Despite being the worst critically rated Marvel film in the modern MCU, Eternals raced on top of the domestic box office with $71 million over the weekend.

The film was in questionable status due to its overall Rotten Tomatoes rating with critics now sitting at 48 percent. That rating is lower than 2008’s The Incredible Hulk with 67 percent, 2013’s Iron Man 3 with 79 percent, 2013’s Thor: The Dark World at 66 percent. In fact, it is the only Marvel film with a “rotten” spoiled tomato rating.

As if it doesn’t get worse, its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 81 percent on the lower half of rated Marvel films, an IMDB score of 6.9/10, and a CinemaScore of a B, which indicates a barely below the average status of outgoing cinema viewers.

Despite its negative press, the film opened successfully on over 4,000 screens and indicated that this franchise is “too big to fail. It barely opened lower than Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings that opened on Labor Day Weekend with $75.4 million and Black Widow at $80.3 million that faced its own competition from Disney+.

Even better news, Eternals opened with the second-best global start since the beginning of the pandemic with over $161 million and at a little over $90 million international. It became the biggest pandemic box office opening in the countries of Italy, Brazil, and Hong Kong. Also, it was the biggest non-local film pandemic opening in Korea. Many countries in the Middle East and China have no plans to even showcase the film in theaters any time soon.

Even our own movie critic Fox Troilo remarked its dazzling visualizations and many things to applaud with this movie. He gave a solid B in his review and a recommendation for all others to check out the movie.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Eternals Review: Long-Lasting Characters; Truncated Plot

Neon Pictures’ Spencer with Kristen Stewart opened in the eighth spot this past weekend with $2.148 million on 996 screens. Indie audiences and Stewart fans make a decent showing to watch her decent performance.

Cinemas needed a win badly after a few weeks of so-so box office receipts.

Warner Brothers’ Dune fell to a second-place finish with $7.62 million, a drop of 50.6 percent from the previous week. No Time to Die hung on with third place for a second week in a row with only a small drop of 20.3% to $6.18 million. Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage climbed a spot to fourth position with $4.46 million, a 22.4% drop, and a few million dollars crossing the $200 million total gross mark. And finishing the top five, 20^th Century Studios’ Ron Gone Wrong closed with a $3.6 million, a 3.8% drop.

Next week, Netflix pre-releases its big-budget film Red Notice into theaters ahead of its streaming date. The film stars Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot in this action film. However, Netflix tends to release films like this as with Army of the Dead and The Harder They Fall to drum up support for its streaming service.

Other films coming next weekend include the anticipated Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast and the family film Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Source: Box Office Mojo