There was a bit of a tussle for the number one spot at the US box office this weekend. It was like Godzilla vs Mothra, except instead of a giant lizardy thing that staggered around like a drunk on a bouncy castle duking it out with a big angry butterfly, think a middle-aged bald man versus a teeny tiny little rat with photo-real hair. There are still arguments raging over whether it was Die Hard 4.0 that was victorious or Ratatouille, the latest from Pixar.
Die Hard 4.0, called Live Free Or Die Hard in the US because it puts people more in the mood to wave a flag, ended the weekend with $48,178,000. But that was from five days, since it opened on Wednesday. Ratatouille took $47,227,000, but opened on the more traditional Friday.
Now, words like 'cheating' are thrown around a lot these days, but to award John McClane the victory for making an extra million in two days would be to reward PR factual misdirection and is just a few steps from a world ruled by truthiness. Also, Ratatouille is easily the better film and it has an anthropomorphic rat who likes to make soup. Die Hard 4.0 has a car crashing into a helicopter, but the car doesn't make soup, or any other liquid-based foodstuff, so it's really not even a close fight on those grounds.