Because I am all about the box office
It is all the buzz these days about how Joss Whedon's Avengers is on track to be the third-biggest movie of all time. A certain amount of contrary-minded people are talking about how with 2012 3-D ticket prices, that number is practically meaningless. (And it's all because of marketing and comic books suck and etc.) And then some of us with a stats fetish have been over on Box Office Mojo geeking out over their "Sales Adjusted for Inflation" statistics. So. Geekery. Today, Saturday May 19, a Joss Whedon movie will pass, in actual-butts-in-seats true-comparison numbers, the total runs of the following films:
Lawrence of Arabia
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Rocky
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Men in Black
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(Not to mention The Poseidon Adventure, the biggest dumb star-studded blockbuster action movie that could ever possibly exist, ca. 1972.)
By the end of the weekend, The Avengers will be better attended than any Alfred Hitchcock movie ever made, any Transformers movie, any Harry Potter movie. Bigger than Sergeant York or The Best Years of Our Lives, bigger than Saving Private Ryan, bigger than the original Superman. It will pretty clearly not crack the top 25 of all time - no Jurassic Park or Return of the Jedi or Ben-Hur numbers - but running the trends I like it to eventually put more seats in padded theater chairs than Independence Day, Home Alone, or Ghostbusters.
Pretty good for a cult director.
Lawrence of Arabia
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Rocky
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Men in Black
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(Not to mention The Poseidon Adventure, the biggest dumb star-studded blockbuster action movie that could ever possibly exist, ca. 1972.)
By the end of the weekend, The Avengers will be better attended than any Alfred Hitchcock movie ever made, any Transformers movie, any Harry Potter movie. Bigger than Sergeant York or The Best Years of Our Lives, bigger than Saving Private Ryan, bigger than the original Superman. It will pretty clearly not crack the top 25 of all time - no Jurassic Park or Return of the Jedi or Ben-Hur numbers - but running the trends I like it to eventually put more seats in padded theater chairs than Independence Day, Home Alone, or Ghostbusters.
Pretty good for a cult director.