By Jonathan Fisher, November 23rd, 2009
Twilight: New Moon has made $258 million around the world in its first three days of release. That is a crazy amount of money in such a short period of time. It's broken the all-time opening day gross record, and the top single-day gross record. To put that in a bit of context, last year's The Dark Knight -- the most popular movie of the decade so far, and a film that wound up grossing a shade over a billion dollars worldwide -- opened $100 million less than New Moon, at $158 million. Still a monster opening, but well short of the New Moon juggernaut.
New Moon was always going to be big, but this big? This thing might (but probably won't) topple Titanic as the highest-grossing film of all time (Titanic wound up making $1.8 billion around the world). And yet, one would imagine that New Moon would have little cross-over appeal to men, or anyone over the age of sixteen. Why such a big opening?
The obvious reason is that the hype leading up to the opening weekend resulted in lots of re-viewings in the film's primary target audience of females from 13 to 18. This demographic tends to bolt out of the gates pretty quickly, watching a movie twice, even three times in the opening weekend. Usually, they go in groups, so their effect is magnified.
Critics have been harsh on New Moon, more than I expected. I'll save my own review for the coming days, but I bring up the critical reaction because that may reflect the word-of-mouth effect that this movie will have on its non-core audience. People who aren't blinded by their hilariously caricatured fangirl love for the male stars probably won't think that this is a good movie. The drop-off for New Moon in the coming weeks could be precipitous, in stark comparison to something like the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which generated great word-of-mouth and appealed to just about everyone who likes movies.
It is a little disturbing to me that the Twilight meme has taken off as powerfully as it has. I gave the first movie a middling two and a half stars, enjoying the visuals of the film but not the story or its characters. It's partly, but not entirely, the story of Twilight that I object to currently. The amount of male objectification that has painfully been on show over the last eighteen months, the dissemination of the distinctly anti-feminist message that a woman is only as good as the man she's with and that it's fine to be self-absorbed, melodramatic and clingy represents a backwards step in the fight for gender equality and equity. What's sad is that it's the young, malleable generation that is being indoctrinated by the Twilight school of philosophy. Jordan Baker at the Sydney Morning Herald has written a very provocative, nuanced piece here that discusses this trend and society's response to the films and books. Twilight: New Moon may not topple Titanic as the highest-grossing movie of all time, but if it does, do we really want this movie to be the lasting memory of this decade?
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2 comments:
I agree Jon. I noticed a comment you made about Zodiac falling flat while something like New Moon dominates the box office. It's a sad state of affairs when the general public can't appreciate such a wonderfully crafted film as Zodiac yet will throw their dollars willingly at the after-school-special melodrama of teen vamps and werewolves. Blurgh.
There were a lot of mitigating factors behind Zodiac flopping a bit. The biggest factor, I think, was the time of year it was released. It was released in May, which is kind of a no-man's-land for movies like Zodiac. May is the time of year when films like Transformers and Iron Man are released, and people have popcorn on their mind. I actually think Zodiac could have been sold well as a thriller, a la Fincher's other movies like Fight Club or Panic Room, or even Se7en. But the studio, for some reason, advertised it as an 'awards' picture. As a result, it didn't get bums on seats because it didn't appeal to the blockbuster crowd, nor did it get awards because when Oscar gets around to his nominations, his memory only goes back to October.
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