Why Avatar Box Office Record is Real and Inflation Doesn't Matter

There is a lot of speculation regarding James Cameron's Avatar film not really holding the highest grossing movie of all time. The reasons many site the record isn't real are: 1)the inflation rate; 2) the inflated ticket sales of 3D showings. I'm currently taking Statistics for Engineers, and often I get contextual questions wrong. If this were on a test, and inflation rates were given for Avatar and Gone with the Wind to determine which movie was better (despite evidence that Gone with the Wind technically sold more tickets) I'd still say Avatar was the better movie.

That's because back in the days of Titanic and even Gone with the Wind, the Internet was not around like it is today. Instead of traveling down to the nearest cinema for some visual entertainment, you now can watch everything, including Avatar on your home computer. If you're tech saavy you can have a whole box office streaming on your jumbo flat screen t.v.

In 1997 the year of Titanic, we had Windows '95 and America Online. Whoever you were, the internet was hooked up by telephone and boring websites took up to 30 minutes to load (my computer anyway). In 1939 the year of Gone with the Wind, there wasn't even color t.v. and sets that streamed antenna broadcasts were the of Lexus's with the screens the size of magazines.

Avatar, again, the greatest movie of our time, has to compete with the greatest technology man has ever made, the Internet. Avatar offers an experience that is unmatched, and even if you could watch 3D movies on your laptop well enough, or your big flat screen, they still cannot compete with Avatar IMAX, not even close. IMAX is a multi-million dollar setup, for $15 hell yeah I'll watch Avatar over and over.

This debate just goes to show you how useless money can be in measuring success. The brains at Forbes can crunch dollar bill signs all day, but they don't consider the context of their data. Basically, they suck at interpretation. Movie gross, just tells you how much a movie made. Comparing one movie's gross to another is indicative of which is a better movie in the eyes of the public. Comparing movie grosses across generations doesn't reveal which was the better movie because there are so many factors from each generation that affect whether or not people see a movie. The case I have made is that despite the internet providing most middle class citizens with ample entertainment, many choose to see Avatar...over...and...over...and over...

Avatar is not Racist

This article sheds light on people that believe that Avatar was a racist movie. The white Messiah comes and saves the indigenous colored people. Examples in film are Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai" and Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves" and the real life example of John Smith and Pocahontas.

I'll get back to why people that call Avatar racist are idiots, but first my take on the Movie. It was Art in the most technologically advanced, compelling, emotional way ever created. I didn't cry when I saw a painting by Da Vinci and my heart didn't churn when I read John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Movie making is the medium by which every field of artistic endeavor (writing, drawing, photography, music) can come together and create an even more dynamic masterpiece; Avatar is the masterpiece of our time. 

As black film professor Donald Bogle has said:

"Maybe there is something he does want to say and put across" about race, Bogle said. "Maybe if he had a black hero in there, that point would have been even stronger."

That request and degradation of this film's theme to racism is uneducated and pathetic. The main complaint is: why can't colored people save themselves. Yes, the white Jakesully rallies the blue Na'vi, but he doesn't win the war for them, the moon's deity, Eywa saves the day. And if religion is not your flavor, then ham it up to dumb luck as rhino-type beasts decide take a jog and stamp out the villainous ground troops or to the thousands of flying creatures that suddenly arrive just to wonder what a flying piece of metal would taste like. -- Had the ikran (mountain banshees) not attacked the escorts, Jake would never had gotten close enough to blow up the bombers. It would have been a dues ex machina, had the whole film not centered around this Eywa spirituality the WHOLE TIME, where importance is placed on the spirit behind the physical embodiment being the true person (I See You). 

As an advocate for equality I continually am disappointed by the ways people find a problem in everything, then go write about it or bitch about it with other friends who go an write about it themselves. Do they create solutions? NO. They elaborate on some problem. Now with this poor accusation I mark the death of a College Ten all star; I bled that theme social justice and community, but it's time to ditch that type of whining to work with real people and real solutions. 

James Cameron has remarked on Avatar's real theme:

[Avatar] asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message."

Does the existence of an alien species expose the reality that all humans are actually one race