(Transformers 2: You Can’t Even Tell Who’s Fighting)
Five days after opening in the U.S., Transformers 2 has earned $387.2 million dollars worldwide. Domestically, it earned $201.2 million, becoming the second-highest five-day gross ever behind The Dark Knight ($203.8). And keep in mind it opened on a Wednesday.
The five-day opening gross of $201.2 million from 4,234 theaters domestically easily eclipsed the $152.4 million earned by “Spider-Man 2,” which previously held the five-day record for a Wednesday launch. Overseas, the action tentpole opened to an estimated $162 million, the fourth best international opening of all time, after “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” ($216.3 million), “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” ($193 million) and “Spider-Man 3″ ($164.9 million).
Despite negative reviews, more than 90% of those polled as they left theaters said the sequel was as good as, or better than, the first. [Variety]
I find that poll hard to believe, but knowing the audience for this film I’m not sure those polled were capable of understanding the question. I saw Transformers on Saturday afternoon. Before the movie started, the groups of kids directly in front of me and behind me were both playing video games (with the sound on) on their PSPs. Then throughout the movie, of the three white kids sitting in front of me, two were texting the entire movie and one actually answered his phone during. The two black dudes to my left yelled at the screen the whole time, and on my right, there was a Hispanic woman translating everything into Spanish for her husband. Everywhere children were crying or yelling or whining about going to the bathroom, and I was convinced that at any second, a kid with a propeller beanie and giant lollypop would run down the aisle smearing everyone’s face with chocolate. Long story short, I thought the film was pretty terrible, but given the atmosphere I might not have been the best audience for a movie about saving humanity.
(”We sleep in bunk beds.”)
Michael Bay has been taking a lot of heat lately for his jive-talking, illiterate, gold-tooth wearing minstrel bots, and FilmSchoolRejects recently got a chance to ask Transformers screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman about it.
FSR: I heard that the gold tooth was Michael Bay’s idea, but do you have any response to those who found The Twins offensive?
Orci: Number one, we sympathize. Yes, the gold tooth was not in the script, that’s true.
Kurtzman: It’s really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie.
FSR: Were you offended by them?
Kurtzman: I wasn’t thrilled. I certainly wasn’t thrilled.
Orci: Yeah, same reaction. I’m not easily offended, but when I saw it, I thought, ‘Someone’s gonna write about that.’”
If you’ve ever seen a press-tour interview, you know it’s almost impossible to get anything out of movie people other than glowing, unoriginal, embarrassing praise. In the movie business, acknowledging a disagreement and saying “I wasn’t thrilled” is tantamount to calling someone a devil-worshipping holocaust denier. But that’s why it’s nice to work with Michael Bay. You know you can say anything you want about him in a print interview, because he’ll probably be too busy shopping for gold teeth to see it, and anyway he can barely read. True story.
UPDATE: Variety is now reporting a $60.6 million dollar first day
Despite pretty much universally poor reviews (The Guardian described it as “like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan”), Michael Bay’s Transformers sequel earned $55 60.6 million in a single day. On a Wednesday. For comparison, consider that Watchmen made $55.7 mil in its entire first weekend.
Transformers ROTF [which stands for "Revenge of the Fallen," though I keep reading it as "Rolling Over Table Farting"] easily scored the best opening day ever for a Wednesday release at the domestic box office. Previous record-holder was “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” which grossed $44.2 million in its first day.
[NEW] “Transformer 2’s” opening day haul also is the second best of all time after “The Dark Knight,” which grossed $67.2 million on its first day in release (a Friday).
“Transformers 2,” playing in more than 4,200 theaters in the U.S., has a strong shot at eclipsing the $152.4 million earned by “Spider-Man 2″ in its first five days. That film opened on the same Wednesday in 2004. The opening day haul in the U.S. included $16 million in midnight runs, the best run ever for a film released on a Wednesday. And it’s the third-best of all time after “The Dark Knight” ($18.5 million) and “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” ($16.9 million). [Variety]
Before he begins work on Transformers 3, Michael Bay said he plans to use some of his money to travel the world in a unicorn-shaped zeppelin, bringing explosions to underprivileged children. Then he made a crass joke about “record opening” and giggled for 10 minutes.
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Poor Michael Bay. You use a couple jive-talking, gold-tooth wearing, breakdancing illiterate robots as comic relief and suddenly everyone’s calling you racist. Maybe it’s you who’s racist. Racist against awesome stuff.
Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling ‘bots are just good clean fun. “We’re just putting more personality in,” Bay said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. [Oh right, I forgot] These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”
TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids. Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”
Script excerpt: “Optimus Prime walks up to [HILARIOUS RACIAL STEREOTYPE TK.]. OPTIMUS: ‘Hey you worthless [HILARIOUS ETHNIC SLUR TK.]s, why don’t you get off your asses and get a job instead of blowing all your robot welfare money on [HILARIOUS ETHNIC FOOD TK.]?’ Hold for laughter.”
“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay’s lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely. [Yahoo]
Orci and Kurtzman added that they weren’t able to squeeze in a few of Bay’s other ideas, like Squint, a “math bot” who’s bad at driving, or Grease Spot, an Autobot who can transform into a Puerto Rican flag and spends all day on his stoop “being loud.” And then there was Tiger, Bay’s beloved but ultimately abandoned idea for a tiger who can transform into “a bigger tiger.”
Look, let’s get one thing straight: no one expects Transformers 2 to be classic cinema. Michael Bay’s best movie was The Rock, which is only good in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, and this one’s a sequel of a film based on toy cars. But having realistic expectations doesn’t mean I can’t still love the awful reviews as I would my own son. Here’s what Ebert had to say:
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination. [...]
I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with…fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, except for Starscream®, who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard. [Sun-Times]
I love when Ebert trashes something. But I might argue that a “horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments,” is actually a metaphor for the human experience. (*takes drag off clove cigarette*)
