In future, the director suggested, audiences will be expected to pay more to see large-scale films than their more understated counterparts.
He suggested audiences would be drawn to the story because it is not defeatist about what eventually became the misadventure of Vietnam.
Reviews were encouraging, and the film also enjoys a warm 7.6/10 user rating at IMDb, suggesting audience word is positive.
Tracking reports, however, suggest audience interest in the Mission: Impossible franchise has dipped now that it's reached the fifth entry, 19 years after the original.
Several tweets, suggesting Audience was under US government investigation, are said to have caused the share price of the mobile audio company to fall 28 per cent before the stock market authorities temporarily halted trading.
Bale, meanwhile, said Scott was not to blame for casting and appeared to suggest audience habits would need to change if actors of Middle Eastern or north African heritage are ever to be given a chance in similarly pitched Hollywood productions.
The concern for the new Almodóvar is not so much the gap between the number achieved and the previous films at the same stage, as the rate of descent, which suggests audience word is less than positive.
It recasts the seventh president as an alternative-rock star and suggests audiences draw parallels between, say, his treatment of American Indians and the current immigration debate.
The success of Gravity and Interstellar, meanwhile, suggests audiences are keen on dramas set in outer space, as well as straightforward sci-fi action.
The bountiful box-office returns for Pixar's films, and more recently Disney's Frozen, suggest audiences aren't turned off by the absence of real actors on screen.
