The Reject Report Experiences The Revenge of the Fallen

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 24, 2009

Welcome to a special early edition of the Reject Report — early because it’s summer and we are into the mid-week release season again. This week Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits the theaters and one of the big questions on people’s minds concerns how well it will do.

We’ve heard a lot of hype from a lot of people predicting this will be the big box-office winner of the summer and could set records that could rival The Dark Knight. However, I am wise to these stories by now and I am convinced these reports about box office tracking are planted in the press to hype the movie up. I have heard some general trends about the tracking — that this movie might do better with women than expected because apparently a lot of girls like Shia LaBeouf. And of course, all the dudes like Megan Fox. What we are not getting are stories about whether people might actually like the movie. Good question.

I could care less about the tracking, because the fact is we won’t know for sure what the box office will be until the box office totals come in. What we do know for sure is that people are looking closely and waiting for the Wednesday numbers to see if this flick sets the Wednesday record. The Wednesday record was set in 2007 with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It brought in $44.2 million on its Wednesday opening night.

The other big record that people are looking at is the five-day record of $203 million set by The Dark Knight last year. I kind of find it hard to believe this record will fall by the wayside, but more on that later.

What I find a little baffling is that while there is all this hype out there about how well the movie will do, I find the reaction from the movie fans to be a little … muted. I mean, yes, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for this movie and a lot of people camping out for the midnight screenings and so forth, but to me it doesn’t feel like the kind of frenzy that we had with some of the flicks last year — like The Dark Knight. Yet there are people insisting this movie could beat The Dark Knight’s records. I just don’t get it.

Mind you, The Dark Knight’s opening day was just pure craziness. How the hell much did it make on opening day? $67 million? Something ridiculous. Really, who can ever hope to top that?

It could be that I am really out of the loop on this one and am misreading the public opinion surrounding this Transformers sequel. I guess the thing that has me wondering is all the comments I hear and read bashing Michael Bay and his movies. There are a lot of Michael Bay haters out there, calling him a schlock-artist, and they claim in unison they aren’t going to show up.

Another thing has me wondering about the movie. This has just popped up in the last 24 hours or so: this Transformers 2 sequel is tanking with the critics. Now keep in mind, when the first Transformers movie came out, the flick was running at about 80 percent around the time when I wrote my column about it, but then the reviews started coming in throughout the week and it finally ended up dipping below 60 percent by week’s end, into the “rotten” category.

But last I checked Transformers 2 was down to 26 percent on the Tomatometer. That’s just seven percent ahead of Year One. I know, already, you think the critics are idiots. Still, that’s a lot of “idiots” trashing the movie — more than the last time, in fact. That’s troubling.

The one thing I have noticed this year is that the really big box office success stories of the summer so far — Star Trek, Up, even The Hangover – have been big, freaking successes with the critics. Now, a lot of people are saying this Transformers 2 movie will be critic-proof, but I wonder about that. I wonder if you are going to see a lot of frustrated fans of the first Transformers movie walking out in disgust, criticizing both Michael Bay and the movie. I guess I still remember what happened to Terminator Salvation earlier this summer, and how I got so badly burned with my predictions for that movie. That was another movie that a lot of supposed smart people said would be a huge hit, and those folks were all DEAD wrong. And part of the reason they were wrong was because so many frustrated fans were telling their friends how they felt let down by the movie.

I guess what I am really saying is that I am not at all confident about my prediction this week, but here I go anyway.

Here’s the way I see the next few days shaking out for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I see a big Wednesday, a dip on Thursday, and a slight recovery on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday is anyone’s guess. It’s going to depend on how people react walking out of theaters on Wednesday night. I’m just saying that if the buzz is not there from the people who count the most, the FANS, then this movie will just end up being another $300 million movie and not the record-setter that a lot of people are predicting it to be.

For the next five days I see daily totals (in the millions) of $43, 30, 35, 35 and 25. That adds up to $168 million, which is on the lower end of the range people are predicting for the movie, but still an impressive showing. It would also fall short of the overall five-day record but it would be be a five-day record for a movie bowing on a Wednesday.

And for the record — I am going out on a limb and predicting no Friday record. Maybe I’ll be wrong, who knows. Keep in mind the last Transformers movie didn’t do anywhere close to $40 million a day at any point in its run, as I recall. And that was a flick that grossed well over $300 million by the time it finished its domestic run. Setting the Wednesday record will be a tall order, even with the midnight screenings.

We’ll see what happens. If the records start falling like dominoes this weekend, great. But for some reason my Spider senses just aren’t tingling the way they were for the Spider-Man movies, for The Dark Knight, and everything else. You’d think they would be, given the relentless hype about this flick and the strong year we have had at the box office in general.

I’ll be back with my usual weekend prediction column later this week and by then we will have some early numbers to report on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Maybe even some records. See you then.

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