Archive

Big at the box office: muscle-bound men

This weekend, the special effects-laden war epic 300 raked in over $70 million in its opening weekend, making it the third biggest R-rated opening ever (behind The Matrix Reloaded and The Passion of the Christ) – and despite the film’s bloody subject (a battle between 300 Spartans vs. the 60,000-member Persian army in 480 B.C.), the viewing audience was reportedly evenly split between men and women. Warner Bros., the company behind the picture, claims that they have finally reached the difficult-to-reach 15-to-24-year-old video game-playing public.

According to AfterElton.com, 300 plays to numerous homophobic stereotypes, which doesn’t exactly make me want to see the movie (even though I admit that I do enjoy a bloody war epic), but apparently that hasn’t kept viewers away from the theaters. Maybe they all went there to see a scantily clad Lena Headey (Imagine Me & You).

But 300 isn’t the only testosterone-heavy movie to make big bucks recently. The No. 2 spot over the weekend belonged to Wild Hogs, another abysmally reviewed film, this time starring Tim Allen and John Travolta as middle-aged suburbanites who take to the road on a bunch of motorcycles to do whatever middle-aged men in mid-life crises do.

Thankfully, not all the films in the top five rely on tired gay jokes or macho bonding: The No. 3 spot belongs to Bridge to Terabithia, the film adaptation of the classic children’s novel. Unfortunately the reprieve is short-lived. Rounding out the top five are Ghost Rider (Nicholas Cage as a motorcycle-riding comic book hero, Johnny Blaze) and Zodiac (about the hunt for the Zodiac killer, starring Jake Gyllenhaal).

OK, Zodiac sounds like an interesting film, but do four out of the top five-grossing films really have to be about men, men, men and men?

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button