Yeah, I enjoyed Avatar on the big screen as well. ;-)
Posted on 01/26/2010 9:23:59 PM PST by Reagan Man
Boxoffice is arguably more straightforward to report than TV ratings. You have this weekly Top 10 list of returns, you compare each movie to the other movies. TV ratings are a murky swamp where one network's hit is another network's flop and context is not just a factor, but often the entire story.
Yet one respect in which boxoffice reporting is pretty odd -- emphasizing ticket grosses yet rarely mentioning ticket sales. That would be like always reporting how many ad dollars sold off "Lost" and not mentioning the number of viewers that actually watched the show. With everybody reporting how "Avatar" is The Biggest Movie of All Time based on grosses ($1.859 billion and counting), it's important to remember how rising ticket prices skew the returns.
Here's the Top 20 movies of all time ... by number of tickets sold:
1 "Gone With the Wind" (1939) 202,044,600
2 "Star Wars" (1977) 178,119,600
3 "The Sound of Music" (1965) 142,415,400
4 "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) 141,854,300
5 "The Ten Commandments" (1956) 131,000,000
6 "Titanic" (1997) 128,345,900
7 "Jaws" (1975) 128,078,800
8 "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) 124,135,500
9 "The Exorcist" (1973) 110,568,700
10 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) 109,000,000
11 "101 Dalmatians" (1961) 99,917,300
12 "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) 98,180,600
13 "Ben-Hur" (1959) 98,000,000
14 "Return of the Jedi" (1983) 94,059,400
15 "The Sting" (1973) 89,142,900
16 "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) 88,141,900
17 "Jurassic Park" (1993) 86,205,800
18 "The Graduate" (1967) 85,571,400
19 "Star Wars: Episode I" (1999) 84,825,800
20 "Fantasia" (1941) 83,043,500
"Avatar," despite topping the worldwide gross list, by and by, is only No. 26 on the ticket sales list with 76,421,000 sold ... at least, so far...
It is a DUMB movie.
Spectacular 3D but a very pedestrian movie.
And Avatar’s grosses are further raised by inflated iMAX prices.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up.
I don’t know about anyone else, but if I see any other Hollywood productions promoting that green crap, I’ll hurl.
It is actually a very enjoyable film. I may see it twice in fact.
OK, it does make the military and corporations into the bad guys. In the theater I was in, the evil military general says something like: The natives are massing. We have to do a preemptive strike with some shock and awe because we have to fight terror with terror. After these anti-American lines, some liberal puke sitting in the audience called out sarcastically: “GO USA!”
So, you do have to endure that. But, everything else is great. The effects are wonderful, not distracting, but fit well to the story. The story is epic, so of course it is simple.
It is the same story used in Old West films and novels: a white guy falls for an Indian princes and comes to adapt their ways and defend the tribe against exploitation. Once you have that plot, making the mining corporation the bad guys seems right.
It was awesome. Not exactly great literature, but rich and gripping.
Just come to grips with the fact that the bad guys were, in fact, bad guys, and the primitives were coping with the planetary brain in the only way they knew how.
I wouldn't say so. The one thing that was great was the execution, the production. So you bought it ... I bought it. Whatever it was, it looked great.
Interesting numbers. One additional thing one might do is divide by the U.S. population at the time just to calibrate the totals for population growth. GWTW’s 202 million in ticket sales looks even more impressive given the U.S. population totaled only 131 million in 1939. In contrast, with our population now over 300 million, Avatar’s ticket sales of 76 million looks even less impressive.
Even if the ticket sales are worldwide figures, my guess is that the U.S. accounts for the lion’s share of these, so it’s reasonable to use the U.S. population as a way of standardizing the figures to account for population growth.
How did it make 1.8 billion dollars if it only sold 77 million tickets. That’s more than $20 a ticket.
I just saw the movie. It was a great visual movie. Story was so-so, or as my daughter says “Ferngully with tall smurfs”.
There were also plot points stolen from star trek, pohohantas, and Orson Scott Card’s Enders series (specifically the Children of the Mind portion) — complete with the slightly-different named Aiuas living in trees after they die.
And you had Eragon and the dragon-bonding.
Cameron wasn’t much for originality. But he loves senseless killing. And vengeance.
‘I Believe in Eco-Terrorism’:Does James Cameron Live In a Malibu Mansion? by Pam Meister
Avatar’s far worse than simply a pedestrian film. It’s a reflection of Cameron’s ideology/activist propaganda. Here’s a revealing quote:
Just when you think certain celebrities couldn’t get any more obnoxious, we are treated to an interview with last night’s Golden Globe winner, James “I’m the King of the World” Cameron in Entertainment Weekly. On page 35 of the latest edition of the print version, Cameron responds to the following criticism of his latest film “Avatar”:
EW: “Avatar” is the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool.”
JC: Good, good. I like that one. I consider that a positive review. I believe in ecoterrorism.”
Did you catch that, FReepers? “I believe in ecoterrorism.”
Avatar is just another ultra-liberal propaganda peddling film dressed up in a eye catching Versace, bling and all.
Cameron can take his hypocritical eco-terrorist Avatar and go pound sand.
Yeah, I enjoyed Avatar on the big screen as well. ;-)
Read post #10
I thought Gibson’s Passion of the Christ outsold Titanic, for ticket numbers.
See #14
“But, everything else is great.
I wouldn’t say so”
So, you liked it or not?
Hilarious. It’s a regurgitation of the same ‘ol liberal ideology, and the sheeple swallow this pile by the bucket loads.
Pocahontas: Dances with Smurfs.
I won’t bother seeing it. Unless it’s a pirate copy.
Reminds of the pantomime epic that you act out with a folded piece of paper serving in sequence as a moustache, a hair bow, a bow tie, and a moustache.
“You pay the mortgage!”
“I can’t pay the mortgage!”
“I’ll pay the mortgage!”
“CURSES!”
LOL, that was good, I feel like I was actually there.
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