The Force Is Strong In Star Trek!

To Infinity, and Beyond! I mean… um… Frak! Wait. No. I am… your father… Greedo… Bespin… Um… Oh, right! Star Trek prospered this weekend and will likely live long in theatres.

1) Star Trek — $US72.5 million
Yes, that intro was belabored. But Star Trek did do well, despite the wold’s most important critic, me, finding it a bit underwhelming. While not matching or besting the awful Wolverine’s numbers last weekend, Trek did manage to improve on its franchise’s last best debut, First Contact’s $US30 million thirteen years ago, by more than double. Good work everyone! But mostly good work J.J. Abrams, who is basically made of gold at this point. People just love him. And people just love the movie. It got a rock solid A from CinemaScore, which ought to mean good word-of-mouth ticket sales in the weeks to come. Unlike…

2) Wolverine — $US27 million
Nobody liked Wolverine. Not even Wolverine liked Wolverine. Jean Grey called it “middling” then enclosed herself in her mind bubble. Professor X awkwardly twiddled his thumbs and then slowly backed his magic wheelchair out of the room. Gambit explosively charged his cell phone and was all “Uh, I gotta get that…” and ran away. Jubilee didn’t say anything because no one cares what Jubilee has to say. Cyclops chuckled softly to himself, his visor glowing the ruby red of satisfaction. Psylocke cut a hole in the wall with her telekinetic hand blade and slipped away into the night. And Beast quietly pooped in a corner, reading Chaucer. The movie dropped a steep 68% from last week, because nerds told other nerds who told sorta regular people who told the normals “wait for the DVD.” This is bad news for everyone except for me, who is maliciously happy that Taylor Kitsch shan’t be as big a star as some predicted.

3) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — $US10.4 million
Speaking of pooping in a corner, Matthew McConaughey’s little ghostly romantic comedy about Jennifer Garner paying her Violet bills and Emma Stone trying to get famous and Michael Douglas doing a sad little softshoe while mumbling “see Kitty, I’m not old…” fared just aight in its second weekend. The Dudester can usually go bigger than this, but summer romantic counterprogramming really only works effectively when the lynchpin upon which the whole thing hinges hasn’t been sun griddled down to a mostly useless mound of drawling tanned hide.

4) Obsessed — $US6.6 million
Boncee, Boncee! She’s still got it. Her thriller about killing white ladies while Stringer Bell watches, helplessly aroused, has thrown $US56.2 million’s worth of blonde bitches down the stairs in three weeks. Which is significant considering the movie only cost about $US20 million to make. So expect Boncee to feature in some more thrillers, like The Hand that Rocks the Crib and a remake of A Stranger Among Us, about the Destiny’s Child singer moving to Boca.

7) The Soloist — $US3.6 million
Jamie Foxx sitting in a dark room, muttering to himself. Yes, that’s the plot of the movie. But it’s also what happened this weekend, when the actor wrote the AMC in Century City a check for $US3.6 million, got some Butterfinger bites, and sat by his lonesome in the theatre, trying to figure out what went wrong.