It’s always a bad sign when studios start scaling back their financial expectations for a new film – especially on a Memorial Day weekend and most especially in regards to a highly anticipated action franchise release.  So why was Warner Brothers throwing the under-achieving figure of $50 million out for “Terminator Salvation”?  That would be $50 million for the whole four-day holiday weekend, by the way.  Didn’t “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” top that figure in two days last May?  True, Indy had the field all to himself while “Terminator” is up against the “Night at the Museum” sequel, but still!  I was thinking that this estimate was just false modesty, but it turns out, um, not so much…

There was a time when the Memorial Day Weekend heralded the official start of Hollywood’s summer blockbuster season.  Today, if I’m not mistaken, the season that accounts for over 40% of the studio’s entire yearly revenue begins somewhere in mid-February… or maybe it just feels that way.  This particular holiday weekend gives us the year’s first blockbuster showdown as WB’s retooled “Terminator” franchise goes head-to-head with Fox’s suddenly summer-worthy sequel “Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian”.  “Terminator” came out early and brought in a so-so $13.4 million on Thursday and another $3 million from its midnite gigs.  Friday was the first big test, however.  Here’s how things shook out:

“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithonian” is exactly the kind of movie cynics lament when they speak of big summer spectacles.  Being cynics, they over-generalize and sometimes incorrectly brand some summer movies as committing the crimes of big-budget, celebrity-stuffed, empty-headed spectacle that’s nothing but an exercise in trying to separate consumers from their wallets as they turn off their brains and watch pretty colors and sounds for a hundred minutes. But Shawn Levy’s unnecessary sequel is guilty as charged.