[GreenLantern2814]

In the early days of the internet, I would spend an inordinate amount of time on the message boards of the IMDB. It used to be this groovy place where people who liked movies would talk about movies with other people who also liked movies.

It has since become a festering wasteland of 'DARK KNIGHT IS BETTER THAN AVENGERS' and "80 MILLION OPENING??? FLOP!!!!' and so on.

Polite disagreements are a thing of the past, I understand this. I'm at a loss, however, to explain why every other movie has ten threads about the box office returns for every thread about the actual film. Maybe I'm in the minority, but does the amount of money a film earns impact anyone's ability to enjoy that film? Did anyone leave Pacific Rim feeling awesome, see that it was going to struggle to make its money back and go 'well #### this Jaeger bull#### then'? I don't think they did.

I confess, there are moments when I'm curious to see how a movie does, and my primary interest is usually driven by:

1. I liked the movie and I hope it makes enough to ensure the people involved get to do more things I might also like.

OR

2. I'm legitimately interested to see how many big budget cash grabs need to fail miserably before Hollywood takes a hint.

I run into more people than I think I should who's go-to argument when debating a film's merits is 'but how much money did it make?' and to that I say 'who cares?'. It doesn't matter if Battleship ended up grossing $300 million worldwide. All that tells me is that there's $300 million worth of humanity out there that can easily be tricked.

Obviously money plays a role in determining what movies get produced and distributed. I can't understand the level of importance placed on it by the movie-going public.