Box office analysis: Dunkirk holds its ground against Emoji Movie

After a harrowing battle, Dunkirk managed to defeat The Emoji Movie for the weekend’s box office crown, keeping our faith in humanity intact.

Whew. For a while, it looked as though a feature-length advertisement would be able to correctly declare itself the “#1 movie in America” in TV spots. Luckily, however, artistry prevailed over flagrant commercialism in the end. Dunkirk beat The Emoji Movie to lead the box office for two weeks in a row.

Christopher Nolan’s World War II spectacle earned $28.1 million over three days, bringing its total domestic gross up to $102.8 million. Meanwhile, The Emoji Movie garnered roughly $25.7 million – lower than the $27 million that box office prognosticators estimated based on its $10.1 million Friday.

Deciphering box office data is a bit like reading tea leaves. Several factors decide whether a film warrants the label “success” or “failure.” Because The Emoji Movie got (relatively) close to the top, it’s easy to call it a success. The New York Times interpreted its performance as evidence of a rift between “the masses” and critics, who handed the movie scathing reviews. Yet, audiences gave it a relatively harsh B grade on CinemaScore, and, as BuzzFeed’s Adam B. Vary points out, The Emoji Movie only made back half its $50 million budget.

In other words, it didn’t bomb, but neither is it some sort of unexpected triumph. (We have yet to see how it fares overseas, a market on which studios increasingly rely.)

So, what does this mean? Ideally, Hollywood realizes that people have little interest in product placement disguised as story and scraps any plans for a Smartphone Cinematic Universe or whatever. Hollywood tends to feign ignorance when logic fails to suit its favored narrative, though. Just watch executives dismiss the success of Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, and Girls Trip and continue to greenlight an endless parade of films about white men. Watch them use Dunkirk as an excuse to invest in IMAX and 70 mm but not original ideas.

Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe The Emoji Movie is harmless in a world where congressmen seek to deny their own citizens healthcare. Regardless, its existence portends a bleak future for the film industry. In 2015, television critic Emily Nussbaum expressed her concern about the prevalence of advertising in modern entertainment. Now, her essay seems not only insightful but prescient. Blame Transformers. At some point when we weren’t watching, Hollywood traded its soul for a corporate sponsorship, and it became acceptable – normal – for studios to churn out whole movies based on toys, board games, or apps. Even if it isn’t the end of the world, it’s depressing.

Anyway, here are the box office estimates for this weekend:

Dunkirk (Warner Bros.) – $28,130,000
The Emoji Movie (Sony) – $25,650,000
Girls Trip (Universal) – $20,085,540
Atomic Blonde (Focus) – $18,554,000
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Sony) – $13,450,000
War for the Planet of the Apes (Fox) – $10,375,000
Despicable Me 3 (Universal) – $7,725,895
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (STX) – $6,800,000
Baby Driver (TriStar) – $4,050,000
Wonder Woman (Warner Bros.) – $3,540,000

Bottom line: kids these days deserve a better class of movies.