Three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies in, we knew that teaming Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski was a winning formula — even if the third one was pushing it. And now they can add Depp and Verbinski’s “Rango” to the equation; the CG comedy grossed $38 million this weekend, nearly doubling the take of its closest competitor, “The Adjustment Bureau”, which earned $20.9 million in second place. (“Beastly” opened in third with $10.1 million, hardly a challenge to anyone.)
I expect “The Adjustment Bureau” will see an uptick next week, or at least hold steady, as word of mouth circulates and people get a better sense of the film’s spirit. It’s not the conspiracy thriller/chase picture that Universal’s selling it as — well, not exactly. Have you seen it? You should see it.
And in other fun movie-misrepresentation news, Michael Bay has come out against one of his own movies, telling Empire Magazine that “Transformers: Rise of the Fallen” was ruined in pre-production by the writers’ strike:
“The real fault with (Transformers 2) is that it ran into a mystical world,” he explains. “When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers’ strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you’ve got to have a story in three weeks.”
He adds, “I was prepping a movie for months where I only had 14 pages of some idea of what the movie was. It’s a BS way to make a movie, do you know what I’m saying?”
Only a scoundrel would point out that Bay had unfettered access to screenwriters for all his other movies, and somehow still managed to make “Armageddon”, “Pearl Harbor”, “Bad Boys 2”, “The Island” and the first “Transformers”.
The documentary on the DVD/Blu-ray also makes it pretty clear that all the worst ideas in Revenge of the Fallen were Bay’s doing, and had nothing to do with the writer’s strike. There’s actual footage of him instructing the VFX people to make a little robot hump Megan Fox’s leg. He giggles like a schoolgirl at how “hilarious” it is, while they quizzically give him a look of: “Really? Are you sure this is what you want?” I believe Bay even states in the commentary that this was the scene he’s proudest of in the movie.
He also goes off on a rant in the commentary about the obnoxious “geography buffs” who might complain that the back door to the Smithsonian doesn’t open onto a desert.
Scoundrel!