WHY JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR CAUSED THE REBOOT EFFECT (PART THREE)

Let me start by addressing the recent allegations surrounding James Cameron and Avatar.  Two people have sued him claiming he stole their idea.  If we remember in Part 1 I explained how unoriginal the story was.  Well, apparently, these guys suing Cameron never saw Fern Gully.  That's fair.  Apparently, they haven't seen Dances with Wolves either.  Or Disney's Pocahontas.  Or learn the history lesson about the real version of Pocahontas of which the aforementioned film was based on.  I don't understand how two of what I assume to be HACKS, without reading a written word, can even claim to have such unoriginal, overused stories in their stables.  Suing one of the most unoriginal scripts of the decade for ripping your material off?  Seriously?!

And we're back.  I was saying that James Cameron's big, blue film mucked up Hollywood perception.  Well, let's just be honest here.  The truth is, it all started with other James Cameron films.  Since Terminator 2, people have been fond of the big, slick blockbuster machine.  True Lies perpetuated this even further.  Of course, Cameron took it to a whole new level with Titanic, where he kept all the CGI and the hefty handed budget, but picked a love story.  Of course, that was interrupted to sink the world's biggest ship, but you didn't see Arnold running around shouting one-liners, did you?  Avatar just brought it to the next generation who missed out on Last Action Hero.

Cameron isn't the only one who is allowed fat stacks of money to make a movie.  Steven Spielberg's last two films cost a total of $200 million (War Horse; $70 and Tin Tin $130).  He earned the rights when he turned the $9 million film Jaws into a $470.6 million dollar return.  Michael Bay loves to blow shit up.  That costs money, but Avatar cost the most and it bled into our culture.  After that, it became a space race for who could break the record next.  Only Batman or good old Mr. Potter could ever come close, though.  We've been in a recession, however, so raising costs and budgets isn't plausible.  It's not smart.

I said in the beginning that Avatar's approach on home entertainment basically killed us as consumers.  That movie made so much damn money that Fox decided to release the DVDs and Blu-rays in little slices.  Instead of getting commentary and special features, the first round only contained the standard movie.  Then, months later, you could buy the movie with the commentary and some extras.  Then, after all that, they sold the movie in 3-D...but not with the special features.  So suddenly, people had to buy three versions of the film to get the same as a standard 3-D sale (which really didn't exist two years ago).  If you ask me, that's brutal in the harshest sense.

People have to take that, consumers have to take that because otherwise we twiddle our thumbs.  Don't want to buy what we're selling?  Don't watch.  And we get abused like this while Hollywood houses complain that it has to be that way due to piracy.  Piracy began because of money moves like that.  No one wants to pay $30 to watch Tower Heist a month after it's released!  No one should have to.  Don't get me wrong, I buy films.  I have hundreds of DVDs and Blu-rays, it's a sickness.  I cave at every turn is the problem.  I could buy a car with the money I've spent on movies.

Anyway, after that quick trick, 3-D TVs became the new "it" girl (though numbers are identical to last year) and you couldn't operate a 3-D Blu-ray without a special player and either of those without a special TV.  All cost extra.  Now, people have to pay extra not just to see I-Max ($17.50 for MI4, which was very worth it), but extra on top of that to see I-Max in 3-D.  Next they'll come up with skipping the previews for a buck more.  Better yet, Robert Rodriguez's 4-D scratch and sniffs will be included for $2.50 extra.  I'll cry when that happens.

So, you can see how things have escilated over the past two years.  Well, at least I hope you can see.  It's not that things are bad, the industry is looking better with so many big named stars trying to make smaller, more personal and original films.  Drive, Shame and Midnight in Paris, I'm looking at you.  The problem is, we are but a few and die-hard Transformer fans are going to go to see those films no matter how many tacky, hacky regurgitated jokes plague that script.  As long as this happens, Hollywood doesn't have to apologize (even though Michael Bay did after the second robot fiasco).  Talk to your friends, tell them the truth.  The Hangover II was just The Hangover with out the comedy.

Ty-T

Boardwalk Empire Season Finale...what the shit happened!?

Before you read this, be aware that the following post is filled with SPOILERS from the last episode of seaon two of Boardwalk Empire.  If you have not seen it yet, my heart would suggest you don't, but if you must, wait until after you do to read what I wrote.  Now that the SPOILER ALERT (sorry, just being sure) is out of the way, let's have a little chat.

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So, let me start by saying I love what Boardwalk Empire and specifically, Terence Winter has done for television.  Supreme casting, beautiful set design and costumes and knock out scripts with authentic dialogue.  The whole series is saturated in sugary, syrupy sweetness in terms of content and you can't ask for a better product on television.  That said, I just might never watch Boardwalk Empire again.    I feel as though someone punched my cat in the face, then blew up my X-box and told me my Mom was fat.

I know, I know, I'm over reacting, but the emotional wounds inflicted within are the result of what has befallen my most cherished and beloved character, Jimmy Darmody.  My heart has broken.  I know a lot of fans will agree that Jimmy was the cornerstone in the series.  Michael Pitt, who I've had my eye on since Murder By Numbers and who I knew was an acting asset since The Dreamers, was made for that role.  The man killed it with a stare and that is something that can be taught, but takes natural talent to master.  I could spend hours talking about why Michael Pitt will one day win an Oscar and break in the new age of cinema (coincidentally with his once co-star, Ryan Gosling), but let's stick to Empire, shall we.

I understand why Winter did what he did.  He said it was staying true to the story and the characters.  On some level, it made sense to the story, but if you really watch the structure of what happened in this season and the way Nucky Thompson fluxuates between sinner and saint, it really wasn't the best move for the story.  Not because Pitt is gone, not because they killed off one of the most complex and brooding characters in recent television history (or ever), but because the rationality behind it wasn't there.  I suppose it didn't have to be, because Winter wasn't after rationality.  He was after shock and awe.  He wanted to do something different and he wanted to do so by starting a storm of outrage and tears and really drive home how the show was unlike anything else on television.  He did that, but it wasn't the best option, believe me.

Look at Nucky and Eli's relationship this season.  Eli, at every turn, backstabbed, lied and tried to eliminate Nucky from the picture.  All the while, it was Jimmy who was skeptical of it all.  Eli even tried to kill Nucky with his own hands (and again secretively) and then sat in jail and waited to testify against him, yet Nucky embraced him like he only dented his car.  I understand, blood > water, but water isn't that thick and when you're a cutthroat go-hard (Workaholics, anyone?) you do what you have to.  Ask Michael from The Godfather or Patty Hewes from Damages.  You don't let people stand in your way...even family.  I guess, by that rationality, I justified the ending of the season, but the real transgressions and the real betrayal was on Eli.  It was written that way to throw us for a loop when Jimmy was shot.  I, however, had thought he was going to be killed off after the incest episode.  Here is why.

If you notice how Jimmy progresses from the beginning of the season to his unfortunate end, you'll notice that not only does his character and personality grow wilder and more unstable, but his story does as well.  He begins as this young, groomed war vet who is learning the business of being a gangster from his real father.  As time goes on, he starts to act peculiar.  Then, he does things for no reason at all.  He appeared distant and conflicted, which Pitt does an amazing job portraying, until we finally get a good episode of his past at college.  Granted, it all turned Oedipal and Fraud would have had a field day, but even after the fling with his mother, Jimmy was still likable by most viewers.  You cannot buy that kind of loyalty.  It is something that Pitt, as Jimmy, earned through staggering performances and silent stares.  It was also obvious something was up when everyone on Jimmy's end of the story-line started dropping like dimes.  Arguably, Jimmy's best moment comes at the very end when he suddenly won't shut up while Nucky's pistol screams in his face, but how can you say he really had it coming?

Nucky never really took a hard line with anyone in the show he has cared about before.  Suddenly, Nucky decides now is the time to make a stand, when the logical move would be to use Jimmy.  Yes, it was a bold, bold move to remove him and it allowed Steve Buscemi to show some grit, but I think the same gravity could have been instilled if Nucky shoots past Jimmy and puts one in Eli's dome.  Owen clips Manny from behind and suddenly Jimmy is saved.  Is it orginal?  Not really, but neither was killing of Jimmy.  Sons of Anarchy killed off Officer Hale suddenly at the beginning of season three.  It was shocking and I believe a mistake, but it was similar.  Damages does it all the time.  Lost.  Deadwood.  I could keep going, but now I'm missing Charlie and Wild Bill.

The point is, while it was bold and brave and that is commendable, Pitt brought a dangerous quality to the show that no one else had.  He was a wild card, but he was also very, very good at it.  Who else is going to throw people off balconies one day and sit beside them in a meeting the next?  He brought a natural insanity to a world where everyone put up a sane front in public.  He didn't care what people thought of him or what he had to do (unless it involved Nucky), he just did it and kept on the razor's edge.  That kind of character can't be replaced.  You can't bring in a new young gangster with a lot of promise and ambition and hope people will take to him.  Jimmy was too important.  Pitt was too talented.  Christopher Nolan couldn't even kill off Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, even after his real life death.  The Joker was too pivotal to be sacrificed (and it's not Batman's style).

The question becomes, where do we go now?  All the originality from this move will lead to a slew of cliches and repetitive damage control.  They have to bring in new season blood, but they also have to replace the ever expanding black hole where Jimmy once was.  Nucky will be haunted by his decision, which might bring Pitt back for a ghost guest spot, but the obvious course is Richard Harrow, who will likely eliminate Manny and then go after Nucky.  They already established that Owen could be the new best friend of Harrow, since they had some nice words over a stand-off, but Jimmy anchored Harrow.  He anchored Gillian, who is basically useless now, and he was the main link between the show and Al Capone.  Yes, Capone sort of disowned him (which was another tell-tale sign of Jimmy's demise), but Darmody was so intricitely woven into the story that to eliminate him basically restarts the show from scratch.  It's not Boardwalk Empire anymore.  It's something else.  Something cruel and unforgiving.  But hey, that's television.

Tyler Baker

WHY JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR CAUSED THE REBOOT EFFECT (PART TWO)

(Let's get back into it.  I was saying Avatar is a decent movie with amazing visuals.  Basically, America was blinded by the beauty of CGI.  Avatar grosses over $749 million.)

The next thing we knew it, everything went smurf blue and studios began raising obscene budgets without even contracting any scripts.  Perhaps they figured if Avatar is the most expensive film of all time and it made the most money of all time, it must be a winning formula.  Why would the goal of business be to increase your costs, especially during a recession?  I know enough about the film industry to know that the film going population is filled with cliques and niche hounds that rally for one genre but verbally raid another.  Avatar hit the demographics because it could be shown to children and they are the largest clique of all.  What horrid, monster of a parent would refuse to take their poor child to see that movie with the blue cat people and Sigourney Weaver?  Of course the parents went, they secretly wanted to see it too.  Don't leave out the fanboys and first time daters; that movie hit ever demo.  The problem is, all those same audience demos aren't going to show up for Ridley Scott's reboot of Robin Hood (which cost $200 million to make).  That hits men 13-up and whatever female demographic loves Russel Crowe.

Some budgets made no sense from the start.  Giving up $200 million to make a video game adaption of Prince of Persia might have sounded like gold in the early morning meeting, but video game adaptions have never been lucrative.  We go to Box Office Mojo, where we see the number one video game film of all time is the original Tomb Raider at $131 million.  All together Raider brought in $274 million, so it theoretically was probable, but realistically too big a budget to justly defend.

How then do you expect to start an unproven franchise at what a third installment is supposed to cost?  By the third film, the franchise has been successful and is familiar, so studios have less of a chance to lose money.  Instead, you give up $200 million, which should be $100 million over the film salary cap (we'll go into that at another time), and you don't even bother writing a coharent script.  The costumes and make-up made a production where everyone should be gold dipped and gleaming into a SyFy mini movie with really nice cameras.  At least the CGI was appealing and Jake G can rock a wicked accent.  The end result was $90.7 million domestic and a worldwide total of $335 million and some change.  To those not versed in the Hollywood system, it looks like a win.  They made their money back, right?  Wrong.  Any film that does not make it's money back domestically is considered to be a failure in the eyes of studio executives.  Call it ego, call it favoritism, but that's the way the numbers game works in film.

Let me get to the point of all this.  According to Box Office Mojo, in the year of Avatar (2009) the yearly domestic box office was $10.595 billion.  That was a 10% jump from 2008.  The following year, it was off by about $30 million with 12 more films and almost a dollar extra per average ticket price.  That's a failure because it's all about topping the year before.  What they didn't have in 2010 was an $800 million film to anchor the end of the year like in 2009 and they couldn't possibly cover the damage that Avatar had done.  Think about it, three years of buzz, almost $200 million in marketing (way too much) and wild fire word of mouth spread by James Cameron himself, so of course the numbers were going to be down the year after.   Hollywood doesn't make excuses, though, and so the year of big budget films reduced their profit margin and people were losing intrest because ticket prices were becoming unbearable for casual filmgoers.  Don't forget, you had those sleepers in 2009 like The Hangover ($277 million) and The Blindside ($255 million) which weren't supposed to make more than $80 million in a best case scenario.  2009 was simply a great year for blockbusters.  Star Trek, Harry Potter 6, Transformers 2, Twilight 2, Sherlock Holmes and even the attrocious Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 all brought in over $200 million.  So, something had to give in 2010, right?

I believe this has to do with Hollywood's overwelming need for familiarity.  With big budgets come justification.  You need to back up that price tag on your production.  So, one sure fire seed for success is familiar films.  Take your audience back to a place they loved.  That's why films are being looked at not just as a trilogy anymore, but more so as a four or five picture franchise.  Fast and Furious, Pirates of the Carribian, Shrek, Harry Potter, Twilight, and Resident Evil all have four or more in their franchise.  All are also franchises that began after 2000.  Resident Evil is the only one in this category that actually relies on foreign box office numbers to make a profit, since like I said, video game films don't make much.

Back to the familiarity theory, in 2010 the top five releases were all sequels or remakes.  ALL OF THEM.  Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, Twilight 3, and Harry Potter 7.   Alice in Wonderland fed off that obsene 3-D ticket price and Johnny Depp/Tim Burton connection to make it's money, all the while promising a Burton-esque re-imagination of the established Lewis Carrol adaptation.   I personally thought it was a swing and a miss, especially considering the actual story was based around strange happenings and randomality.  Burton's film turned what was supposed to be a non-linear storyline into a big budget fantasy epic where Alice was foretold to save Wonderland.  Really?  As for the rest, they were bound for the top of the list since they were proven franchise formulas.  Now, let's take a look at their production costs.

Toy Story 3 - $200 million

Alice in Wonderland - $200 million

Iron Man 2 - $200 million

Harry Potter 7 - $250 (though it was shared with Part 2 because Warner Bros. is smart)

Twilight 3 - $68 million

Besides Twilight, who have notoriously had low budgets on account of the fact that Summit doesn't have $200 million to spend on films and Twilight series doesn't need good scripts or sets because the female population is going to gravitate to theaters either way, these films all cost more than what Avatar made in 2009.  It's not uncommon to put some pennies into a production budget, but if you spend $200 million on one film instead of four or five, you're limiting your potential to make a profit and your margins will eventually shrink.  Then distribution rises, ticket prices rise and attendence drops.  All this because James Cameron made it work?

I don't know if any of that makes sense, because to be honest, I feel I've rambled and rifled off numbers like a Texas instrument.  Let me say one last thing here.  Look at the Indie market of last year.  The King's Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter to be specific.  All three cost a total of $53 million to produce.  I didn't forget a zero, that's how much they all cost ($15,$13 and $25).  Together they made roughly $336 million domestically and $533.3 million overseas.  That's $869.3 against $53 and everyone involved is still on vacation.  Did they look as good as the top five of last year?  No, they arguably looked better (The King's Speech and Black Swan anyway).

They didn't need wire work and fifty-five minutes of CGI to make it work.  They applied three very engaging plots to smart, visual auteur directors and three amazing and willing casts.  Almost every actor in those films took salary cuts from their market value.  They get much more for a back end percentage when a budget is $15 million and you're making $115 million, but that's another story.  Plus, of course, there are the insane amount of awards these films received.  Combined, those three took most every major acting award there was last year and King's Speech took Best Film at the Oscars.  Now they not only made more money, but gobbled up awards season like a pack of hungry, hungry hippos.  With such a severe success rate and unbelievable profit margin, how could Hollywood think big action flicks with an overabundance of CGI was nessessary?  Simple, Avatar made more than The King's Speech.

Alright, I'm going to put a pin in this until my third and final installment of this blog.  I hope you guys are enjoying it.

Ty-T