Dead Men Don't Sell Movie Tickets

Warner Bros. "The Dark Knight" has brought more money than was wasted making "Waterworld" and "Last Action Hero." It's critically acclaimed and popular, and didn't even need Oscar buzz and a Celine Dion song to get it over the top. But the common line of thinking seems to be that Heath Ledger's overdose is what made everyone go check out "The Dark Knight," which means that basically, for us to see a good movie in droves, we have to be prompted by the same instinct that made people watch "Jackass." And since I now have internet access again, let me shut that down right now. Let me list the REAL reasons why "The Dark Knight" brung in all this cash.

1. Ticket price inflation.
I paid $10 to go see the damn movie. Back in 1989 when I went to go see "Batman," I paid $1.25. I never was good at percentages, but that's like, a 1000% increase, which means the first Batman would have had to sell five times as many tickets just to reach the same level. I think I paid about $5 or $6 to go see "Titanic," the reigning box-office champ, back in 1997. In 11 years, ticket prices have doubled, so it's just a matter of time that a movie blows by that record, because unlike the music industry, they don't count tickets sold. They count the box office. That's why "The Dark Knight" only leads the original "Star Wars" by about $18 million, despite the fact that "Star Wars" came out 31 years ago. Back then, five bucks could get a seven-person family into the movies with change left over for snacks. So when we get to the inevitable point of paying $20 a ticket, probably sometime in 2010, judging by the current rate of inflation, even "Ghost Dad" will be able to top $600 million.

2. It was shown more times, on more screens, than any movie, ever.
It was shown on 4,366 screens, which means that they were counting art house theaters and the really big TVs at celebrities' houses. So even at reasonable ticket prices, if a movie is showing at least four times every three hours in almost 4,400 locations, I'd say it stands a good chance of breaking records. It's like Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals last week. Sure, he won all eight races, but he had eight chances to get eight gold medals. Everyone else only gets a shot at one gold, unless they're in synchronized diving, in which case, they stood no chance against the underage, Chinese man-machines.

3. There wasn't anything else playing.
"Iron Man" and "Indiana Jones" went on first, because they were smart. There wasn't another movie after "The Dark Knight" that stood a chance. I know there were a lot of people who thought that Brendan Fraser was up to the challenge, but there's a reason why no one listens to those people, and it's probably the Down's Syndrome they were afflicted with at birth. As a result, "The Dark Knight" stayed at the top of the charts for four weeks.

4. It wasn't his death, it was his well-received final performance that made people watch. There's a difference.
Because let's face it, I don't remember there being a media blitz for "The Crow" when Brandon Lee died. Or how many of you went to see the Aaliyah's tour de force, "Queen of the Damned?" Now that the three of you have put your hands down, it begins to come clear that it wasn't Heath Ledger's death that made everyone go to the theater. The hype around his performance was already starting before he died. There was a curiosity factor involved, because people wanted to see Heath Ledger completely disappear into this character, not because they thought, "Hey, maybe they'll accidentally leave some death footage in." To further prove my point, how many of you really believe that Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes' deaths are going to up the gross on "Soul Men?" Hey, two of them died...the gross should go up twice as much!

5. It was a good damn movie.
But that couldn't have been a factor, right? Not when the co-star of the movie died. Because a well timed death makes all the difference. It was only a comic book movie so good that calling it a "comic book movie" is really selling it short. It was a good movie, period.

At least the execs at Warner Bros. know that it wasn't Heath Ledger's death that caused the movie's success. Unfortunately for all of us, they believe it was the dark tone of the movie that made it so popular. And with these people being the copycats that they are, they want to apply this dark tone to all of their other comic book properties. Because nothing screams popular like a realistic, dark and brooding Superman. Only this time, when he's stalking Lois in the elevator, he'll have to do it with binoculars from behind the bushes like a real stalker. Here's hoping he gets arrested like a real stalker, too.