Earlier this month, I pointed out that Avatar: The Way of Water was climbing the box office charts and had once again proven that James Cameron is the king of popcorn movie entertainment. Cameron has had lots of success over the years, going all the way back to The Terminator in 1984 but he’s also had a lot of naysayers along the way. Before Titanic came out there were lots of people predicting its doom at the box office. And before Way of Water was released I was hearing the same sort of thing.
Who wants to see this? Where is the audience for a sequel released 13 years after the original?
As of now we can give a pretty clear answer to those questions. Everyone, everywhere wants to see it. Today it became the #10 domestic film of all time, edging past the first Avengers film:
Another day, another milestone for “Avatar: The Way of Water.” James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel has generated $623.5 million at the domestic box office, taking down “The Avengers” ($623.4 million) to become the 10th-highest grossing domestic release of all time.
But that doesn’t actually give you a sense of how popular the film is worldwide, where it now has the #4 film of all time at the global box office after beating out The Force Awakens last week.
This past weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water became the fourth highest-grossing film worldwide at the global box office, surpassing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Nominated for four Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, the film remained No. 1 at the domestic box office after seven weekends in release—a feat that has not been achieved since the original Avatar was released in 2009. Additionally, Avatar: The Way of Water is the second fastest film in history to reach $2 billion (after Avengers: Endgame)…
Avatar: The Way of Water is also the highest-grossing film of all time in France, Austria, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lebanon, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Cambodia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Colombia, and Puerto Rico.
Here’s the current top 10 worldwide box office from Box Office Mojo. As you can see, James Cameron now has three of the top four films.
Way of Water will probably overtake Titanic before it’s done but that depends how much money Titanic makes during a 25th anniversary theatrical re-release that is happening this month.
Despite all of this undeniable success, some people are having a hard time understanding how Way of Water could be such a tremendous hit. Over at Vox Alex Abad-Santos took a stab at explaining it, starting with his own mystification.
How is this movie making so much money? And why is this movie making so much money?
The Way of Water’s astounding success has seen some claim the numbers are a psyop perpetrated on the American people by 20th Century Studios and its parent company Disney.
He quotes JD Connor, a professor from USC, who tries to explain it though I don’t think his first attempt really helped.
Avatar is, Connor says, a sort of dinosaur franchise that, thanks in large part to its financial success, still operates in a way that some older franchises — like Alien or, more recently, Planet of the Apes — worked. That means that while there’s supplemental merch and other cinematic accoutrements, the movie was the main attraction, the endpoint.
Back then, “you didn’t say, in a meeting halfway through production, ‘Hey, Jim, what’s the ride for this look like? Or what’s the toy for this look like?’ Whereas folks making those other franchises absolutely have those conversations,” Connor explained.
I know Abad-Santos is aware there’s a 12-acre Pandora ride at Disney World because he mentions it a couple paragraphs later. According to Wikipedia, Cameron and Disney started working on it in 2011. Construction began in 2014 and it opened in 2017. There are also toys and action figures for sale on Amazon and elsewhere right now. So someone must have thought about that stuff. Anyway, Connor, the USC professor starts to make a lot more sense when he talks about why these films keep doing so well. The answer is James Cameron.
“Frictionless” is the compliment Connor uses to describe Cameron and his movies. It’s the basic idea of being able to create a narrative that everyone can understand and enjoy. That simplicity can sound like a backhanded dig, but it’s not, Connor assured me.
“So many movies can have ‘easy’ narratives and plots, and they aren’t anywhere near as successful,” Connor said, pointing to how some generally loved Disney and Pixar movies don’t necessarily do well in Russia. The secret, Connor believes, is that Cameron is a notorious perfectionist, and that extends to his storytelling.
“Nobody has a better idea of how big movies work than he does, but the key thing is that when you watch Cameron’s movies, there is none of that. You don’t feel the weight of any of his knowledge,” Connor explained. “Everything clears out of the way, because of a very precise distillation process that goes into the relationship between the very simple structural stories and the totality of what he knows. That’s a tremendous skill!”
I think it’s true that there was no one rooting for Avatar 2, at least not the way some fans were for Star Wars VII or the next Avengers film. But what matters more is that when you do get the film it just works, not just for the excited fanbase but for almost everyone around the globe. Well, not everyone of course. Some people never go to movies. But it works for more people than any other movies made by anyone else in the last 25 years. That really is a tremendous skill and with Cameron now holding 3 of the top 4 films on the global chart it’s clearly a very marketable one.
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