The Avengers: The Motion Picture Discussion Thread- Open SPOILERS -enter at own risk!

[IrishJedi]

When the Titanic numbers are compared to, does the recent 3D re-release get factored into its total numbers? I'm assuming yes, but wasn't positive.

Yep, it added $50 million or so to the total.

 

[Khev]

Oh I know it's the way it is - but I genuinely believe it's the wrong way to look at it, so I think it's worth pointing out in these discussions from time to time

Man, the "Gone with the Wind" benchmark REALLY needs to be laid to rest. It did NOT make "1.6 billion dollars" in 1939 dollars. It made that money throughout 70 years of re-releases and...yep...inflation as the world took decades to invent a little thing called VCR's and DVD/Blu-ray players.

Its a *completely* different culture right now. Everyone knows that 3-6 months after you watch a movie at the theater you get to go out and pay a flat $20 or so and watch it an infinite number of times for FREE from there on out. With GWTW you *had* to buy movie tickets each and every time you wanted to see it for over 35 years, hence the insane ticket count padding.

 

[jye4ever]

Fixed

talk to you later, out the door for Avengers.

 

[intothevoid]

Man, the "Gone with the Wind" benchmark REALLY needs to be laid to rest. It did NOT make "1.6 billion dollars" in 1939 dollars. It made that money throughout 70 years of re-releases and...yep...inflation as the world took decades to invent a little thing called VCR's and DVD/Blu-ray players.

Its a *completely* different culture right now. Everyone knows that 3-6 months after you watch a movie at the theater you get to go out and pay a flat $20 or so and watch it an infinite number of times for FREE from there on out. With GWTW you *had* to buy movie tickets each and every time you wanted to see it for over 35 years, hence the insane ticket count padding.

Even if you explain away GWTW like so, you can't do the same for Titanic, or even Star Wars for that matter

 

[IrishJedi]

No you can't. And he's not. The blockbuster benchmark was pretty much defined by the Jaws/Star Wars/ET era. Titanic was one of the few true phenomenons after that, where it stayed in theaters for almost a year and made a ridiculous amount of steady box office throughout most of its run. That's so rare for a film in the home video era. 15 years later I'm still baffled by its popularity.

 

[greygoose]

Imagine...

All you do now is drink, have sex and go watch The Avengers.

 

[IrishJedi]

Well, I did that for 1 weekend at least.

 

[greygoose]

Well, I did that for 1 weekend at least.

Nice one!

 

[The Ween]

Why Stark's mini chest reactor is not lit in some scenes and others it is.

Gone of the Wind made that kind of money because there was nothing else to spend money on.

No internet costs.
No cable tv costs.
No smart phones.
No cell phones.
No home theater.
No HDTVs
No dvds.
No computers.
Little traveling over seas.


All you did back then was drink, have sex and go watch GOTW.

You do realize that there was a world war going on then and people had very little money to spend, yet this movie was THAT popular.

 

[The Ween]

Man, the "Gone with the Wind" benchmark REALLY needs to be laid to rest. It did NOT make "1.6 billion dollars" in 1939 dollars. It made that money throughout 70 years of re-releases and...yep...inflation as the world took decades to invent a little thing called VCR's and DVD/Blu-ray players.

Its a *completely* different culture right now. Everyone knows that 3-6 months after you watch a movie at the theater you get to go out and pay a flat $20 or so and watch it an infinite number of times for FREE from there on out. With GWTW you *had* to buy movie tickets each and every time you wanted to see it for over 35 years, hence the insane ticket count padding.

Ticket count padding...........

 

[IrishJedi]

You do realize that there was a world war going on then and people had very little money to spend, yet this movie was THAT popular.

Actually, GWTW hit and made a ton of its money a few years before the U.S. entered WWII. The country had just come out of the Great Depression and was on its first real hint of economic upswing in decades (which is why many were hesitant to bite the bullet and go back to war). The time was actually right for a cultural phenomenon for people to escape to.

 

[Niltusk]

Yeah, it's that simple. He just mishandled his finances. Marvel & Stan Lee are not in the wrong at all, especially since most of this happened decades ago. Doesn't matter that they continue to cover their tracks and attempt to re-write history, either. Kirby was just a grown man who screwed himself. Got it.

Good job, wasn't too hard to figure out.

 

[Niltusk]

talk to you later, out the door for Avengers.

I need to switch lives with you, my whole weekend was either dinner with my parents, the inlaws and a bunch of scraping and painting in between, I am really wanting my third round with the Avengers soon. I thought the second viewing would help, but now its like an addiction.

 

[Khev]

Even if you explain away GWTW like so, you can't do the same for Titanic, or even Star Wars for that matter

Oh I'm not. Those are definitely more apples to apples comparisons than GWTW and anything post-Jaws.

 

[Niltusk]

Sticking apples to apples and throwing the money out the door equation, in pure brute prison sex form has any movie ever dominated an opening weekend like the Avengers? I don't remember any.

 

[tomandshell]

Sticking apples to apples and throwing the money out the door equation, in pure brute prison sex form has any movie ever dominated an opening weekend like the Avengers? I don't remember any.

First time a movie has made $200 million opening weekend. First time a movie has made $100 million in its second weekend.

 

[karamazov80]

void, right or wrong most people (including Hollywood) don't reference or care about the Adjusted numbers. You don't hear GWTW mentioned as the reigning box office champ. No, it's Avatar and before that Titanic and before that Star Wars, ET, etc

For better or worse, that's just the way it is.

That's true, but it's just a marketing ploy. Though people are no doubt gonna have their eyes gloss over if I get into much detail (as I've seen in other threads recently ), money only makes sense in relative terms. $1 today has to be understood in terms of purchasing power, and we can only understand relative purchasing power by accounting for inflation. A more nuanced, comparative estimation of the real popularity of this film would take into account specific efficiencies/inefficiencies in the theater industry, the widening income gap skewing aggregate numbers, the potential effects of digital downloading/pirating, more theaters showing films yet much more pervasive marketing campaigns nowadays, and other factors. But since we don't have that, changes in inflation is a nice way of summarizing the overall difference in economic success. Number of tickets sold would actually be a better number IMO, but I doubt that number would look very great comparatively, which is probably why we don't see corporate marketing teams promoting those numbers.

None of this is meant to suggest that the success of this movie isn't phenomenal. But those claims we always see about a movie being more successful than any movie ever are extremely dubious when they use simplistic information such as overall gross ticket profits. You have to put it in some kind of context if you are going to make reasonable claims that it is successful in unprecedented terms.

Adjusted numbers are fun to talk about in the same way its fun to say if Babe Ruth played with today's smaller parks. I look at it like sports stats that you make what you make and if you get passed you get passed.

I think those things definitely do need to be accounted for (in baseball as with anything else), but monetary inflation is a much more significant factor than changes in baseball rules and park sizes. Inflation, on average, occurs at roughly 3% per year. That adds up BIG TIME over time.

 

[intothevoid]

That's true, but it's just a marketing ploy. Though people are no doubt gonna have their eyes gloss over if I get into much detail (as I've seen in other threads recently ), money only makes sense in relative terms. $1 today has to be understood in terms of purchasing power, and we can only understand relative purchasing power by accounting for inflation. A more nuanced, comparative estimation of the real popularity of this film would take into account specific efficiencies/inefficiencies in the theater industry, the widening income gap skewing aggregate numbers, the potential effects of digital downloading/pirating, more theaters showing films yet much more pervasive marketing campaigns nowadays, and other factors. But since we don't have that, changes in inflation is a nice way of summarizing the overall difference in economic success. Number of tickets sold would actually be a better number IMO, but I doubt that number would look very great comparatively, which is probably why we don't see corporate marketing teams promoting those numbers.

None of this is meant to suggest that the success of this movie isn't phenomenal. But those claims we always see about a movie being more successful than any movie ever are extremely dubious when they use simplistic information such as overall gross ticket profits. You have to put it in some kind of context if you are going to make reasonable claims that it is successful in unprecedented terms.


I think those things definitely do need to be accounted for (in baseball as with anything else), but monetary inflation is a much more significant factor than changes in baseball rules and park sizes. Inflation, on average, occurs at roughly 3% per year. That adds up BIG TIME over time.

Well put

 

[The Josh]

I think those things definitely do need to be accounted for (in baseball as with anything else), but monetary inflation is a much more significant factor than changes in baseball rules and park sizes. Inflation, on average, occurs at roughly 3% per year. That adds up BIG TIME over time.

That's the other side of the coin I suppose.

 

[tomandshell]

The masses leave, moms and sons, young couples, groups of buddies, taking about how funny it was when hulk punched Thor. Then they get in their cars and drive to Applebee's go home and fall asleep to American idol.