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

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