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Welcome to Marquee History, the column that takes you back to a time when you - or your parents - were younger. Prepare to become nostalgic (and shocked) at how much time has passed when you recall what was new in theaters 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years ago.

Summer at the movies begins with May, and who better to kick things off than a trio of Tom Cruise films?

Here are the movies that premiered on theater marquees ...

10 years ago - May 2006

May 5th new releases:
Mission: Impossible III / An American Haunting / Hoot
This is the third Tom Cruise film celebrated this month, so jump to the end and work backward if you'd like the chronological replay. By Mission: Impossible III the series had already established itself as a thrilling big stunt series. Two of the notable action sequences are a convoy jailbreak on a bridge, and Hunt swinging onto an all-glass skyscraper in Shanghai. Again, the plot is a little convoluted (tracking something called "The Rabbit's Foot"), but the real fireworks and intensity in this entry are based on the personal story; Cruise's wife, played by Michelle Monaghan, is kidnapped, and Hunt will do anything to save her. The face-off between him and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian features Cruise at the most intense level we've ever seen from him. Mission: Impossible III opened with $47 million from 4,054 theaters, which was not so impressive compared to the previous films or other franchises. Its $134 million gross is actually the lowest of the series. I don't care; this one is my favorite of the franchise.

May 12th new releases:
Poseidon / Just My Luck / Goal! The Dream Begins
Poseidon remakes the 1972 disaster movie about a cruise ship turned upside down by a rogue wave. Kurt Russell leads an ensemble cast trying to make it out alive. Reviews were weak, but the film was later nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. I was impressed by Russell's acting, especially his final scene. Poseidon couldn't take down Tom Cruise's crew, and opened at #2 with $22.1 million, ultimately taking in $60 million (about $100 million short of its budget).


May 19th new releases:
The Da Vinci Code / Over the Hedge / See No Evil
The Da Vinci Code was a huge, bestselling novel, so naturally audiences flocked to see its film adaptation. Tom Hanks plays the symbologist Robert Langdon and Audrey Tautou plays French cryptologist Sophie Neveu, who team up to solve a murder and uncover a vast conspiracy by the Priory of Scion and Opus Dei to cover up the true history of Jesus. The Da Vinci Code opened with $77 million from 3,735 theaters and ultimately grossed $217 million in the U.S. and a whopping $758 million total worldwide, making it the fifth biggest domestic earner and the second biggest worldwide movie of the year behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The sequel, Angels & Demons, was released in 2009 to lower numbers.

Despite having the fifth widest release ever to that time, Over the Hedge could only manage second place for the weekend with $38 million from 4,059 sites. The animated adventure about backyard animals going beyond their typical boundaries features the voices of Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, and William Shatner. It took in a total gross of $155 million in the U.S.


May 26th new releases:
X-Men: The Last Stand / An Inconvenient Truth
X-Men: The Last Stand was the third entry in the comic book superhero series. This story features Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants fighting back against the use of a medical "cure" for mutants. Jean Grey has transformed into Phoenix, and we see the introductions of Angel, Multiple Man, Callisto, Juggernaut, and Kitty Pryde. The Last Stand opened with $122 million for the four-day Memorial Day weekend, taking that record from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and setting the single Friday record. It went on to gross $234 million in the U.S., which was the best of the X-Men franchise until Deadpool was released in 2016. The next X-Men movie focused on Wolverine's origins before the series shifted to younger versions of the characters with X-Men: First Class in 2011.

Though Al Gore's environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth opened at just four theaters this weekend, it had a big $70,332 per-theater average. It expanded its release to just under 600 theaters and eventually earned $24.1 million, the third highest grossing documentary to that time.

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