Top Movies of 2013: Surprises at the Top
by EG
If you did nothing but read headlines over the past year, you might conclude that 2013 was the year of the huge box-office flop. The truth is, while there were quite a few high-profile financial disasters at the theaters last year, there were also a lot of movies that did quite well. Just which movies those were, though, might come as something of a surprise.
First of all, if nothing else, 2013 was the year of the animated movie. Three of the year's top ten highest-grossing movies—three of the top six, actually—were animated films aimed at general audiences. "Despicable Me 2" came in third, "Frozen" fifth, and "Monsters University" sixth. There were disappointments among animated films, to be sure—"Turbo" and "Free Birds" among them—but the biggest animated hits were tough to beat.
Even superheroes had some trouble. The year's top movie was "Iron Man 3," and "Man of Steel" was fourth, but no other movie based on a comic book broke into the top ten. In fact, many of those celebrated box-office failures—"R.I.P.D.," "Pacific Rim," etc.--were comic-based movies, and even big names like "Thor" and "The Wolverine" fell short of blockbuster status.
The relative success of a few low-budget horror movies inspired some commentators to declare 2013 the year of the horror movie, but that wasn't exactly true. "The Conjuring" and "The Purge" delivered huge returns on investment, but their grosses were only good enough to put them in 18th and 52nd place, respectively. And several hyped horror films—"You're Next," "Carrie," "Evil Dead"—didn't deliver much of anything at all.
Something similar happened with comedies. "We're the Millers" and "Grown Ups 2" dominated the box office for much of the summer, but both films grossed considerably less than "The Croods" in the end.
Finally, some of the year's most successful films were sneaky about their success. "Star Trek Into Darkness" took 10th place, ahead of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" and "Thor: The Dark World," despite tepid reviews and lukewarm fan reaction. Even more surprising is "Oz the Great and Powerful, which somehow slipped into 9th place, ahead of "The Hobbit" and "World War Z."