Ben Bests Bale At Box Office

Apparently, killer robots can be defeated by animated inanimate objects. At least, that's one conclusion to be drawn from Friday's US box office, which saw Terminator Salvation outgrossed by Night At The Museum 2.

To its credit, Salvation has outperformed 2003's Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines in its first two days at the box office, giving McG and star Christian Bale something to smile - or grimace and shout their names loudly for no immediately apparent reason, perhaps - about (Salvation has made $28.3 million in its first two days, against T3's $24.3 million). Yesterday, however, saw the much-anticipated movie lose out to the Ben Stiller sequel vehicle, which grossed $15.3 million to Salvation's $14.8 million.

With critical reaction to both movies generally pretty unfavorable - Night At The Museum 2 getting a 43% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and Terminator Salvation getting 34% - it'll be down to word of mouth to see which movie ultimately triumphs this weekend. Call me cynical, but my money's on the feel-good movie that doesn't feature the slow and deliberate destruction of the human race.

'Museum' tops 'Terminator' Friday [Hollywood Reporter]

Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.