Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
May 28, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: The budget for this project was massive but the opening weekend has pretty much calmed any fears. X-Men is going to do just fine at the domestic box office and the international numbers are going to be big. With a reported $200 million budget, there had to have been concerns from the outset. Fox probably became more and more comfortable as they saw how red hot the box office has become over the last couple of weeks. Going into Memorial Day weekend, it just became a matter of how big the opening was going to be. Sure, the drop next week will be noticeable, but the reviews are surprisingly good, and I would expect strong holds in weekends three and four.
Bruce Hall: This is excellent, with one reservation. X-Men: DOFP erased the stench of X3 in almost every way except at the box office, taking a close franchise second place only to Brett Ratner's widely hated abomination. Somehow that just doesn't seem fair. Still, even though Fox tried to gamely lowball their expectations (come on guys, you gave us a release date for the sequel last December), this is about the result I believe most people were expecting.
The X-Men have never been more popular except, it appears, when Brett Ratner was in command. I'm having a little trouble accepting that.
Edwin Davies: I'd say that this was a pretty excellent result, even if it also highlights just how much momentum the franchise regained with First Class. Even though that installment didn't do great business compared to the other films in the franchise, it did remind people that you could make a decent film out of the X-Men and really ignited interest for a take on one of the most iconic stories the comics ever told. The return of Bryan Singer also probably helped get a lot of people on board who had drifted away from the franchise after he left to make Superman Returns and let Brett Ratner mess everything up, a situation which ended up pleasing almost no one. Still, the fact that it shot under The Last Stand despite eight years of inflation and the addition of 3D surcharges suggests that the series is still trying to make back lost ground.
Tim Briody: Once again we see the value of giving back a few bucks with a reboot. It really pays off when it comes to the next film. This is fine even if Hugh Jackman is starting to get a little old to pull off Wolverine.
Max Braden: I don't think I can get on board with "excellent." For an ensemble film in the franchise, tying together both the original cast and new cast members, I would have expected to have seen over $100 million, if not tens of millions more. It's a movie I do want to see, but I wasn't rushing out to see it this weekend because of two elements in the trailer: the Sentinels looked to me like amateurish CGI and too reminiscent of the drones in Iron Man 2, and despite all the fantastic sci-fi of the X-Men, including mind reading and teleportation, I'm never really keen on time travel (except in Back to the Future and romances like About Time). It just seems like a cheat or a crutch. I'm also far more interested in how the X-Men blend into contemporary society, rather than how they run around on some post-apocalyptic landscape set in the future. On the other hand, time travel does help bring in the young and old versions of the main characters as well as involve newer cast members, which had to be one of the major draws for audiences. The other scene that caught my attention was the big knife about to go into Storm's back. Aside from some evil satisfaction at the potential demise of one of my least liked characters, the bait of "which main characters will die?" is always a strong attraction for audiences, which is why episodic TV dramas use it every sweeps season.
David Mumpower: I actually wound up a bit disappointed in Days of Future Past in terms of the movie itself. Acknowledging that, I would like to counter several prior statements in the discussion. First, I do not believe Jackman is getting long in the tooth to play Wolverine because that is the genius of the character. He is centuries old and grizzled looking. That appearance in the comics affords Jackman the ability to portray the character for an indefinite period, assuming he remains willing and does not price himself out of future projects. At a minimum, Jackman is an absolute must for an Avengers project at some point. He has earned that sort of acknowledgement after seven appearances as the character.
With regards to the ongoing comparisons of Days of Future Past to The Last Stand with regards to box office, the statement is valid that a lot more tickets were sold for the Brett Ratner movie. I also agree that the seminal nature of the Days of Future Past storyline in combination with the return of both X-Men casts boosted the box office in a somewhat artificial manner. Fox stacked the deck as it were. As such, I understand Max’s argument that the expectations for this project were high.
Where everyone loses me is when the belief is espoused that the seventh X-Men project is not an excellent performer due to its failing to become the high water mark for the franchise. We are evaluating a movie that either 64% or 67% higher than the previous title, depending upon whether we use First Class or The Wolverine as the baseline. To a larger point, any project that grosses $110.6 million over Memorial Day weekend has performed exceptionally well. That goes double for Days of Future Past, which actually surpassed Avatar to become Fox's largest international debut. The latest X-Men project has already grossed over $300 million worldwide. First Class managed “only” $353 million during its entire global run. Days of Future Past will become the most popular X-Men movie in terms of worldwide box office as soon as next weekend. That is a sublime achievement.
Kim Hollis: I also think that we have to remember, when looking at X-Men: The Last Stand’s performance, that it followed an extremely popular and well liked movie in X2: X-Men United. If we’re going to argue that the quality of a previous film buys additional audience for the following film, we have to acknowledge the impact for X-Men 3 as well. After that film and the subsequent less-than-stellar Wolverine projects diminished the franchise, it is beyond impressive to me that First Class was able to elevate the X-men back to a level where Days of Future Past can be a $100 million plus earner over Memorial Day.
Edwin Davies: Days of Future Past had the second best opening of any X-Men film after 2006's The Last Stand, which is doubly impressive since it follows a pair of films that had two of the lowest opening weekends and final tallies (First Class and The Wolverine) of the entire series. Now 14 years and seven films old, how would you describe the state of the X-Men franchise?
Jay Barney: I think the franchise is doing just fine. That may change, and maybe we are at a temporary peak, but Fox has to be happy their film anchored the Memorial Day frame this successfully. I had never considered the number of films to be one every two years, and you would think a series with that level of exposure would be suffering a little bit of fatigue. Even if the Wolverine films and the most recent X-Men film haven't performed as highly as the original three, this weekend erases any doubt about the franchise. This is a huge opening and the worldwide take is going to be massive. No, this is not Avengers, but this will not be the last of the X-Men films.
Bruce Hall: Excluding X3, the franchise prior to now averaged a domestic opening weekend of around $66 million. Add in That Which Must Not Be Named and the figure rises to $72 million. While this cannot be ignored, to me it paints a picture of a franchise that is well liked but not necessarily beloved. However the amount of praise this DOFP is getting might signal a reboot not just of the franchise but of the general public's relationship with it.
If they can score a second such success in a row with Apocalypse in 2016, the deal will be sealed.
Edwin Davies: As I hinted in response to the previous question, I think that this represents an improvement in the fortunes of the X-Men franchise while also suggesting that they are still trying to recover from the damage caused by the one-two punch of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Those films both did decent business but were so bad, and were received with such hostility from audiences, that the two films prior to Days of Future Past felt more like acts of contrition than films. Fox seemed to realize that they had messed up and needed to make amends, and this weekend's result suggests that they have been mostly forgiven, but only mostly.
The series has slipped from being one of the top tier superhero franchises to being somewhere in the middle, but it definitely feels like it is on the upswing with this one, both critically and in terms of domestic and international box office. That last point feels key, to me, because the series has always struggled to match the global impact of the Spider-man films or any of the MCU films, so if it can make huge gains now then that will probably bode well for the future success of the series.
Max Braden: Despite the box office numbers this weekend, I feel like the series is muddled. When the first X-Men opened in 2000, it was the first modern comic book movie and set the stage for everything that has come since. Immediately Wolverine was my favorite of the characters and remained that way for me for years, so I was happy to get more of his backstory. It's hard to say if Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine had been better if I'd still favor the character, but at this point, and with so much of his material not involving Jean, I feel like his story has dragged on.
Where I'd have liked to have balanced that with more origin background of Professor X and Magneto, the addition of what feels like dozens of other characters has overwhelmed the main ones. Professor X, Jean, Wolverine, Magneto, Mystique. Just focus on those and leave the others in the background (or give them a TV show like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) . I think the series has suffered from too much of a good thing in terms of character count. By contrast, I think other series like Spider-Man, Batman, and the Avengers have done well because they've limited the focus to just a handful of characters.
David Mumpower: I believe that you are all evaluating the state of the franchise without adapting enough to changing circumstances. We oftentimes discuss how the quality of the previous film directly impacts the opening weekend of the following title. X-Men: Days of Future Past is 92% fresh at RottenTomatoes and received an A Cinemascore from the opening day zealots. Each of those totals surpass the ones for X-Men: First Class (89% fresh/B+ Cinemascore), a movie I personally consider vastly superior.
What we witnessed this weekend is that the decision to reboot with a new cast and new storyteller, following the same model as Batman Begins, paid dividends. Just as was the case with Christopher Nolan’s reinvigoration of the Batman franchise, consumers were reluctant at first but eventually discovered a much better X-Men experience than they had received with X-Men: The Last Stand or either of the Wolverine standalone projects.
The result this weekend was a dramatic increase in opening weekend box office for Days of Future Past. Given that the new movie is even better received than the last one, we should expect another spike in box office for the opening weekend of the already announced X-Men: Apocalypse project. In discussing the muddled nature of the X-Men franchise, people overlook the fact that the overcast skies have now cleared. Sunny days are ahead for Fox and their X-Men.
Kim Hollis: I’d say the franchise is in fine shape at this point. We have a film that has audiences buzzing positively, which means that the upcoming Apocalypse has the potential to be a monster. Fortunately, there is no impending Wolverine film prior to Apocalypse’s release, because that could certainly dilute the brand if the quality is similar to the previous two films.