Why
the hype surrounding Avatar? For starters, this is director
James Cameron’s first full-length motion picture since a certain small
1997 movie titled Titanic. You might have heard about it . . .
Titanic went on to become the biggest box office
hit in all history, crossing the magical one-billion dollar mark in box
office earnings – a feat which no Hollywood movie have been able to
accomplish until The Dark Knight
broke the billion dollar mark eleven years later to become the # 2 hit
movie of all time. What makes Titanic’s accomplishment so
remarkable though is that when takes into account inflation: when
Dark Knight hit cinemas tickets
were more expensive and a billion dollars wasn’t exactly what it used to
be a decade ago . . .
What is often forgotten is that Titanic’s box
office took everyone by surprise. The movie was hugely expensive to make
thanks to director Cameron’s legendary perfectionism. (He even took a
submersible to film actual footage of the sunken ship itself fer crying
out loud!) It featured ground-breaking effects (for its day) and thanks to
the hazards of filming in a huge water tank in Mexico went wildly over
budget. (Final budget was an estimated $200 million, which was huge for
the time. Two years later George Lucas made
The Phantom Menace, which arguably had more special effects and sets
than a single sinking ship, for slightly more than half the budget, namely
$115 million.)
Titanic featured no major stars (no, Leonardo
DiCaprio wasn’t a star right then) and wasn’t part of an established
franchise or anything. Yet it became a certifiable phenomenon. Strong word
of mouth insured that the film stayed at the number one spot at the US box
office for fifteen weeks! (That’s about fourteen weeks longer than
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra for
instance.)
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"Avatar has more in common with Titanic than just
its director . . ." |
Box office observers remarked that the movie did so well
because of teenaged girls – a previously overlooked demographic in a
Hollywood where teenaged boys are the Holy Grail when it comes to
expensive special effects summer blockbusters – who rewatched the movie
endlessly. DiCaprio’s boyish non-threatening teen throb looks, healthy
wallops of Mills & Boons sentiment and Celine Dion’s warbling on the theme
song proved to be an irresistible combination when it came to this
particular demographic.
Avatar’s poster art work may market the film as
by “the director of Titanic,” but the movie is in fact aimed at
altogether different demographic group, namely the male audiences who made
Cameron’s previous science fiction action efforts such huge influential
hits, namely The Terminator (1984),
Aliens (1986) and
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). These
iconic hits – a Holy Trilogy of sorts - aside, the 55-year-old director’s
output has been spottier. His underappreciated underwater 1989 epic
The Abyss failed to set the box office
alight and his 1994 spy-actioner True Lies may have done well at
the box office, but that was largely thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger who
was at the height of his popularity right then. It simply wasn’t the sort
of innovative effort die-hard fans expected of the bearded one.
Most
fans in this demographic probably cringed at the schmaltz in Titanic
even though they still went to see the film out of loyalty. For them the
question is, will Cameron make another huge, innovative science fiction
film like he did back in 1991 with
T2? For Fox, the studio
behind Avatar the question is much simpler: will Avatar make
back its money? Splurging millions of dollars on the director of the most
popular movie of all time may seem like no-brainer, but things simply
aren’t that simple. Avatar may have a lot in common with Titanic,
but its success isn’t guaranteed at all . . .
Avatar has more in common with Titanic
than just its director. For starters, Avatar is hugely expensive
even though it actually cost less than Titanic. Luckily inflation
didn’t get to Cameron: Avatar actually cost $10 million less
than Titanic. But $190 million is still a hefty amount of pocket
change even in spendthrift Hollywood.
Dark Knight cost $185 million to make and
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra cost $170
million. However unlike these big budget blockbusters Avatar has
its work cut out for it when it comes to attracting audiences. It comes
with no marketable pre-branding: it isn’t based on a hugely popular and
recognizable comic book character (Batman,
Spider-man) nor is it based on a popular toy
range (G.I. Joe,
Transformers). It isn’t based on a
best-seller or popular videogame, doesn’t feature a big star nor is a
remake of a well-known movie or television series.
Next: "For
Hollywood marketing folks Avatar is a nightmare!"
