Well. A hunnerd and forty-eight meeeeellion dollars. That would keep a gross of Doctor Evils happy.

I'm trying to be funny because I'm afraid that otherwise I'll get way too serious in overanalyzing not just the number itself but the frenzied reaction to it. Everyone except Sony, apparently, knew that Spider-Man 3 was going to break all sorts of records -- Laremy's generous Friday prediction of $142.4 million, for one, was pretty close to the actual number. All the records the film broke this weekend -- one-day, domestic, overseas, IMAX, and so on -- are hardly a surprise. So why is there such a frenzy over the numbers? It would have been big news if Lucky You made $148 million this weekend -- that would have been a man-bites-dog story. But Spider-Man 3 taking in that kind of haul? That's dog-bites-man.

Yup: Spider-Man wove a web of box-office something-or-other. Hey, the world's a mess and desperate for a hero with honor and integrity. Or else the world just wants to escape reality for a while. And so the entire population of planet Earth went to the movies to see a cartoony, comic-book adventure. This is not a story. There's something obscene in all the harping on the hugeness of the film purely as a financial matter. There's no thoughtful contemplation about why a movie that has gotten a drubbing from critics -- I still kinda like it, despite its many problems -- has touched such a nerve for so many moviegoers. Nothing about whether the movie has, in fact, touched a nerve, or will disappointed fans stay away from the third, fourth, and fifth viewings that might have sent the film's box office to even greater blockbustery heights? Little to nothing about whether such an expensive movie was a ridiculous gamble ... but plenty of hearty backslapping about the vindication of the gamble: of course it made perfectly wonderful sense to spend half a billion dollars on production and marketing! What a silly question!

Is any movie worth the $350 million Spider-Man 3 is rumored to have cost in production alone? I don't mean as an investment that may or may not pay off. I don't even mean as "art." I mean as entertainment. You pay the same price for a ticket for a film that cost $3.5 million as you do for one that cost a hundred times that -- theoretically, the super-expensive flick should be a better bargain for the audience. We should get a hundred times the entertainment from that $350 million flick. Did you feel that overwhelmingly entertained by Spidey 3?

Cuz I sure didn't. I was maybe only $150 million entertained. So I feel kinda cheated, and I'm not alone in that. By that measure of success, Spidey 3 ain't lookin' so hot.

(Box office numbers via Box Office Mojo.)

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