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Guys, anyone interested in movie box office discussion on Tildes?
I was thinking if we can have a weekly thread on ~movies for discussing Boxoffice performance and projections, if there is enough interest for it. There are a few posts on ~movies, however they are limited to popular movie of month like Indiana Jones and Elemental ones. A dedicated post will also reduce the multiple posts.
I don’t say this to be disparaging, but measurements of popularity or financial success are perhaps the least interesting thing about movies to me. I’d much prefer to talk about the content of the film.
i agree to a degree, i just think its a totally different subject. The ‘business’ side of showbusiness is interesting on its own but as you say its not what you focus on generally. Sometimes you do go ‘holy shit that looked difficult/expensive’ - i rewatched Ronin as it’s getting a 4k restoration last week, and those 90s stunts look fantastic. Part of it is knowing CGI wasnt really a thing, or at least wasnt cheap enough to make it widespread. But theres a specific scene where the two stuntmen flip over a handrail and it looked painful. But it all serves the end - you can spend 10 billion dollarydoos and the film is total horseshit. In fact its funny how often that is the case - who knew storytelling could be so simple?
I agree with this. We are already inundated with mediocre movies that are trying too hard to appeal to a broad, or even international audience. There is a place for mindless nonsense I guess, but it’s already celebrated too much.
Besides that, I get annoyed when they compare the income from current and past movies. The comparisons are meaningless due to different ticket prices, different competition from other media, different sized populations.
That would be meaningless if we adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation gets something like A New Hope to 1.5 billion domestic. Not adjusting for inflation basically equals it out considering all the things you’ve brought up: different ticket prices, different populations, more competition. Because if we always adjusted for inflation that would make theatrically movie going today seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the past. Even the recent past, where, adjusted for inflation, movies like Chicago, Signs, and Catch Me If You Can all hit 300 million domestic.
Yeah, just look at some of the highest grossing movies of all time like avatar. Nobody even remembers what the plot was, and nobody is even talking about it any more all these years later.
Financial success on a movie is interesting information, but it by no means tells of a movie was actually good.
And good is subjective too. It’s not like we all agree what movies are good or bad.
It’s not like a sequel was released last year grossing over two billion dollars.
But that’s exactly my point. They both made outrageous amounts of money. But even a few months after release I haven’t heard anyone even talk about the movie.
They make lots of money, but it doesn’t really mean the movie was “good”, just “okay”.
To me, his movies are more of tech demos, and excuses to go exploring in submarines.
But clearly if the sequel made a lot of money 13 years after, supposedly, everyone forgot about the first one, then your hypothesis is incorrect. I get it’s a standard internet/Reddit opinion to say no one cares about Avatar. But among the general audience, or rather normal people, they do remember it and there’s a fondness for it.
It’s always funny to me that this always comes from techy/gaming nerds too. Always seem to come to movies with the same perception/philosophy.
The comment above you explains it really well, but Titanic and Avatar are not comparable in the sense of cultural penetration.
The sinking of Titanic has always been captivating, and building an entire story and showcasing the lives and personalities of those that may have been involved in the real life event is obviously going to have a big cultural/societal impact. The special effects and shots of the actual wreckage serve to enhance the story.
Avatar's focus was 100% technology and special effects. The story served as a vehicle for the technology. It's also sci-fi so much harder to make a deep human connection with the characters and backdrop. Pretty much the exact opposite of Titanic.
So did you remember the plot of the first movie?
Not a soul I know remembers it. Not just “people online”.
So of course my opinion here is from my point of view. I’ve been very clear that this is all subjective.
Look, I also think the plot of the first Avatar movie was crap and it's extremely forgettable. But you're talking past each other at this point. No one remembers the plot of Avatar, indeed, but no one went to see Avatar for the plot. Its shitty plot was just a flimsy excuse for it to show off all its groundbreaking special effects.
Insisting that Avatar failed as a film because no one remembers the plot is like saying the same thing about a porno -- it misses the point of why people are watching in the first place. Avatar was always marketed and perceived as a special effects movie, and that's what people raved about after it originally came out. There are definitely tons of people who remember the experience of watching Avatar, and I wager people went to see the sequel because they remembered that experience and wanted to have it again. I haven't seen the sequel so I can't say whether it succeeds at that, but clearly people didn't need to remember the plot of the first one to want to see the second one.
It is kinda shocking how little an impact the plot and characters in Avatar left on audiences, I'll give you that. But it's a matter of degree, because plot was never the focus of Avatar. Cinema has a ton of elements other than plot that can matter just as much to a film's quality and its reception by audiences.
Well you’re basically just saying what I said, but with more words.
I never said avatar “failed”, I just said it’s financial success doesn’t seem to equal cultural success. And that it was more of a tech demo, just like you’re saying above.
But thank you for putting it into more clear wording. I guess I got lost in the weeds with my future comments because that other dude misunderstood what I was even talking about.
Thanks. A few other replies also echo your views so not many Tildes members look interested in talking movie numbers. I'll try posing one post this week to check the reception,.
Just judging by the size of the current Tildes userbase / amount of activity per post, id see a weekly post where there could be a top level comment for each major movie release that week (Title, Studio, box office numbers, a couple review aggregator scores) as a good starting point. under those top level comments there could be discussion of any aspect of that movie (Boxoffice, performance, review, discussion, …). From there, if that becomes a massive post with too much content, I think it could be split off in to separate posts per movie (I made one for Nimona that had a decent amount of discussion), where users could talk about review, plot, boxoffice performance, etc.
The reason I think keeping posts higher level / more broad right now is because many users who read a comment about the plot may also see a comment about box-office performance and add to that thread in a meaningful way (and vice versa). That would lead to more engagement on all topics.
I miss weekly discussion posts from the movies and box office subreddits. Having them combined in a post given the userbase makes a lot of sense.
Thanks I'll try creating a post this week and see if people like to follow.
I think the weekly posts to trade numbers is enough for that
No. How much a film makes does not measure its merit as art. If you're keen on the topic post on ~finance
I agree. Discussing these things is a perfectly reasonable hobby, but the nature of conversation is very much finance not art.
I disagree. As nice as it would be to take money out of the equation, movies are a part of an industry that exists to make money. What movies get greenlit by studios is heavily reliant on how they expect it to perform at the box office regardless of how good or bad their predictions might be. I think there's value in discussing box office performance because it is indicative of how it might impact what movies get made in the future. A string of Disney reboots underperforming for example might get them to change whether the reboot trend continues and that's very much a ~movies discussion instead of ~finance.
When i used to work in an office, there was a lot of "fantasy sport" stuff that i wasn't into.. but me and my little group talked a lot about movies...
so i made a shared spreadsheet of some "big" pictures (block busters) penned to come out the rest of the year with links to the trailers.
Everyone entered in what they though the rotten tomato score was going to be (recorded 1 week after premiere) and it would show how far off everyone was and the lowest number was winner.. practically each week we had something to discuss and it was kinda fun.