Early last week, Tom Cruise’s latest adventure “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation” was tracking to open in the $40M range and Ed Helms’ latest comedy “Vacation” in the $30 range by the end of the week. “Vacation” stumbled on opening day with $3.8M last Wednesday. Meanwhile, “Rogue Nation” drew a huge $20M debut on Friday. As a result, the actioner finished the weekend with $56M (three day total) and the comedy with $21M (five day total). The two films took the top two spots at the box office, respectively.

I was impressed by the creativity and realism (compared to most superhero movies) of the action scenes from “Rogue Nation,” so I was expecting it to perform above expectations. For the second film in a row, the franchise has scored above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s super duper impression for a couple reasons. First, they’re action movies, which tend to score poorly with critics. Second, they’re the fourth and fifth film in the series, when quality should be eroding drastically.