By now the very ugly weekend numbers for Battleship are in: it made just $25 million, getting easily walloped by The Avengers and delivering Taylor Kitsch his second high-profile flop in a row, though it's hard to blame either John Carter's failure or this one entirely on him. If $25 million seems awfully low for a big blockbuster, especially one as expensive and heavily promoted as this one, it is: it's a historically bad opening, actually. According to EW $25 million is the worst domestic opening ever for a movie that cost more than $200 million-- and of course, John Carter's opening of $30 million can't be too far from the top of that list either.
Battleship is doing surprisingly well overseas, though, having made $215 million internationally, so it might not wind up being as big as money-loser as John Carter. But still, there's an air of mystery around this historically bad flop. What went so wrong here? How did trailers promising a movie from "Hasbro the studio that brought you Transformers" and tons of special effects and a small role from Rihanna add up to a movie that barely anybody cared to see? As usual, it's probably a lot of different factors-- the lasting success of The Avengers that drew away a lot of attention, the ho-hum reviews, the fact that it's based on a board game that nobody truly loves, the lack of stars who actually compel people to buy tickets, or hell, even the gorgeous weather on the East Coast could all have kept people away.
Having seen Battleship I had a hard time recommending it to anyone, especially the people I know who are likely to see only two or three summer movies. I also am still kind of angry at it for running nearly two and a half hours long, an egregious amount of time for a movie that was based on a damn board game and still never managed to properly explain the motivations of alien characters. But I want to hear from you guys-- what kept you from Battleship? And if you did see it, did you recommend it to other people? On paper it seems like every silly, over-the-top thin we love about big summer movies, but somewhere in the execution it fell apart entirely. Vote in the poll then let us know in the comments what kept you away from the movies this weekend.
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