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‘Avatar’ Passes $1 Billion & Cameron Rewrites the Future of Moviegoing
by Mark R. Leffler
Most movies drop in attendance by about half after opening weekend, and another 50 per cent the third week, and so on. But in this respect, and about a million others, James Cameron's Avatar is not your average Hollywood film. It took in almost $80 million domestically its opening weekend, and in twenty days Avatar broke the $1 billion mark in worldwide business. After five weeks Avatar had grossed $1.6 billion worldwide, leaving it about $300 million shy of sinking Titanic as the all time box office champ. Of course this is nothing new to the “King of the World” as Cameron famously proclaimed himself when Titanic was named Best Film at the Academy Awards. 1991's Terminator 2 smashed the $100 million mark (at the time the sign of a massive hit) eventually making a half billion worldwide and beginning a trend of Cameron appearing with movies every so often that set box office records and displayed state of the art mind blowing special effects. True Lies (1994) starred Terminator icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, raked in massive amounts of money and showcased breathtaking effects. And then there was Titanic, which proved unsinkable at the box office becoming the top grossing film of all time. And on the seventh day, James Cameron rested. He invested his time, energy and considerable financial resources developing new technology, including the Fusion Camera System, created with James Pace. The FCS, which combines two SONY HD cameras to produce a state of the art three-dimensional image, was one of the technologies he needed to tackle this movie he had in his head about a nine foot blue woman. That woman turned out to be Neytiri, a female of the Na'vi tribe. The image of a large blue woman came from a dream Cameron's mother had and it had been in the back of his head to create a movie featuring her. In 1994, while making Titanic, Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for a science fiction epic that would primarily use digitally created actors who did not exist in the real world. Since the technology did not exist to create such a film, Cameron spent the next decade working on documentaries and inventing the digital effects and the FCS camera system he needed to produce Avatar, including the state of the art in 3D. There are two levels of criticism regarding Avatar: digital effects and story. Anyone who views Avatar in any of the three versions available (traditional 2D, 3D, 3D IMAX) comes away awed by the visual brilliance Cameron's team displays on the intricately created moonscapes of Pandora. At one point in the story, helicopter jockey Michelle Rodriguez tells her passengers (and the audience) “You should see the look on your faces right now.” This writer experienced Avatar in 3D at the Saginaw 8 theatre. The 3D glasses fitted comfortably over my own glasses. The earliest 3D scenes were impressive in their separation between characters and scenery. Later scenes were jaw dropping in their scope and detail. The plot of Avatar is predictable to anyone who has seen Dances with Wolves, Ferngully, Pocahontas, or any of about a dozen other movies where a noble white explorer discovers love and family values among the native people (The Last Samurai comes to mind, also). And the bad guys wear American military uniforms, which are bound to rub at least a few Fox News Fans the wrong way. Still, its Save The Rain Forest/PETA script hasn't hurt it at the box office. And at this point it's as strong a contender as any for a Best Film Oscar as well as a bucket load of awards for effects. A film critic for NPR commented recently that such advances in effects and digital editing has made the job of judging acting more difficult. How much of what the audience sees is the performance of Zoe Saldana (Uhuru from last year's Star Trek reboot) and how much is the end result of thousands of hours of work by Cameron's team working with Peter Jackson's team of effects wizards in New Zealand? That's a valid question. Still, the effects and technology all work in service of the story, as they did with Titanic more than a decade ago. Titanic clawed its way to the top as the number one box office champion largely through repeat business. And Avatar built its impressive weekly numbers partly on the irresistible urge some fans had to take their friends and share a unique movie-going experience. At slightly over two bucks, the cost of the 3D glasses seems a solid investment. And those extra dollars helped fuel it's rocket like rise to the $1 billion worldwide mark. In some ways, the real story of Avatar's success is the arrival of 3D as a technology and movie going experience. Last year several of the top grossing films featured 3D animation, such as Up. Indeed all of the movie trailers seen before the screening I attended were for upcoming 3D features such as Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Cameron has even made a public vow that all of his future projects will be produced for 3D, and you really can't blame him. As the credits began what is probably about ten minutes worth of names and titles, I couldn't wait to see Avatar again, possibly in IMAX, which would involve a road trip to Grand Blanc. As Cameron noted in a recent interview part of the joy of seeing a great movie is taking friends and sharing the experience. With Avatar, Cameron and crew have delivered as thrilling an experience as they did with Titanic. Only time will tell if he manages to top himself and place Avatar over Titanic as the number one top grossing film of all time. Oh, and he's also seriously planning two sequels to Avatar featuring the same characters. Who does he think he is, George Lucas?
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