James Cameron - Best of All Time!
With Avatar: The Way of Water Jim caught lighting in a bottle for the 3rd time
What do the most successful box office hits of all time have in common? On the surface, there are a few factors. 4 out of the top 5 are action adventure sci-fi movies; 3 out of 5 have Zoe Saldana in them; another 3 out of 5 are directed by Jim Cameron. Here the top 10 global box office highest grossing movies:
Courtesy of Box Office Mojo
Now let’s try to do some theory crafting about why these movies ended up there.
Genre Success
Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, The Avengers & Spider-Man: No Way Home are super hero movies. The most common and obvious explanation is that superhero movies have universal appeal. They are our modern mythology with simplistic stories of good and evil that have been with us since the dawn of civilisation. In other words, Greek (insert any other ancient culture here) gods reloaded. Such stories do well globally and have mass appeal as they are deeply engrained in our collective human history.
Another crucial factor for their success is China, which is the biggest movie market in the world. Being successful in China is mandatory to get into the top 10. The superhero genre appeals to the Chinese market as much as it does to Western audiences, which helps with their top 10 dominance.
It’s worth mentioning that there is an import quota of 20 Hollywood movies a year with the option to add up to 14 commercial films (3D or IMAX). I won’t veer off into politics at this point but every movie also needs to be approved by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party before getting approval to be released. This has lead to many an adjustment to movies, which seek commercial success there. Super hero movies are not controversial by nature and the bad guys are usually made up villains that don’t offend. Therefore, approval is easy!
A notable exception is Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was not allowed to release in China. It still made it into the top 10, which is an impressive feat. This success was likely due to it being the first Marvel movie on the big screen to serve the pent up demand that built up during global lockdowns.
Sorry but I have to take this tangent! The Chinese Publicity Department reportedly requested the removal of a long action-packed sequence in the third act of Spider-Man: No Way Home (this is the one on the Statue of Liberty). Sony (side side note - Spider-Man is the only Marvel hero for which Disney does not own the film rights) didn’t budge so the Chinese authorities instead asked for the removal of certain shots from the sequence that they deemed too “patriotic” (the scenes where Tom Holland’s Spider-Man stands on the Statue of Liberty’s crown). Sony rejected the request, resulting in not getting the approval to release the movie. The film lost a potential $170 million-$340 million in sales from China, according to reports. The previous 2 Spider-Man movies released there respectively earned $120 and $205 million (or 13% and 18% of their global gross). Makes you think about how much the script writing process is influenced by seeking this approval.
I would lump Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens into this super hero category as well. However, they add another distinct quality to the formula, which is that of family drama. There are of course family components in the other movies too but they do not play a central role to the narrative.
The Lion King (2019 release) contains globally accessible family narratives and themes of good and evil. If one examines the expanded top 100 list, it becomes apparent that animated Disney movies as a genre do well. The success is to no small part due to a PG rating, which allows access to a much bigger audience, while the formula still keeps mass appeal with adults.
Let’s talk about Titanic. There is no other movie of the Romance Drama category anywhere in the top 100. There is also only one other Leonardo Di Caprio movie in the top 100 (Inception at 88). So the genre underperforms and Leo isn’t usually selling that many tickets globally. What else is afoot here? We are now getting to the uncomfortable truth about this whole list and most of the expanded top 100 grossing movies. They are up there because of visual effects. Jurassic World can’t be explained any other way - well, other than having dinosaurs.
Jim Cameron’s Success
So how did Jim Cameron manage to end up with 3 of the top 5 most grossing movies globally (Titanic and 2x Avatar)? Clearly because of his talent and vision but also because with both projects he pushed film forward visually by using extraordinary SFX and VFX.
For clarification, special effects is abbreviated as SFX while visual effects is abbreviated as VFX. The crucial difference between the two is that the latter happens in post production, while the former is more about doing cool things on set.
Jim Cameron is the master of both SFX and VFX. For Titanic a budget of $40 million was spent alone on to building a mock full sized ship that could sink on the press of a button. The post production was impressive and set a new benchmark for VFX. For Avatar he created a new stereoscopic camera that both allowed for more freedom in the filming process and for capturing more depth of field. The post production of Avatar took years and again set a new standard for VFX. It also set the benchmark for 3D experience in movies and changed the motion capture game. The plot, on the other hand, was kinda meh.
Yes, I know my thesis is somewhat simplistic but the correlation between VFX and box office success seems undeniable. Maybe we are just that shallow! Then again that’s what the movies are about nowadays. Other less visually overstimulating genres are being consumed from the comfort of our couch at home. Banshees of Inisherin doesn’t require a big screen to enamour us with superb acting. However, there is a big qualitative difference in the enjoyment of a dopamine ridden Marvel movie on the big screen compared to my TV at home.
Jim gets that and he arguably saw this coming much sooner than anyone else. I doubted that he could pull off what he did with Titanic and Avatar with Avatar: The Way of Water. The first movie’s plot was Pocahontas in space with blue aliens. I watched it for the effects and because I’m a movie buff but I didn’t care much about the franchise. Hell, nobody did. There were no major games, toys, rides or fan fiction that followed even though he had announced it to be a trilogy. Compare that to Marvel that create meta narratives between movies, TV shows and comics to create a continuous pop cultural relevance loop. Avatar disappeared as fast as it emerged. It seemed positively insane to spend nearly $500 million on a sequel (making it the most expensive Hollywood movie) to a franchise that nobody cared about for 13 years. Yet he did it again.
Despite the reviews taking it apart for the new age jargon in its script, the insane 3+ hour length, the weird casting decision to include Sigourney Weaver as a child Na’vi and the predicable simplistic plot, I went to see it. Why? Because every review said it looked totally awesome! A new benchmark for animation quality and VFX! A movie made to watch in the theatre.
I am still surprised it did as well as it did. Then again Jim knows what he’s doing. The story is simple - no multiverses or plot twists. It’s a family drama with relatable blue aliens on a beautiful planet. The bad guy is one we love to hate. The appreciation for nature strikes a nerve in a world worried about climate change. It all feels quite universal. No rough edges that could get anyone upset or overly excited. Now it’s the 4th most successful movie of all time. Does anybody still talk about it or care? Not really. Does it matter? Nope.
Bonus: Zoe Saldana’s success
No real secret here. Zoe had the good fortune to get cast both in Avatar and Marvel’s Guardians of the the Galaxy. The Guardians are part of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame so she’s managed to star in 4 movies in the top 10. As a side note, the core cast of the Avengers (Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner) all star in 3 movies in the top 10 (Avengers Assemble, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame).
Closing Thoughts
The state of the franchise and VFX driven box office successes has fundamentally changed the movie industry. China’s recent rise as the largest movie market has played a key role. This is why a majority of the top 100 grossing movies globally are from the 2010s.
The top grossing category is merely a facet of the movie art from. I appreciate the artistic side of it much more but I don’t think this commercial element is destroying the movies. There are aspects of the commercial side that are problematic (censorship, etc) but widely successful movies create a shared experience between people that is much needed in the age of fractured societies.
Some directors miss the past. Self-referential nostalgia tales about the good old Hollywood days are becoming more popular: Damien Chazelle's Babylon, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, or Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Yes, the resulting loss of genre diversity due to box office hits movie making is regrettable. Diversity still exists, however, and arguably has increased given that technological progress has created cheaper means to make movies. Independent studios like A24 have made a name for themselves by picking niche low budget movies and making them commercially successful with innovative marketing. No, film is not dying, it is just adapting to the changes in culture and technology.
Nostalgia can be beautiful as long as it doesn’t paralyse. The future of content is going to be very weird very fast. Generative AI will soon conquer video as a medium and that will change everything. But I’m sure Jim will still have some aces up his sleeve!