Steve Mason’s Exclusive Early Box Office Estimates:

1. Up – $20.5M Friday … $67M 3-day … $67M cume
2. Night at the Museum 2 – $7.5M Friday … $27M 3-day … $106.79M cume
3. Drag Me To Hell – $6.25M Friday … $16.5M 3-day … $16.5M cume
4. Terminator Salvation- $5M Friday … $16M 3-day … $90.5M cume
5. Star Trek – $3.7M Friday … $13.5M 3-day … $210.2M cume
6. Angels & Demons – $3.6M Friday … $12M 3-day … $105.56M cume
7. Dance Flick – $1.7M Friday … $5.2M 3-day … $19.54M cume

If these numbers hold, “Up” will open better than “Wall-E” and “Monsters and Aliens.”

Considering ”Up” is fairly low concept and starring a 78 year-old man, this is beyond impressive. Word of mouth, rave reviews and the reservoir of goodwill Pixar’s built up over the years are making this a real audience-driven sensation.

As of Thursday “Terminator Salvation” is tracking almost to the dollar with “Terminator 3.” Figuring for inflation, this is a major disappointment, especially when Schwarzenegger’s last outing was considered an under-performer.

“Angels and Demons” is also tracking poorly, well behind its predecessor: $33M compared to $52M.

“Wolverine” is a hit and “Star Trek” is a smash.

The implication is that the filmmakers made this movie just so they could tell a ripping good yarn. Stipulating for the moment that it is a good yarn, there’s no way to show that the filmmakers were indeed fully cognizant of their movie’s cultural impact. There’s no way we can get inside their minds, right?

Hassassin Assassin

Well, I’ve figured out a way to do just that. No, I don’t have ESP or a special mind-reading device. But I do have common sense (pace my wife).

Now, whenever someone adapts a book into a movie, it’s instructive to examine where the movie differs from the book. If the movie version alters a key detail in the book, you can’t blame the original author for that decision. It’s clearly a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers.

One key difference between the book and the movie here lies in the character of the Assassin. Simply put, he’s the bad guy. He is the one who actually commits all of the brutal, sadistic murders that take place in the main plot.

But in the original novel, this character is identified as “Hassassin,” a member of the original Islamic cult of the same name (and the origin of the modern English word “assassin”). He’s described as a misogynistic, “mahogany-skinned” Middle Easterner.

In Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, the murderer is an albino member of Opus Dei, an actual Roman Catholic society. That character is kept entirely unchanged from book to movie. (Offending both Opus Dei members and albinos, incidentally.)

But in Angels & Demons, Howard decided to change the murderer from a Muslim Arab motivated by a centuries-old sectarian grudge, into… a nondescript Dane motivated by mere money?

You tell me, who is more fascinating? A member of an exotic, age-old secret society seeking revenge? Or just another white guy who’s only in it for the Euros? From a creative standpoint, it’s a no-brainer. The villain is a key element of a great story. Try to imagine Star Wars without Darth Vader, or The Dark Knight without the Joker.

Unless you are concerned about something other than mere good storytelling. Howard obviously had no qualms about offending Opus Dei or albinos, which is why the villain in The Da Vinci Code stayed the same from novel to film. But something made him radically refashion the murderer in Angels and Demons.

There’s only one plausible explanation for this change. The filmmakers wanted to protect the image of Middle Easterners. They know that how you depict people, even in a fictional movie, has an impact on our society’s views.

Sure, one character alone won’t make a sea-change, just like one movie may not transform the world overnight. But the cumulative impact of our culture is unmistakable. Culture is to people what water is to fish. Culture shapes the way people live, think and believe far more than does politics.

Does anybody honestly doubt that Hollywood is acutely aware of its power to shape public opinion? This very website is predicated on that (well-founded) assumption. Why do you think the Oscars persistently award the most progressive or liberal movies?

And why do you think Hollywood made a seemingly endless stream of anti-war movies during the peak of the Iraq conflict? After the first few bottomed out at the box office, they knew it was a financial loser. And yet they persevered in throwing more and more anti-war and anti-military movies into the cultural mix, like so many suicidal kamikaze planes.

And why do you think the advertising industry exists? If a 30-second commercial can change people’s shopping habits, what do you think a two-hour movie or 10-year TV franchise can do?

Let me stress that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. If you want to make money-losing message movies, knock yourself out. One man’s ham-fisted, vomit-inducing, over-the-top message movie is another’s deep, socially relevant, life-changing event. Just don’t tell me that you had no idea your movie might have any social impact.

So, who’s being naive here? The people who say, “It’s just a movie”? Or the ones who understand there’s usually an agenda?

Check out this typical comment at my second-favorite blog created by Andrew Breitbart:

“We need to keep an anti-religion mindset in the popular culture if we are going to continue to fight Christian and corporate fascism. Any suspicion we can cast onto Christianity, or any other brand of guilt and fear-inducing magical thinking, gives the corporate and religious oligarchs one less weapon they can use to manipulate us with. – Retrofuturistic”

And the Guardian, hardly a defender of the Faith, posted this headline: “Angels and Demons WILL damage the Catholic church.” (Emphasis in original.) It went on to argue (approvingly) that the movie will “fuel the belief that Catholicism is incompatible with modernity.”

In interviews Brown (and the filmmakers) say that his books are meant to get people talking, to ask questions. Rather than lead to more clarity, however, the countless mistakes, deliberate or otherwise, create great clouds of confusion.

Art historians have to wearily explain to their students, “No, Bernini wasn’t a member of the Illuminati, nor did he hate the Church. In fact, he was a devout Catholic who prayed for hours a day.”

Instead of teaching something new and true, they waste valuable lesson time debunking falsehoods, clearing weeds instead of planting new seeds. Just as bad currency drives out good, junk history pollutes minds instead of enlightening them.

One of the main attractions of Brown’s books, and the movies based on them, is the transcendent beauty of a culture once called Christendom. The tragedy is, Brown and Howard are exploiting this beauty, while at the same time contributing to its downfall.

Do you ever wonder why most modern and post-modern art and architecture seem so empty and cold, even alienating? Do you ever wonder why the art and buildings preceding the rise of Modernism are so much more inspiring than what has come since? Perhaps it’s because contemporary art and architecture are the products of a culture that has rejected sanctity, eschewed sacredness.

As philosopher Roger Scruton writes in the latest issue of City Journal:

“The current habit of desecrating beauty suggests that people are as aware as they ever were of the presence of sacred things. Desecration is a kind of defense against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things, our lives are judged, and to escape that judgment, we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.

“Christians have inherited from Saint Augustine and from Plato the vision of this transient world as an icon of another and changeless order. They understand the sacred as a revelation in the here and now of the eternal sense of our being.”

Increasingly, modern man is akin to a barbarian tribe camped out in the decaying city of a once-great civilization, gaping incomprehendingly at the exquisite ruins in their midst, admiring them while not having a clue as to how to recreate them (or at least, how to recreate the conditions that made them possible).

Many here who said they wanted to see Angels & Demons despite the negative reviews cited the beauty of Rome and Vatican City as the main attraction. Isn’t it ironic that the movie is profiting from this awesome splendor, while viciously chomping on the hand that created that art in the first place?

Based on a novel by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, and featuring the same director-star team as the lucrative 2006 film adaptation of that novel (Ron Howard and Tom Hanks), Angels and Demons brought in approximately $48 million during its first weekend. While enough to edge out Star Trek’s second-weekend take of $43 million, it’s a good deal less than Da Vinci, which snagged a gaudy $77 million during its first three days.

Simple Hollywood film economics explains the matter quite well without reference to any hypothetical backfire effect from church boycotts.

It seems likely, first, that some of the difference between the two films’ initial performance is attributable to the greater popularity of the novel on which the first one was based, and the novelty value of its concept. The Da Vinci Code didn’t need any PR boost from the church–it was based on a huge international bestseller, and its concept was extremely well-known. Angels and Demons, while also a bestseller, was not nearly as big a phenomenon. Most people likely don’t know what it’s actually about.

Bad press from professional film critics is also a factor in audiences’ less enthusiastic response to Angels and Demons–but as an indicator, not a cause. The film adaptation of Angels and Demons received relatively poor reviews, but many big hit films get bad notices from the professional critics, and The Da Vinci Code actually got even worse reviews than the sequel has garnered. So that’s not a cause of the lower box office, but it identifies another factor probably holding down initial audience enthusiasm for Angels and Demons: in addition to the obvious fact that sequels tend not to do as well as the originals because the novelty value is greatly diminished, that effect is especially powerful for sequels to films that drew big audiences but weren’t as entertaining as audiences expected.

Also, while the premise of Angels and Demons is indeed less controversial than that of The Da Vinci Code, that very factor works against the new film by further diminishing the sense of originality behind it, and therefore audiences’ expectations of how interesting it will be, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with the premise.

Thus the diminished novelty value and expected quality level of Angels and Demons vis a vis The Da Vinci Code are probably sufficient to explain the new film’s strong but unspectacular start.

While it’s true that the Catholic Church muted its complaints about Angels and Demons so as not to provide any more free publicity to the film than necessary–in contrast to its full-court press against the openly anti-Christian and anti-Catholic Da Vinci Code–to suggest that the Church’s less intense response accounts for the difference in audience size undoubtedly attributes too much influence to the church over the movie-going habits of an audience that is, after all, largely non-Catholic.

While The Da Vinci Code did better in post-Christian Europe and other non-U.S. countries than in the United States, which remains largely Christian in religious identification and attendance, the Da Vinci Code film and novel made heaps of money in the United States–$217.5 million domestically for the film version, plus DVDs, pay per view, etc.. Unless every atheist in the nation saw it several times, the film and book cannot have offended the U.S. laity nearly as much as they did the Church hierarchy.

Clearly, U.S. Christians were interested in seeing The Da Vinci Code and judging what it had to say. Having been there and done that, however, they seem disinclined to rush right out and repeat the experience. That’s simple common sense, and sufficiently explains the less-passionate initial audience response to Angels and Demons.

—S. T. Karnick, editor of The American Culture

People whose opinions I respect have defended A&D as not being anti-Catholic. This is probably due to the end of the film which delivers a trumped up moment of warmth and reconciliation between Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon character and the Church in the form of a new Pope.  From my perch, this moment is a subtle but devious cherry on top of a blisteringly unfair and wholly dishonest attack on the Church.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

One way to dishonestly destroy someone or something is to repeat only the negative about that someone or something. DreamWorks has just announced a new film about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and were it to focus solely on King’s extra-marital affairs no one would argue that the movie was anything other than a propaganda tool produced with the goal in mind of assassinating his character.

Now, DreamWorks could do this and hide behind the defense of “telling the truth.” After all, there’s little doubt King was involved with women other than his wife.  But to focus solely on that aspect of King’s character without allowing for the full context of the great man’s life is pure, 100% character assassination.

The lie isn’t in what’s spoken – the lie is in what’s unspoken.

During my A&D screening I noted a hash mark each time an obvious swipe was taken at the Church. About 40 minutes in I had counted nine – most of them delivered by our protagonist played by Tom Hanks, some of them gratuitous and having nothing to do with the story. These criticisms included charges of the worst kind of intolerance, outright murder and what ends up being the film’s central talking point theme – a fear of scientific truth.  

Rather than get sidetracked, let’s just stipulate each criticism is accurate (though they’re not). But it doesn’t matter, because… None of the enormous good the Church has done over the last 2,000 years is ever mentioned. So even if the filmmakers are right on “the facts,” they’re telling no less of a lie. Intentionally omitting all the good the Church has done intentionally creates a false impression no reasonable person would get if the film provided the full story.    

In other words, all Director Ron Howard has to say is that Martin Luther King, Jr. was an adulterer.

Another cinematic sleight of hand used to affirm the negative is the fairly common device of putting the worst face possible on an institution by carefully crafting the character chosen to represent it. We’ve seen this a hundred times before with cold, calculating businessmen, yee-haw Southerners, overly-aggressive soldiers, wormy CIA directors…

A&D uses two characters this way.

The most notable is Commander Richter, played by Stellan Skarsgard. He’s a security officer whose zealous dedication to the Church is established immediately, and we know he’s the face of the Church because he’s the one charged with protecting it.

Naturally, he’s written and portrayed as a jerk – an intolerant, overbearing prig who’s not only unlikable, but so intolerant of outsiders like Robert Langdon it ends up interfering with how he conducts his job.

Howard only gives Richter a single opportunity to defend his Church, and here’s that lame attempt after Richter finally tires of Langdon’s unrelenting, snide comments [paraphrasing]:

“My church feeds and cares for millions, what does yours do? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have a church.”

Of course, Richter’s not allowed to say, “…and what does Harvard do for millions of starving people?” because that would actually make a pretty good point (Langdon’s a Harvard Professor). Instead, the line is used to show Richter’s holier-than thou attitude with a side order of intolerance towards non-believers.

Worse, Richter’s never once allowed the opportunity to reveal a generous spirit or moment of real humanity. For a reel or two we’re led to believe Richter might be the arch-villain, but when it’s revealed he’s not, he dies the same pious tight ass we were introduced to.  

The second face of Ron Howard’s Church is Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, played warmly by boy-faced Ewan McGregor. But this character is another classic trope in the Leftist propaganda film canon: the set up for the ideological sucker punch. At first we’re led to believe McKenna is an example of what the Church really is and all the things Richter is not: patient, tolerant, open, kind to outsiders, unafraid of modernity… That is until the final ham-handed twist when McKenna is revealed to be the arch-villain.

And what are his motives for planning and committing a number of horrible murders?

In a nutshell, McKenna is afraid of science.

This ideological sucker punch (positioned squarely at conservative Catholics) is that Our Guy – the only sympathetic face of the Church – isn’t really. Ron Howard twists McKenna into something horrifying in order to further a lie. And at this point in the film, Howard has effectively left the whole of the Catholic Church without even a single sympathetic representative.

From all of this, it’s reasonable to come to the conclusion that the filmmakers have an axe to grind with the Church based on science, but this is yet another Leftist head feint.

A&D isn’t about moving the Church towards a more pro-science position because the Church already is pro-science and the filmmakers know it — just like the Democrats and their allies in the media knew President Bush was pro-science. But just as it was with Bush, this charge of anti-science is not being hurled to convince the Church to become pro-science, it’s being hurled as propaganda to marginalize the Church outside the mainstream by convincing as many people as possible that this “superstitious” institution with an “indefensible history” would rather see them die young than give up outdated ideas and traditions.

Like Bush, the Catholic Church does not oppose stem cell research, they do, however, oppose embryonic stem cell research. This isn’t an anti-science position, this is a pro-don’t-kill-human-life position, and much more defensible than animal-rights activists who want to impede science to save bunny rabbits. But what the Democrats did to destroy Bush, Howard does in his cinematic attempt to destroy the Church: he intentionally morphs opposition to embryonic stem cell research into opposing “stem cell research,” giving himself cover to cry “anti-science.”

And so through the alchemy of half-truth and obfuscation the most effective kind of propaganda is created…

The kind that sounds just true enough.

Finally, to reaffirm his straw man really does exists, Howard tacks on a warm closing scene that portrays the Church as evolving into an institution more open and accepting of scientific truth.  

Some may have gotten the fuzzies from this moment, but the Church is already open and accepting of scientific truth and to say it could be what it already is… Well, let’s just say that if “Angels & Demons” was as clever at storytelling as it is at spreading lies, it might have been a watchable movie.

UPDATE: Responding to those who find cowardly refuge in the “It’s only a fictional movie” argument, a reader summed it up beautifully in the comments: “Fiction with an agenda is propaganda.” — I’ve also changed the title to reflect that perfect sentiment.

With a haul of $16.6 million, “Angels & Demons” nabbed the top spot from “Star Trek” yesterday, but fell short of “The Da Vinci Code’s” $28.6 million Friday debut in May of 2006.

Compared to “Spider-Man,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Narnia,” and “National Treasure” this is a pretty steep drop for a sequel, but while everyone saw “The Da Vinci Code,” have you met anyone who liked it? For a sequel to perform close or even better than the original, it has to engender some goodwill and on no front did “Da Vinci” do that.

According to Steve Mason’s weekend projections (available here), “Demons” is looking at a $45M opening weekend, which is nearly $30M short of its predecessor, which opened at $77M.

Have at it.

Discuss. Debate. Write your own review…

Big Hollywood’s review can be found here.

Hollywood Reporter:

If the world could be rendered as simple as “Angels & Demons,” we’d all be living in a less confusing place. Taking to heart the critics’ lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film “The Da Vinci Code” was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon’s return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park.

Kristopher Tapley:

I’m not going to review “Angels & Demons.”  Sometimes the idea of tearing a film apart just doesn’t quite appeal to me, believe it or not.  But watching the expected unfold on the Sony lot last night, it suddenly occurred to me that Dan Brown’s bloated if intriguingly researched fiction has no place on the big screen.  It might, in fact, be better suited to television.

I haven’t watched scripted television since “The Sopranos” ended and “Law and Order” took a rocketship to the planet HateBush, but people I trust tell me the writing’s better than ever, so maybe Tapley’s offering a compliment?

Or not.

I’m a fan of Ron Howard. I’m also a Roman Catholic. So when Howard recently defended his upcoming film, Angels and Demons, on the Huffington Post from criticism leveled by William Donohue of the Catholic League, I sat up and took notice.

Here’s an understatement for you: Not everybody likes William Donohue. Whereas some admire him as a passionate defender of the faith, others view him as a hectoring, self-righteous censor, with a tendency to get red-faced and a bit shouty when locking horns on one of the ubiquitous news talk shows.

Howard, of course, is always calm and collected. Besides, he’s Opie; and who doesn’t like Opie? So I enter this fray with the greatest trepidation, fully expecting to regret every minute of it.

Howard’s panoply of defenses included that familiar old warhorse: don’t knock it if you haven’t seen it. Ordinarily I have a lot of sympathy for such an argument. In this case, however, Howard’s new film is based on a novel of the same name first published nine years ago. And it was written by Dan Brown who also penned The Da Vinci Code, which Howard rather faithfully (no pun intended?) adapted into a movie with the same star (Tom Hanks). So, score one for Donohue.

But this isn’t about Howard vs. Donohue, as entertaining as that MMA match may be. It’s about Angels and Demons, alighting in a theater near you May 15.

A few years ago, intrigued by the fuss surrounding The Da Vinci Code, I read Angels and Demons. Why? Code was still in hardback, and Angels was only $7.99. I wasn’t about to give Brown the satisfaction of my $24.99 — not that I think his bank account noticed.

Later, I watched Code on cable (once again, not eager to give my money to an arguably anti-Christian work. So I think I’ve got sufficient standing to comment.

Reading Angels and Demons, I wasn’t so much struck by the work’s bigotry as by how badly it was written. The cliched style is the literary equivalent of cotton candy. And for someone with so much animus toward religion, Brown employs the deus ex machina more frequently than the Old Testament.

But more disturbing is Brown’s commingling of fact and fiction disguised as fact, aimed at convincing his readership that the Catholic Church is vehemently, even violently anti-science, and therefore anti-progress and anti-reason.

By fiction disguised as fact, I don’t mean standard historical fiction techniques like creating new characters against a backdrop of actual historical events. I mean massively altering or fabricating historical events and chronologies. For instance: virtually every historical fiction writer fudges dates a little, but Brown shifts key timelines by more than a century.

Perhaps Brown counts on most of us to be too lazy or obtuse to fact-check his work on the Internet. And judging from his hordes of unquestioning fans (and, usually, myself), he’s probably right.

[SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this article contains spoilers. If you don't like spoilers and haven't read or seen Angels and Demons yet, then you shouldn't read further. On the other hand, maybe you should read on, because at least you'll be armed against the falsehoods that pervade Angels. It's up to you.]

So, I got off my duff (a matter of speech — I actually sat on my duff throughout this ordeal) and actually (gasp) looked up some of the claims Brown makes in Angels and Demons.

Here are just a few inaccuracies (hardly an exhaustive list) I picked up in several exhausting minutes on the Web:

Brown claims: Copernicus was murdered by the Catholic Church.
Fact: Copernicus died quietly in bed at age 70 from a stroke, and his research was supported by Church officials; he even dedicated his masterwork to the Pope.

Brown claims: “Antimatter is the ultimate energy source. It releases energy with 100% efficiency.”
Fact: CERN, the lab which plays an important role in his story, actually debunked this claim on their website: “The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion of the invested energy back.”

Brown claims: Churchill was a “staunch Catholic.”
Fact: Any history buff could tell you that Churchill wasn’t Catholic, he was Anglican; nor was he particularly religious. The only things Churchill was staunch about were cigars, whiskey, and defending the British Empire.

Brown claims: Pope Urban VII banished Bernini’s famous statue The Ecstasy of St. Teresa “to some obscure chapel across town” because it was too racy for the Vatican.
Fact: The statue was actually commissioned by Cardinal Cornaro specifically for the Cornaro Chapel (Brown’s “obscure chapel”). Moreover, the sculpture was completed in 1652 — eight years after Urban’s death.

Brown claims: Bernini and famed scientist Galileo were members of the Illuminati.
Fact: The Illuminati was founded in Bavaria in 1776. Bernini died in 1680, while Galileo died in 1642 — more than a century before the Illuminati were first formed.

This last falsehood bears further examination, because the Illuminati are so integral to the plot of Angels and Demons. The great Baroque artist Bernini is also a central figure in Brown’s tale.

It may seem like a small “white lie” to change the timeline so drastically, and to make Bernini a key player in an Illuminati plot against the Catholic Church. But Bernini was an extraordinary Baroque artist who deserves better than Brown’s treatment.

Imagine that someone made a film that portrayed Steven Spielberg as a closet anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Movie fans would be justifiably outraged.

But Dan Brown wrote a book (soon to be a movie!) identifying another great artistic virtuoso, Bernini, as a secret atheist who hated the Catholic Church. In reality, though, Bernini was a devout Catholic who went to mass every day and pursued the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, which include up to five hours of daily silent meditation.

In one of the movie trailers (since taken down — I wonder why?), Tom Hanks chastises Vatican officials — “You guys don’t even read your own history!” — for not knowing about “La Purga,” the branding and execution of four Illuminati scientists in 1668.

The irony’s so rich, it could pay off the national debt. Because, you see, it’s Hanks’ character who doesn’t know his history. Repeat after me: there were no Illluminati before 1776. (Of course, that’s just what they want us to believe! Mwu-hahaha!)

Most of Brown’s historical misrepresentations tend to malign Christianity or the Catholic Church in particular. If these were just haphazard mistakes, you’d expect roughly half to be positive. But the book’s agenda clearly is to tarnish the Church’s image.

Some might argue that the Church has done a good enough job of that on its own, what with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the child-abuse scandals, and other shameful episodes in its past. Brown is like the cop who plants evidence on a suspect because he thinks he’s guilty. If his case against the Church is so strong, why make things up?

Nevertheless, Ron Howard encourages William Donohue to see the movie version of Angels and Demons for himself. The only reason that could make a difference is if the movie tones down some of the anti-Catholic aspects of the novel. So perhaps that’s a kind of acknowledgement that the book was too harsh, and the movie will, indeed, be different.

Well, there is one area, apparently, where we already know the film will stray from the novel. One of the bad guys is the Hassassin, whom Brown described as a “mahogany-skinned,” misogynistic Middle Easterner. According to the movie’s IMDb page, however, the actor portraying this character is… Danish.

His character name is altered from Hassassin (related to the Persian term for a Muslim sect) to the more generic-sounding Assassin. Some on the IMDb message boards suggest that the filmmakers changed him from a Middle Easterner because they were afraid of potential controversy.

So let’s get this straight: It’s okay to bash the Catholic Church as a violent institution opposed to reason. But don’t you dare make one bad guy (out of several) a Middle Easterner.

Why? Because Catholics may gripe, write letters, boycott, even sic William Donohue on you. But they won’t riot. And they won’t behead anybody.

To quote one of my favorite movies, “How do you like that? I buried the lead.”

Part II to come later…. Maybe….