Pacific Rim Tracking Poorly

What some people considered to be a huge movie, is tracking to be nothing more than the speed bump of the summer season. Pacific Rim which plot pits giant robotic war machines vs monstrous creatures from the deep, hasn't a couple more hurdles to jump. On paper you may piss your pants with fanboy excitement but that is just the problem, fanboys aren't the majority of people that go to the movies. What the majority of people may go see is a stupid Adam Sandler comedy in this case Grown Ups 2 which opens on the same day as Pacific Rim. I can't explain why Pacific Rim is tracking at a mediocre 30 million and Grown Ups 2 is tracking 40 million I can however read between the lines.

Grown Ups the predecessor of this new comedy, grossed 40.5 million in its opening week, which gives the sequel a better chance to improve on that. As for Pacific Rim, you get what would be considered either a monster movie, or a robot movie. While robot movies have found some success in the form of the transformers trilogy, monsters movies haven't fared very well. While Godzilla (1998) did hold a 44 million dollar opening weekend it was in an extreme downfall from there and ended up grossing 136 million dollars domestically. That could just be the case of a bad film under performing in all categories, but it does say something about the films itself. The films are pure fanboy films, Pacific Rim more so than ever and it may hurt itself in the long run.

What Legendary Pictures Is Saying

Like any bad press start, you have people trying to pick up the trash. In this case Thomas Tull the head of Legendary Pictures, here is what he had to say and what I make of his comment.

Audiences that have seen the movie, love the movie," Tull told me.  "I think in our core audiences and, sort of, the fanboy groups that want to see the movie...we have seen tracking wildly on all of our movies so, at this point, all we can say to audiences is if you go see this movie, you're going to love it and you're going to tell your friends - that's all we can do.  The other stuff, it has almost become like sporting events.  Every weekend, it's so wildly reported on and now even opining about tracking, which is kind of weird to me.  I can tell you, when I was a kid andStar Wars came out, I wasn't like, 'I don't know, the trailer looks cool, but the tracking sucks.'  I don't know what that is."

I applaud you Mr. Tull, for playing it off as if tracking is no big deal. There is nothing wrong with the confidence he has in the film, but to pretend that everything is going well is an absolute lie. I am sure Legendary is shaking in there boots, especially after leaving their partnership with WB. Though Warner Brothers is backing this particular film (a very small amount) a bust will not run well with a company looking to find success. Also though Rian Johnson (Director of Looper) raved about the film, saying it made him feel like a 12 year old boy. The others reviews that have came on board tho mostly positive are not what I would call "loving it". Also yeah feeling like a twelve year old boy is great and all, but a more complex and inventive story would be nice. Nobody is denying that the action of the film and scale will be extremely impressive, but nowadays that doesn't cut it.

Why you shouldn't worry

Just because a film doesn't do well, it doesn't mean its a bad film. Look at last years Dredd, I found it to be a pretty good film even with its poor box office reception. However it's low budget made it still a successful film in the long run. Also this years The Great Gatsby was projected well below it actually performed, but it is a different case. At the beginning of the year if you told me I could see a film staring Leonardo DeCaprio or a Robot vs Monster flick, id have to choose DeCaprio because the latter has a better chance of being bad. If we are lucky it would turn out like Hellboy I and II and it will find its fanboy following, but for sure it won't be one of the more successful films of this year.