Slashdot Mirror
Spidey Knocks Out Harry Potter at Box Office
RasputinAXP writes "According to this Yahoo article, Spider-Man picked up an Amazing $114 million dollars at the box office, squishing Harry Potter's $90.3 million like a bug. More coverage is available at Box Office Prophets' new Weekend Wrapup, including analysis."
this movie would have been perfect for Katz to pontificate about the ramifcations from 9/11 on the setting of the movie to how Peter Parker was really just like a Columbine geek, but with superpowers.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Now now, less of the hyperbole. I won't have financed the RIAA until I've done my fiduciary duty by buying the soundtrack as well. :p
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Who can forget the multi-millionaire Hollywood stars begging for attention just days after the terrorist attacks, all too eager to remind the rest of the world that they're better and more important than the lowly common folk and the situation at hand.
Or how every movie in production at the time was trying to figure out "how to best address the attacks" (Translation: how to best market it to the public).
You had the P.C. goons at the studios rushing to erase the Trade Center from their movies, past and present. ("Oh no! The sight of the buildings actually standing might offend or upset someone!")
You also had script monkeys trying to shoehorn patriotism into situations where it was not necessarily appropriate. ("Hey, I know! Let's put a bigass flag behind him!")
What's the message they're trying to get across? Spiderman standing next to the U.S. flag? Do they mean to say that we as Americans should applaud our fake heroes as "Real American Heroes" instead of our real ones?
Hollywood is trying to show that it's still important in this day and age. It clearly is not. Let fantasy be fantasy, and reality be reality. For God's sake, life is short. Let's get on with it.
Thank you.
Spider-man! Spider-man! Makes more money than Rowling can. Gets to lay Kirsten Dunst! Sequel assured, in a few months. Watch out! Here comes the Spider-man! In Summer, 2002, movies were showing.
George Lucas: What happen??
Rick McCallum: Somebody set up us the blockbuster.
Rick McCallum: We get phone call.
George Lucas: What?
Rick McCallum: Main screen turn on.
George Lucas: It's you!!
Sam Raimi: How are you gentlemen??
Sam Raimi: All your demographic are belong to us!
George Lucas: What you say??
Sam Raimi: You are on the way to bankruptcy.
Sam Raimi: You have no chance to make up for Phantom Menace, make your sequel!
Sam Raimi: Ha ha ha!
George Lucas: Take off every merchandise.
Rick McCallum: You know what you doing??
George Lucas: For great profit
Geroge Lucas: move merchandise.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
1 Gone With the Wind: $1,146,081,811
2 Star Wars: $1,025,027,477
3 The Sound of Music: $850,020,681
4 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: $823,800,033
5 The Ten Commandments: $760,123,752
6 Jaws: $743,173,676
7 Titanic: $725,045,021
They did think of that, there is a page on the site that contains an inflation-adjusted list of All Time Domestic grosses. Not surprisingly, Gone With The Wind tops the list with $1.1 billion dollars, followed closely by the 1977 release of Star Wars.
The full list is here.
Very, very interesting site.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
The web shooters were always the one weak element of Spider-Man lore. The very idea that a tube of fluid small enough to not be seen under skin-tight spandex sleves could possibly produced even a single ten-story strand of webbing strong enough to hold a person's weight is preposterous. And Paker was shown as a science genious, in that he pretty much had his choice of colleges, his friend implies that he consistantly dominated the science fair circuit while growing up, got into a leading technology company right out of high school (remember him talking about getting fired for his chronic truancy?), and yes, writing papers about Osborn's work does establish him as a genius, because Osborn himself is stunned to learn that a HS student has even managed to read his stuff.
John Romita Sr. (pehaps the writer most involved in creating Spider-Man lore, after Stan Lee himself), personally came around to admiring the organic webbing as "clever", and didn't consider the change that big of a deal upon reflection.
MJ has been the main love interest of Spidey in the comics for over a quarter of a century. Did you really expect the first film to trot out the Gwen Stacey story, when she has not been a living character in the comics since 1973?
If all he's got going for him is his super powers, then isn't that exactly what he is, just another superman?
No.
What defines Parker is not that he is Nobel-prise-worthy smart (which he would have to have been to invent that webbing), but his social alienation as a brainy geek. The film captured that perfectly.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.