The new Wolverine movie demolished the competition at the box office this past weekend making about $87 million, but I’m sure the ignoramuses at the MPAA will still allege that piracy torched a possible higher profit margin, which is absurd. If anything, the leaked Wolverine workprint helped get more people interested in seeing it at the theater. Movie studios need to think more about marketing to pirates as opposed to criminalizing them, but that’s a whole different story. Anyway…

As for the workprint, itself, I haven’t seen it, but people have said that there are no special effects, and you can see everyone dangling from wires while performing stunts. Plus there is about 10 minutes of footage missing from the end. And I don’t know about you, but that would drive me insane and cause sleepless nights of X-Men hysteria. It doesn’t really sound like the the best film-watching experience.

While several people are praising Wolverine so far, it hasn’t gone without its fair share of opprobrium. Mostly, the arguments are that the plot was lacking and the action and special effects were way overdone. These critiques were anticipated. And I don’t think they’ll stop people from a second Wolverine viewing, considering there are several secret endings playing at different showings.

Will X-Men Origins: Wolverine end up doing better than the other X-Men films? I doubt it. It’s good to see Wolverine’s story alone, but it’s certainly not the same experience that you get with the entire X-Men cast. Although, they did try to incorporate a team of mutants into this movie as well to make up for a lack of other prominent X-Men characters. And for all those X-Men fans, how great was it to finally see Gambit? Personally, I thought we would have at least seen him in one of the three X-Men movies.

What does the future hold for Wolverine? The movie studios will likely create a few more spin-offs after seeing the success of Wolverine, but I don’t think they’ll bring in the same numbers as Wolverine. As for a sequel, I don’t think that will happen, but it would be nice to see another X-Men film. I’m an obsessed fan of the original television series, so I can’t really get enough X-Men. Although, we might also see a break from the film franchise. It might be good to step back for a second and not keep making a string of mutant madness. I know, I know, “heresy,” you say! I think in the long run, it would be best to take a break and thoughtfully explore the cornucopia of X-Men possibilities.

Here’s a breakdown of the box office numbers:

1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine – $87,000,000
2. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – $15,325,000
3. Obsessed – $12,200,000
4. 17 Again – $6,355,000
5. Monsters Vs. Aliens – $5,800,000
6. The Soloist – $5,600,000
7. Earth (2009) – $4,184,000
8. Fighting – $4,173,000
9. Hannah Montana The Movie – $4,075,000
10. State of Play – $3,655,000

Here are some more articles on Wolvie’s triumphant return:

Box Office: $87 Million for Wolverine
20 Awesome Wolverine Artworks
Wolverine To Have Multiple Secret Endings
Wolverine Trailer
Official Site

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm and is filed under general, movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.