This weekend, a battle for the ages was fought in cineplexes across America, and Inception (2010) came out the winner, so before I even tell you its opponent, you should already be thrilled.Inception, in its second weekend, made $43.5 M while its primary challenger, the Angelina Jolie star-vehicle Salt (2010), which opened only Friday, came in second with $36.5 M. That means that, even in its second week of release, Inception still holds power over derivative action-movies driven by name-recognition and how close the trailer can be made to look like a Bourne sequel.
(Notice the Salt poster? It's got absolutely nothing to say about the film except that Angelina Jolie is in it, and she's dyed her hair)
This is more than I expected from life.
Now, I don't even actually hate what Salt is -- it's a decently-reviewed no-brainer action movie, and by itself, it's perfectly harmless. I was just worried that such bare-bones entertainment was going to supplant a real mind-bending masterpiece like Inception without so much as a last gasp at the box office for the better film. Nolan's film, and its fans, did my expectations one better by actually beating Jolie's slick thriller in the area I least-dared-to-dream it would: the box office.
Make no mistake: movies are financial investments as well as pieces of art. Making a movie isn't like painting a picture: if you paint a picture, nobody needs to care if it's popular because it only cost $100 to make, but a movie costs $100 million. That's simply too much money for anyone not to care if it's well-received by audiences. So it wouldn't have mattered how intelligent Inception was if it wasn't going to make any money. Nobody would've been happy with a $6,000 Nolan film (oh, wait, he did Following (1998) for that much, didn't he?).
This post is in danger of spinning out of control, so let's simply raise a celebratory glass and go see Inception a few more times before it comes out on blu-ray.
--Serge
I'm gonna wait for it to come out on DVD
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