DavidBrennan

Yes, I agree. I saw in some early interviews that both Trevorrow and screenwriter Derek Connelly got defensive when they were accused of softening the raptors. (To me, the raptors = Alien. Death incarnate. The idea of turning them into cutesy sidekicks with names was anathema to the very concept of the movie raptors - from Crichton's book onward.) I saw this as potentially as pussi-fying to the raptors as AVP was to both the As and Ps. But they neither softened them very much, nor were lazy in how they did so. They were clear that Pratt imprinted on them (as Hammond did) and that he was still terrified of them. Here's Trevorrow talking about this very topic: (Relevant part starts at 5m10s.) Props to the Jews, btw: I had thought Trevorrow was a score for the gentiles. Damn! Another Hollywood blockbuster credited to the Chosen People. Begrudgingly.

Because of the nearly guaranteed quality filmmaking, quality spectacle, premier marketing campaign, and the fact they'll be given huge berths by other studios....I can't imagine the franchise tanking and resulting in a "clusterfuck". I really can't. I just view them as, at best, like the Hobbit movies; a sort of blah, dull blockbuster of obligation. And for all the reasons I've stated already, I don't think there's any chance of them being 600m+ breakouts.

Yeah, I liked virtually all of it, but was just singling out the middle third in particular. (Although I've read some legit criticisms - specifically of some contradictions concerning the villains - in the JW thread, which I'll keep an eye out the second time; we had the baby with us and had to take him out once, and also I had to go to the bathroom twice, so I missed at least five minutes of it.)

JW was pulling an upset by beating POTC and JP1. Just Googled "Summer 2015 box office predictions". Here's what came up for JW: EW: 295m HitFix: 300m Joblo: 285m Slashfilm: None of their staff had it 1 or 2 (and one even had it #7!) MSN: 300m (I didn't include WW predictions, obviously.) JW's OW was one of the most remarkable BO stories I've seen since watching box office in 1995 (RIP Marty Grove on CNN's Inside Hollywood segments!) The record is clear that its continued performance is one of the most shocking tentpole overperformances in history. Discounting BWP and MBFGW small budget shockers, this is rapidly approaching AVTR and if it continues, perhaps, even Titanic in terms of its all-around astonishment, from my personal perspective.

ugh. Comparing JW to AVTR is absurd. JW = Giant summer blockbuster with tons of hype and brand recognition and no competition (Pixar? gag.) AVTR = Small indie movie w/ no brand recognition and no hype and the stiffest competition imaginable: 'Alvin and the Chipmunks 2'.

I think the second act, when everything goes to hell-in-a-handbasket, was the most thrilling part of the movie. Most movies, I don't necessarily believe the threat and just have to sort of grant a free pass to the story in pretending that everything would really be so horrible. (There are definitely exceptions - the first JP, Die Hard 2, and a good many others, I'm sure. But generally I just don't buy the "Everybody is fucked!" tone. I did here.)

AVTR has an 83 score at RT http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/ and an Oscar Nom for best pic By any objective criteria, it's a "good movie". The root question is why the movie has no lingering fanbase (cosplay, fanfic, Special Edition flopped, etc.) There are a lot of "good movies" which were moments in time, whose success couldn't be replicated even closely just a couple of years in either direction. Examples include 'Rush Hour 2', 'Passion of the Christ', MBFGW, among others. AVTR, by virtue of its seeming inability to maintain any public interest even nine months after its release, likely has a strong component of that faddishness in its success. Combined with also non-repeatable and insincere claims about the psychological boost audience would receive from 3D, and a virtual competition-free run of cinemas for two months, it seems highly improbable that sequels will be nearly as successful as the original.

Because "hype" has enough subjectivity that they think they can worm their way into the absurd claim that AVTR was a smaller movie than JW. Despite the subjectivity of "hype", their claim has still been explicitly debunked. They just keep shifting the goalpost. A few pages back, they were arguing that 'Alvin and the Chipmunks 2' was stiffer competition than IO. Then they were arguing that AVTR had no "name recognition". Now, they're arguing it had "no hype". Every time they get debunked, they concoct a new bullshit theory to try and make the Fox tentpole blockbuster AVTR sound like a little indie movie.

Box office is a measure of the number of people who bought tickets. Hype is the amount of media and tastemaker attention given to or bought for a movie. I don't know why you believed they were synonyms, but there you go to clear up your poor vocab.

AVTR had independent investors. So did JW. So do most all tentpole movies nowadays. You see all those flashy logos swirling around before movies? Yeah? Those are put there by people who pay for the movie. Do you understand? Now, to be clear, you're claiming that JW had "more hype" than AVTR. Because contemporaneous media (Slate: "Years of hype". BOM: "Massive amount of hype" indicate you are dead wrong and trying to re-write history in your hilarious quest to make AVTR sound like a small indie movie, we're going go have to ask for some proof of that claim. Thanks!

I do. A lot of the costs attributed to it could, by most accounting practices, be amortized (spread out and attributed to other things). For instance, many of the people were throwing in the cost of the 3D camera and software development, which added tens of millions of dollars. But these are never placed on just one movie, because studios know they're going to be used on later movies. (For instance, if a VFX house writes some new code to make metal reflections more realistic for Transformers, that wouldn't all be placed on the TF budget, because it's going to be used in many subsequent movies.) I would strongly suspect that the cost of developing Weta studios is another one of these expenses that, while due to AVTR, was not exclusively for AVTR, but some reporters heard things like, "They're building their own studio in New Zealand that cost another $50 million." and they didn't grasp it was actually a building that was for permanent use, not just AVTR.

Here's Slate - which was highly critical of AVTR and Cameron all the way until it became a hit - rounding up the estimates on December 10. They're all between 60 and 80: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2009/12/here_come_the_cats_with_human_boobs.html So there's another "Avatar was a small indie movie!" talking point debunked.

JW's budget was reportedly 150m AVTR's budget was reportedly 237m (2009 dollars)

Where?

You're arguing with yourself.

I don't follow pop politics anymore. In 2009, though, I can tell you DrudgeReport was the #1 news site hub. It was so popular a simple Drudge linkthough could crash servers at local newspapers. Non-stop AVTR throughout December 2009. I don't ever recall seeing a movie (besides maybe Fahrenheit 911) headlining Drudge. I was stunned.

"AVTR was a small movie that caught everybody by surprise!" Who? ".....AVTR was a lil indie movie, and its battle with Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 was the fiercest box office showdown of all time!"

lol. still arguing that AVTR was a small movie.

Just one tiny AVTR memory just popped into my head: They aired the AVTR trailer on the NFL pregame show on FOX (which gets huge ratings) and simultaneously on the Dallas Cowboys jumbotron, which was then (and might still be) the largest video screen on Earth. That was months before its release. Just a drop in the bucket in the massive marketing push AVTR had that I randomly remembered.

Who didn't expect AVTR to crack 200m? Name one reputable pundit (not a fanboy troll after the teaser trailer) who predicted this.

You've said so many crazy things - saying earlier November releases like 'Twilight' were competition for AVTR, saying little ol' AVTR had no "name recognition" or "brand awareness" - that I understand your desire to back away from your absurdities.

keep trying

The past several pages were honestly spent trying to explain to somebody that IO is a bigger movie than 'Alvin and the Chipmunks 2' and that AVTR was not a modestly-budgeted indie movie with no ad budget. Unbelievable.

Here's the BOM report on AVTR's OW. As expected, it was a monster from the start, and as massive as its OW was, it was indeed muted by blizzards in the Northeast: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2632&p=.htm "Massive amount of hype."

Yes, AVTR, that lil Indie Film (250m) budget, that opened so quietly, against the vaunted Box Office Titan, 'Alvin and the Chipmunks 2'. Surely, it opened modestly, right?