With Transformers and Godzilla you're basically seeing the result of marketing and brand recognition.  You can hype almost any movie to a #1 opening weekend if it's got a recognizable brand name to build from. If the movie drops like a rock afterward, that usually means it wasn't all that great - or at least not of interest outside the core market.  So the wider audience wasn't interested and repeat business wasn't very strong. 

See also: Fault in our Stars, Pacific Rim, etc.  Opened huge, then fell off a cliff.   Core audience showed up, but nobody else.  Compare to the first Hunger Games:  built-in audience to get started with, but turned out to be entertaining to the rest of the world as well. Good buzz, good reviews, so - opened big, stayed big.

Other side of the equation - poor lil' Edge of Tomorrow.  Hyped like crazy, but no brand name.  And the Tom Cruise brand is sorta shaky in the US.  So, opened below #1... and then just hung in week after week, staying around #3-5, gradually creeping toward 100 mil (which it STILL hasn't hit, but will in another week or so).     That's repeat biz and good word of mouth at work.

Unfortunately, modern studio deals are set up so they get the biggest take from the opening weekend, and less of a percentage afterward.   So on the books, Godzilla still probably looks pretty good and worth making another half dozen just like it.  But Edge of Tomorrow?  Meh.

I think the wild card of the summer is Guardians of the Galaxy which will certainly do okay, but might be a monster.   Marketing, check.  Brand name, sorta check (Marvel, although this property hasn't been done before).  But speaking as someone who definitely does not say "oh hooray another goddam Marvel movie", I gotta admit this one looks pretty fun, and I'm okay to go.   If Guardians is as nifty as the trailers suggest, it could be this year's Avengers, and for the same reasons.

And the chimpanzees are supposed to be the enlightened ones!  Go figure.

ANYway, that's a good example of why Bechdel shouldn't be used as an automatic pass/fail for every movie.  I think The Grey and Life of Pi deserve an exemption, among others.

On the other hand, it is no surprise at all that movies like Ted and Ghost Rider and The Watch fail the test.  Because of course they do.

And even the "bad guy" is female!

Yeah, the hologram isn't as risky because it isn't meant to simulate a real solid object, and it's also (presumably) self-illuminating.  So you have more wiggle room there before it looks "wrong" to the audience.

And the tracking for something like that isn't TOO hard these days, as long as certain considerations are met when shooting.  In your example, that wristband is what made the shot trackable - it's got several small but clear shapes on it, which are visible to camera during the entire shot.   That's what tracking software needs to do a track most easily. 

If she wasn't wearing the band, or moved her arm more and thus obscured or blurred the trackable points at times, it would still be do-able but would take much more effort.

So if you design a shot that is more or less like the one in the example, that'd be on the "easier" side of the scale, not far above saber roto.

I hope they do the same for "Come On Eileen"!

Best Thread Title Ever

Finally, a chance for the non-GoT-readers to have their revenge. 

"You guys are gonna lose your sh*t when you see what doesn't happen in THIS episode!"