Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” has held on to No. 1 at the box office with a second weekend total of $35 million, bringing its domestic run to a ten-day total of $124 million.
After posting the best raw opening for the long-running Tom Cruise action series, “Fallout” is now 15 percent ahead of the pace set by “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” three years ago. This means that the film is on track to become the first Paramount release in four years to gross over $200 million domestically, the last being “Transformers: Age of Extinction” with $245 million in 2014.
After “Fallout,” however, the signs of an August slowdown similar to what the box office saw last year are starting to show. Disney’s “Christopher Robin” has opened to $25 million from 3,602 screens, below the studio’s expectations of a $27-30 million start.Critics were fairly positive with a 68 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, while opening night audiences loved the film with an A on CinemaScore.
While higher than the $21 million made by Disney’s last August release, “Pete’s Dragon,” it’s the lowest opening for a Disney release since that film, even lower than the $33 million that “A Wrinkle In Time” earned earlier this year.
Still, that’s no problem for Disney, a studio that has already earned over $2.5 billion in domestic grosses this year.With a $30 million global start against a $70 million budget, “Christopher Robin” will look for bigger openings in the U.K. and Australia, where Pooh and the A.A. Milne books he’s based on have been popular for nearly a century. Pooh also enjoys a strong fanbase in Japan, though the film will not be released in China as the honey-loving bear is often used by opponents of the country’s government to mock President Xi Jinping.
In third is Lionsgate’s “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” which has slumped to an opening of just $12 million from 3,111 screens. With critics giving the film just a 37 percent on the Tomatometer and audiences not liking it much more with a B on CinemaScore, the Kate McKinnon/Mila Kunis comedy is looking like it won’t match the success of films like “Office Christmas Party” or “Game Night,” which opened to $16-17 million and went on to have legs at the box office.
But Fox’ “The Darkest Minds” flopped even harder this weekend, posting an opening of just $5.7 million and finishing in eighth this weekend as the YA novel genre continues to fall out of moviegoers’ favor in this post-“Hunger Games” marketplace. Produced on a $34 million budget, critics panned the film with a 19 percent Rotten Tomatoes score while audiences gave it a B on CinemaScore.
Among holdovers, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” isn’t showing the endurance of its 2008 predecessor, but is still doing decently with $9.1 million in its third weekend for a domestic total of $91.3 million and a global total of $230 million. Sony’s “Hotel Transylvania 3” and “Equalizer 2” both grossed in the $8 million range this weekend, with “Equalizer” sitting just shy of $80 million domestically while “HT3” sits at $136 million domestic and $338 million worldwide. Meanwhile, “Incredibles 2,” which cross $1 billion worldwide this past week, added $5 million this weekend to push past “Zootopia” on the global chats with $1.04 billion.
'Mission: Impossible' - 10 Stunts That Make Us Think Tom Cruise Has a Death Wish (Photos)
No matter what the situation, Tom Cruise is committed to making his movies feel as realistic as possible. But sometimes, it feels like he takes it a little bit too far, to the point that his "Mission: Impossible" co-star Simon Pegg says that the biggest difference between watching him do the stunts on set and watching them in the film is that the audience "knows that Tom lives in the end." Here are some of the ways Cruise has risked life and limb for his craft.
The Last Samurai (2003) After eight months of rigorous martial arts and katana training, Cruise climbed aboard a mechanical horse for a makeshift battlefield joust against co-star Hiroyuki Sanada. But an error in Sanada's mechanical horse caused it to stop farther than the crew intended, and Cruise's neck nearly collided with Sanada's sword. Decapitation? Who's to say. But would Cruise have broken his neck if that sword got any closer? Quite likely.
Mission: Impossible II (2000) In one armrest-clutching shot, Ethan Hunt stops a knife from being driven right into his eye. When it was filmed, Cruise shocked director John Woo when he said he wanted to be involved in the shot with no special effects. Like "The Last Samurai," the blade is dulled, but it's attached to a cable to make sure that Cruise didn't need that "Valkyrie" eyepatch eight years in advance.
"MI2" also had one of Cruise's most famous scenes: the opening of the film where Ethan climbs up a cliff with no gear. But while Cruise did have digitally removed gear he used during filming, he did tear a muscle in his shoulder while filming the scene, which included a shot of him clinging to the sheer rock face while facing outward over the huge drop below.
Mission: Impossible III (2003) Three years later, Cruise worked with J.J. Abrams on a scene in which Ethan falls off of the garden wall of the Vatican while suspended by a brake cable that will stop him an inch from the ground. In reality, the cable holding Cruise back from a bone-crushing meeting with the ground was held on the other end by a bevy of strong crew members
Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) An instantly iconic action scene for both Cruise and the genre as a whole was Ethan's infamous attempt to scale the Burj Khalifa. While Cruise was harnessed, he climbed, dropped, and swung around the side of the half-mile high skyscraper for eight days to get the shots seen in the film.
Jack Reacher (2012) Before working together on "Mission: Impossible," Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie worked on this action film in which Cruise did all the car chase scenes on his own. Yes, even the parts where he's smashing into walls and other cars. Cruise went on to use his stunt driving training to power slide through narrow alleys in "Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation" while cameras attached to the windshield make it nearly impossible to see the road.
Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation (2015) That's not a green screen. While Cruise is attached by a safety harness that's digitally removed, he really is clinging to the side of a plane as it takes off. Cruise has said that between the g-forces of the takeoff and the wind blasting in his face, he nearly forgot to say his line while holding on to the plane.
In the underwater scene in "Rogue Nation" where Ethan has to hold his breath for over six minutes, Cruise didn't actually have to hold his breath as long to film the scene since they could use effects and takes. But to prove to the safety crew that he could be filmed for several minutes at a time without them having to worry about him, Cruise did learn how to hold his breath for six minutes
"Mission: Impossible -- Fallout" (2018) Now, in the latest "Mission: Impossible" film, Cruise goes from car chases to helicopter chases. In an interview with Graham Norton, Cruise says he spent two years getting his helicopter license and preparing for the scene, which involves a close range, low altitude chase through the mountains of New Zealand with co-star Henry Cavill. "There was a point where I genuinely thought... 'At least I get killed by Tom Cruise. That'll look good in the papers,'" Cavill said.
And that's not the only death-defying stunt he does in the film. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Cruise explained how he jumped 25,000 feet out of a plane over 100 times for another aerial stunt sequence while wearing military breathing equipment that allowed him to skydive at such high altitudes.
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Sometimes Tom Cruise is a little too committed to realism
No matter what the situation, Tom Cruise is committed to making his movies feel as realistic as possible. But sometimes, it feels like he takes it a little bit too far, to the point that his "Mission: Impossible" co-star Simon Pegg says that the biggest difference between watching him do the stunts on set and watching them in the film is that the audience "knows that Tom lives in the end." Here are some of the ways Cruise has risked life and limb for his craft.
