'Batman v Superman' Box Office: Zack Snyder Blockbuster Making Bank Despite Brutal Critical Reviews?
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is officially out in theaters and it's already doing gangbusters at the box office.
Thursday night's box office shows the epic blockbuster raked in $27.7 million. This is the sixth highest total for a Thursday preview, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens still holding that record at a whopping $57 million.
As of Friday morning, the movie is being project to make about $166 million in its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.
The film comes with a lot of baggage from the critical lashing its been given this past week. Film critics of all kinds have largely panned the film, with a score of just 30 percent (out of 100) on Rotten Tomatoes.
One of the most critical reviews comes from Slate, which calls the film "baffling" and calls out director Zack Snyder.
"To put it delicately, this comics fan hated Batman v Superman with the fury of a thousand red-dwarf suns. Blunt, humorless, and baffling, it collides the brutish directorial stamp of its director (he of 300 and Watchmen fame) with the most shameless instincts of our latter-day superhero franchise bubble," the review reads.
"It is worse than the widely detested Joel Schumacher Batman films, including the one with bat nipples," the review continues. "It is probably worse than the never-filmed Superman movie starring Nicolas Cage would have been. If Christopher Reeve is spinning in his grave right now, it's not because Snyder's film so egregiously ignores what might make a Superman film special (though it does!) but because the throbbing Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL score is loud enough to rattle a buried corpse.
Then there's The Wall Street Journal, which says in their review, "Spasms of highfalutin philosophy, and howlingly pretentious dream sequences, serve only as the thinnest of veneers for incessant action in one of the most assaultive movies ever made."
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the first live action feature film to feature both Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill). The film also gives watchers a taste of what they can expect from future DC movies, with the inclusion of Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) and a few others (which shall remain nameless for spoiler purposes).
