Matrix Reloaded to suffer biggest drop EVER

[Guest teke184]

The simple answer? They front-loaded the movie to have the maximum amount of showing possible in the first week. I had NEVER seen a film get 4 screens per theater at multiple theaters in my area before Matrix... Star Wars only got 3.

 

There were no screens sold out that I know of in my town although the screens were about 95% full.

[Guest cabbageboy]

Someone mentioned Titanic as a movie with a big opening that dropped big...far from the case. Titanic opened at about 27 million (barely ahead of Tomorrow Never Dies) and then just kept making about 25 million for the next 3 months.

 

I'm a bit torn on what I thought of Matrix Reloaded. It certainly didn't blow me away or anything, some of the action scenes were cool but my god there were some dull stretches. The first half hour was nearly unwatchable, then it picks up a bit, then slows to a crawl again, then finally when they meet the French guy it picks up and keeps going till the finish.

 

The biggest gripe I have is that the Wachowski Bros. obviously wrote this script to sound intellectual and include a lot of "destiny vs. decision" crap, big words, etc. When you do this it becomes impossible to CARE about anyone in the film, the movie becomes a cold, technical exercise. And at that point all you have is a bunch of extended fight scenes and never ending conversations made up of pseudo intellectual bullshit.

 

I had a similar sort of problem with the first LOTR film. Characters are just thrown at the viewer as though I'm supposed to know who everyone is without a proper introduction. First time viewers will be baffled as to who Merry and Pippen are (were they even called by their short names until halfway through?), why they even tag along, who is Aragorn and why is he called Strider, why is he in the bar, etc.

 

The 2nd LOTR film was a lot better to me, since in that one they do a much better job explaining who is who, what they are doing, and why. It got me interested in the characters, made me more familiar with Legolas and Gimli, made me care more about Aragorn, and gave Merry and Pippen something to do.

 

Matrix Reloaded did almost the exact OPPOSITE of all this....it took a hugely important character like Morpheus and made him one of many ship captains, involved in a routine romance plot, and basically showed everything that he believed in to be wrong.

 

And let's face it, Smith is far less interesting here. In the first film Smith is the MAN, you do not fuck with him or any other agents. Now between the upgrade agents, the French guy, the ghost twins, and the Architect...well, Smith's heel antics become diluted.

 

Heh, that was long winded.

[Guest NaturalBornThriller4:20]

Ouch. Looks like Neo may be The One but Bruce is the Almighty.

 

Yeah, that sucked. sorry

I thought that was pretty good, actually.

[Guest Urine Sane]

There were no screens sold out that I know of in my town although the screens were about 95% full.

 

The theater I went to had 4 screens going and they (from 5pm on) were all sold out except for maybe the 12:15 a.m. show I went to.

[Guest Urine Sane]

(SpiderPoet @ May 24 2003, 09:30 PM)

Considering the cash it made opening weekend, nobody can call it a financial disappointment. Sorry, but it's done pretty damn well, like it or not. Reloaded will probably do very similar. 

 

slow down there, tiger. it can't be considered a success until it recoups all the money that went into it. considering the god damn thing cost $127 million dollars just to MAKE, it's barely made back its production budget so far. and considering the market's been bombarded with matrix shit, i'd say at least another $200 million went into marketing. and it still doesn't include the cost of making all the 35mm prints (and IIRC, it costs around $60,000 to make one full-length print--not a lot in itself, but when you open in thousands upon thousands of theaters around the world, often on multiple screens in the same theater, it adds up).

 

from comingsoon.net

The question of whether Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty could beat The Matrix Reloaded has been answered... in a big way.

 

The new comedy took in an estimated $20.4 million for Friday alone, which means it could be making close to $90 million for the four-day Memorial Day weekend. The Universal Pictures feature looks to become the second-biggest opening for a comedy ever, only trailing last year's Austin Powers in Goldmember.

 

The Matrix Reloaded earned about $11.2 million on its second Friday, to put its 9-day total at $175.8 million.

[Guest RedJed]

The fact that more than one person liked that movie makes me want to shoot myself. It was the first movie I ever actually walked out of the theater on. That thing is truly the worst movie I have ever seen. Usually bad movies at least have an appeal BECAUSE of their being bad. This movie was just ungodly painfully boring and a insult to any person with the slightest bit of intelligence. To say that this was NOT dumbed down when it was the most dumbed down movie in years is itself, dumb. I haven't seen a movie this dumb since Charlie's Angels. The problem here is that Charlie's Angels was supposed to be dumb and this wasn't. I never thought I would hate a movie more than I hated the remake of Thin Red Line, but I finally found one. People have told me, but it's a summer movie, just turn off your brain and enjoy it, don't think about it. Good God. I'd have to have a lobotomy not to notice the glaring plotholes in this movie.

 

Ironically, I saw the Freddy vs Jason trailer with it and on the big screen I thought the trailer looked awesome. Go figure. haha Hell, all the trailers before the movie was better than the actual movie.

Wow how funny, considering you went to great lengths to explain to me and a few others how much you hated everything about the F v. J trailer.

 

HUH?!!

[Guest SP-1]

175 Million in 9 days.

 

GTD, was it 127 million for RELOADED, or 127 Million for the back to back production of RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS since they were shot together?

 

Either way, 175 Mil has made up for it. If it's already made up for both, then there's no way in hell it's a disappointment.

 

Lethargic, I fail to see how it was dumbed down, either. The fact that there's still tons more information to unearth in REVOLUTIONS to make sense of everything seems to curb the plot holes theory as well. I'll reserve judgement on that until I've had time to digest REVOLUTIONS properly and see how well things come together.

[Guest godthedog]

The Matrix Reloaded earned about $11.2 million on its second Friday, to put its 9-day total at $175.8 million.

whoops. figures slightly off, but point still stands. till it makes upwards of three hundred million, they're still in the red.

 

GTD, was it 127 million for RELOADED, or 127 Million for the back to back production of RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS since they were shot together?

i just pulled the figure from imdb, so it didn't say. but if it was the combined budget, that means 'reloaded' was only made for about 64 million, and that seems WAY off for such a huge movie. hell, the original cost about that much, and that was 4 years ago. the general rule of thumb is to make the sequel bigger to make it as/more successful, & considering the kind of numbers the studios were going for, $127 million sounds about right. even your average run-of-the-mill summer blockbuster runs at least 70 million these days, & they wanted to make 'reloaded' far more than your average summer blockbuster.

[Guest Hogan Made Wrestling]

I think it will reach 400 million once it's been re-released about a month before Revolutions or whatever they are planning to do.

[Guest kane3212321]

One problem (of many) that I had with the Matrix Reloaded was that everyone kept going on about the prophecy but no one actually said what it was. I thought X-2 did so much better as a sequel then martix did.

[Guest Flyboy]

I thought X-2 did so much better as a sequel then martix did.

*ding, ding, ding*

 

We have a winner, here.

 

People say "Reloaded is a lot better than shit out these days". X2 owned Reloaded, period.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Eh, I thought X2 was shit personally, but than I don't feel like doing it a favour by wasting valuable time that I can spend doing....something...by talking about it. It was just that *bad*. That's why I was so surprised to see all the love it got on the board here.

[Guest NaturalBornThriller4:20]

The new Jim Carrey movie "Bruce Almighty" bounced "The Matrix Reloaded" from the top spot at the North American holiday box office, setting a new record for a non-sequel comedy.

 

According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "Bruce Almighty" earned $70.5 million for the first three days of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend. The Keanu Reeves sci-fi thriller "The Matrix Reloaded" slipped to a distant No. 2 with $37.2 million.

 

Data for other films was unavailable with most studios waiting until Monday to report four-day figures. Final grosses for the weekend will be released on Tuesday.

 

"Bruce Almighty," an $81 million project released by Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Pictures, stars Carrey as a disenchanted TV newsman given divine powers by God himself, played by Morgan Freeman . Universal produced the film with privately held Spyglass Entertainment.

 

Carrey's previous best opening was the 2000 film, "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," which also held the record for a non-sequel comedy with a three-day bow of $55.1 million. The best comedy opening overall is the 2002 comedy "Austin Powers in Goldmember" with $73.1 million.

 

Universal also predicted a four-day sum of $86.1 million, which would make "Bruce Almighty" the No. 2 opener for the four-day Memorial Day holiday following the $90.2 million launch for "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" in 1997.

 

Meanwhile, "The Matrix Reloaded" sped to $201.1 million after 11 days -- including evening screenings a day before it officially opened on May 15 -- becoming the second-fastest movie to reach a double century. The 2002 hit "Spider-Man" took nine days.

 

On Friday, the film's ninth day of release, it passed the lifetime total of its 1999 predecessor, "The Matrix" which ended up with $171 million. The films were released by Warner Bros. Pictures, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc, which partnered on the series with Australia's Village Roadshow

 

Credit: Yahoo! Movies.

 

$71.5Mil, I wonder how much it'll have by Monday.

[Guest Edwin MacPhisto]

"Bruce Almighty," an $81 million project released by Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Pictures

 

$81 million? Yikes. I know Carrey pulls about $20 million a movie, but I'm still astonished at how huge budgets have gotten lately.

 

::thinks of how funny he could make a movie with $81 million::

[Guest SP-1]

So even then, RELOADED has more than made back it's bank and made a hell of a profit. A more or less expected drop off for an R rated movie isn't going to amount to very much in the grand analysis.

 

And, X2 serves it's purposes as a sequel. RELOADED serves it's purpose as well, as the second part of a TRILOGY. I don't count EMPIRE as a sequel either. I think that's a dumb classification. TWO TOWERS isn't a sequel either. It's a continuation. So is RELOADED.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

One problem (of many) that I had with the Matrix Reloaded was that everyone kept going on about the prophecy but no one actually said what it was. I thought X-2 did so much better as a sequel then martix did.

Watch the first one. I hate it when sequels spend time explaining things that we already know.

[Guest Human Fly]

According to Boxofficemojo.com projections after Monday Matrix will have made 214 million.

 

I thought Reloaded was a very good movie. My only complaint was, at least to me, it seemed obvious that they were trying to get a PG-13 rating.

[Guest Pegasus Kid]

That R rating is financial death for a big budget movie. I can't believe the US Film system hasn't come up with a medium like we have up in Canada with the AA rating (anyone under 14 needs an adult accompanying them). I think the first week came out exactly as it should have. All the adults saw the movie. The second week is pretty much whomever was busy over the last week. The theater release will break even when it's all said and done and then the VHS/DVD/video game sales will be where the rest of the money comes in to substantiate calling it a success.

[Guest El Psycho Diablo]

The game's already sold over a million.

 

(Even if it is Max Payne with kung-fu, like someone here said)

[Guest godthedog]

So even then, RELOADED has more than made back it's bank and made a hell of a profit.

when it makes back all the money spent on MARKETING as well as production, it will make a profit.

[Guest ShooterJay]

Oh, I've figured out a big plothole.

 

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

In the first movie, Morpheus is interrogated in order to get the access codes to Zion, so the machines could destroy it. But according to the second movie, the machines created Zion and could destroy it at will when the time was right. So why did they go to all this trouble to capture Morpheus and interrogate him?

[Guest Urine Sane]

One problem (of many) that I had with the Matrix Reloaded was that everyone kept going on about the prophecy but no one actually said what it was.

 

Did you watch the first movie!?! It explains that Neo is to lead them in the fight against the machines and ultimately win.

 

In the first movie, Morpheus is interrogated in order to get the access codes to Zion, so the machines could destroy it. But according to the second movie, the machines created Zion and could destroy it at will when the time was right. So why did they go to all this trouble to capture Morpheus and interrogate him?

 

The machines did not create Zion.

[The Dames 0]

WOW. I went to see Bruce Almighty tonight and actually had to turn around and go to another theater the first time because it was sold out for the night. That just shocked me because I figured that Matrix would be number 1 for a few weeks.

 

Dames

[Guest SP-1]

That's not a plot hole. It's not a good idea to jump to conclusuions about anything the Architect says until the credits roll on REVOLUTIONS. The whole story hasn't been told yet, so searching for holes in the plot seems pretty dumb.

[Guest DrTom]

Agreed, SP. For all we know, The Architect could have been bullshitting Neo the whole time, just to railroad him into making one choice or another. It's hard to say something is a contradiction without the whole story in front of us to set things straight.

 

A holiday weekend drop like this should be expected, really. Considering that most people have other plans, they probably only had time to see one movie this weekend. And since a lot of them went to see Reloaded last weekend, they opted for the Carrey flick this time. I don't know if the fortunes will reverse themselves this week, but I'd bet on the fact that Reloaded still has some healthy box-office weeks ahead of it.

[Guest cabbageboy]

Well, let's say the Architect is right (mainly because if he was bullshitting it would cause my brain to hurt). Even then Zion wouldn't exactly be created by machines. It was created by whoever "The One" was at that point and some other people sent along with him.

 

Though to be honest, I sort of got the feeling that we'll find out that (surprise, surprise) Zion is actually a separate part of the Matrix and what they THINK is real life is just more bullshit created by the Architect.

 

You do have to wonder: what is the point of all this? I mean, people build a city so sentinels can destroy it, rinse and repeat...Neo fights Smith despite the fact that he can't really kill Smith and Smith DID kill him only to have him no sell and be resurrected.

 

Only movie more bizarre and existential is the Road Warrior....where people look for gas so they can refuel and look for more gas.

[Guest redbaron51]

you know what sucked more than the Matrix Reloaded...

 

 

 

 

A Walk To Remember...

 

 

 

[Guest Ripper]

So even then, RELOADED has more than made back it's bank and made a hell of a profit.

when it makes back all the money spent on MARKETING as well as production, it will make a profit.

Product placement and companies like power- aide that paid to use the licence...they cover the cost of the marketing. Because you see the Matrix mentioned in a commercial, it doesn't mean that they had to pay for it.

 

And the movie budget was for the production of two movies. ONE of them has made over 200 million.

[Guest starvenger]

One problem (of many) that I had with the Matrix Reloaded was that everyone kept going on about the prophecy but no one actually said what it was. I thought X-2 did so much better as a sequel then martix did.

X2 was meant to be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the franchise, and it delivered.

 

Having now seen it, I'd say that Matrix Reloaded was the "Back To The Future II" of the franchise. Not bad, but not what I expected - and it's seemingly there just to set up the finale.

 

Note to future directors: unless your name is Peter Jackson and you're adapting Tolkien, DON'T film multiple parts to a movie franchise at the same time...

[Guest Lethargic]

The budget listed for Reloaded is only for Reloaded. The movies were made for 300 million total. That's 150 each plus another 50 for marketing so 200 each actually.