MFF Special: A Closer Look at Movies That Feature Pencils Used as Weapons

I love random statistics that have zero correlation or causation. Whether they be about jet ski action scenes, explosions on movie posters or Nicholas Sparks movies I can’t help compiling data that means little in the long run. The following post examines the data of films that feature pencils used as weapons. I just watched John Wick: Chapter Two and was very impressed with the violence that John was able to inflict on his foes with a pencil. The film influenced me to gather the Rotten Tomatoes critic scores, IMDb user scores and domestic box office/budgets of pencil weapon movies in order to see how they add up. The films Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Faculty, Evil Dead, The Dark Knight, RocknRolla, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sleeperwalkers, Fright Night and Stoker all feature some fantastic pencil work and the results were surprising.

Sidenote: If you are looking for “pen action scene” data you are gonna have to go somewhere else. Sorry Casino, The Bourne Identity and The Running Man. Also, the films Tormented and Pencil do not have enough data to be included in the post. I didn’t include the box office of John Wick: Chapter Two because it just came out.

The Average Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score is 69.8%

I was really impressed with the “fresh” 69.8% average. My best guess as to why they are fresh is because they thought outside the box and went creative with the violence. Nobody expects pencils and the results are always surprising and cringeworthy. The fresh average was buoyed by The Dark Knight, (94) John Wick 2 (90), Evil Dead (95) and Fright Night (91). These four films carried Sleepwalkers (15), The Faculty (54), and RocknRolla (59) on their backs and gave cinematic pencil violence a good name.

The Average Budget is $47 Million

$47 million is relatively low nowadays for movies that get theatrical releases. The budgets were kept low via the horror films on the list. The Faculty, Evil Dead, Fright Night, Stoker and From Dusk Till Dawn all have budgets below $30 million. The Dark Knight and its $205 million budget are what kept the budgets in the 40s. The biggest surprise was the $92 million (with inflation) budget of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Key and Peele were right, G2 is a crazy film.

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The Average Inflated Domestic Box Office is $98,927,434

$98,927,434 is nothing to sneeze at. I was very impressed with the tally and it made jet ski action scene movies look bad in comparison ($49 million). The Dark Knight jacked up the average with its $593 million, but Gremlins 2, The Faculty, Fright Night and Sleepwalkers all collected over $50 million at the box office (with inflation) and helped out as well. The only film that super tanked was the very good Stoker ($1.7 million).

Watch Stoker now.

The Average IMDb User Score is 7.14

The 7.14 average proves that IMDb users like pencil violence more than critics (I can’t back this up). I was surprised to see the 7.14 average because it is really quite high. The Dark Knight (9) and John Wick 2 (8.5) boosted the scores while Evil Dead (7.6), RocknRolla (7.3) and The Faculty (7.3) helped combat the lower ratings.

Conclusion: These averages prove nothing of importance. However, movies that feature pencil violence easily defeated movies that feature jet ski actions scenes and that makes me happy.