Noah is the Most Unpopular Movie in Current Release

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Noah has topped the box office, but the opening weekend is about marketing dollars. At a production budget of over $125 million and poor audience responses, Paramount had to put some serious money into promotion.

Reportedly that may be something in the $50 – $75 million range on marketing to get people to see Noah. That’s  short of its weekend box office total which is likely to be under $50 million.

But while you can get audiences to show up for the opening weekend, you can’t make them like it.

Cinemascore’s rating for Noah is a C. That’s the worst movie they have ranked in current release. Worse than Sabotage, the Schwarzenegger movie which just bombed, which still only pulled in a B.

That means audiences hated Noah more than Sabotage. They hated it more than the Legend of Hercules. They just plain hated it.

At Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score is at 50 percent and falling. The user score at Metacritic is 5.4.

The critic numbers tend to be much higher only because director Darren Aronofsky is an indie favorite who could film wallpaper for two hours and still get high scores and because the movie’s anti-human environmental message caters to their prejudices.

Noah was dumped on international audiences in countries like Mexico and Korea early on where it did well enough and if Paramount scrapes some money out of audiences before it gets crushed by the new Captain America movie, it may accept that as the best it can get.

  • A Z

    Talk Show host Hugh Hewitt liked it. I think he saw the movie with rose colored glasses. A film based on the Bible has not been done in a long time. He interviewed the writer of the film and it was worth listening to the interview.

    Glenn Beck & co-hosts panned the film. The Nephim (rock men the film’s interpretation) is cringe inducing.

    Based on review from FPM, PJ Media & talk show hosts I am not going to see it.

    • truebearing

      We’re going to pass on it, too. I don’t support propaganda, especially when it intentionally profanes the Bible by taking such an important story and turning it into global warming BS.

      • BS77

        I guess you haven’t seen Steve Carrell in Evan Almighty…what a Noah film that was!!!

  • DogmaelJones1

    I think the best “interpretation” of Noah was done by Bill Cosby, a long, long time ago.

    • mikeh420

      “Noah!”
      “What?!”
      “How long can you tread water?”

  • wileyvet

    I’m surprised Noah isn’t a Muslim in the film, yelling Death To America as the storm rages around the unbelievers. Aronofsky really missed the Ark on this one.

  • Texas Patriot

    IMDB viewers have it rated at 6.9 out of 10.0.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959490/

    • A Z

      What is an IMDB viewer? Is it the universe of movie goers, the universe of net savvy, movie goers, The universe of net savvy movie goers who use the IMDB site as opposed to other movie sites, or is it representative of the U.S. at large?

      When you have statistics, you want to know what population you are drawing from and is the “sample is a “random sample” and therefore representative of the overall population.

      • Daniel Greenfield

        Obsessive fans of film from 18 to 29 mainly male. Noah tends to rank decently well among them, but they’re not too representative

        • Texas Patriot

          DG: Obsessive fans of film from 18 to 29 mainly male.

          I can think of worse demographics.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            No doubt, but unlike Cinemascore, it’s not statistically representative of moviegoers… but is statistically representative of fans who would highly rate Darren Aronofsky’s wallpaper.

            Case in point, they rated The Fountain at 7.4

            http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/

            Even critics hated that one.

          • Texas Patriot

            Ordinarily I’m a pretty big fan of Russell Crowe. Master and Commander is one of my all time favorites, and the clips of Noah I’ve seen don’t look half bad. Maybe it’s worth a look.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      Cinemascore is the only serious polling group in the bunch. The rest are self-selected.

  • fred

    ….

  • DogmaelJones1

    I would’ve been really, really impressed by “Noah” had it shown how Noah saved all the dinosaurs. No, wait. Didn’t Adam and Eve come first? Did the dinosaurs come after or before Adam and Eve? Or did they coexist? Now I’m confused. My mind is about to blow a fuse. Nothing computes. Mind shutting down.

    • jonathangrabe

      How about the dinosaurs roamed the earth, then God chose to create man in His image, he wiped the majority of the dinosaurs out, leaving some turtles and crocodilians, and began again. This concept works fine for me. The Bible begins with the creation of man in God’s image.

      • IronMaidenaregods

        The bible justifies slavery so obviously slavery is okay with you as well.

  • Johnnnyboy

    I have been following this movie closely because I do that sometimes and because I have an interest in how the Bible is portrayed. A couple random points here.

    The studio knows they have a problem with the more far fetched fantasy elements in this movie because the keep away from them in the movie trailers. If they were marketing a Transformers movie the trailers would feature the Nephim, the walking piles of stones. That being the case, the curiosity for me is why they do not cut the thing shorter. Shorter is better if a movie is not much good, and it would be an opportunity to cut down on the crazy-fantasy stuff that most of the audience does not go along with.

    Over at the Rotten Tomatoes website a big hit movie will get around 90% approval. A passing grade movie will be around 75% or better. Currently Noah is running a 50% rating. Reading some of the very numerous audience reviews, what impressed me the most was the intensity of dislike among those who did not like the film. A lot of people really, really hate it. Hollywood
    is going to lose some future viewership on this.

    The director, Darren Aronofski, is great at doing visual entertainment, but seems to be one of these people who does not quite have his feet on the ground. I have seen two of his movies previously. The Wrestler was well reviewed, but I got little pleasure from it, mainly because I could not get into following a character who was for the most part a self indulgent user of other people. The Life of Pi had great visuals, but its hook to hold audience attention (apparently??) was a kind of search for meaning by this comming of age young man. My problem was that the viewpoint character was a kind of unfocused air head who seemed to be in search of the particular line of hokem he would find emotionally satisfying. I could not bring myself to care about what vague notions he would eventually adapt.

    • Texas Patriot

      It’s too bad they had to turn the Nephilim into “rock creatures”. They sound much more interesting in the Bible:

      When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:1-4

      • truebearing

        I agree. They may well have been what we now call the “Greek Gods.” At very least, they were giants who were far larger and more intelligent than humans, or at least the other humans. Either way, it begs the question: who were they?

        Typical Hollywood. They elevate their paltry creativity over the fascinating mysteries of history.

        • Texas Patriot

          It’s one of the most fascinating mysteries of the Bible, and it probably should have been the centerpiece of the movie. Whoever they were, whatever they were, and however they went wrong, it is obvious that they wrecked the world so badly that God was prepared to destroy it:

          The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:5-8

  • truebearing

    Russel Crowe is a great actor, but content matters and this film is a lie on every level.

  • silvertoad

    i saw it — it was dreadful. cool visuals and effects of course, but ruined by an utter lack of artistry in story-telling — in addition to telling the *wrong* story. just as hollywood turned Titanic into a sappy love story (vs the much earlier and far superior A NIght to Remember) so was the greater story of noah eclipsed by one of preposterous family revolt, noah having by degrees been transformed into a God-filled maniac, intent on eliminating sinful Man from the post-flood world – it was to be for the uncorrupted animals – even to the point of murdering his new-born grand-daughters so no new men could be born (he relents at the last moment). i’m simply astonished at how bad this movie was.

    • Texas Patriot

      Wow. Thanks for that report. It sounds like what would happen if you gave a really great story to some junior high school kids and told them to write a screenplay. Maybe it’s marketing strategy. If you want to reach the fifteen year old audience, get some fifteen year old writers?

  • liberalism is a mental illness

    I saw the movie and thought it was great. Can’t see why anyone would hate it.

  • tickletik

    The book was better

  • tagalog

    Noah was #1 at the box office this past weekend (March 28-30, opening weekend), and made $44 million. I’m surprised too, but the truth is the truth.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      “That’s short of its weekend box office total which is likely to be under $50 million.”

  • Wolfthatknowsall

    Tubal-Cain was in this movie? He actually gets onto the Ark, in spite of the fact that his “mines” were destroying the planet. Thus, he becomes the progenitor of all earth-destroying “fat cats”. This movie is only marginally centered on a Bible story. The rest is Hollywood trying to impose its dogma on the Bible, and the American people.

    In spite of the fact that Russell Crowe is in the film … one of my favorite actors … I will pass on this bit of environmental tripe …