Well, it looked like it worked – all of Tom Cruise's rampant publicity-drumming has ensured that Mission: Impossible III is sitting on top of the US weekend box office like Xenu sitting on top of a pile of Body Thetans.
Mission: Impossible III's success at the US weekend box office has a greater significance than a film about Tom Cruise running around non-stop for a couple of hours being quite popular. Now that Mission: Impossible III is out, it's officially braindead summer blockbuster season! Here's to four months of movies about thoughtless explosions underperforming at the weekend box office!
Mission: Impossible III is the first of the year's summer blockbusters to top the US weekend box office, a special position that Mission: Impossible III shares with rubbish vampire film Van Helsing and rubbish crusades film Kingdom Of Heaven. Illustrious company, we're sure.
On closer inspection, however, Mission: Impossible III hasn't been as successful at the weekend box office as the last Tom Cruise film, last year's War Of The Worlds. Which goes to show, having a baby and eating the placenta is no match for shouting down talk-show hosts and bouncing on a settee for a while. Here's the US weekend box office top five:
1 – Mission: Impossible III (Mission: Impossible III also has the lowest-grossing opening weekend of any Mission: Impossible movie to date. Conclusive proof that, while a man flying a helicopter into the channel tunnel and the most boring motorbike jousting scene in cinema history are OK, audiences just don't buy that bloke from Capote being all aggressive) $48,025,000
2 – RV (Remember when Robin Williams decided to make disturbing films like Insomnia and One Hour Photo instead of dumbly bland comedies? We can't even work out which category RV falls into) $11,100,000
3 – An American Haunting (Like a European haunting, but fatter and more prone to talking loudly about itself on mobile phones in restaurants) $6,380,000
4 – Stick It (A film about gymnastics with an insulting title. Whatever next – a synchronised swimming movie called Fuck Off You Wanker?) $5,522,000
5 – United 93 (Only fifth in the US weekend box office this week. Maybe United 93 could have benefited from incorporating aspects of the four movies above it, such as ghosts, gymnastics, mobile homes and that bloke from Capote dressed up as Osama Bin Laden) $5,211,000
Read more:
Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo
[story by Stuart Heritage]