Friday, May 27, 2005

- Revenge of the Sith made 158.8 million during its first four days. It made 50 million during its first day. ROTS has the following records:

1. Biggest opening day
2. Biggest day ever (Thursday, May 19th)
3. Biggest initial 3 days
4. Biggest initial 4 days
5. Largest non-holiday Monday.

However, ROTS did not get the biggest weekend haul (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). During its actual weekend, ROTS made 108 million. Spider-man made 114 million during its initial 3-day weekend opening.

Even with all this information, its still difficult to determine exactly how much money ROTS will make. It could be a very "front-loaded" movie, like Matrix Reloaded, or it might have good legs, like Phantom Menace or Titanic. This Memorial Day weekend will be crucial. ROTS is guaranteed to make more money than Attack of the Clones (AOTC made 312 million), but will ROTS make over 400 million? We wont know until Tuesday.

Revenge of the Sith finished with 83% at Rotten Tomatoes. In an earlier posting, I predicted from 70 to 75% freshness. I am glad I was wrong. Here is how each Star Wars movie fared at Rotten Tomatoes.com:
The Empire Strikes Back: 98%
A New Hope: 93%
Revenge of the Sith: 83%
Return of the Jedi: 81%
Attack of the Clones: 65%
The Phantom Menace: 62%

I have seen the movie twice, and I plan on seeing it at least twice more. Its the best of the prequel movies, but still not quite as strong as the original trilogy. On a scale of 1 to 100, I give the movie an 85. I enjoyed it more on my second viewing.

Lets poke the hornet's nest...the combined box-office from the three prequel movies will be greater than the combined box-office from the three Lord of the Rings movies. Does that mean that the prequel movies are better than the Lord of the Rings movies? Of course not. I think the LOTR movies are better, but if someone wants to argue that the prequel movies are better, at least they have some kind of statistics to back-up such a claim. Here is how much each LOTR movie made, and how much each prequel movie made (ROTS obviously isnt done yet, but it certainly will make more than 300 million.)

The Fellowship of the Ring: 314 million
The Two Towers: 340 million
The Return of the King: 377 million
Total: 1.031 billion

The Phantom Menace: 431 million
Attack of the Clones: 312 million
Revenge of the Sith: 300+ million?
Total: 1.043 billion?

If we want to compare these two trilogies to the grand-daddy of all trilogies (the original Star Wars movies) we should adjust for inflation. After all, ticket prices were only 2 to 4 dollars in the late 70s and early 80s. Here are the adjusted numbers for the original Star Wars movies:

A New Hope: 1.139 billion
The Empire Strikes Back: 628 million
Return of the Jedi: 601 million

It really isnt a fair comparison though. Times were quite different 25 years ago. Nowadays, people have many more ways to entertain themselves than they did back then (cable TV, computers, Nintendo, etc..) Disposable income also stretched farther, so families could see a movie over, and over again. During the 1970s, 40% of all Americans went to the movie theater at least once a week. Now its down to 10%. Its estimated that 88 million people saw A New Hope during its initial release. Only 44 million people saw The Phantom Menace when it was released in 1999. Check out the forums at boxofficemojo.com. That's where I am getting all this information.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/forums/viewforum.htm?f=2&sid=c44f789c05a9f1f2c128c2fcbcf18649

- Here are the top ten ways (according to one scientist) of destroying the earth. I am not talking about just destroying humanity, or destroying all life on earth, I mean physically destroying our shiny blue home:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html

- I bought a cell-phone a few days ago. I want it to work in Las Vegas, but I have to pay extra for that feature, which got me to thinking...why doesnt my cell-phone work in Las Vegas? That line of thought brought me to an even more fundamental question...how does my cell-phone work anyhow? The website HowStuffWorks.com can explain how a cell-phone works. In fact that website can explain just about anything. Here a link:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

A few years ago, the TV quiz show Jeopardy changed its rules. The show normally allowed a person to only win 5 times in a row, and then the champion must leave the show. Now on Jeopardy, you can keep playing as long as you keep winning. Last year Ken Jennings won 74 shows in a row, and won over 2 million dollars in prize money (a record for game-shows.) Ken Jennings was the best trivia player I had ever seen. Let me repeat that. Ken Jennings WAS the best player I had ever seen. Two months ago, Jeopardy started the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, which pitted their greatest players from the past 25 years against each other. The two players who emerged from this tournament would play Ken Jennings in a three-day tournament for 2 million dollars. The three day tournament started last Monday, and ended on Wednesday. Ken Jennings got crushed! Brad Rutter, a native of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, stomped on Jennings. He beat Jennings each day of the three day tournament, and finished with twice as much money as Jennings. Brad Rutter is the BEST trivia player I have ever seen. He knew every question that Jennings knew, but he was quicker on the buzzer, and made less mistakes than Jennings. Here is an article about Rutter from his home-town newspaper:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05147/511399.stm

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