Of Maxes, both Regular and Mad

Well, we're still a ways off from July 12th and... oh, right.  The next Terminator movie opens July 1.  Ooh look!  A school bus flips up into the air!  I know, I know, it's deadly serious.  Serious as a heart attack.  Think of the children, The Movie Hooligan!  Of course, I thought the baby carriage full of cans in Speed 1 was hokey as well, but that's the kind of guy I am.  As cynical as I wanna be.
And so, it's another happy day in the MacFarlane household as Ted 2 makes a healthy debut at #3 with 33 million.  Meanwhile, it's a happy day in the Yakin household as his latest, the canine adventure movie Max comes in at #4 with 12 million.  Quite a drop!  But that's how it goes, alas.  Boy, Boaz Yakin's had a strange career.  He hit it big with 1994's gritty urban drama, Fresh, and has pretty much stuck with the dreaded R rating his whole career.  Now comes this family-friendly PG-rated fare!  Must be desperate for a hit.  Well, he's got it.  As for co-screenwriter Sheldon Lettich, well, he needs a hit, too, and clearly he's tired of the kicking and punching of Jean-Claude Van Damme for whom he's written and directed some of his most icon-ish type roles.  Van Damme pushed his acting ability to the limit in Double Impact, facing off against his greatest nemesis... himself!  But that well ran dry about 1997 or so.
Boy, but that Van Damme's a head scratcher.  I was watching a little bit of the big fiery (literally!) finale of... whatever.  Hard Target, that's it.  I can't badmouth that too much because my man Sam Raimi was involved in it.  Still... I know Van Damme knows martial arts and all that, and he certainly looks like a strong guy, but he kept punching and punching and punching and kicking and kicking and kicking... LANCE HENRIKSEN.  Yeah!  Over and over and over again, and God bless him, Lance just wouldn't stay down!  Now I'm certainly not going to try and fight Van Damme... but I feel a little bit emboldened.  I mean, surely I can take punches as well as Henriksen can!
So that's about it for the box office in terms of debuts.  Jurassic World looks like it's on its way to making A BILLION DOLLARS in the U.S.  The last time I've seen numbers this stellar was The Dark Knight in 2008.  I mean, all the Avengers movies have done well, too, but... meh.  I mean, Jurassic has been #1 for 3 weeks, and it's already at half a billion!  I'm assuming these totals are U.S. only, but who knows.  Anyway, time for an Adam Sandler update, because I came across this smart-ass headline over my Yahoo! news headlines today.  Some wiseass wrote an article entitled "Why No One Likes Adam Sandler Anymore."  And, I'm all... wow.  I mean, it's bad enough that someone in the bubble has lost all their faith in Eddie Murphy.  That happened long ago for me, and I never even saw Meet Dave or A Thousand Words or Daddy Day Care.  I did see about five minutes of Tower Heist.  But not attacking Bill Cosby?  That was the final straw.  I say, the dude's being generous and giving Kenan Thompson more work.  And Kenan was FAT ALBERT, for God's sake!
The point being, Eddie Murphy has lost some diehard fans of his... but Adam Sandler?  Really?  NO ONE likes him?  I'm insulted.  I take offense at that suggestion.  And if it pleases the court, I submit ONE NAME of ONE PERSON who still likes Adam Sandler.  You can probably guess the name, but I'll type it in anyway... Nick Swardson.  That's right!  Bucky Larson himself!  Apparently the two met in 2006 and... 15 movies later, they're still working together, on The Ridiculous 6, among other things, being shot on crappy-looking digital video as we speak.  And even the hipster author of the article I mentioned earlier had to begrudgingly admit that Sandler's Pixels is coming out soon, and is probably going to be a hit.  In this instance, I choose to be a defeatist and say that it's only going to recoup cost... on the other hand, how good of friends could these two be if Swardson's not in Pixels as well?  How does that work exactly?  Did director Chris Columbus put his foot down?  Did Sandler have to pull Swardson aside and tell him to back off on this one, that this is an A-list-type project that he can't soil on?  I can only assume so.
I was going to submit for the court's approval a second name, the name of Rob Schneider, but Rob's probably unhappy with Sandler ever since Rob started starring in his own movies like The Animal and The Hot Chick and the Deuce Bigalow series.  Maybe Netflix can make that third Bigalow movie that... surely someone in addition to Rob would want to see made.  Maybe Kathryn Bigelow is available to direct!  Go all in, guys!