Look, Avatar is a fine movie. If I were ranking the best hundred movies of the year, it would certainly find a solid place in the top twenty-five purely based on its technical virtuousity. That said -- why are so many people flocking to the theater to see it? For the seventh God damned weekend in a row, it topped the box office taking in $30M ($594M) to easily bash Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness which only managed $17.1M in its opening frame. The dreadful, apocalyptic When in Rome managed a mere $12M to top the almost as dreadful The Tooth Fairy ($10M | $26.1M).
The intentionally apocalyptic The Book of Eli rounded out the top 5 by gathering in $8.7M ducats ($74.3M). The, uh, apocalyptic Legion plummeted in its second weekend ($6.8M | $28.6M) but still bested The Lovely Bones ($4.7M | $38M) and the resilient Sherlock Holmes ($4.5M | $197.5M). Dumb Fucking Chipmunk Movie continued to grind out cash from dumb children and their moronic parents ($4M | $209.2M) while It's Complicated ($3.7M | $104M) did basically the same thing from lonely, middle-aged women. In limited release, Saint John of Las Vegas had a decent start ($11,200 per theater).
