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Sci-Fi Movies

'Avatar: the Way of Water' Beats 'The Force Awakens', Becomes 4th Highest-Grossing Film Ever (variety.com) 112

Posted by EditorDavid from the fighting-franchises dept.
Avatar: The Way of Water "has passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time," reports Variety: Director James Cameron's sci-fi epic has now earned $2.075 billion at the global box office. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, another sci-fi sequel released long after previous installments, finished its theatrical run with $2.064 billion after hitting theaters in December 2015.

With this latest box office milestone, Cameron now has three of the top four highest-grossing movies in history — the original Avatar is still the champion [with $2.92 billion], while Titanic sits in third place [with $2.2 billion].

[The second-highest grossing film of all time is Avengers: Endgame with $2.79 billion.] Avatar: The Way of Water has quickly moved up in the record books, surpassing Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.92 billion) on Jan. 18 and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.05 billion) shortly after on Jan. 26....

A third "Avatar" entry has already been set for release in December 2024 and there are plans for a fourth and fifth to continue the intergenerational saga
Some context from The A.V. Club: The highlight of that big pile of planetary currency being a massive $229 million turnout in China, where it's one of the first Disney movies to play in the country's lucrative markets in some time.

As it happens, James Cameron told GQ back in November, ahead of his sequel's release, that his "fucking expensive" movie would have to post these kinds of numbers to be anything other than a loss for the studio. "You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history," he noted at the time. "That's your threshold. That's your break even."
Wikipedia points out that when box office figures are adjusted for inflation, the highest-grossing film of all time is still the 1939 Civil War drama Gone with the Wind. And the next top-grossing films of all-time?
  • The original Avatar
  • Titanic
  • The original Star Wars (1977)
  • Avengers: Endgame
  • The Sound of Music (1965)
  • E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)
  • The Ten Commandments (1956)
  • Doctor Zhivago (1965)
  • Star Wars: the Force Awakens

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'Avatar: the Way of Water' Beats 'The Force Awakens', Becomes 4th Highest-Grossing Film Ever More

'Avatar: the Way of Water' Beats 'The Force Awakens', Becomes 4th Highest-Grossing Film Ever

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  • James Cameron has 3 of the top 4 grossing films. Zoe Saldana has 4 of the top 6.

    • James Cameron has 3 of the top 4 grossing films. Zoe Saldana has 4 of the top 6.

      As an actor yes.

      As a director/producer no.

    • "Zoe Saldana has 4 of the top 6."

      I like her as a blue space-smurf.

      But she's also great in green.

  • 640 out to be enough... (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @05:51PM (#63247577)

    For a load of laughs, have a look at what everyone on Slashdot thought about Avatar 2 being profitable [slashdot.org]. The consensus looked grim. But some of us knew...

    I still don't like Avatar and am not going to see the 2nd. But there is something in these movies lots of people love. It's true of the second as it was of the first.. there was no logical reason why so many went to see Avatar... yet they did and have.

    I have to admit I feel the draw to go see this in IMAX, but I have resisted thus far...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For a load of laughs, have a look at what everyone on Slashdot thought about Avatar 2 being profitable. The consensus looked grim. But some of us knew...

      Most of us just dont give a shit...

    • Re:640 out to be enough... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @06:09PM (#63247611)

      there was no logical reason why so many went to see Avatar...

      It's the spectacle. Avatar 2 isnt any more of a perfect film then I remember the first one being but watching this movie on the big screen is just a ton of fun and the actions scenes are absolutely riveting which is more than a can say about the snooze fest some major franchise's action scenes have largely become.

      • Re:640 out to be enough... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @06:15PM (#63247617)

        I actually found the action scenes dragging. The last half an hour or so shoult have been cut into 10 minutes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          That's fair, tastes of course vary.

          I suspect a lot of folks are finding some sort of significant value to the movie given the numbers going to go see it. Mine is the action scenes and just the visuals in general.

        • I agree. The whole movie is too dragged out. They could have cut it in half to 90 minutes and told the same story easily. The first Avatar was showing off fancy state of the art special fx. But Avatar 2 is hardly groundbreaking. There's not much of a reason for it to be so long to show off.
      • Exactly. Combine that with the unbelievably immersive 3D, and you have an experience that apparently many people enjoy. In some ways it's more of a (really long) ride rather than just a movie.

        • Yep! It's also an SFX tour de force. The entire thing is mocap and it looks good. Really good. It doesn't degenerate into the kind of messy frenetic samey crap that fills up Marvel films.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Your ride analogy makes a lot of sense to me.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Phact ( 4649149 )

            I haven't A2 yet, but I've noticed movies today are frequently shot with scenes and sequences that seem intended to adapt well to video games or amusement park rides.

        • Exactly. Combine that with the unbelievably immersive 3D, and you have an experience that apparently many people enjoy. In some ways it's more of a (really long) ride rather than just a movie.

          So, what exactly are they selling then? A movie, or a movie-going experience?

          Strip away all of the 3D and surround sound effects coming from a 200-speaker Atmos certified IMAX room. Are you still wearing a "highest grossing" badge or would you be wearing the world's largest loss in "movie" making history?

          • Strip away all the 3D and you'd have a cheaper movie. But yeah... my guess is that the experience is a big part of why people are showing up. The movie itself is decent, but not $2 billion decent.

      • also it looks good, unlike the glaring visual mess of said major franchises.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I think people have been waiting for something like this for a long time too. With the pandemic and the recent Marvel movies being lacklustre, it's a while since we had a proper big budget special effects extravaganza. The timing was perfect.

      • Avatar 2 isnt any more of a perfect film then I remember the first one being

        While nothing remotely resembling perfect it is very much *more* of a perfect film. The fact that the story alone isn't just FernGully - 3D already makes it better. It was slightly more compelling than the first.

        But fuck it was beautiful. Frankly forget the story. Give me just a montage of underwater scenes and things blowing up in that quality and I'll pay to see it.

    • Funny how those people using "woke" (whatever the hell that is) are once again eating crow. They're probably the same ones who backed this disaster [imgur.com] or tried to get in on this stupidity [imgur.com] or couldn't be bothered to keep this reject [businessinsider.com] in business.

      • Funny how those people using "woke" (whatever the hell that is) are once again eating crow.

        Well, there's woke and then there's staying awake. I had trouble keeping my eyes open for first Avatar and there's a high likelihood this one suffers from a bit of snooze-inducing sequelitis (I've yet to see it).

      • It has a vague environmental message, reminds me of that one times we tried to exterminate the natives, corporations are greedy.

        Super woke.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Yes but it would be the *best* looking goatse ever made. It would set the bar for how it ought to look and studious will all be chasing that.

        Can we drop the analogy? This is doing unpleasant things to my brain.

        My recommendation to you? Find a good cinema with a big screen and go and watch it in 3D (I essentially never recommend this). Cameron can't write scripts for shit, but what he can do is make the absolute best use of the cinema screen and 3D (who's benefit has been somewhat elusive).

        It's like $20 buck

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • For what it's worth, I though interstellar was awful.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • Well love is a 5 dimensional book shelf that transcends time or gravity or some shit. I dunno.

                My SO and friend that I went to see it with also didn't like it. So that's 5.

                • Intersteller, Gravity, there's a couple more I didn't like as well as this one.

                  Too many practical questions, like the "aliens" (humans) land and 1 year later there's a war. War is ultimately wasteful, they're not defending a tree this time, and and just how is it they're not smart enough to avoid a war?

                  Plus, aliens are here because the "home world is dying?" What does that mean? They / we can travel space, terraform a world where almost every critter can and also wants to kill you, you can't breathe th

      • I quite enjoyed the first Avatar film. I'd go as far as saying it's one of the few memorable films I've seen in the cinema in the last 15 years, a period where I've given up on anything from Hollywood. Different strokes for different folks. And no, it was nothing to do with it being part of the 3D (stereoscopic actually) fad at the time: I can't see 3D. Incidentally, thatâ(TM)s ironic because I was also developing Hollywood post production tools at the time including one of the main encoders the in

    • The movie looked okay, but I'm perfectly fine with waiting for it to get leaked to the high seas (how's that for "way of the water"?) rather than going to the cinema. Basically, I got spoiled during the pandemic with everything being released direct to streaming, so actually having to go out to see a movie just seems so... archaic.

      • I'm perfectly fine with waiting for it to get leaked to the high seas

        I can also watch it at home for free later because I subscribe to Disney+

        But the thing that actually makes me think about seeing it, is a large part of the point of seeing this movie would be the full IMAX spectacle.

        If you don't see it in IMAX I don't really see the point of watching it at home no matter how It was acquired, even though I have a projector I watch most content on...

    • but I have resisted thus far...

      Congratulations on your perseverance. The world is a better for you to have decided not to see something that you have no actual idea if you will like or not. We are all moved by your actions.

      Avatar was crap. It was a technical marvel and well worth seeing for that alone.
      Avatar 2 was crap (slightly less). It was a technical marvel and well worth seeing for that alone.

      But stick to your guns man. God forbid you get a new experience.

  • Credit where due, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @06:25PM (#63247627) Journal

    James Cameron doesn't seem to me like he's ever really involved in a movie with an outstanding, original story-line that wows an audience?

    I just sat down last night and watched that sci-fi/drama, Solaris, that he help make (the one starring George Clooney). Perfectly mediocre film there. Some interesting moments and parts? Sure ... but I could have gone without seeing it and wouldn't have missed much.

    I never thought much of Avatar either. The story is just kind of a futuristic version of the battle between loggers and tree-huggers, except all jazzed up with amazing looking f/x and 3D.

    He's figured out how to get movie studios to open their wallets up wide for his productions, at this point. And he's figured out that when you put on an expensive spectacle, you get a LOT of paying customers to see what it's all about. He deserves the credit for using that kind of budget in a productive manner and getting multiple "top grossing films" out of it. But I'll always be more impressed with a movie like Star Wars that took a lot of chances, on a much more limited budget, and still made something that incredible and lasting.

    • Re:Credit where due, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @06:43PM (#63247663)

      Outside of Aliens, Titanic and Pirahna II all of his movies have been original works? And even those have original stories he has a pretty strong hand in. Now are those stories "outstanding"? Probably not in a traditional, Academy Award story type lens but as a filmmaker on the whole he's a modern master for a reason. His films are engaging, paced well, with compelling characters and visually he is always pushing the medium. He got studios to open their wallets because he delivers,

      I mean just tlook at his streak of Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and T2 pretty much all being standout and scifi and action films.

      From a story POV "A New Hope" is just The Hidden Fortress and other Kurosawa mixed with Buck Rogers style serials. The story is incredibly straight forward but again, compelling characters, impressive visuals and an engaging experience overall.

      • Looks like he's learnt from Marvel & is just going to carry on making the same film with the same characters over & over from now on & watch the money roll in.

        • Re:Credit where due, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @07:56PM (#63247789)

          Looks like he's learnt from Marvel & is just going to carry on making the same film with the same characters over & over from now on & watch the money roll in.

          Actually I think he just got bored with regular film making, he had 2, now 3 of the top 4 grossing films, and then started doing documentaries.

          At this point I think he's just genuinely interested in building out Pandora. The one, fairly legit, criticism of Avatar 2 is that it's quite long and a bit slow.

          That's because it's not really a film, it's a (mostly) nature documentary set in Pandora with enough movie elements to try and cover its budget. I don't think Cameron is trying to maximize revenue, he's trying to maximize how much of Pandora he can film.

          • That's exactly the impression I also get from this, Cameron can write his own ticket and this is what he wants to do, apparently I had read he has the whole overarching story mapped out he wants to make and thus he's got the budget and capability to knock out a whole 5 picture series.

            The better timeline is the one where he ends up directing "Battle Angel" instead of handing it off. Maybe he can use some of that Avatar 2 money to make the sequel anyways.

    • Re:Credit where due, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @07:17PM (#63247721)

      James Cameron doesn't seem to me like he's ever really involved in a movie with an outstanding, original story-line that wows an audience?

      No one ever claimed he was an experimental director.

      Nor is anyone going to give you hundreds of millions to make a really nice looking experimental film.

      He just makes the same films that everybody else tries to make, and he makes them better.

      I just sat down last night and watched that sci-fi/drama, Solaris, that he help make (the one starring George Clooney). Perfectly mediocre film there. Some interesting moments and parts? Sure ... but I could have gone without seeing it and wouldn't have missed much.

      Which is why he's renowned as a director, not a producer.

      I never thought much of Avatar either. The story is just kind of a futuristic version of the battle between loggers and tree-huggers, except all jazzed up with amazing looking f/x and 3D.

      And extremely tight writing and acting.

      He's figured out how to get movie studios to open their wallets up wide for his productions, at this point.

      By being extremely good at his job and consistently producing box office hits.

      And he's figured out that when you put on an expensive spectacle, you get a LOT of paying customers to see what it's all about.

      Totally [wikipedia.org].

      He deserves the credit for using that kind of budget in a productive manner and getting multiple "top grossing films" out of it. But I'll always be more impressed with a movie like Star Wars that took a lot of chances, on a much more limited budget, and still made something that incredible and lasting.

      Oh, so you're impressed by original films that are made on a small budget and have a lasting impact, like The Terminator [wikipedia.org] (made for less than the original Star Wars!!!).

      You want to get all "popular stuff sucks" on something look at #2 on the list, Avengers: Endgame. They chose to cap off 10+ years of world-building with a time travel fan-service clip show.

      • You want to get all "popular stuff sucks" on something look at #2 on the list, Avengers: Endgame. They chose to cap off 10+ years of world-building with a time travel fan-service clip show.

        It could've been worse. They could've made it a courtroom drama, where everybody who lost someone sued Thanos in space court. Bonus points if they'd gotten John de Lancie to play the judge. Of course, they'd also still work in the clip show aspect, depicted as evidence being presented to the court.

    • When the first Avatar movie came out, there was a comparison made between its script and that of Pocohantos.

      https://comicvine.gamespot.com... [gamespot.com]

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Dude Terminator and Terminator II was a risk. And so was Titanic. Fact is that any high budget movie is a risk, so of course the storyline isn't going to be wildly risky. Would you invest a shit-ton on a risky venture? As to your assertion that Star Wars took a lot of chances. Did it? Star Wars was a risk, but not a crazy risk. Sci-fi had been shown as a potential money maker by prior movies such as 2001. Also George Lucas had previous success with American Graffiti and to a lesser extent with THX1138. The

      • Re:Credit where due, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @10:28PM (#63247967) Journal

        Maybe you missed my point to an extent? I was saying that the popularity and long-term worth of a movie like Star Wars was an amazing thing to achieve with the kind of budget spent on it, vs what it cost to make either an Avatar movie or something like Gone with the Wind. Nobody who starred in Star Wars back in '77 thought the movie would amount to much. You could say the same about the original Star Trek TV series, where the budget was so limited, props were made out of trash rescued from dumpsters.

        I think when you're given essentially "as much money as you want" to make a movie, it's really less of a risk than it might seem that it'll be a total failure. At that point, the key is making sure whatever you do looks amazing on the big screen and keeps up a decent pace so an audience finds the action exciting. People are going to see why it cost so much to make, in other words....

        I've long been a fan of sci-fi movies, and I usually find the ones I like the best have relatively low budgets and sometimes even use unknown actors/actresses. (Take a movie like "The Cube" for an example, or "Moon".) Those films work because the story is intriguing. They don't need a lot of computerized 3D rendered, costly special f/x. But a movie like Star Wars did all the right things to create all of that royalty income from the toys, too.

        • Darn you, now I want to rewatch the Cube trilogy.
          By the way, I think Cube 2: Hypercube greatly surpasses both The Cube and Cube: Zero.

    • James Cameron doesn't seem to me like he's ever really involved in a movie with an outstanding, original story-line that wows an audience?

      George Lucas once said that a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing [youtube.com]. One might've assumed he was implying an "outstanding, original story line" as you've said, but since Star Wars is essentially just a generic hero's journey [wikipedia.org] story arc with a bunch of eye candy, he literally meant that any story will do.

      James Cameron is just following in his footsteps.

      The story is just kind of a futuristic version of the battle between loggers and tree-huggers, except all jazzed up with amazing looking f/x and 3D.

      It's Disney's Pocahontas [wikipedia.org] in space.

    • But I'll always be more impressed with a movie like Star Wars that took a lot of chances

      There's very much a place for both types of films. Some films need to be compelling in story and pull at the heatstrings. Others need to kick the industry hard in the balls and push them kicking and screaming forward. It's not just a case of 3D, Cameron has quite often worked with many in the industry to develop completely new ways of doing things that break through previously thought technological barriers.

      Prior to Avatar 3D cameras were so big they had to be mounted on a dolly. It was the push from Camero

    • I never thought much of Avatar either. The story is just kind of a futuristic version of the battle between loggers and tree-huggers, except all jazzed up with amazing looking f/x and 3D.

      You are looking too far out. The tree-hugger/logger dichotomy is merely the vessel to introduce the idea of personal choice of right and wrong. The choice was, "stay with your original group and values that you know", or, "try out this new group with new values".

      In this particular instance, the new values were seen as "better" because they valued the individual.

      (I love it when the CAPTCHA is appropriate)

  • $20/ticket is pretty gross (Score:4, Insightful)

    by I'm just joshin ( 633449 ) on Saturday January 28, 2023 @06:39PM (#63247657)

    "Highest Grossing Every" claims are ridiculous as they don't account for inflation.

    "Gone With the Wind" tickets were about a buck.

    • Which Gone With the Wind are you talking about? The 1939 release? The 1942 release? The 1947 release? The 1954 widescreen release? The 1961 release? The 1967 70mm release? The 1971, 1974 or 1989 release? The 1998 release? Or the 2013 4K release?

      You see people like quoting Gone With the Wind as the highest grossing inflation adjusted movie of all time, but that conveniently ignores the time element of it.

      GWTW had taken in only took in $2.5million in the box office in the first month post release.
      So multiply

      • Best/highest/greatest $whatever ever generally means jack.

        Some TV "legends" around here managed to get ratings of over 80% viewership. That's impossible today, back then there was a handful of channels and they usually didn't bother to broadcast anything good if they knew they were up against that "legend" and couldn't get a sensible market share anyway. Today you have a couple 100 channels and a 20% rating is already considered record breaking. You will never get the 80% of the 70s. Never.

        Same with some of

      • World population in 1939 was about one-fourth of what it is today. And that's a misleading number. I suspect that the number of people that could have seen Gone With the Wind in the first month was considerably less than one-fourth of the number that could see Avatar 2 in its first month (due to more overseas distribution).

        • Its actually completely irrelevant. The funny thing is my math double applied the inflation number. I forgot to correct for the inflation adjustment for the ticket itself and just did it for the box office. So in reality instead of multiplying the number by 20x I should have multiplied it by 0.85x.

          Yeah that's right. The OP's claim that ticket prices were better for Gone with the wind doesn't hold water since $1 in 1939 terms is actually more like $23 inflation adjusted meaning in his scenario it's cheaper t

      • It does fucking not. Total revenue is total revenue. Stop whining. In 20 years, Avatar will look pretty fucking hokey. It already does.

        • In 20 years Avatar will still make some (albeit not much) money from running on Disney+, to complete the catalogue, along with the other parts, Avatar 1-10. That's how Disney works.

        • It does fucking not.

          Oh I'm sorry. Were you triggered by your own inability to create a meaningful comparison?

          Total revenue is total revenue. Stop whining. In 20 years, Avatar will look pretty fucking hokey. It already does.

          If it already does, and yet people are paying through the nose to see it, how does that fit your silly point? Based on what you're saying is despite it being "fucking hokey" it will still make money. That's your point right?

          And even if your point weren't completely stupid and reinforcing my own, the reality is I double counted in the inflation on the ticket price. Avatar has not made 2x the amount that Gone with the win

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Sure, but there is also a lot more choice today and Gone with the Wind was in theatres for 4-years... and home TV didn't exist.

    • It is a bit silly indeed to quote pre-inflation, but the summary does mention inflation-adjusted in the end. So, adjusted for inflation the new Avatar is not in the top 10. Obviously Gone with the Wind is at an other level - about $4 billion inflation adjusted!

      Avatar 2 still made a load of money. The only way to watch it of course is in 3D at a very good cinema (e.g. Imax 3D), although for me it doesn't really bring something something revolutionary visually over the original Avatar, I'd have preferred Came

    • It really doesn't make sense to compare dollars without accounting for inflation. In inflation-adjusted dollars, SW:TFA is $2.56 billion.

  • Does anyone remember anything about these movies? Character names, motivations, personalities?

    Cameron managed to make a tonne of money and still have no cultural influence. It's quite astounding.

    • Hollywood's all about excess. They measure success by budgets, gross takings, the most "acting", highest paid stars, etc.. Nobody's trying to make art there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      It's not that different to how popular music is made. If you need to please the masses, you cannot dare to put up anything extraordinary.

    • If you think that's bad, take a look at Michael Bay. His movies are most often box office successes but frankly, I wouldn't even bother watching any of them when they get available on DVD because they live off their flashy, gimmicky effects. Nobody gives half a fuck about the threadbare story holding together the CGI masturbation.

      5 years later nobody gives a fuck about it anymore because it looks dated and boring compared to contemporary CGI and the story sure doesn't hold up either, because it already didn

    • Does anyone remember anything about these movies?

      Tail tentacles.

    • Does anyone remember anything about these movies? Character names, motivations, personalities?

      Yep.

      Character names

      My memory is poop, and I can still remember Jake Sully, if only because the name was repeated so many times.

      motivations, personalities?

      Sure, Jake was hapless. His motivation was legs.

      There were literally people attempting suicide after the first movie because the contrast between the alien world and the real world was so painful to them. Can't blame 'em, the Na'vi are connected to their world, and we're destroying ours*.

      * Yeah yeah the planet will be fine and all that shit, but we won't

  • This baffles me. It was a terrible movie. Just rewatch the original and you'll see a significantly better film. It was so bad that it completely put me off of ever watching a new Star Wars ever again. It some how made 1-3 better by comparison, which is also amazing.

    1-3 were "okay" but mostly because of how pretty they were. 7 just offered zero. Graphics were no better then anything else I've seen and the storyline was 100% rehash but with worse characters. The main villian just a downright emo tard and the

    • Even Jasmine (sorry, Aladdin) remake was more watchable

      Why the hell would you watch that? I was in agreement with you up until that point.

      • Why the hell would you watch that? I was in agreement with you up until that point.

        If you already have Disney+ and ran out of shows to binge watch, it's one of Disney's less awful remakes. To be fair, the original has some CGI and pop culture references which have both become a bit dated, so a remake wasn't entirely unwarranted.

        Now the Lion King remake? Ugh. Most visually stunning bad movie I've ever watched.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          Why the hell would you watch that? I was in agreement with you up until that point.

          If you already have Disney+ and ran out of shows to binge watch, it's one of Disney's less awful remakes.

          Or you could do something with your life that's better than trying to find the least-worst content spewed out by a multinational corporation.

          You know, like posting on /. :)

      • Maybe got kids?

  • Of course Gone With the Wind is number 1 .. it had a lot less competition and ran for a year, not including multiple re-releases. What else was there to do back in 1939? Doesn't mean it was a better or more significant movie. Nowadays it is nearly impossible to make a new movie, look at all the blockbusters in the top ten! They are old or based on ancient comic books. it's all remakes, because new movies rarely make a dent. Original ideas don't get funded, and maybe modern writers and movie creators are not

    • I'll bet they will soon remake Gone With the Wind

      If they did, it would be entirely about slavery. There is no way they would make it anything like the original.

    • I half expect if they remade Gone with the Wind it would be that "farting asshole" movie depicted in Idiocracy.

      ...and it would probably be a huge hit.

    • Of course Gone With the Wind is number 1 .. it had a lot less competition ...

      Do you actually think that Avatar 2 has competition that rivals The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Those films were all released in 1939. And as for "there was a lot less to do back in 1939," that's a ridiculous statement. We absolutely have more free time nowadays than people of that era.

    • The contenders for Best picture are all now highly praised classic films -
      Dark Victory
      Gone with the Wind (Best Picture winner)
      Goodbye, Mr. Chips
      Love Affair
      Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
      Ninotchka
      Of Mice and Men
      Stagecoach
      The Wizard of Oz

  • Yet (Score:1)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    Just like the first movie, it's CGI is dishearteningly bad. It's not bad bad, but it's not the level of CGI I would expect given the budget. They could get even better results with no live actors and full 3D animation on a cheaper budget. It's just meh quality overall, but the masses like mediocre nowadays.

    • This [youtube.com] is bad CGI. Also the tiger head thing [youtube.com] in Aladdin. Then there's also these [imdb.com] abominations [imdb.com].

      There's a lot I'll fault Avatar for, it's too long and the plot is practically a copy-and-paste of Disney's Pocahontas, but bad CGI really isn't among the reasons. Really, if there was ever a movie that should've had better CGI given the budget, it was the Ghostbusters 2016 remake. God only knows what they spent that movie's budget on, because absolutely none of it made it to the screen.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        Yeah, those are the badbad, and These two Avatar movies, the CGI is just plain regular bad in the context of their budget.

        The Ghostbusters 2016 remake was bad because it was just bad. Bad acting, bad writing, bad everything.

        Examples from the 80s and 90s aren't really fair, since the technology literally didn't exist to do (significantly) better. That's on top of the fact that every example of yours had a budget range of 1/20th to 1/4th of Avatar's. The CGI used in Terminator Genisys was better than Avatar,

  • ET (Score:3)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @04:36AM (#63248267)
    Sad that no one seems to give much time for ET. I watched that movie regularly as a kid, back when VHS was the main thing. It has actually had an influence on my life.

    That one film is better than all Star Wars in all respects (coming from someone who thinks the prequels and sequels were okay, rather than hate-worthy).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Hmm, interesting. I quite liked ET as a kid, but I was never as impressed. I was more impressed by Close Encounters myself, but by far my favourite film as a kid was Spaceballs.
      Watching them again as an adult, I am of an even worse opinion of ET than I was - I find it kind of boring. Maybe replacing guns with walkie-talkies was a bad idea? I still much prefer Close Encounters and, yes, I still laugh at most Spaceballs scenes!

      • The gun thing is inconsequential, since they literally affected nothing of the plot or the characters. It was like 2 seconds. And there's nothing stopping anyone from watching the original.

        I can see how ET could be "boring", if you wanted a different film. But then why not just watch a different film, and watch a film when you're in a mood for that type of film? I have never understood this trend of modern film "criticism" for failing to fit your mood at a given time. It's not the movie's fault you weren

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ecuador ( 740021 )

          Very presumptuous of you to assume I found ET boring because I wanted to see something else :)

          I wanted my gf to watch it because she is younger and had missed it when she was a kid, and since it's one of the classics that I liked in my childhood I thought it was a good idea to watch it together. The gun thing was a joke obviously, it doesn't affect the movie at all, just seems like a completely pointless change. Anyway, I found it less exciting than I remembered, something that was not an issue when I watch

          • Your explanation literally just said you found ET boring because it wasn't the film you were expecting.

            I found it less exciting than I remembered

  • yet no zeitgeist (Score:5, Interesting)

    by esperto ( 3521901 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @09:54AM (#63248683)

    I find impressive that a movie with such a massive viewing, that has success at the theme parks with huge lines and is a fantasy world has basically no presence in pop culture, none, people at cons don't dress as the characters, there are no jokes or relevant fan movies or big discussion forums (specially after the movie is off theaters), no famous quotes... nothing
    The other high grossing movies from Cameron himself are very present in the public mind, to this day people can't see the bow of a boat without doing "I'm king of the world" or be pissed about the piece of wood being able to hold two people, people quote "I'll be back", "game over man, game over" constantly, and movies that were not big hits like True Lies have more mind share than Avatar... it's like the movie only exists during the showing

    • Cameron for the past 20+ years has only been good at spectacle, not worldbuilding. The days of Rambo, Terminator, Aliens etc are long gone.

      The reality is world building is hard. Disney is good at it, George Lucas was good at it, but beyond that it's quite difficult to do it well. In fact many of those pop culture rich movies aren't rich in pop culture because of the movie, but rather the movie exists because of the pop culture that came before it.

    • I've often wondered about this. I think to get that kind of impact you need to not break, but brush against the 4th wall a bit. If you think about quotable lines they're often heavily set up with bit of a pause and an unusual focus on the character making the delivery. Avatar didn't really do that and Avatar 2 did it exactly once.

      I think the movies simply take themselves too seriously to allow for that kind of setup, or Cameron chose not to shoot those lines for whatever reason.

  • Constant frame rate switching between 24 and 48 was very annoying. I didn't know it was implemented. I prefer to have high frame rate through whole movie.

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