‘Fault in Our Stars’: Teen Cancer Flick a Summer Blockbuster?

It’s possible that the teen tear-jerker “The Fault in Our Stars,” which crushed the competition this weekend, including Tom Cruise’s big-budget Sci-fi saga “Edge of Tomorrow,” will be the summer’s big sleeper hit.

The film, produced by the “Twilight” team and based on the best-selling novel by John Green, tackles the inevitability of death while adding a spice of teenage angst to the age-old love story between two teens. Seventeen-year-old Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley) who prides herself on all things cynical, and 18-year-old Augustus (Ansel Elgort), who’s arrogance pulsated throughout the theater, both have terminal cancer.

Meeting at a support group may seem improbable to most, but to Hazel and Augustus it marked the start of a fantastical relationship that quickly grew into love.

Throughout the film the heavy load of the teens’ mortality weighs on them as they struggle to figure out who they truly are, and more importantly, how they will be remembered when they’re gone.

The story forces viewers to think about how they will be remembered; and the question of how you will remember the deceased morphed into understanding what’s inside oneself and how that individual lived.

Although the teens fought with terminal cancer, they showed real maturity in how they made the best of it, which is all any of us can really do.
–Hayley Goldberg

The Top Ten in Millions:
“The Fault In Our Stars,” $48.2;
 “Maleficent,” $33.5; 
”Edge of Tomorrow,” $29.1; 
”X-Men: Days of Future Past,” $14.7;
 “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” $7.1;
 “Godzilla,” $5.9;
 “Neighbors,” $5.2;
 “Blended,” $4;
 “Chef,” $2.5;
 “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” $1.9.