More Avatars

// February 1st, 2010 // Random Movie Musings

Let me start with saying, once again, I really like the movie Avatar. I think it’s an awesome movie and I am not trying to insult it or put it down in any way shape or form. I just don’t believe it should win best picture, simply for the reason that it isn’t the best picture of the year and here is why.

First, we have the issue of dealing with it being the highest grossing movie of all time, worldwide and soon to be domestically. However, not only are these stats misleading, they are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. They are misleading because, wait for it…………Avatar was being shown in 3-d as well as 2-d. We all know what this means, right? 3-d tickets cost 3 dollars more per ticket. So instead of someone going to see a regular movie and paying fifteen dollars, they are going to avatar in 3-d and paying twenty-one dollars. See what kind of problem that creates with comparing it to other movies? Avatar is currently sitting at 595 million dollars. Let’s compare that with 2008′s the Dark Knight. The Dark Knight made 533 million dollars, with no 3-d showings. If we took twenty percent of those ticket sales and turned them into 3-d ticket sales, what would the Dark Knight’s gross be at that point? I don’t know because I don’t know how to do that kind of math but it would be quite a bit higher. And that would be assuming that only twenty percent of Avatar’s ticket sales were in 3-d, which we all know is definitely a low guess, I would estimate it somewhere around fifty five or sixty percent. Even if we don’t want to accept that argument, we can look at the all time box office and see how it compares when you adjust for inflation. If you adjust for inflation, Gone With The Wind is the highest grossing film of all time by a longshot. It’s not even close to Avatar with sales at 1.5 billion domestically. When adjusting for inflation Avatar is the 21st highest grossing movie of all time, so the highest grossing movie argument just can’t be used.

But, as I stated before, that argument is really irrelevant. I say that because best picture is not awarded to the most popular movie, or the highest grossing movies of the year. In fact, the people that have the artistic integrity to make film as art and aren’t concerned with huge box office earnings usually aren’t widely seen because filmmaking has become about making money so they only buy the movies that have mass appeal. The award of best picture is given to the best made film of the year, how much a movie makes says nothing about how well the movie is made. If the academy nominated the highest grossing movies of the year the list would look like this: Avatar, Transformers 2, Harry Potter, Twilight, Up, The Hangover, Star Trek, The Blindside, Alving & The Chipmunks, and Monsters vs. Aliens. Does that really look like a list of the ten best movies of the year, or more like a list of the most appealing movies to a majority of people?

A lot of people just go to movies to be entertained so they go to things like G.I. Joe or Transformers, anybody that saw those movies know that they are piles of garbage, but they make money because people just want to be entertained. Sadly, once again, that is not what best picture is for. It is to reward the movie that is the most well made movie overall. With a movie like Avatar, where the dialogue is mediocre and bad in parts, all the characters are flat, the plot isn’t original at all, it becomes really hard to make a case that it is the most well made movie of the year. Even with counting all the ticket sales to Avatar, you still can’t claim that that makes it great because who knows how many of those people went more than once and how many people even liked it. My final point is just a reiteration of what I said before. How much many something makes is not indicative of how good the movie is, does that mean that it has more appeal to most people, yes probably, but that doesn’t mean it’s better then any other movie. Best picture is a reward for making the best film over all the different categories, not making the highest grossing movie. I have just rambled on and on at this point, so I will stop now. I could go on about this all day, but I think you see my point.

14 Responses to “More Avatars”

  1. Jake says:
    February 1, 2010 at 5:13 pm

    I think i saw this thing on reddit.com but im not sure, they compared avatar to Pocahontas. It was uncanny how similar the plots are. I will try to find it so i can show everyone.

  2. Jake says:
    February 1, 2010 at 5:38 pm

    I found it!

    http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/

  3. Chris says:
    February 1, 2010 at 6:38 pm

    I absolutely agree with you that most popular does not equal best. I was going to post that in the comments of your other post, but you beat me to it.

    While it is true that Avatar has made a lot of money from 3D and IMAX sales, it is still pretty remarkable how quickly it has shattered records. It will be interesting to see how well it does with DVD sales since its biggest box-office draw has been its technical wonders, which won’t transfer as well to the small-screen.

  4. Jason says:
    February 1, 2010 at 11:28 pm

    I will agree that most popular doesn’t always equal best, but can. So what are the criteria for best picture?

  5. nic says:
    February 2, 2010 at 11:38 am

    I want some education on this, too. Judging from Justin’s post, I think three criteria are good dialogue, deep characters and original plot. And I’m assuming that a film ought to be approached as art, not entertainment. Am I completely off on this?

  6. justin says:
    February 2, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    First off, movies can be art and entertainment simultaneously, they don’t have to be one or the other. Film is an art form though, and just like any other art form, there are good and crappy pieces.

    For a movie to be best picture quality, or to be great filmmaking it has to be good in all aspects of filmmaking. Those aspects include, writing, directing, editing, acting, character development, and it doesn’t need to be an original plot. No country for old men is an amazing and recent example. It is almost flawless across all different aspects of filmmaking, and it’s plot isn’t original. It’s based on a book of the same name, and almost adapted verbatim. Maybe to make it more clear we will compare Avatar and the real best picture of the year, The Hurt Locker.

    Avatars visual effects–amazing
    The Hurt Lockers visual effects–great
    Avatarts plot–unoriginal but entertaining
    the Hurt Lockers plot–great
    Avatars writing–mediocre at best
    The Hurt Lockers writing–great
    Avatars characters–flat and cliche
    The Hurt Lockers characters–interesting, round, and deep
    Avatars acting–mediocre
    The Hurt Lockers acting–great
    Avatars directing–great
    The Hurt Lockers directing–great

    When you compare them like this does it make more sense? The Hurt Locker is better in almost every aspect of filmmaking with the exception of visual effects. Avatar’s visual effects are the best of any by a long long way, there is no doubting that. Does this make more sense?

  7. nic says:
    February 2, 2010 at 4:28 pm

    This sheds a LOT of light on the subject. Gracias.

  8. Jason says:
    February 2, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    Here is an interesting tid bit:

    Most ticket sales of all time:

    1 Gone with the Wind 283,100,000
    2 Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs 225,300,000
    3 Star Wars Fox 176,900,000
    4 E.T. 158,000,000
    5 101 Dalmatians 143,100,000
    6 Bambi 140,800,000
    7 Titanic 130,900,000
    8 Jaws Universal 128,600,000
    9 The Sound of Music 119,300,000
    10 The Ten Commandments 117,800,000

  9. justin says:
    February 2, 2010 at 11:56 pm

    That is an interesting tid bit. I was looking for somewhere that would show me ticket sales. Where did you find this?

  10. Jake says:
    February 3, 2010 at 1:04 am

    @jason: i too saw that list. I think it was on yahoo. It had avatar at 26 if i remember correctly.

  11. nic says:
    February 3, 2010 at 9:44 am

    Perhaps it was from this link that I put in a comment on your Past & Present post:

    http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/avatar-ticket-sales-.html

  12. nic says:
    February 3, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    Justin, curious as to your opinion of this very short film (four and a half minutes):

    http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/nuit-blanche/

    Stuff like this fascinates me.

  13. Chris says:
    February 11, 2010 at 11:24 pm

    I’m late to the debate, but I just have to say that Avatar in 3D at the IMAX was pretty freakin’ awesome. Yeah, not a very original story or anything, but it was technically astounding. It will, at least, deserve the technical category Oscars it will surely win.

  14. Jason says:
    February 12, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    Justin, I haven’t read your blog for a while so I didn’t see your question. I just googled that list. I don’t remember the website. There were several websites that had it and I just chose one. It is really interesting though. Notice how Titanic sold only 130,900,000 compared to Gone With The Wind at 283,100,000. How on earth did Gone with the Wind sell so many tickets? Really! If anyone can answer that question I really want to know the answer. It was so long ago and there were so many less theaters and even so fewer people!

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