X-Men Origins: Wolverine took about $87 million on its opening weekend.
It’s a good, but not great film. $87 million is enough to bring it into the top 20 all time biggest movie openings. Number one is Dark Knight, which took nearly $160 million.
Looking at the top 100 list, it is clear that the reason people go to the movies is to be entertained. You might think this is obvious, but if you do, you are brighter than many movie producers, and especially Australian movie producers, who seem to think that people go to the movies to be lectured about the trendy leftist cause of the month.
Lantana is a perfect example. Boring, self-righteous, and of course the critics loved it. Then there was Black Balloon. The critics loved that too.
Baz Lurhmann’s Australia is possibly the most boring movie of all time – such a disappointment after Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, and Moulin Rouge. But the critics hated it as much as I did, perhaps because it tried to be entertaining, and the preaching only occurred occasionally. It wasn’t bad because it was preachy, it was bad because it was bad.
Happy Feet was preachy too. I hated it. It made some money though, because it was cute.
The only Australian movie I have enjoyed in recent years was Kenny. Go Kenny! It had a message, but not one the critics would enjoy – amongst other things, hard work and honesty are more important than a university education. Being smart doesn’t make you good, etc.
Kenny made money because it had characters you could care about, a great, if simple, story, and was funny without trying too hard.
Kenny had no public funding.
Public funding kills the arts.
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