Box Office 2009: Robots, Potter, Pixar Rule
As 2010 dawns, it's clear that (for better or worse) the mega-budget franchise ruled the box office in 2009.
The biggest winner of the year was a film so appalling most viewers could barely comprehend its sheer dreadfulness - which proves that Hollywood producers are geniuses and that PT Barnum's misattributed dictum - "There's a sucker born every minute", not to mention "A constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home." - still hold true. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $402,111,879 in the US alone, plus another $432,857,937 in the rest of the world, making it to (to date) the 20th most successful film of all time. Good grief.
At #2, a good $100M behind, is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with $301,959,197. However its worldwide total of $929,359,401 (the eighth largest in history), gives it the #1 spot overall, and makes it the third most successful in the franchise, behind Sorcerer's Stone ($947.7M) and Order of the Phoenix ($938.2M).
Those looking for some hope for humanity and the soul of the American people, can take solace in the fact that Pixar's Up holds the #3 spot with $293,004,164 ($683M worldwide), making it the second most successful Pixar movie after Finding Nemo ($339.71M), the most successful 3D movie of all time, and bringing the Emeryville studio's total take to $2.42 Billion. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is at #4 with $283,897,000, ($665.40M worldwide) making it one of the most profitable films of the year and eclipsing (sorry) the original's $192.76M.
Avatar looks set to break records with $283,811,000 ($760M worldwide) after 13 days on release and the #5 spot for the year (it's currently the eighth most successful science fiction film ever), while #6 is claimed by one of only two non-genre films in the Top 10, The Hangover, with $277,322,503 ($459.42M worldwide), making it the most successful R-rated comedy of all time, ahead of Wedding Crashers ($209.25M) and There's Something About Mary ($176.48M).
The Star Trek reboot sits at #7, with $257,730,019 ($385.46M worldwide), making it the most successful Star Trek film, ahead of 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ($109.71M) and the ninth most successful science fiction film. Animated hits Monsters vs Aliens and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are next, with $198,351,526 ($381.46M worldwide) and $196,573,705 ($887.56M worldwide) respectively, while Sandra Bullock's surprise hit The Blind Side rounds out the Top 10 with $196,403,000 (no worldwide release yet).
Other genre films in the Top 20 include X-Men Origins: Wolverine (#11 with $179.88M US/$373.06M world); Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (#12, $177.24M US/$412.68M world); 2012 (#14, $161.49M US/$734.28 world); and A Christmas Carol (#19, $136.68M US/$254.88M world).
The most profitable film of the year sits at #28, Paranormal Activity earned $107,783,000 (foreign takings unavailable), showing that, contrary to evidence at the top of the table, sometimes all you need is $15,000 and a couple of friends.
Overall, both box office takings and bums on seats are up 9.4% over 2008, on a roster of 516 movies versus 605 the previous year, with average ticket prices holding steady at $7.18.
Happy new year!
Figures courtesy of boxofficemojo.com and boxoffice.com. Worldwide figures are US plus foreign territories.
Box Office 12/21/09: Cameron King Again
The prevailing critical opinion: clichéd, predictable – and really quite wonderful, either didn't matter, or worked in Avatar's favor and swept it to $77.02M at the weekend box office, beating even its own studio's estimates (see my review here). Heavy snow on the East Coast held it back from breaking too many records, but it stands as the highest grossing original work (not a sequel or a remake) in history, the second highest December release (just beaten by I Am Legend's still bewildering $77.20M), and the highest ever 3D release, earning $55M from 3,129 screens, beating Up's $35.4M by quite some margin. Of those 3D screens, 178 were IMAX, and the film earned $9.5M in those theaters for the second highest IMAX opening, behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's $11.70M.
Overseas, Avatar brought in an additional $164.54M, bringing its worldwide total to $241.57M, the largest ever for an original work, but ninth overall – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince holds the record with $394M, and this year's The Twilight Saga: New Moon, at #6 with $274.9M, means that three of this year's releases are in the all-time Top 10.
At #2, Disney's The Princess and the Frog hopped down a predictable 50%, with $12.18M, for a running total of $44.71M, while The Blind Side continues to hold on with $10.02M for a running total of $164.72M, making it the most successful film of Sandra Bullock's career.
Did You See the Morgans failed to overcome the "Seen it all before, on TV" feeling exuded by its trailer and earned a meagre $6.61M at #4, a disappointment given its $58M budget. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, continues to descend, falling 45% with $4.40M, its US total now standing at $274.59M ($634.69M worldwide).
Invictus is at #6 with $4.20M, while A Christmas Carol fell 50% and 332 screens (including relinquishing all its IMAX locations to Avatar), bringing in $3.44M for a US total of $130.81M ($249.01M worldwide). The Top 10 is rounded out by Up in the Air ($3.21M), Brothers ($2.88M), and Old Dogs ($2.34M), while 2012 sits at #11, with $2.20M for the weekend, a US tally of $159.02M, and an astonishing worldwide total of $714.21M, making it the fourth biggest earner of the year, behind the Harry Potter ($929.40M), Ice Age ($883,70M), and Transformers ($835M) sequels.
Christmas weekend sees the opening of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, It's Complicated, and expansions for Up in the Air and Nine.
Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2009)
Country: USA
Production Company: Twentieth Century-Fox, Dune Entertainment, Giant Studios, Ingenious Film Partners, Lightstorm Entertainment
Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau
Executive Producer: Colin Wilson, Laeta Kalogridis
Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Cinematographer: Mauro Fiore
Cinematographer, LA [3D System]: Vince Pace
Editors: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music: James Horner
Production Designers: Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg
Art Directors: Todd Cherniawsky, Kevin Ishioka, Kim Sinclair
Costume Designers: Mayes C. Rubeo, Deborah Lynn Scott
Special Makeup Effects: Antony McMullen, Keith Marbory, Gary Yee , Kevin McTurk/Stan Winston Studio
Second Unit Director: Steven Quale
Virtual Cinematography System Creator: Robert Legato
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri/Weta Digital
Special Effects: Steve Ingram
Creature Designers: Wayne D. Barlowe, Neville Page
Sound Designer: Christopher Boyes
Sound Editors: Addison Teague, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Costume Designers: Mayes C Rubeo, Deborah L Scott
Stunts: Garrett Warren, Allan Poppleton
Length: 163 mins.
Budget: $425 Million*
Cast: Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoe Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Col Miles Quaritch), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Norm Spellman), CCH Pounder (Moat), Wes Studi (Eytukan), Laz Alonso (Tsu'tey), Dileep Rao (Dr Max Patel), Matt Gerald (Corp Lyle Wainfleet), Sean Anthony Moran (Pr Fike).
Synopsis: In the year 2154 Earth is a dying planet and Human corporations, with military backing, have colonized the distant moon Pandora and are strip mining it for a rare mineral. Disabled Marine, Jake Sully, takes the place of his dead brother in a program that places humans among the indigenous Na'vi, to better learn their ways and persuade them to surrender their forest to the corporation. As Jake finds himself drawn to the arcadian Na'vi and particularly their leader's daughter, Neytiri, the suits and their military cohort, Colonel Quaritch, lose patience and begin enacting a huge operation to destroy the Na'vi's most sacred region.
Review: Fourteen years in the making with 2,000 people employed solidly for the past two years, Avatar is so costly that the effects work had to be amortized across two films (Battle Angel is coming in 2011) and even then it lands in theaters as the most expensive film ever made, from the director of the most successful film in history, Titanic (1997) having pulled in 11 Academy Awards and $1.6 Billion at the box office.
Given this level of anticipation, the film stands or falls on whether producer/director/writer/editor, James Cameron, has managed to create a ground-breaking epic with broad appeal, that demands repeated viewing, and blows away everything we've seen before. Ever. This somewhat audacious goal can only be met if Cameron overcomes our jaded palate for massive summer CGI slaughter-fests like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator: Salvation, and 2012, as well as successfully engaging our hearts and brains in his huge endeavor.
In part, he's succeeded. The world of Pandora is absolutely stunning, each leaf shimmers with detail, each spec of dust and flying insect has been meticulously brought to life and, aided by the IMAX 3D experience, you'll find yourself swatting at small creatures and waving away specs of ash, open-mouthed at the sheer beauty and scale of what's on the screen. The motion capture animation is also brilliantly realized, no unconvincing mouth movements or soulless eyes here, the Na'vi and the human Avatars are entirely relatable, we buy fully into their pastoral existence, fall entirely for Zoe Saldana (Star Trek) as the feisty warrior princess Neytiri and, if you thought Sigourney Weaver looked hot in her Alien wife beater, you'll appreciate her even more as a 10-foot-tall, blue cat creature.
Unfortunately this is almost fatally undermined by dreadfully hackneyed storytelling and, while it's laudable that Cameron's basic message is pro-environmental and anti-militaristic, everything from the banal yoga studio font used in the subtitles and logo (a modified version of Chris Costello's shockingly over-used Papyrus, for those who care), through the story – essentially a sci-fi remake of Dances with Wolves – to the dialogue, cardboard cutout villains and appalling dialogue, threatens to topple the film right up to its last half hour. We long for the comparative complexity of Michael Biehn's psychotic Lieutenant Coffey in The Abyss (Biehn was originally considered for the role of Quaritch), or the oily intensity of Paul Reiser's Carter Burke in Aliens (1986). In comparison Stephen Lang (Public Enemies) coasts on physical bulk and shock and awe, while Giovanni Ribisi (Lost in Translation) only occasionally summons enough menace to raise our ire and we greet his eventual comeuppance with a shrug. Even Sigourney Weaver's performance is weak, her line readings lacking the conviction she brought to ass-kicker, Ripley.
And yet, despite the pervading second-hand feel to proceedings (even the Unobtanium mineral McGuffin is borrowed from eyewear designers, Oakley), Cameron still succeeds. Just. His greatest strength as a storyteller has always been to place believable relationships at the heart of massive spectacle. Kyle and Sarah in The Terminator (1984), army grunts Vasquez and Drake in Aliens, and the battling Brigmans in The Abyss, and while Sam Worthington is no Ed Harris, the love story that seemed so dubious in the trailer here proves to be the anchor-point of the entire enterprise. Sully's gradual embracing of the Na'vi way of life, backed by his gleeful appropriation of a functioning pair of legs, may be totally predictable, but it's a testament to Cameron that when the final battle comes, we're emotionally engaged with both the noble warriors and their exquisite arboreal homeland.
Mainstream press have, for reasons best know to themselves, been gauging the success of this film on fanboy festival reaction - but Harry Knowles and his ilk are irrelevant to the success of Avatar. the film wasn't made for 20-something ComicCon attendees, or their middle-aged fathers, but is squarely aimed at the teenagers they were when they first experienced, respectively, The Matrix and Roger Dean LP covers. Avatar's faults are many, but there's no denying the power of the on-screen images, the basic decency of the message, and the level to which he engages his audience in an admittedly predictable tale. For all this, Cameron's film can be judged a success and he may just have invented a whole new mythology for the next generation of awe-struck science fiction fans.
*Source: Financial Times: Man in the News: James Cameron, December 18th, 2009.
