Box Office Democracy

Week 49: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2

This week caused me no end of stress. Usually I check the box office numbers on Saturday morning and again on Sunday but this week I was checking about every hour. All I wanted was information. That’s not true, all I wanted was information that said Skyfall was gaining. All weekend the projections said it would be a difference of about $300,000. When the final estimates came out on Sunday the margin was about $400,000 in Twilight’s favor, enough for me to wait out the actual results on Monday afternoon. I spent an entire morning reloading all of my news sites hoping for a miracle. Sony overestimated Skyfall by almost half a million dollars. Then despair set in.

I went to Facebook to complain about the result and later to beg anyone to come with me and share this horror only to be rebuffed. I seriously considered abandoning this entire project. With 48 weeks down I was willing to just walk away and never talk about it again. Spend every holiday party responding to “Hey, how’s that movie blog thing going?” with “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

I eventually realized how stupid that was and that it was only two hours and isn’t this the kind of sacrifice that any worthwhile endeavor requires? I’m still not entirely sure about that last bit but it got me in to the theater and that’s all that matters. I sat through the whole ugly, boring mess again.

It wasn’t as bad as I had built it up in my head. In the end after three weeks with Twilight (I’m very sure it won’t win again) that’s what I have to say about it: it isn’t so bad that it’s worth spending three days fretting over. It’s a bad movie with a pretty good eight minute fight scene. It isn’t the destruction of cinema nor will it turn an entire generation of girls into pre-feminist pushovers. It’s just fifth film in a forgettable franchise that will, one day, be looked upon with the same gravitas as the American Pie films. It’s over and it’s time to move on.

4 December 2012 ·