New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: I don't think it's going down at all. This is a movie that is surprisingly kid friendly (WALL-E and Ratatouille were really kind of not). The 3-D gimmick makes a huge difference. No, Monsters vs. Aliens didn't have a huge run to the finish, but it also didn't have rapturous reviews, nor was it released right in advance of summer vacation. This is a win.

Jason: I think that realistically speaking, this is a win for Disney/Pixar . . . though you have to combat the "we knew it'd do well and it did well so it only MET expectations and didn't exceed them." A $68+ mil opening plus some semblance of strong legs is great for any studio that's trying to put out a product that marries high quality plus wide appeal. Also, I don't think that you can really compare a pre-2000 Pixar film to a post-2000 Pixar film - computer animated films are just more common nowadays and don't have the "wow" factor that it did when the technology was still new. That in itself makes it harder to draw large audiences for more recent Pixar films.

Lastly, I just want to note that based on my own subjective experience, it's been a while since mass audiences LOVED a Pixar film. I think that Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. had a real emotional weight to them . . . not that people didn't enjoy Ratatouille and WALL-E, but it's a little harder for a typical moviegoer to LOVE a movie about a rat in a kitchen or a nearly-dialogue-free robot. At least, not in the way that people could love Sully and Dory. I hope that the emotional quality of Up really warms people's hearts like some of their past releases.

Reagen Sulewski: I find it slightly bizarre that Pixar films have never really broken through into the upper stratosphere of opening weekends. All they've done is deliver top notch family entertainment for a decade and a half. Ho-hum. However, I guess there's something to be said for consistency, so that when you do have a slight disappointment in box office terms like Ratatouille, alarm bells don't go off. This is all my roundabout way of saying that Up is already one of the winners of the summer, and will most likely be top five when things all shake out.

Sean Collier: It's a win. Josh was right about Up being tough to market - and while 3D prices help, Real D itself isn't as much of an attention-grabbing factor as it was about a year ago. It had a big opening weekend, little competition going forward, and very positive word of mouth - I do think it'll have huge legs, and push ahead of the totals for Ratatouille and WALL-E.

RealD sounds like something much creepier than it is.

Kim Hollis: This is the second major RealD animated release of the year after the $195 million blockbuster Monsters vs. Aliens. Is this an effective technology to lure audiences to theaters, or is it a gimmick that is reaching a saturation point?

Josh Spiegel: Speaking as someone who had to stand in a line for a sold-out showing of Up at 11:30 in the morning (which was preceded by a sold-out 9:00 A.M. showing, and followed by a sold-out 2:00 P.M. showing), I think it's safe to say that it's either not a gimmick at all, or it's a gimmick that's working. With regards to Up, there's really no gimmick at all. Though the film was made with 3-D technology in mind, there are really no cheap tricks that are meant to jolt the audience. This is the second such animated film that went to 3-D this year without any gimmicky tricks (Coraline being the other film). That, plus the fact that over half of the previews before Up were for 3-D films, makes me think that RealD isn't going away any time soon.

Continued:       1       2       3