Inception vs. Eclipse

August 31, 2010 at 11:08 pm (Movies)

Turns out the world wide theater-going audience actually has a good taste in film for once, and the box office numbers are actually showing it. Since January of this year, we’ve had a few surprise box office hits, from Leonardo Dicaprio’s Shutter Island to the surprising worldwide success of Robin Hood, which is even more shocking considering the film’s grab of $100 million in America (taking into consideration Iron Man 2 made more than that its opening weekend). I guess I’m somewhat happy that in the top place is Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (it could be Twilight), which has been a monumental success making more than a billion dollars worldwide. Coming in close behind it (and hopefully soon eclipsing it) is Disney’s other big hit, Toy Story 3 with less than 12 million behind. Disney became the first studio ever to have two billion dollar films within the same year, and theoretically it could happen again with Tron on the horizon.

Dreamworks has brought in quite a bit of dough with Shrek Forever After, much farther behind with around $700 million dollars. The green ogre’s last (?) outing was his least profitable, but with a $500 million profit, it’s hard to complain. However, it’s after that where my nerd spirit soars. Christopher Nolan’s intellectual outing, Inception, has been a huge success from a huge gamble for Warner Bros. The studio invested well over $150 million in the project, and has so far made close to $685 million worldwide. Inception not only proved creativity can win in the end for the box office, but it can also beat out crappy franchises directed only to make a buck, like the Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which is roughly 20 million dollars behind it. Inception came out about half a month after Eclipse, so chances are very strong the brain bending masterpiece will still come out on top. It really shows what happens when you make films strictly for a market just to make money off of them (7 months between the second and third film) and on the opposite end of the spectrum what can happen when a director spends 2 years by the sweat of his brow, his creative brain muscle, and a team of incredibly talented people put their minds together. Just in case you’re wondering, the rest of the list goes as follows.

• Iron Man 2-$620 Million
• Clash of the Titans-$490 Million
• How to Train Your Dragon-$490 Million
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time-$330 Milion
• Robin Hood-$310 Million

Maybe this will be the turning of a new page for Hollywood. Sure Hollywood will still be Hollywood at the end of the day. Franchises will still be milked, ridiculous projects will still be announced, critical hits will go unnoticed, and sequels will be both gloriously approved and others shot down in flames (cough *Anchorman* cough). However at the same time this will open the flood gates for more films like Inception, pushing the bounds of creativity, mindful films, and more directors doing what creative people do best, making creative things. Are all of these films inspired by that creative success going to be good? Of course not, but more creative things being made by creative people isn’t a bad thing by any means…