Bam! I hate to say I told you so, but, well… there it is.

I try to avoid being too gleeful when I’m right about a movie failing. The reality is that I’d love every animated film to be great and to do well at the box office. It’s not good for anyone in my business (animation) when a movie tanks, and schadenfreude is in bad taste when the movie was made by good people who never did me any harm. Even more upsetting is that this poor showing will probably doom the troubled Imagi Studios (warning, link is very Flash-heavy), and at the very least will lead to major cutbacks for them, likely including the shuttering of their LA studio as they regroup in Hong Kong.

So with that in mind, I’d like to do a mostly factual post-mortem (seems appropriate) breakdown of my prediction and the reality.

I basically made two predictions while spending most of my article being snarky about Astro Boy’s status as a not-so-hot property with kids today.

Prediction 1: Astro Boy will be derivative and boring.
Outcome: If the 48% rating at RottenTomatoes.com doesn’t tell the whole story, here are some quotes from reviewers.

There’s very little that the filmmakers haven’t borrowed here, making Astro Boy feel as copied as its title character.
— Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times

Astro Boy ultimately fizzles when it should be flying.
— Todd Gilchrist, Sci Fi Wire

Lacklustre design and rudimentary storytelling sink Astro Boy…
— Jason Anderson, Toronto Star

Not all of the reviews were bad, but there are some telling trends even in the reviews that come in positive:

A visually stunning sci-fi movie that occasionally drags and could have used more imagination as well as some exploration of its provocative themes…
— Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

I found it all pretty exciting, except for the middle, and only as much as I’m interested in CGI based on manga, but still.
— Fred Topel, Can Magazine

…the familiarity gives it the elemental power of a fairy tale. The animation is serviceable but nothing special; what makes the movie work is the brisk pace and the engaging characters.
— Jim Lane, Sacramento News and Review

Those last three quotes are from reviews the Rotten Tomatoes deemed “positive.” I’m cherry-picking, of course, but I did pick quotes that I felt were representative of the overall critical reception. Hardly any of the critics are skewering it or wishing for their money back, but very few are singing its praises either.

Prediction #2: Astro Boy will tank at the box office.
Outcome: Boy-howdy, was I right. Astro Boy cost $65 million to make, and it pulled in less than $7 million on its opening weekend. I haven’t been at this long enough to predict its final returns based on its first weekend, but it seems like it will be hard-pressed to break even, even with DVD sales factored in. On the other hand, kids movies seem to do better on DVD relative to their theatrical earnings than movies aimed at adults, so Astro Boy’s salvation may lie in Netflix and Blockbuster.

What I find so frustrating about this whole thing is that everyone who bothered to have an opinion of this movie before its release was optimistic. I’m not talking about the filmmakers. Of course they would say they were optimistic, and I suppose they really were. I wouldn’t expect them to diss their own film in any case.

Forbes magazine published their own predictions in advance of this weekend, guessing that Astro Boy would make $13 million and place #4 for the weekend. They probably thought they were being conservative, but it actually came in with about half that much, and two places lower. Even the lackluster Couples Retreat, now in its third week, beat it by nearly $3 million. Steve Hulett, blogger and business representative of The Animation Guild (a Hollywood-based union for people in the animation industry) thought the movie would do better than $13 million, and had been making optimistic comments about the film and Imagi studios for some time prior to its release.

Maybe I’ve just been keeping cloistered company, but part of the reason I started this feature was to combat the seemingly hopeless naivete and baseless optimism about upcoming animated features. There’s nothing wrong with a little fanboyism (I’m particularly prone to it myself when it comes to superhero movies or Pixar features), but some of us are supposed to be professionals with an ability to evaluate animation professionally. That means the two questions we should be asking are “will it be good?” and “will it make money?” If your answer to either of these questions starts with “I want” or “I hope,” you are already in trouble.