One Month Out: Part One
By BOP Staff
November 3, 2009
Sean Collier: It's hard to imagine Avatar living up to the hype. "Whelmed" is right - my reaction to the trailer was pretty much, "Oh, so that's what Avatar is." I'm sure it will be very, very good, but I don't see why it will perform much better than any tentpole action/sci-fi film; the Titanic bump will inflate it to a very good opening, above $70 million, but I'd be surprised if it hit $250 million total.
Reagen Sulewski: The strange thing about Avatar is that movie goers are being asked to take things pretty much on faith. "This 3-D technology is really, really awesome! Even better than the animated stuff we've shown you! Only there's no way we can show you how awesome it is, you have to buy a ticket! More expensive than regular tickets, even!" It could live up to that, but there's got to be that initial hook of the plot to bring them in and I'm not sure these ads have done it. If it can leverage the 3-D tech correctly it can more or less call its own end point, but if the plot turns out to be The Abyss II, well, that's not going to save it.
Brett Beach: Avatar. I imagine that between now and December 18th, there will be any number of ridiculous print and web articles with some variation of the "straw man" question: Will Avatar beat Titanic's domestic and/or worldwide figures? I will be more than happy (as I am sure James Cameron will) when we all move past that line of thinking. I am surprised that there is no counter-programming going on that weekend. What I have seen so far of the creatures in Avatar distresses me as they appear to be more of the "so lifelike you'll think they're almost totally truly real" world of CGI that drives me batty. At a conference earlier this year, both Cameron and Peter Jackson expressed a desire not to sublimate the importance of telling a great story to the spectacle provided by continuing advances of technology. Great sentiment, but since I consider them both far better conjurer of worlds than writer of words, this may be a moot point. Avatar needs to make around $250 million to stand on its own. I have a feeling it will perform much like King Kong did in 2005, with a not ginormous but respectable opening and long play through January and February.
Michael Lynderey: People seem to have been buzzing about this one for eons now, but I never saw the appeal. And I hate to sound like a sourpuss, but the trailer makes this look fairly routine, and lacking that ubernatural "oomph" Cameron is known for in his sci-fi. I think it's going to get a fairly positive if unexceptional critical reception, and the box office will follow suit - something like a total number just on the edge of $200 million. Avatar just seems like too much of internet hype over something that will look very out of place in the middle of the holiday movie season.
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