Tron roared into theaters at 33.5 million dollars and then immediately asked for directions, apologized to a traffic cone, and parked in the dollar bin. The lightcycle hit the skids so hard the laws of physics filed an HR complaint. My popcorn took out renter’s insurance.

Meanwhile, Roofman perched at number two with a sturdy 8 million, achieving what contractors call load-bearing modesty. It’s a film about a man, a roof, and the eternal question: why is the ladder always six inches too short? The audience arrived equipped with vertigo and left with closure.

Box office is the only sport where money does the sprinting and the films do the wheezing. Tron promised a neon revolution and delivered a very shiny brochure about stairs. Roofman countered with a story about gravity, which remains undefeated and unionized.

Studio executives blamed weather, Mercury retrograde, and the public’s stubborn preference for stories with functioning human emotions. A VP assured me the algorithm liked Tron so much it proposed to the trailer. The wedding venue was a test screening; the vows were rewritten by a focus group made of ficus trees.

Audiences, ever the final co-authors, voted with their eyeballs and a coupon code. They don’t hate glowing lines; they just prefer them attached to characters instead of spreadsheets. Also, if your plot sounds like a Bluetooth speaker reciting a mission statement, the ushers will start doing stand-up.

One crowd member told me he bought a programmable neon wall grid and got more narrative closure arranging hexagons than in two hours of lightcycles. Another said Tron’s world feels like a nightclub that forgot why it invited everyone. The bass dropped; the stakes did not.

Roofman’s charm is biblical: a man ascends, confronts the heavens, and the heavens say, ‘Sir, please get off the roof.’ It cost a deli sandwich and three roofing nails to make, but it remembers what movies are: problems plus weird solutions. Also, the villain is wind, which tested off the charts with people who own hats.

At my screening, a hush fell when Roofman chose between tar paper and love. Across the hall, Tron increased volume in lieu of plot, and the speakers quietly asked for SAG cards. I don’t need 7.1 surround exposition when a sigh and a shingle will do.

In a brave synergy play, Roofman merch now includes a DIY shingle repair kit signed by the boom operator. Tron responded with glow-sticks that swear they’re character arcs. Both come with a QR code for a rebate and an existential shrug.

Critics ran the numbers, then ran them back because the digits looked judgmental. Tron, they said, is a screensaver with impostor syndrome. Roofman is a YouTube tutorial that discovered subtext and immediately asked for back pay.

The forecasting models predict Tron will stabilize after remembering to have humans do things. Expect an apology cut titled ‘Tron: We’ve Tried Talking Now.’ Roofman is already teasing a sequel: ‘Roofman 2: Gutter Reckoning,’ a meditation on rainfall and forgiveness, possibly rated PG for leaf-related peril.

I watch the business behind the spectacle, and this week the spectacle got outbid by a ladder. Tron mistook decibels for decisions; Roofman mistook a hardware aisle for destiny. When the credits rolled, the audience climbed down satisfied, and Tron was still revving in neutral, flashing its high beams at a shingle.