The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 held on to the top spot at the US box office at the weekend after posting a spectacular $75.8m (£50.5m) over the long Thanksgiving holiday week. Two new films, Pixar animation The Good Dinosaur and Rocky spin-off Creed, also did well, with bows of $55.6m and $42.6m in second and third place respectively over the past week.
The final Hunger Games movie has now posted $198.3m in North America in just two weeks, and is running ahead of its predecessor (final total $337.1m) at the world’s largest box office. This is something of a turnaround, as its opening haul had come in behind that of Mockingjay – Part 1 during the same period last year. Worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence’s final turn as Katniss Everdeen has posted $440m, against its predecessor’s end total of $755.3m.
The Good Dinosaur tells the story of an intelligent apatosaurus named Arlo who befriends a human named Spot in an alternative history where giant reptiles still rule the Earth. While reviews have been reasonable – the film has a 77% “fresh” rating on the critical aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the consensus is that Peter Sohn’s film is not a Pixar classic.
“I found it desperately disappointing, unoriginal and twee, exactly the kind of creative cul-de-sac that we’d been afraid of before Inside Out,” wrote the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw. “The story is unsubtly borrowed from The Lion King and The Jungle Book, with bits of Ice Age and The Croods. The Good Dinosaur looks great, of course, but it’s not in the league we’ve come to expect.”
Creed has a much better 92% “fresh” rating from critics, and has even been talked about in some quarters as an Oscar contender. The film sees Sylvester Stallone, this time in a supporting role, reprise his famous role as boxer Rocky Balboa. Now in his late 60s, Balboa agrees to train the illegitimate son of his late rival turned friend Apollo Creed. Michael B Jordan plays the up-and-coming boxer, Adonis “Donnie” Johnson, for his Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler.
“Its opening act is staggering in its inelegance,” wrote the Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman in his three-star review. “But the film keeps pounding through the predictable setup and storyline until, finally, when you think it can fight no longer and will have to throw in the towel, it charges back with some scenes of originality, pathos and, in ever-so-swift jabs, excitement.”
The top five this weekend was rounded out by the James Bond film Spectre, with $12.8m in fourth, and animated tale The Peanuts Movie, with $9.7m in fifth. The sci-fi horror Victor Frankenstein, starring James McAvoy as Mary Shelley’s overreaching scientist alongside Daniel Radcliffe as his aide, Igor, failed to make the top 10. Burdened by derisive reviews, Paul McGuigan’s film opened in 12th place with just $3.4m.
North American box office 27-30 November
1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2: $75.8m. Total: $198.3m
2. The Good Dinosaur: $55.6m - NEW
3. Creed: $42.6m - NEW
4. Spectre: $12.8m. Total: $176.1m
5. The Peanuts Movie: $9.7m. Total: $116.8m
6. The Night Before: $8.2m. Total: $24.1m
7. Secret in Their Eyes: $4.5m. Total: $14m.
8. Spotlight: $4.5m. Total: $12.3m
9. Brooklyn: $3.8m. Total: $7.3m
10. The Martian: $3.3m. Total: $218.6m
