Melissa's Place

Disjointed Blog on Cinema

I went to see The Dark Knight last night at the Thunder Bay Theatre.

It was a very good movie.

Apparently, it grossed more in the first weekend than any other film....ever.

These last two ideas are completely unrelated in my opinion. Movies don't rake in mounds of cash in the first weekend because they are good movies. Everyone who decides to contribute to the coffers has no idea whether the movie is good until after they've paid! If people could decide AFTER the move is over whether they want to pay for the ticket, well then I'd say that the amount of money a movie makes in the first weekend is directly linked to how good the movie is.
But no, movies gross lots in the first weekend because of hype and hype alone.

Heath Ledger, bless his soul, loved by the multitudes (and became even more intriguing, I dare say, with in his mysterious death) was apparently so haunted by his role of The Joker that he was "never the same again". And then he overdosed on drugs which may or may not have been related to some psychotic backlash of his delving too deeply into the character of The Joker. A casualty of the story, so powerful its hold was on his mind. That is a kind of hype that no trailer or life-size poster can create. Bittersweet happenstance, speculation and a touch of the inexplicable conjured up an anomalistic degree of hype and the piggy banks of Hollywood are all the more full because of it.

Second point: Although pump-your-own butter popcorn at the AMC seems like a brilliant idea, it has been the sorrowful demise of many perfectly good buckets of popcorn (and pants).