Dark Knight Passes Star Wars
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James Joyner | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 |
Dark Knight is about to pass Star Wars — which had two independent releases of what were arguably two different movies — to become the number two grossing movie of all time. It still has a ways to go, though, to pass Titanic:
To be sure, “unadjusted gross” is a rather silly metric. After all, ticket prices have skyrocketed in recent years. That’s offset somewhat, however, by the fact that new movies are released to DVD within months (or available for download from various Torrent sites much sooner) and many of us choseto wait to watch them in the comfort of our own homes.
Hat tip to Jonathan Last, who has some other interesting movie ranking trivia.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Hmmmm.... Look at the only R-rated movie on that list.
Look at that list of movies.
#1 is a chick flick writ large.
#7 and #24 fall under the action/adventure genre.
#12 is a Christian epic.
#17 is a comedy.
#2, #5, #6, #9, #13 and #25 are sci-fi
#3, #8, #11, #16, #20, and #22 are comic books brought to the screen.
#4, #10, #14, #19, #21 and #23 are fantasy films.
#15 and #18 are harder to classify. Are they children morality tales or another form of fantasy film.
So roughly 1/5 of the top grossing movies is something other than sci-fi/fantasy/comic book themed movies.
What does this list look like when the dollars are adjusted for inflation?
Yah, if it ain't inflation-adjusted, it's worthless.
Why is so much emphasis placed on the dollar amount when comparing a movie's success? Doesn't ANYONE out there realize that new movies are going to keep topping each other because the price of tickets keeps going up? Let's review how many ticket sales it took to reach the 460 million dollars the original Star Wars earned, at roughly $2.00 per ticket, compared to the $10 ticket price of Dark Knight. C'mon people...there is NO comparison.
