Editorial - James Cameron's Avatar: The Sprousse Mousse of Modern Movies

As has been documented on many movie sites, James Cameron's Avatar is storming the box office and has become the biggest movie since Cameron's previous box office champion Titanic by grossing 1.6 billion worldwide in just 5 weeks and crossing the $500 million mark at the US Box Office in the same space, just as Mr. Burns's Sprousse Mousse promised to carry 200 passengers from New York's Idyllwild Airport to the Belgian Congo in seventeen minutes, despite the fact it was just quite a nice model.

But one question remains: why has this film made so much money so quickly, well I've decided to have a crack at it and there are a couple of answers as to why.

Firstly, the film is designed for the big screen experience right from the start, most movies today are designed for Plasma, LCD and LED screens as well as little iPod screens and laptop monitors and as a result, they lose some of the grandeur that comes with a good big screen experience, Avatar rectifies this in a big way with its outstanding visuals that virtually demand themselves to be seen in a cinema with a nice big screen, comfortable seating plus good popcorn and projection.

Secondly, the film has that rare appeal that crosses the boundaries of cinema audiences, most films today only appeal to certain subsections of that audience, Transformers 2 being a prime example where the majority of its money came from families with young children and 14-17 year olds wanting to perve on Megan Fox the entire time, the Cameron film appeals to one and all and at both of the screenings I attended there was a good mixture.

And lastly, the film itself is just a damn good film that like most of Cameron's films, deserve to be seen more than once as it contains so many small details one will miss on the first showing, particularly the CG work as mentioned before which for the first time since Cameron's own Terminator 2 back in 1991, it is handled with real characterization and contains a soul in all of it, when it comes to the landscape, the creatures and the Na'vi itself.

Now those aren't the definitive answers as to why but reasons I feel as to why this film has smashed the box office in a big big way.