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David Mumpower: Edwin's final sentence rings true to me. The pace of The Dark Knight Rises is epic compared to the overwhelming majority of movies. The overall opinion of the film's performance hinges on whether people decide standing in the shadow of The Dark Knight is okay. I always had these concerns about the follow-up movie to the most triumphant project in a generation (prior to the release of Avatar). I never in a million years expected The Dark Knight Rises to fall this far behind the pace of The Dark Knight after ten days, though. The Dark Knight Rises is $26.7 million behind and dropping back an average of $4 million a day. I simply do not see it recovering at this point. The overall rate of decay is too significant.

I believed this movie would earn so much in its first two weeks that it would approach The Dark Knight in final domestic take primarily due to early momentum. Now that this has failed to occur, The Dark Knight Rises is in the same situation The Amazing Spider-Man was after its second weekend. The movie has already earned most of its money (probably somewhere between 65% and 72% of its final take), which leaves us to debate whether said amount is enough. I describe the current expected domestic take as acceptable but definitely not impressive.

Shalimar Sahota: I see $289 million in ten days as a fantastic number. I'm sure many a studio would shout this from the rooftops. The only problem here is that as the third film in Nolan's Batman franchise, we can't help but draw comparisons to what came before. As has already been touched upon, The Dark Knight had a lot going for it. Firstly Heath Ledger's last "full" performance as The Joker, an iconic villain in the Batman universe. When it comes to Bane, some people just don't know who he is. There was also the "Why So Serious" viral marketing campaign, quite possibly the best marketing campaign you could have for a film, helped largely in part by using the Joker character. The only other film on the horizon that could have surpassed it was The Dark Knight Rises. Except it didn't. Personally I found the marketing on The Dark Knight Rises rather sombre. While there is the now expected quality associated with a Christopher Nolan film. I feel that going in, the only thing that The Dark Knight Rises had that was a little bit different, was that this would be the last one.

Kim Hollis: I'm sure that based on all of the replies above, we're going to get hate mail labeling us as Batman apologists and fanboys. However, the truth of the matter is that The Dark Knight Rises has indeed made a phenomenal amount of money and to label it a disappointment is just not fair or accurate. There are mitigating circumstances that prevent us from ever truly knowing what might have been. I do think, though, that it's impossible not to compare The Dark Knight Rises to its predecessor and The Avengers. Whether that's fair or not, it's just the way we look at these things. We often say that a movie buys the success of its successor, and if ever there was a movie that should have generated massive goodwill from audiences, The Dark Knight is it. Also, a lot of people really seemed invested in hoping that The Dark Knight Rises might beat The Avengers' opening, and it fell short in that department.

Reagen Sulewski: I definitely echo the sentiments that this is a film cursed by its own success. $289 million in ten days is a remarkable feat by any stretch, and yet we're sitting here wanting more. That's really a testament to how strong this franchise has been that we expect the moon of it. It was pretty clear that this summer belonged to The Avengers early on, however, and The Dark Knight Rises is also suffering in comparison to that.

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