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

Either way, what we recognize is that no matter how laughably the MPAA sticks to the company line that the average ticket price is under $8, the skew created by mega-expensive IMAX and 3D purchase cost has extended the potential for opening weekend as well as final box office take. We have created a moving target in this regard, one that has been around for 25 years now but whose discrepancy has grown exponentially over the past three years. The Dark Knight Rises is arbitrarily deflated in terms of opening weekend box office by Christopher Nolan’s artistic choice to eschew 3D and its inflated ticket revenue generation. Yes, there will still be IMAX but The Avengers will have a higher overall ticket cost median than The Dark Knight Rises. As such, the latest Batman film is playing from behind in terms of increased expectations, heightened competition and potential ticket revenue.

Will The Dark Knight Rises manage exceptional box office? Of course. Will that business be enough to view the project as a triumph? The magic 8-ball is cloudy on this topic. Using another 2004 release and its sequel as an example, we can readily understand the potential pitfalls for Batman. Spider-Man 2 earned $373.5 million, somewhat less than its immediate predecessor’s $403.7 million. Still, that was a tremendous result and the quality of Spider-Man 2 is above reproach. In fact, I maintain it is on the shortlist for best comic book adaptation of all time.

How did the performance of Spider-Man 2 help Spider-Man 3? On opening weekend. This is how the process works. The quality of a movie directly impacts the opening weekend debut of its sequel. Spider-Man 2 was phenomenal and so Spider-Man 3 shattered the domestic debut record by $16.5 million. There was, however, a problem. I call it the Jazz Hands Imbroglio. Whereas Spider-Man was well received and Spider-Man 2 was much beloved, Spider-Man 3 was the most recent comparison to Batman and Robin, a seemingly infallible sequel that somehow failed anyway. Its final domestic take of $336.5 million represented easily the worst legs in the franchise.

The failure of Spider-Man 3 fundamentally altered the perception of Sam Raimi’s retirement from Spider-Man from tragic to requisite. With The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan is in exactly the same situation…and that was before The Hunger Games and The Avengers tore up the box office. As such, the fate of The Dark Knight Rises will be determined ultimately by whether the movie is better than its trailers or instead accurately reflected by them. And I say that as someone who thinks Bane is a better Batman villain than The Joker. In hiding the story of The Dark Knight Rises from the advertising, the producers are taking a huge risk that only pays off if the third Nolan-Batman film exemplifies the same impeccable quality as the first two. I am hard pressed to recall a 2000s release that faces more pressure than The Dark Knight Rises now does due to internal production choices as well as outside industry developments.

Continued:       1       2       3