TPM falling further and further behind Titanic ...

[Darth23]

Hey Kyp!

[Kyp Durron]

What's up Darth23! Nice to see all you guys again!

[JonathanLB]

Well that is an interesting take on the situation.

The slow box office season, though, does not mean that people have all of the sudden become tired of films, or that they hate movies and don't want to go to theaters. Usually, lulls in box office activity result from inferior film product.

Aside from Titanic, the other movies that were out at the time just weren't worth seeing. Titanic was a major summer blockbuster that happened to be pushed from its release frame during the summer into the still-lucrative holiday season. Bond provided some initial competition, and there were some good films out in December and the first part of January, but then Titanic faced films that were seriously making $6 or $7 million in second place in some occassions.

Because people enjoyed Titanic, they took their friends and returned to see it again and again, or they recommended it strongly to others, and nothing else was in the marketplace to convince moviegoers that seeing Titanic over and over was a bad decision. Heck, I felt the same way about summer 1999. Most of the films weren't worth my money anyway, so I just watched TPM a ton of times. I loved the summer of 2000, though, and I hate to say it, but I think that if TPM had come out in the summer of 2000, I'd have seen it at least ten fewer times. I couldn't have resisted seeing M:I-2, Gladiator, or X-Men, among others, whereas nothing during the summer of '99 forced me to change my plan of just seeing TPM, hehe.

Titanic's success was remarkable simply because few movies in history have ever exhibited such phenomenal staying power. There have been more impressive box office runs, such as A New Hope's, because the film had a relatively dinky budget and managed to stay at #1 for something like 17 weeks in a row, and 21 non-consecutive weeks total. Nevertheless, comparing ANH's success to Titanic's is unfair because in 1977 many movies played all summer long and in general movies enjoyed more time in theaters, but Titanic competed in a marketplace where most films can never spend two weekends at #1, let alone frickin' FIFTEEN.

Also, I'm not criticizing Titanic's success for the lack of competition that was present during its release. First, that is no fault of Titanic, and second, A New Hope also faced pretty weak competition. Many of the highest grossing movies have taken advantage of weak box office periods, and the movies that competed against ANH were all pretty much lightweights. I think ANH topped the nearest film in 1977 by FOUR times, which is pretty much amazing. Titanic beat Lost World in 1997 by almost three times, which is also incredible, but ANH's margin of victory shows how much moviegoers cared about the rest of the films in release, and that is to say not much! lol.

You won't find criticisms of Titanic in my book, though you will find praise of its success. I certainly do write a fair amount about the rivarly between Titanic fans and Star Wars fans, because I feel it is interesting and set the stage for TPM at the box office. I had some comments from Lucas about the "battle," and also mentioned the media's creation of it, basically. Yeah it existed, but the media stoked the flames through their articles, many of which probably pissed Titanic fans off to no end (such as, "Everyone knows that The Phantom Menace will crush Titanic like a toy boat in a bathtub," or whatever). Nevertheless, the comments that initially irked Titanic fans later came back to piss Star Wars fans off too, because the reason for some people's criticism of TPM's success stems from the expectation that it WOULD *without a doubt* defeat Titanic. Nothing is so certain, and everyone (including me) should have realized that expecting a prequel (or a part in a series) to become the highest grossing movie is probably not realistic. That is not to say it cannot happen, though, and that is not to say anyone was wrong for thinking it would.

For instance, how could you look at all of the media hype for TPM and NOT feel like it would become #1? It's hard to see through the hype, sometimes. Star Wars fans should be incredibly happy that TPM didn't pull a Godzilla or a Batman and Robin, or a Lost World. Those films fell like rocks at the box office, and TPM really did well. It's hilarious that the media would see any shame in becoming the second highest grossing movie of all-time worldwide, and the second highest grossing movie in the U.S. in one theatrical release (since ANH, ranked 2nd, took 6 releases to get there). I dunno, personally I'd be pretty darn happy with the 25 or so records that TPM set. $50 million speed increments from $100 to $350 million, highest grossing non-holiday Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (yup every day). Highest grossing non-holiday weekend, highest grossing second weekend in history, the records continue. Not a movie to be treated as a failure; the media is pretty absurd! LOL.

[CMJ]

That lull that exists every year from Mid-January till late Narch(or April) lets Big x-mas holiday films(like say CASTAWAY) and Oscar contenders(like say TRAFFIC) to do continued business for weeks and weeks. It happens every year. What made TITANIC so incredible was that it was both. To say it had little competition is very true in a sense. But films like GOOD WILL HUNTING(Oscar film) and AS GOOD AS IT GETS(see GWH) did good biz throughout the peiod too. Both grossed over 130M I believe, which is quite good.