Donnie Yen and his martial arts is another winning combination at the box office. His last outing, Special ID (特殊身份) went straight up to #1 despite a mediocre review, earning MYR 3mil on its opening weekend. This week, he stars in the time travel tale of Iceman, and once again takes the top spot on its opening weekend, beating defending champion Rio 2, and another new release Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp.
If you read the synopsis of Iceman on Wikipedia, it goes something like this: Iceman 3D revolves around a Captain America-like character portrayed by Donnie Yen. The heroic role and his evil foe (Wang Baoqiang) lived during the Ming Dynasty. Both were frozen during a fight and were defrosted in modern day Hong Kong where they continue their battle.
Yes, Captain America-like, that's the description. So conceptually speaking we have two Captain America on the chart (or rather, one Captain America, one Captain China). Besides the Captain America comparison, Iceman has the element of time traveling, which is quite a hit lately. TV series and movies with such stories easily captured audience. Add in Donnie Yen, who has been a draw since his Ip-man series, you can't possibly lose the battle.
Johnny Depp's Transcendence opened at no. 3, behind Rio 2. This comes as a surprise to me, since Johnny Depp, despite what they might say about him, is still considered a big star; and big star is all that matter when it comes to box office in Malaysia. We idolize big stars. The soft opening probably is partly due to Transcendence has very few marketing prior to its release (I only came to realize its release one week prior to it opened), and science fiction is not a big draw as action flicks in Malaysia. For that reason, the fact that it managed to place one spot above Captain America is considered good enough.
There was another big star flop last week, and it came with even fewer marketing thus not many knew it exists. It was Tokarev starring Nicolas Cage, who is no stranger to bad thrillers / action films that the only miracle is any of his films in the past few years not being a flop. I don't even know what Tokarev is, and I don't care. Apparently few did. It opened at no. 8... wait, didn't Kevin Costner's Draft Day failed to crack Top 10 last week? So it means a bad Nicolas Cage movie out-performs a good Kevin Costner movie? What are we, the 90s?
(As of the writing of this article, Box Office Mojo has yet to update their International chart, so the estimated gross is unavailable)
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