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Doooooooom!

Kim Hollis: Drive Angry wrecked in a fiery explosion of doom. The Summit Entertainment release earned a paltry $5.2 million. What went wrong here?

Josh Spiegel: "Come, see what desperation looks like in 3-D!" I mean, this movie just looked so silly, so ridiculous, that not even the allure of actual 3-D could get people interested. Nicolas Cage can draw audiences to the multiplex, but it's clearly only when he's working in a specific template. This was not that template.

Bruce Hall: Nic Cage is in it, and people are tired of getting fooled by Nic Cage. It looks like a neo-grindhouse picture and people are tired of being burned by that format. It just plain looks stupid. There are so many better choices this weekend like Hall Pass. CNN is more exciting than the multiplex these days. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Daron Aldridge: I am astounded that the studios looked at his non-stellar track record of late and thought that the limited audience that was showing up would actually drop even more money per ticket to see Cage's hair cut with a thrown hatchet in 3-D.





Brett Beach: I'll leave out the Nic Cage box office poison aspect and simply focus on the fact that even with a 3D price boost, Drive Angry barely cracked $5 million. That is beyond indifferent and in the realm where perhaps no one was even aware that this was coming out. If Tarantino and Rodriguez can only get a movie called Grindhouse to $25 million domestic, a grindhouse-esque film shouldn't expect to take in even half of that apparently. I must note, however, that I haven't been so intrigued to see such an apparently disreputable piece of junk cinema since Running Scared, the Paul Walker film that was so gonzo it played childhood abduction and murder for laughs. Drive Angry's crash and burn debut means I can see it for cheap (in 2D!) before March is over.

Reagen Sulewski: Don't worry, Nic can make up the lackluster performance of his two films so far this year on volume.

I think what gets overestimated a lot is audience's appeal for schlock. Yes, films like Transformers and 2012 are bad, lazy B-movies, but they are glitzy B-movies, and based on something people recognize. Drive Angry belongs to the class of films like Shoot 'Em Up and Smokin' Aces which are just unremitting noise and color and based on nothing they recognize. That Marvel brand for Ghost Rider is worth a ton, apparently.

David Mumpower: I'm particularly disappointed that the failure of Drive Angry means we'll never see a crossover movie a la Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator entitled The Fast and the Angriest. Can you imagine a climactic showdown between Cage and Paul Walker? An entire theater of movie goers would willingly swallow their own tongues.

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