Avatar and The Tipping Point

There were many film journalists, everyone is a critic, who predicted James Cameron's Avatar would be lucky to get to $1Bil in box office.  I wondered why they thought the film couldn't be as successful as The Dark Knight.  After all, Hollywood's relentless push to put only content that we are somehow familiar with, be it sequels or remakes, is a trend that cannot last forever.  Now, Avatar has passed The Dark Knight in worldwide box office, yet I see more attacks of the film than articles about why it's doing to well.

I believe Avatar has done so well because it was able to reach what Malcolm Gladwell calls The Tipping Point, in a book of the same name. While I don't want to go too deep into the book, it's worth a read, Gladwell describes the "tipping point" for something as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."  With a film like Avatar, we reach a "tipping point" through word of mouth.  Talk of the film spreads like an epidemic to the point where the mass of people shift into must-see mode and an all-time box office return is possible.

So how do we relate this back to screenwriting?  I have two ways.  First, is what Gladwell calls "The Stickiness Factor," which is specific content of a message that renders its impact memorable.  Being memorable is the most important battle a script faces from when it first makes it to a reader's desk to when it finally hits the big screen.  I'd argue Avatar has done a terrific job at being memorable.  The WGA Nominators clearly thought so as well, despite the hate.

So what's memorable in your screenplay?  What happens in your story that will make people leave the theater and talk about it?  It doesn't have to be 3D or 10ft tall blue aliens.  It can be a line of dialogue, a character, or a cop getting his ear cut off.  If you think about it, all the films you love have really memorable moments, that's why you love them.  Have you made your script memorable enough to be one of your favorite films?

The second screenwriting takeaway is using the idea of a "tipping point" in your script.  *SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen The Dark Knight or Avatar.*  Both of these films have a point where you could say things boiled over for the characters in the story.  In The Dark Knight you had the death of Rachel, and in Avatar you have the destruction of the tree.  Both these "tipping point" moments cannot be reversed and, therefore, are a powerful moment in the story.  

While a "tipping point" in your script doesn't have to be as monumental as the destruction in Avatar, it should be in proportion to the scale of your film.  Avatar aims to be a huge epic and so a huge "tipping point" is needed, and Cameron delivers.  Do you have a "tipping point" scene in your script?  Is it memorable?  A film will challenge Avatar eventually for the records its setting, why can't it be yours?