by Jeffrey Wright

Created on: April 23, 2010

Which is was the better movie is the core question when it comes to comparing this past summers blockbuster  Avatar, staring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver, With 1997’s blockbuster Titanic Staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.


Having seen both, one on video the other in movie theaters, I would have to say that Avatar definitely deserved to have beat out Titanic, by a long shot!  Titanic is still a great movie.  There were scientific explanations presented that showed new understanding of how the unsinkable ship was proven indeed sinkable, even explaining how the ships bow and stern ended up in two different places.

But alas, Titanic, though a brilliant piece of cinematography, lacks something when compared to Avatar.  Originality.  We’re not talking about set design necessarily or any of the technical things that go into making a movie necessarily.  But originality in storyline.  Titanic was based on real events that have been told over and over again from different perspectives, granted many if not most of them being in documentary form.  The most notable titanic movie, stay 1997’s version, was a movie called “A Night To Remember” which was filmed in 1953.  


In fact, according to The Internet Movie Database or IMDB, there was even a horror movie made in 1999 called “Titanic 2000.”  Granted ,if you look up this movie you will see that it takes place in the year 2000 as the title suggests, and is about a vampire, but where did the idea of using a ship called “Titanic” come from if not for that famous ship?  So though it is unarguably one of the most important and tragic events in modern industrial history, it is by far one of the most overdone stories in modern history, be it in entertainment or documentary form.


Avatar, however, is not based on real events, stay from the clear environmental issues it brings up through the movie.  The sets are not designed after any real place, the creatures are not real creatures.  At its core, Avatar is a movie that is completely made up out of the imagination of a brilliant writer and director.  To create a world from scratch takes much creativity on the part of both the director, and on the part of the artists and computer technicians that ran the CGI for the movie.  All that needed to be done with Titanic was simply go to the company who built the original luxury liner in the first place, present the idea and get blue prints for the key locals on the ship to be recreated, which Cameron did.


Avatar, because of its originality in writing, set design and special effects most defiantly deserved to beat out Titanic as highest earning box office movie.  It’s a superior movie in every way, carried a strong message to its viewers and was a lot of fun to watch.  Titanic was too long, boring in many ways, and based off an overdone historical event, though again an important one in modern history.

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