This is the third or fourth Hair Balls entry I've had posted on Fark, and I'm actually amused that their commenters now rank above those on YouTube, IMDb, or the Chron in terms of reading comprehension and grammatical ability.
That isn't saying much, of course, and there's still plenty of deliberate or otherwise obtuseness on display. My favorite for this was the person who assumed I was excluding myself from the "doofus with a keyboard and a lingering affection for Aliens" category, which was supposed to make it apparent that my box office predictions for Avatar are about as scientifically reasoned out as 90% of the other internet dipshits out there.
Which is to say, not at all.
Look, I don't want Cameron to fail. The guy may be an egomaniac and an asshole (unlike every other director in Hollywood, apparently), but the man responsible for The Terminator and Aliens gets a lot of slack from me. And while Titanic wasn't my cup of tea, it did what it was supposed to do: transport the audience to that particular White Star liner for three hours. And make a metric fuckton of money.
But I stand by my assertion that - while visually arresting - Avatar just doesn't look all that interesting to me. I have nothing more than a gut feeling telling me it will open decently, and have some legs early on because of people's desire to see it in IMAX. It will probably perform well, but "well" versus almost $2 billion for your previous movie, when this one cost maybe twice as much to make, isn't what Fox is hoping for. And whatever the spin when the smoke clears, not topping Titanic is going to be viewed as a disappointment.
And if it tanks - which I really don't see happening - well, that's going to make December a lot more fun than I was anticipating.