It’s the summer. And that means that, as weekend box office law states, all films released now must be angry, loud and full of massive robots punching each other.

But weekend box office law has another rule for the summer – that Pixar gets to release a new movie, and it’ll make all the other films look a bit silly in comparison. And this year that film is Up, the new US weekend box office number one.

What made Up so popular? Was it the groundbreaking technological accomplishments? The mature storytelling? No, it was all the balloons. Balloons are fun. Wheeeee!

So Up is the new US weekend box office, a fact that continues Pixar’s two strongest traditions – their extraordinary run of producing critically-acclaimed movies that are gigantic commercial successes and their even-more extraordinary run of producing miserable films about incredibly depressing subjects.

Seriously. Last year’s Pixar film was about the world’s loneliest robot, 2007’s Pixar film was about a character who couldn’t excel at his job because of his appearance, and Up is about a pensioner grieving the loss of his dead wife. Hardly Dude, Where’s My Car, is it?

Still, congratulations to Up, and we look forward to seeing next year’s Pixar movie – an exploration of social and physical decay that consists of nothing but a two-hour black and white image of an Arctic tundra soundtracked by the distant, sporadic sound of a crying woman. Here’s the weekend box office top five!

1 – Up (We can’t wait for Up to be released on DVD. We’re going to have a directional movie marathon comprising Up, Down, Sideways and the as-yet unreleased masterpiece Sort Of Diagonally Zig-Zagish) $68,200,000

2 - Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian (Coming soon, Night At The Museum: Scuffle At The Bath Postal Museum, where Ben Stiller travels to Somerset to witness a hilariously zany night of mail-based escapades. Starring Robin Williams as Thomas Moore Musgrave, Steve Coogan as postal historian Frank Staff and Ricky Gervais as a fat envelope) $25,500,000

3 - Drag Me To Hell (Originally this film was going to be called Drag Me To Hull, but the name was changed after it was decided that Hull is actually worse than the real hell in every conceivable way, and shouldn’t be joked about) $16,628,000

4 – Terminator: Salvation (This week it was revealed that an alternate ending for Terminator: Salvation was for John Connor to become a terminator himself and kill everyone, which would have obviously been a better ending than the one that was filmed. Although, having said that, if John Connor suddenly woke up and realised it was all a dream, and then the entire cast of the movie waved goodbye to everyone like at the end of The Railway Children that would have been a better ending too. What we’re trying to say, we suppose, is that Terminator: Salvation is rubbish) $16,140,000

5 - Star Trek (Oh Chris Pine, stop being so coy and just record a version of Rocket Man that you sing with two other versions of yourself, would you? Gah) $12,800,000

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