It remains to be seen if good reviews and audience word-of-mouth saves X-Men: First Class, but with the biggest summer releases only a few weeks away, the poor opening weekend may prove doom for the franchise.
In breaking down First Class, the easiest comparisons to make are within its own franchise, and the comparisons aren't very good. Of the five X-Men films released (including X-Men Origins: Wolverine), First Class had the second lowest opening weekend, although it barely beat out X-Men (2000) by less than a million dollars while opening in 600 more theaters. And, of course, considering adjusted gross, First Class was beaten badly. In fact, the film opened in roughly the same amount of theaters as the most profitable X-Men film, The Last Stand (2006), which opened at 102 million and grossed 234 million over its run -- numbers that First Class won't come close to, even though The Last Stand is often regarded as the worst of the "traditional" X-Men films (Origins excluded).
In terms of difference versus production budget, First Class is the second most expensive X-Men film ($160 million estimated), which doesn't help soften its opening failure. Not surprisingly, the highest grossing film was also the most expensive, although The Last Stand was made for a staggering $210 million, therefore scraping by its cost with domestic take. The closest comparison would be Origins: Wolverine, which opened at 85 mil. and grossed $179.8 and is considered an anomaly of a success.
Origins: Wolverine may also be a big part of the reason for the failure of X-Men: First Class. Critically, Wolverine was pounded as the type of bloated summer excess that the worst super hero films have become. And while it's audience numbers aren't nearly as bad on sites like IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, by all accounts the cultural perception of that film is not positive. We have seen another film this summer (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) that has done slightly lower domestic numbers critically as the franchise has been receiving diminishing praise, so this is something that could have been expected.
The problem is, though, that X-Men: First Class is a very different film than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and its positive reviews may help it recover in the long-run -- but it may also strangely be working against it. Compared to the other films in the franchise and other recent super hero films, the marketing and trailers for First Class have tried to set it apart as a moody period piece. Although there is certainly a lot of action in the trailers and in the film, it doesn't compare to the popcorn fun that Wolverine was promising (I mean, the dude is launched at an in-flight helicopter, for crying out loud!). More still, there are no costumes -- an obvious part of super hero lore. It also is explicitly missing one of the most important components to the franchise: the character of Wolverine. Knowing that one particular part of the team could branch off of the series and be the center of a successful film, without him, it is not unreasonable to think you are starting at a disadvantage.
At the beginning of the summer, I predicted X-Men: First Class to open at around $75 million dollars and to finish at $189, which would have made it third overall in the series. Now, it may have to struggle to not be the lowest grosser, needing just over $100 million more to edge out the original X-Men. Although it can certainly do that, and I hope it does, my guess is that it is going to fall somewhere short of that, around $135 million at the end of the summer.
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