Wonder Woman

With the right audience, darkness definitely sells. Hell, Universal is about to star a whole “Dark Universe.” Clearly, some folks do want grit and grimness and dudes screaming at each other and being angry and miserable. To each his own.

If you only look at the surface numbers, this was a pretty predictable week at the box office. Wonder Woman did well, The Mummy did not, and everything else shook out accordingly. That being said, there’s some pretty interesting narratives emerging in the how and why of this weekend’s box office report. Let’s take a look at the rankings as of Sunday afternoon and dive into some of the specifics:

A few weeks before Wonder Woman hit theaters, film critics took to social media to share their early reactions of the newest movie in the DC Cinematic Universe. And while critics had plenty of great things to say about the film’s overall tone and Gal Gadot in particular, one sentiment above all others kept bubbling to the surface: this movie was funny. When fans got a chance to see the movie for themselves, they were pretty quick to agree. Gadot’s fish-out-of-water take on Diana Prince, combined with Chris Pine’s deadpan delivery as the superhero’s straight man, makes Wonder Woman one of the funniest comic book movies to date.

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Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is, to make use of a Hollywood parlance, “crushing it right now.” Her first feature film effort in a dog’s age opened to a $100 million-plus weekend, roundly positive reviews (and with some of the more negative ones drawing considerable backlash), and a loving embrace from her new fandom. This time last year, she was a well-respected TV director with an Oscar-winner in her distant past; now, she’s one of the most in-demand women in the business, and a new item from The Hollywood Reporter suggests that she knows it, too.

Wonder Woman just had a record-setting opening weekend. While everyone was at the theater watching her, the woman who plays the Amazonian princess, Gal Gadot, got into a back-and-forth on Twitter with the Asgardian God of Thunder over a question comics fans have debated for years: Who would win in a fight, Wonder Woman or Thor?

As we noted in our review of Wonder Woman, the primary antagonist of the film, the God of War Ares, is a bit of a mystery. Early in the film, a young Diana (Gal Gadot) is taught the origin of her race of Amazons, which involves Ares slaughtering all the other Greek gods. Many years later, Diana learns of World War I from Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and believes it’s the work of Ares. So she sets off into the outside world to find him and kill him in order to free mankind from his influence.

Audiences have grown accustomed to seeing a slew of screenwriter credits on summer blockbusters. A few studios, like Universal and Paramount, have put together writers’ rooms for their biggest franchises; some films also have a host of different writers who either worked to develop the story or hammered out the final screenplay itself. Therefore, fans probably won’t bat an eye when they see three different writers’ names pop up in the Wonder Woman opening credits, but to hear one of the film’s producers tell it, that’s only part of the story. The road to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen involved a whole host of writers who didn’t end up mentioned in the final product.

Based on how this weekend’s box office numbers shaped up, odds are good that you either saw Wonder Woman this weekend or you avoided the theater altogether. It was a record-setting few days for everyone’s favorite warrior princess  —  sorry, Xena  —  but things were decidedly less rosy if your movie was… well, literally anything else. Here are the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:

Behold Chris Pine in all his magnificent handsomeness. The strong jawline. The relaxed confidence. The way with a fedora (New Indiana Jones, anyone?) This is the Chris Pine of Wonder Woman, where he plays Steve Trevor, WWI spy and love interest of Gal Gadot’s Diana. After Trevor’s plane crashes off the coast of Diana’s island home, he becomes the first man to step foot on Themyscira. And Pine, already a star for his portrayal of Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot series, is terrific in the role, and great with Gadot. He turns Steve Trevor into one of the best non-super-powered characters in superhero movie history.