He who spends the most.
Now consider these two movies.
The one where it’s not the bad guy who gets paid the most money: it’s the hero of the story.
So it’s not the villain who gets the biggest paycheck? It’s the hero. Why do they get paid the most? Because, in a movie of this nature that is at the peak of its glory, the hero has to be the best. That’s just the way the world is, right?
I hope you’ve read all the way down to this point. As far as I know, I don’t need to tell you that I’m a big fan of all those who think the big-spending movie-viewer, or the huge, bad-doer movie-viewer, is the way the world really is. That’s as close as I’m willing to come to having to tell you that you are wrong. But I can’t say I know, and I don’t try to. I’m not saying you should try, but I can’t speak to the matter in such a way that you can be confident enough to conclude that anyone but a big-spending movie-viewer or a big-bad-doer movie-viewer is absolutely right. So don’t get upset when you decide that someone in your position is the problem here. As an example, consider this comment I got from someone I can’t name:
Hi, I agree that the movies you mentioned in your last article were some of the most expensive, but I disagree with the conclusion you drew that you could not justify their budgets. However, I don’t agree that the movies you mentioned were “not in any way a reflection of a society in which they would be made.” What your analysis does do is demonstrate that the society you are describing does not exist in the movies you mentioned. This is an area I have thought about and considered, and I’ve looked into the budgets of movies for which the public will never see a full budget. I’ve looked at budget sizes from the time period where movies were produced from the mid-1980’s up until the mid-1990’s. I have studied the budgets of The King’s Speech, Saving Private Ryan, and The Avengers. I’ve also gone through some films from various historical periods in history, and examined the distribution of the profits. I’ve made a map of the distribution of the movies in those categories. Now your analysis is based on the general distribution of