Iron Man Rocks While Speed Racer Dies Quick Death

Unlike 'Iron Man', which earned over $100 million, domestically, on it's opening weekend - 'Speed Racer' has turned out to be a huge Hollywood flop on it's opening weekend. Rather than earning between $50-$75 million during it's first weekend, Speed Racer only earned an estimated $20 million and some Hollywood studios claim that Warner Brothers - the movie company that distributes Speed Racer, has inflated the actual box office figures and they speculate that Speed Racer earned even less than $20 million during it's first weekend of release. I am shocked that Speed Racer opened so poorly on it's opening weekend, but a friend emailed me the other day and said that the reviews for the new Speed Racer Movie were coming in and most of those reviews were very negative.

Most of the time if older movie reviewers don't like modern movies like Iron Man or Speed Racer, I really don't think these movie reviewers have that much sway with mainly teen and 20 year old movie goers to the point where they can either make or break a good movie. More than likely, there were millions of young people that showed up to watch Speed Racer on Friday and when the movie was not good, they instantly began text messaging their friends with the bad news and by the time Saturday rolled around - millions of other young people decided to do something else this weekend like play the new 'Grand Theft Auto' game or go back and see this summers first blockbuster movie, Iron Man. It is amazing how quickly a movie can either become a hit or die a quick death in this modern day and age.

Just last week, I visited the Apple Trailers website and watched the movie trailer for Speed Racer. Of course, it is pretty easy for a movie company to make a bad movie look good by producing a slick trailer that has little to do with what the movie is really all about. That may very well be what happened to Speed Racer because the short movie clip I watched on the Apple Trailers website did look good and it did cause me to want to see this movie at some point in time. However, now that Speed Racer was destroyed at the U.S. box office - I am having doubts as to whether this movie might be worth watching at all. Unlike Speed Racer, I initially thought that Iron Man looked very silly and also not the kind of movie that I would like to go see at the movie theater. However, I may need to rethink that decision as millions of people continue to flock to see Iron Man and from the few people that I have talked to that have seen it, they say this movie is great and they intend to go see it again, soon.

With an all star cast including Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow - Iron Man is turning out to be the movie to beat in 2008. On the other hand, Speed Racer is facing a quick death at the regular box office and it could very well be showing at discount (dollar) theaters before the end of May and released on DVD by the first part of June. This is truly a tale of two movies where one apparently has the right stuff and the other should not have been made in the first place. The U.S. movie box office is a very unforgiving place these days where movie that cost multiple millions of dollars to make, sometimes fall flat on their face on their opening weekend. While other multi million dollar movie productions, like Iron Man, not only earn back their production cost - but do it after only three short days of it's release.

Title: Iron Man Rocks While Speed Racer Dies Quick Death
Written: May 11 2008
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