Blockbusters are now changing for a variety of reasons and have a bigger budget than ever. For the film industry, movies are about profits. For the director, its about profits and sharing their artistic views. Blockbusters are more able to become very creative with new technologies and have a complicated plot and still earn huge profits.
Watching Avatar is a great experience, and it reminds me of why I love watching movies in the first place. It’s a great movie to enjoy with friends and family. It has a great story, great characters, stunning visuals, and an innovative film style with advanced CGI. This movie is set in the year 2154 and sets place in a world called Pandora. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi who blue creatures with big eyes are and about 12 feet tall. The U.S. armed forces came to this world with one mission, to obtain a mineral Earth desperately needs. To venture onto Pandora, humans invented avatars. These avatars look like the Na’vi creatures, and they can see, taste, feel, and have all the same physical aptitudes as the Na’vi as well. They are controlled by humans, mainly scientists, who wanted to research the Pandora planet. The main character, Jake Sully, has been given a special avatar with a special mission from the U.S. military to infiltrate the Na’vi creatures and learn their ways. Using this knowledge, Jake with help the U.S. military find the sacred resource that they need from Pandora. That mission becomes compromised after he is saved by a female Na’vi named Neytiri and becomes accepted by the Na’vi as one of their own.
Avatar was released on December 10, 2009, and it is written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. It is an epic science fiction film with groundbreaking visual effects. It was sort of a political anti-war film as well which was relevant at the time because of the war in Afghanistan. On February 18, 2009, President Obama orders the deployment of 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan. Avatar is highly praised by film critics and the audience alike. The film had 9 total Academy Award nominations and won 3 of them including Best Visual Effects. It is a blockbuster film with a budget of $237 million and it earned $2.8 billion making it the highest grossing film at the time. Roger Ebert writes, “Avatar is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough.” Roger Ebert mentions how Avatar employs a new generation of special effects and many people doubted James Cameron. The people working on Avatar did a good job making the Na’vi characters. Ebert argues how extraordinary Avatar was and that James Cameron silenced his doubters.
Inception is a very complex movie and the plot may be hard to follow. Many viewers, such as myself, might need multiple viewings of this movie to fully grasp what’s going on. The main character, Leonardo DiCaprio, and his partner, Joseph Gordon-Levittare, are extractors who perform corporate espionage with advanced technology to infiltrate their targets subconscious. While in the target’s subconscious, they extract information through a shared dream. The whole movie is based on another premise called inception in which the main characters are tasked with implanting an idea in a person’s subconscious. This task was given to them by a powerful businessman, Ken Watanabe, which have never been done before. They are willing to try given the circumstances and the main character set up his team which includes an identity forger, a chemist, and a dream architect. The whole process is very complicated and it includes multiple dream levels with the whole team inserted into the shared dreams. The first hour of the movie is mostly spent explaining some of the process.
Inception was released on July 16, 2010, and it is written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. It is an original science fiction movie with many twists, great visuals, and many great action sequences. Inception is highly praised by film critics and audiences with an approval rating of 87% based on 359 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four of the following; Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. It had a budget of $160 million and made huge profits earning $828 million worldwide. Kirk Honeycutt from The Hollywood Reporter writes, “In a summer of remakes, reboots and sequels comes Inception, easily the most original movie idea in ages.” Kirk Honeycutt mentions how original Inception was and how Christopher Nolan outdid himself in this film. Inception became a worldwide hit and helped Nolan become the top heap of sci-fi all-stars. Honeycutt argues how great a movie Inception is because of the original plot and action sequences.
These two Blockbuster films had a few things in common and the film industry knew that these two films will become highly profitable. Both films had well known directors which was James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. James Cameron made many highly successful films including Titanic which was the highest grossing film at the time and held that record for 12 years. Christopher Nolan also made many highly successful films including Batman Begins, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight which generated huge profits. Both films had a huge budget, Avatar with $237 million and Inception with $160 million. Both films also had well known actors, great special effects, great action sequences, great storylines, and both was original in their own way thanks to the directors. Both directors made great use of the latest technologies for their film and both films earned an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. With everything put together, you get a highly profitable blockbuster film which is important in the film industry because they needed people to head to the theaters to watch movies. With all the changes in technology like DVD and online streaming services, it allowed more people to watch movies at home which made it harder for the film industry to get people to go out to watch films.
The videoclips above shows just how advanced and complicated it was to make these two films. For Avatar, James Cameron used brand new technology and techniques that made Avatar above the rest with its special effects during its release. In Inception, Christopher Nolan also used many different technologies and techniques for his movie. Many of the action scenes in Inception didn’t use much CGI computer effects, while Avatar was mostly all CGI when it came to the action scenes.
On August 31, 2009, The Walt Disney Company, parent company of ABC, acquires Marvel Entertainment. This is a big deal for the film industry because this means that there would be much more blockbuster films to come. Now Marvel movies can have a much bigger budget than before which will generate even bigger profits. The 2019 Marvel movie, Avengers: Endgame, had a budget of $400 million and grossed $2.798 billion which defeated James Cameron’s Avatar and became the highest grossing film of all time. On January 27, 2010, Apple launches the iPad which can do many things including watching movies. This new technology gave the film industry another way to generate profits.
Works Cited:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
Roger Ebert. Cameron retains his crown. RogerEbert.com. December 11, 2009Links to an external site.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/washington/18web-troops.htmlLinks to an external site.
https://money.cnn.com/2009/08/31/news/companies/disney_marvel/Links to an external site.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/01/27Apple-Launches-iPad/Links to an external site.
Hello Soonphon, your essay has included the same film one of us chose to compare. I have learned a lot more about this film than others that I have compared. I admire using that in my writing by the more outstanding information being presented in my work. your works related to the big course issues.
Hey Soonphon,
I knew that Inception was a very popular film, but from your post now I know that it took home four Academy Awards which is very impressive. The technology and special effects used in both these films were extraordinary and helped change the film industry. It’s also interesting to know we had so many troops being deployed to Afghanistan at the time of the film’s release.
Hi Soonphon!
Avatar is a film that explains worldwide colonization, but more in the cinema industry. Which I love so much, because of the fact that America was colonized by the Pilgrims. So, when you look at it differently, then you can also see the crude comparison to the English colonization of America, and the cruel treatment of the indigenous. On the other hand, Inception, a film that grasps reality. A topic that some people may not understand, such as me with the never-ending space. It hurts my brain to calculate space in different formats, because astral data is just that difficult to understand.