Last week, when we checked in on the Max streaming battlefield, The Watchers had captured the position of number one most-watched movie, plunging the Top 10 into a state of civil unrest. Its first order of business post-victory was to enlist hard-boiled blockbusters Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Fury to enforce order upon the rankings, and shuffle Madame Web‘s dwindling presence off the charts with the help of folk hero Shrek, who shored the table up from the bottom at #10. This, while long-time Max champion Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga struggled to maintain influence in the top three.
Imagine the surprise on The Watchers‘ face, however, when Bad Boys: Ride or Die, one of its prize recruits, decided to steal that power away from Ishana Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut this week, at once crumbling the Shyamalan new world order, and plunging the charts into complete and utter anarchy. Truly, the ranks of most-watched streaming offerings stand on ever-shifting ground, where alliances are short-lived and lifespans are measured in half-minutes.
Per FlixPatrol, this day of Sept. 25 has seen Bad Boys: Ride or Die — the fourth installment of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s storied buddy cop series — clamber to the top of the Max Top 10 film rankings, with The Watchers now coming in at second place, hoping to make Ride or Die pay for its mutinous abuse of box office and critical score supremacy.
As for Furiosa, that reign has very nearly come to an end. Indeed, after being a reigning force for weeks on end following its disappointing box office run, the Chris Hemsworth-starring action odyssey now sits nestled at the bottom of the Top 10 at, well, number 10, which will likely be the site of its last hurrah as it drifts back into Max’s depths.
Enter The Batman in eighth place, who owes much of its current drawing power to its new, in-universe, episodic series cousin, The Penguin, which just debuted its first episode on Max last week. Thus bolstered, The Batman is poised to lead Beetlejuice, currently at fifth place, into the fire and flames as it seeks to recruit more great movies to its cause. For the time being, however, the rest of the Top 10 is littered with unattached insurgents.
There’s The Garfield Movie, who now drifts aimlessly in fourth place, and Fury, the David Ayer-directed star-studded war film that seems to be reluctantly fending for itself at ninth place. Elsewhere, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire — once a commanding officer of the forces of darkness — scavenges the wasteland in sixth place, no doubt scheming for a rebuild/counterattack.
Out of Darkness, meanwhile, has ended its solitary hibernation (befitting of a horror thriller like itself) after being away from the charts for several weeks, using its prestigious critical reputation to buy itself the nice, lofty position of third place.
But most interesting is the absence of The Killer, the Netflix original film that somehow snuck its way into Max, where it held onto the fifth-place position for a suspiciously long time. Replacing it in this equation — albeit with a seventh-place position — is About Time, the Domhnall Gleeson-led sci-fi rom-com that has traveled back in time to warn the rest of the chart’s denizens about what lies ahead. Exactly what does lie ahead is anyone’s guess, but whatever heroes rise, whatever factions form, the battle for streaming supremacy will rage on.