New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Vrrooooom!

Kim Hollis: Cars 2 opened to $66.1 million. Do you consider this to be about the result a Pixar film should expect, or is it a step back from Toy Story 3?

Bruce Hall: Financially, it's clearly a step back and by a lot, too - if you're going to compare it to Toy Story 3. There will be a lot of talk about this, but more glaring in my mind was that it was an inferior product to what we're used to seeing from Pixar. Animation has had a good year overall, but on an individual level the quality of the fare so far is debatable. Cars 2 will do nothing to dispel that perception.

Joshua Pasch: Look, right now everything is rosey. $66 million comes in the top-tier of Pixar films when you strike TS3 from the record, falling almost exactly in step with Up. But as a sequel, and a badly reviewed one at that, I don't expect this one to have the standard Pixar legs. Cars 2 should end up throwing under Cars domestically. But as has been said before, the domestic box office is really just a small consideration for this franchise.

Matthew Huntley: A step back for sure, but not when compared to Toy Story 3, but rather when compared to the original Cars. The sequel had five years of inflation, 3D ticket prices and a broadened fanbase, so Disney/Pixar must be slightly disappointed it could only gross $6 million more than its predecessor. That's not to say it still won't be a massive hit when you take into account foreign and ancillary markets, as well as merchandising, but the movie didn't explode during its opening weekend like many, including myself, were expecting.

Tom Houseman: Cars 2 is going to make boatloads of money, domestically, internationally, and on video, not even taking into account merchandise. Nothing else really matters. Even if Cars 2 has a 3.5 overall multiplier, which is lower than any other Pixar film to date (surprisingly, WALL-E is the lowest with 3.53) it will still make $238 million, good for eighth all time and only $6 million behind the original. The fanboys can bitch all they want about this being subpar Pixar, but it's still clearly better than most other animated films, and it will, if anything, only barely tarnish the Pixar brand. If Brave and Monsters U are back up to Pixar's standard, Cars 2 will only be remembered as one of the few non-Oscar winning Pixar flicks.

Tim Briody: Cars 2 was never going to even approach Toy Story 3's opening and anyone who thought it might needs to share the drugs they're on. Dubious quality aside, it's right in line with what a Pixar movie should open to, and that sound you hear is yet another $100 of merchandise with Lightning McQueen on it being sold.

Edwin Davies: Toy Story 3 really needs to be considered the anomaly in this discussion, rather than the standard to which all future Pixar releases are compared. In that instance, you had the third film in a beloved series that had 11 years of build up and anticipation to send it into the box office stratosphere. Here, we have a follow-up no one was clamoring for to a film that no one was that interested in in the first place. In that respect, $66 million's a pretty good start, even if (when you factor in inflation and 3D prices) it suggests that the audience for this film was about the same size as, if not smaller than, that of the first film. But, as everyone has been saying, Cars 2 exists to sell toys and merchandise, so any money it makes in theaters is kind of besides the point.

Continued:       1       2       3       4