The Dark Knight...of Bad Math

So, The Dark Knight. I still haven't seen it. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "You'll go see Mamma Mia! but you won't see Dark Knight? Exactly how much cock do you chug?" Well, the answer is none of your goddamn business. I will say that I fully intend to go see The Dark Knight, preferably when there aren't lines that wrap around the building. I'm thinking a weeknight.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. I want to talk about something that really gets under my skin, and that's bad math. Specifically, when people talk about numbers with a time dimension in nominal terms. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.

The Dark Knight has made a shit-ton of money in a short period of time. At last count, $313,781,677 domestically in 10 days. I'll grant you, that's a lot of dough. So much so, that there's chatter about it breaking Titanic's record. And that's when I get pissed off.

Here's the thing: Titanic doesn't have a record. $600 million is a lot of money, yeah, but a record it ain't. Even though this shows Titanic at the top, that doesn't mean anything. Why? Look at the number 2 film. Star Wars came out in 1977. Do you think you could buy as much with a dollar in 1997 as you could in 1977? No, you couldn't.

Which brings me to using nominal values to describe something with a time dimension. In this case, looking at box office receipts in terms of today's money becomes useless after only a few years, let alone a few decades.

So let's get the real value by adjusting for inflation. Oh ho, this paints quite a different picture, doesn't it? Titanic tumbles all the way to #6. Still respectable, but not nearly #1, not by a half a billion dollars. That's right, a movie released today would have to do 1.5 billion dollars worth of domestic business in order to break Gone with the Wind's record. Not likely. Possible, but I don't know if any movie ever again would sell that many tickets.

Oh, and The Dark Knight? $300 million in 10 days is impressive, but that doesn't even put it in the Top 100 on the all-time list. Too bad, Bats.