DavidBrennan

Yeah, I wrote a fan book which sold twelve copies. T2 was one of my childhood cinematic pillars. I'm a Cameron fan, and think T1, T2, Aliens....well, most all his movies range from good to excellent. But, like George Lucas, I see a very clear distinction between the young version of the moviemaker and the older one. Specifically, Cameron has never been more vain, lying (I mean, he now tells laughably absurd whoppers that only a deluded blowhard propped up by Hollywood c-suckers could believe he's getting away with), greedy, and, artistically deprecated. Avatar, for instance, was clearly (to me) one of his worst movies, had several script doctors working on it, and its box office was hugely propped up by Cameron's fantastic rhetoric about 3D, which the media swallowed whole. I also think Cameron's rank hypocrisy of making an abjectly anti-white movie, pretending to be a non-white....and then fleeing his guarded Malibu home to move to New Zealand, the Whitest of Whitey White countries (New Zealand has a black population so tiny it literally doesn't appear on demographic pie charts) is shameful. There's nothing wrong with Cameron's preference for white man's lands over non-whites - I'd rather live in New Zealand or US suburbia than Camden, or Compton, or Detroit, or Baltimore, or Sierra Leone, or Liberia, or Nigeria, or.... But there is something wrong with Cameron telling other white people that they're inferior to non-whites and should supplicate to them while he and his family are vigorously protected from large non-white populations. The comparisons between Cameron and Lucas - especially their limousine liberalism and their incredible habit of telling embarrassingly obvious lies as their egos bloated in old age - are very clear.

you should see my dong

I really thought that w/ Cars 2 and especially Brave, and w/ Disney cranking out Tangled and Frozen, that Pixar's day was done. Congrats to the cis-gendered white privileged Christian Pete Docter. A major resuscitation.

Two completely stunning weekends in a row (although IO not nearly to the same degree as JW's OW.) This reflects well on my Peak Comic Book Movie theory. The zeitgeist has turned over. Ant-Man, BvS, even CW are all going to be hits, sure....but underwhelming ones.

Resist defeatism. Our optimistic spirits will help its numbers. (And I do think JW will have a big Father's Day. I was taken to see it this week as a Father's Day gift, actually!)

I will provide a minimum of five Cameron quotes, as well as marketing research if I saved it, proving that 3D had no statistically significant effect on audience enjoyment of features over twenty minutes. If you are willing to commission me for this at a modest rate of $25/hr., I'll write a five page, heavily-footnoted document you can share with your friends called, "James Cameron Was Full of Shit about 3D And He Damn Well Knew It." James Cameron is filthy rich, and is explicitly money-motivated. He stated unequivocally that cash ($1m upfront) was his primary motive for T2, and he unleashed his lawyers on Fox to make sure that they paid him for 'Titanic' even after he'd signed his profit participation away. Then, he told a bunch of half truths (or "lies") to the media about the magic of 3D, all so that he could take people's money. Why do you think James Cameron takes in all these hundreds of millions of dollars rather than working for 50k a year? Or giving his money away? Because he likes money. Including your money. A lot. What's wrong with that?

Not "like", "is". Like all movies. Shamefully, Hollywood still uses the term "director". We must abolish it.

Okay points, but the initial claim was so absurd it doesn't warrant your thought effort.

Since the entire creative team of Amblin works on *all* Spielberg's movies, how do you credit Spielberg? Since the entire creative team of Lucasfilm works on *all* Lucas's movies, how do you blame Lucas? Since the entire creative team of Marvel works on *all* Marvel movies, how do you credit Russo Brothers? Movies are collaborative works. If you believe this means quality doesn't rest on director, then we just disagree. Cool.

Stunned at IO, which looked flat and gimmicky to me. Well, looks like a boring, white Christian has salvaged Pixar after feminists nearly drove it into the ground with their catastrophic last offering.

I guess the guys in 'Hangover' aren't much worse than somebody with that as their main past time! (Don't tell him, but I have a copy here. And he couldn't have it anyway, because I still use my VCR!)

Ha ha. Where's that photo from? What's the context? Yeah, they really tried hopping on the train too soon! That was JUST at the start of the hording phenomenon. It was strange because 'True Lies' was another R-rated Fox movie that was a big summer 1994 hit, and that wasn't for immediate sale. I remember being a little confused at it. But JP, The Fugitive....those were some of the few non-children's movies I recall being for sale right away.

Still haven't seen it. I remember my girlfriend wanting to go see it so bad because everybody was telling her it was just hilarious. She eventually went with her girlfriends, but I had (and have) no interest in yet another movie about a bunch of (aged) dudes guzzling beer and acting like teenagers.

That's just SRP. Off the shelf VHS was usually $15, $20 tops. It's more interesting retrospectively because, back then, only kids movies were available for immediate purchase - you could only rent them, and eventually buy the "previously viewed" used tapes. Starting with JP, and then Speed, Forrest Gump, and others, people started becoming collectors. Then, of course, it became a sickness with DVD and BD where people couldn't (and can't!) stop hording them, as seen on 'Hoarders'. (I used to do professional moving, and I've seen multiple houses where they literally have BluRay collections which combine for more content hours than these people have hours left in their lives!)

Titanic MBFGW Farhenheit 911 Sixth Sense Hangover These are legit "unbelievable" box office runs that make this thread interesting. Just repeating tentpole blockbusters (SM, AVTR, T2, etc.) that went appreciably above their ceilings shouldn't qualify for entry.

I timecoded this video. We throw around the phrase, "History repeats" a lot nowadays, but....

Avatar didn't have any special degree of negative press, aside from people disliking the preview. And that was just phony internet groupthink giggles, not sincere dislike.

Many of the successes cited here weren't shocking at the release date: -The Firm -T2 -Austin Powers 2 Among quite a few others. These might be shocking in retrospect, but they were only "shocking" at the time insofar as they were considerable hits that were considerably on the right side of their expectation bell curves, but not very far right at all. (T2, in fact, had the highest budget of all time at its release, although Cameron disputed this, citing 'Cleopatra's inflation-adjusted budget.)

[Double post]

Cameron didn't achieve a single bump map, subsurface scattering algorithm, or motion-tracking facial rig. Hard-working men in the VFX industry did, and they were the same men who worked on 'Beowulf' and 'A Polar Express'. You have absolutely zero clue what you're babbling about in terms of these VFX. Zero.

AVTR's magnitude of success was shocking. No debate, and listed in my top five most astonishing box office tales just a few pages back.... ....JW's OW is far more shocking, in my opinion. -No gimmicks (Cameron's masterful hyping of 3D and the media playing along calling it "revolutionary", even though Zemeckis had achieved 100% of what Cameron achieved with 3D and handheld CG "filming", and did so 5 and 2 years earlier, respectively) -Minimal track record (JP was huge....22 years ago, and w/ two very middling sequels in between). Cameron had T2 (#2 R-rated movie of all time) and Titanic (#1) -No expectations. This was supposed to be a solid summer performer. 200 to 300m. That's all. -Not a CBM, not a trendy tween franchise The only comp I can make is POTC, but even that wasn't nearly this big.

lol! Thumbs up for the trolling! (I'm going to use that one.)