Daniela Deane and Mairi Mackay Fox says 'Avatar' is costliest film it's ever made December 22, 2009 http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/07/avatar.gianopulos/index.html
Avatar came out with an estimated budget of $300 million dollars, and exceeded that limit. James Cameron, the director, has made other expensive films in the past including Titanic, but this one cost more than ever before. Avatar had a revolutionary plot, and the imagination was unbelievable. It surpasses Pirates of the Caribbean at Worlds End, which cost $300 Million. The article does not confront the matter of when is it too much to spend on a movie? Avatar was one of the top films of 2009 and earned lots of money, but is it good for movie companies to be spending so much on producing films. Cameron's films have paid off in the past, but we will see if this will do as well as some of his movies in the past.
Avatar is a great movie. I saw it and enjoyed it very much. The imagination that it took to visualize, verbalize, and produce was incredible. It was one of the best movies I have seen this year, and a good part about this movie was that it was unlike any other movie I have seen. Pandora, the planet in the movie, seems real. You leave the movie wishing you could go there and become an Avatar. I think that this is what makes this movie immensely successful, however think about how much money it cost to make. It cost just under $500 million. At first I thought this was ridiculous to spend so much money on a movie. My first opinion was why not do something better with that money. My second thoughts made me realize that this money spent on the movie is necessary. Entertainment is one of the biggest parts of our society, and the net gain of movies shows that. It a necessary part of our society to make such a movie, and the money made well exceeds the cost to make the movie, and so now there is more money to do some good with. I believe that expensive movies like Avatar are a necessary part of our society because it helps us all to explore our imaginations and influence us in a positive way and if a movie makes more that it costs then it can never be too expensive.
I support Mr. Tater in most of the arguments made in this summary, though I do think he overgeneralized like a mother goose on Christmas Day. To begin with Avatar had anything but a "revolutionary plot". Critics at Rottentomatoes.com and Filmcritics.com brought this up very first in their evalutions of Avatar. The plot was nothing more than another Pocahontas or Xenocide recycled with a fresh coat of paint. It had no major twists or shocking revelations, and taken as a whole was quite predictable. Also, the "imagination taken to verbalize" this movie was in fact not "incredible" in the slightest. The script was just about as average as you can get.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless these all work toward Nater Tater's overall question: "when is it too much to spend on a movie?" My answer to that is when the plot and the overall characterization(including script) suffer because all a movie can focus on is cool graphics. Avatar was a fantastic movie, it could have been absolutely invincible if only they had focused on a better story and script. But is that the fault of overspending? I think Nater Tater could have strengthened his argument if he had used these vital points in his article.