Cold Man Runs to Fire

Crappy Hack J.J. Abrams Sucks-up to James Cameron

James Cameron, in the words of Stan Winston, is "The ultimate pioneer." J.J. Abrams, in the words of David Brennan, is "The ultimate hack."

So why the heck is this hack running around fanboy gatherings promoting James Cameron's works? And does this make Avatar shitty by association? And does this mean we're going to have to endure other worthless people trying to legitimize themselves by cozying up to other great ones?

The answers, respectively, are:

1. Trying to gain sci-fi cred.
2. Not if I can wipe my memory of this image.
3. Yes.

Sci-fi website i09.com reported that J.J. Abrams was wearing an t-shirt for 'Avatar' during one those inane panel discussions at a pop culture "convention" (where fans pay for the privilege of being propagandized by the film studios for three straight days). Apparently, the shirt had some all-but-meaningless schematics from the movie (the suit humans have to wear to survive the methane-rich Pandora atmosphere), which was excuse enough to send the wannabe fanboys tripping over themselves in an attempt to divine meaning from the bizarre promotion.

Well, as long as Cameron doesn't start wearing Mission Impossible 3 t-shirts, I'll be able to withstand this. But if he does (or, for that matter, if he wears Cloverfield baseball caps), I'm going to have serious doubts about whether he's starting to show signs of late-middle-age dimensia.

In all seriousness, let's quantify how much J.J. Abrams is the doppelganger of the great James Cameron.

James Cameron's last movie, opened with a pretty-darn modest $28 million (yes, that was even modest in 1997). Once people saw the movie, they told their acquaintances to go and see it, who then told their acquaintances to see it. Very soon, before Steven Spielberg and George Lucas could say, "What the hell just happened?!?" the movie not only became the most successful movie of all time....it became the number-one movie of all time by a margin so big that you could fit two blockbusters between it and its closest competitor.

So, in honor of this masterpiece of genuine public appreciation, let's quickly rig a method to quantify how much people actually like a movie, and name it thusly. "The Titan Grade" will simply divide a movie's opening weekend gross by its total gross (North American figures only; folks in Sri Lanka and Russia only go to watch the pretty America pictures and don't have to listen to J.J. Abrams's embarassingly bad Syd Field-approved dribble.)

The Titan Score is figured thusly:

1-(Opening Weekend Gross/Total Domestic Gross)

Okay, it's as basic as can be, and it's hardly comprehensive or definitive (movies that open in limited release can't be measured at all). But still, using this system, it can be comfortably stated that, for any two movies released in the same timeframe, the movie with the higher score was better received by the moviegoing public. (Clearly, I'm no Blaise Pascal!)

Titanic's Titan Grade is 95%. (1-($28,638,131/600,788,188)

J.J. Abrams's most celebrated phony-fanboy-frolic, Cloverfield, scores a 50%. His other cinematic soul vacuum, Mission Impossible 3 (no, these "movies" don't merit hyperlinks), had an almost equally abyssmal Titan Grade of 34%. (Now, does this mean that his next magnum crapus, Star Trek, is going to suck, too? Well, yeah, it does. The man hacks more than Woody Harrelson and Tommy Chong at Hash Bash.)

Everything James Cameron is, in other words, J.J. Abrams is not.

So why is he running around turning himself into a walking billboard for Avatar? Well, I'm guessing it's because of an old expression: "When it's cold outside, people run towards the fire."