Free Topic Friday: Summer Action Movies

What's that? Time for another Free Topic Friday! This weeks topic:

To start, let's present some facts:

The Expendables made $34,825,135 in its opening weekend. So far it has a total gross of slightly less than $100,000,000. The opening weekend number may not seem extremely high at first, and to be completely honest it isn't. Especially when compared to the top opening weekend of all time, which belongs to The Dark Knight, bringing in a whopping $158,411,483. Of course, to compare this movie to such colossal a giant is extremely unfair. So, let's look at a few similar titles:

The Bourne Ultimatum      $69,283,690

The Bourne Supremacy    $52,521,865

I, Robot                           $52,179,887

Bad Boys II                     $46,522,560

Mission: Impossible          $45,436,830

Terminator Salvation         $42,558,390

All of these figures presented are just from the opening weekends. These are all pretty high as well, so it can be said that The Expendables had a pretty average opening weekend.

But let's be honest, 35 million dollars is still a lot of fucking money.

So why exactly does Hollywood expect people to go see action movies, regardless of the plot (or lack thereof) and sometimes overbearing amount of explosions?

The complicated answer:

RottenTomatoes gives The Expendables a 40% rating, or two stars. Yet, this hasn't stopped the movie from making $100,000,000. There have been a slew of negative reviews stating that the movie is just "too much action" and "not enough plot," etc.

However, audiences are completely willing to watch some movies and just let their mind stop working for two hours. It is very easy to walk into a movie theater, forget the outside world, and just let everything in that movie take you to another realm. It is completely safe to say that the "action movie" is a tried-and-true formula, especially in the American markets. I mean, let's face it: people like to see shit getting blown up.

The Simple Answer:

Hollywood expects you to go see these movies because they know you will, and so do you.

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I will be taking the next two days off for mental health reasons, so my daily posting will be postponed until The Monday post (which normally goes up sometime Sunday night.)

I will still be reading the comments, and remember I am always looking for suggestions for Free Topic Friday!

Free Topic Friday: Mac Vs Pc

Welcome to the first ever Free Topic Friday! Since there was only one suggestion for a topic, it was the automatic winner!

Well, there are plenty of areas to take a debate between Macs and PCs. However, since there are plenty of sites that discuss in length (perhaps too much length) the comparisons of hardware and software, I feel I should use this opportunity to discuss a little bit about the advertising campaigns that we have seen.

Everyone is familiar with the brilliant advertising campaign: "I'm a Mac." "I'm a PC." Of course, in each of these commercials, the character playing the PC is meant to look like someone's uncool uncle who spends all his time collecting his receipts for tax season. The Mac, on the other hand, is the trendy young adult whose cool demeanor remains unchanged no matter what fancy shenanigan the PC may have up his sleeve.

Face it. It's brilliant advertising and there is nothing you can do to change that.


But what does PC have?
Nothing.


Granted, Windows has done its best to reply with it's own commercials of "I'm a PC, and Windows 7 was my idea." With these commercials, the consumer shows off some new or "exciting" feature that a machine running Windows 7 can do, and they explain how it was because of some inept realization they had while they were in the shower, or some other mundane situation. Features?! Who wants features?! Think about these commercials and how they compare to the Mac commercials. What do you recall from the Mac commercials you have seen? Do you remember the things that they may have listed that Macs are supposed to do better than PCs? Or do you remember that they make the PC character look foolish in every situation?

Go ahead, I'll wait.

I think the answer is pretty obvious. While some of the more tech-minded people will be able to list some features, the overwhelming majority just remember the gimmick of the commercial. This is why Macs have grown so rapidly in popularity. It isn't the hardware, it isn't the software, it's the marketing.

Personally I'm a PC user and a Zune user. I use a PC because my knowledge of computing is heavily based around the PC, so I can handle any problems that may arise. The Zune I bought because I was able to get a good deal on it. What Zune advertising campaign to I remember? None. What iPod campaign?

I think we can recall pretty easily.