Studios and producers of the absolute slew of superhero movies already in production for the next several years, as well as those hoping to jumpstart another heap of projects currently moribund (The Flash, Wonder Woman, etc.). While some franchises are already established enough that this week’s box office figures don’t really matter, other would-be franchises, ones that either haven’t gained the public’s complete acceptance—The Fantastic Four—or hopeful new ones—2008’s Iron Man (already hoping to become a trilogy) and The Incredible Hulk, for example—must be trying to read the best out of this admittedly favorable mass of box office tea leaves.
Nick Cage had his biggest opening ever with the critically lambasted* Ghost Rider, proving that the critics really can’t do much to change the minds of people once they’ve decided they want to see something. In any case, the (roughly) $110 million film surpassed expectations to draw about $45 million over the three day holiday. As action films generally do well overseas, there’s no reason to think Ghost Rider won’t be, at the least, a moderately successful movie. We’ll know more after we see what sort of box office falloff it experiences next weekend.
[*With the majority of the reviews in, the film sits with a 23% approval rating at Rottentomatoes.com, and several of the ‘good’ reviews aren’t exactly overselling the picture.]Of course, even the success of the film holds dangers, and the movie’s quality does, as a larger issue, matter. Audiences will stick with a genre for a while, but if they find themselves underwhelmed time after time (Ang Lee’s The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Superman Begins, etc.), they will eventually seek their entertainment elsewhere.
On the questionable side, this summer’s Fantastic Four 2 would appear to be a quality crapshoot, despite the fact that they should easily be able to improve on the lackluster first chapter. On the other hand, one may safely hope that the upcoming third Spider-Man and second Batman movies offer the superior filmmaking their earlier entries did. It’s just a question of how many of these things people are willing to see before they get burned out.
For itself, Ghost Rider appears (I haven’t seen it yet) to be exactly what its director gave us with his previous superhero outing, Daredevil. By which I mean, a not awful but not exactly good and certainly utterly forgettable picture. Daredevil sold almost exactly the same number of tickets its opening weekend, but trailed off quickly and failed to spawn a sequel. Well, other than the completely ignored Elektra.
On the other hand, Ghost Rider is a much more visibly dynamic character than Daredevil, and Cage is a bigger star than Ben Affleck. Therefore I expect GR has a somewhat better chance of being followed up, particularly if Cage enjoys playing the part as much as he indicates. Again, foreign box office and DVD sales will obviously have a lot of sway, too.
Too bad the characters are owned by two different companies, because otherwise there would be a certainly lunatic sense in combining the franchises and making a Constantine / Ghost Rider movie. Certainly watching Keanu Reeves and Nick Cage onscreen at the same time would be pretty funny.
