the man who has become the ultimate “Blurb-O-Matic” for the ’90s, Ron “I loved having open heart surgery!” Brewington. He say’s “Wow.” I say, “Ugh!”
READER OF THE DAY: Chris (aka Maniac) writes: “The X-Files has a humongous advantage over Armageddon because if this movie is frightening enough, it could take the No. 1 crown this summer. I predict the top 10 May-August will look like this: 1. Small Soldiers $215m, 2. Armageddon $190m, 3. The X-Files $140m, 4. Lethal Weapon 4 $130m, 5. Deep Impact $129m, 6. Godzilla $128m, 7. Blade $115m, 8. The Mask of Zorro $110m, 9. Dr. Dolittle $104m, 10. The Truman Show $103m, with Saving Private Ryan and The Negotiator also ending up with a respectable $79 million apiece.”
