Box Office: Kate Beckinstail over Red Tails, Marky Mark over 9/11, 9/11 over Gina

George Lucas’s black guilt

Red Tails rated 33% among critics, but received an A grade from audiences (via cinemascore), almost the inverse of Haywire‘s 82% among critics and D+ on cinemascore. Audiences apparently were so happy to see black war heroes that they ignored lines like “Die, you foolish African,” and “I guess there’s more to you coloreds than I thought!”, while critics failed to recognize that a movie that isn’t bad isn’t the same thing as one that’s good. Red Tails did an incredible job convincing black people that it was their duty to see a crappy movie because it had black people in it, while MMA fans tried to do the same with Haywire.

I’m not a black dude, so I can’t really speak to the Red Tails guilt campaign, but I’m pretty sure there were black movies before this, and there will be plenty after it, whether or not we give George Lucas our money for his uncredited remake of The Tuskeegee Airmen. But as a die-hard MMA fan, I can tell you that if I was in the habit of seeing movies just because MMA stars were in them, there are plenty of Hector Echavarria movies I could rent.

This week
Last week
Title
Weekend Gross % Change Theater Count / Change Average Total Gross Budget* Week #
1 N Underworld Awakening $25,400,000 3,078 $8,252 $25,400,000 1
2 N Red Tails $19,100,000 2,512 $7,604 $19,100,000 $58 1
3 1 Contraband $12,200,000 -49.9% 2,870 +7 $4,251 $46,100,000 $25 2
4 36 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close $10,545,000 +11,484.2% 2,630 +2,624 $4,010 $11,237,000 5
5 N Haywire $9,000,000 2,439 $3,690 $9,000,000 $23 1
6 2 Beauty and the Beast (3D) $8,556,000 -51.8% 2,625 $3,259 $33,364,000 2
7 4 Joyful Noise $6,075,000 -45.9% 2,735 $2,221 $21,903,000 2
8 3 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol $5,540,000 -52.6% 2,519 -827 $2,199 $197,349,000 $145 6
9 5 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows $4,805,000 -44.1% 2,485 -670 $1,934 $178,611,000 6
10 7 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) $3,750,000 -43.7% 1,907 -767 $1,966 $94,775,000 $90 5

[via BoxOfficeMojo, Twitpic via David]

×