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...