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Well, he has. Avatar is currently one of the biggest movies of all time in the US, with a box office gross of well over 450 million dollars. Now, a normal film might make about 40-50 percent of its money outside the US, but Avatar is doing much better than that. Right now, the foreign box office is nearly 700 million. In other words, the box office is already over a billion dollars worldwide, and this is on schedule to become the biggest movie in history. Here in China, people don’t go to the movies much. If a big film gets released in the US, bootleg copies show up here on the streets within minutes, and they’re practically free. Because of this, no movie in China has ever had a box office close to 100 million. But Avatar has beaten it. The movie here is shown in 3D on big IMAX screens, and people here are actually paying more to see it than in the US. As a result, the theaters seats here are booked for months in advance.

So the film is doing great. However, it didn’t start out with much fanfare. I went to our little theater on opening day and looked around. There were a few adults, but I went to an early show and the theater wasn’t full. In short, the teens and kids hadn’t discovered it. I turned to my wife and said, "You know, it has been too long since James Cameron has made a movie. The younger generation has forgotten him." In fact, my own children had come to the theater only because I told them that they "had to." My wife studied the audience and said, "Yes, where are the kids?" To which I replied, "I envy them. They’re about to ‘discover’ him. In two days, this theater will be packed with them."

Obviously, that has happened. At the current numbers, Avatar is a blockbuster. But why?

Never mind that my wife kept saying, "Is this supposed to be a remake of Fern Gully?" It’s true that the movie has some timeworn predecessors. I’ll talk about why Cameron did this in a later post. But the film is well worth the money. See it on IMAX in 3D.

Indeed, five or ten years from now, there will be many who argue that it is the "best" sci-fi fantasy film ever made, and I would agree. It’s not my personal favorite, mind you, but objectively I suspect that it is the best. The relative quality of a work is normally not recognized until years after its appearance. The kids who see it now will most likely think that it’s the best of all time.

Now, most of you know that I love Cameron’s work. I’ve said before that he’s a genius when it comes to audience analysis. He knows what people like. That’s why Titanic was such a huge film. That’s why Avatar is huge. That’s why he’ll knock the crud out of future naysayers and doubters.

So I’m going to offer a couple of posts to explain why Avatar works so well, and then I’m going to tell you what I see that Cameron could have done better.

Quote for the day…

Chelsea Cain (9 Mar 06) "Ideas"

1. Don’t date it if you don’t want to marry it

-- Write down 100 ideas. Cross them out and write 100 more. You’ll find the idea in the 2nd 100.

-- Tell the truth.

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Ryan Hunter's decided it's time to take drastic measures to gain an agent's attention, so she's posting her novel online one chapter at a time. The plan is to get enough followers reading the novel oline that agents will quit telling her how good the book is and actually publish it. You're all invited to become followers and Ryan would love to follow your blog in return.