10 Most Overrated Things About 2010 (PHOTOS)

This has been a vintage year for overrated things and people. Sure, every year is a vintage for that, but as some people have noted, it's especially fitting that my book "Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History" was released in 2010. (Did you notice that subtle plug? Cool, huh? Second sentence!)

Well, nobody has really said anything about that, but in a year that allegedly gave us "the most successful movie ever," predicted "the biggest TV event in history," and announced that at least one artist (and one group of television stars) were "bigger than the Beatles," we knew that hyperbole was alive and sick. In the cause of bringing perspective (and shameless book promotion), here are the 10 most overrated things about the past 12 months ...

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Avatar

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Movie history was made in 2010, when James Cameron’s Avatar surpassed his previous blockbuster, Titanic, as “the most successful movie ever”, based on worldwide box-office. The problem is, this is all Hollywood hype. A look at Box Office Mojo, and their list of the all time top movies adjusted for inflation, shows that it's a mere 14th place, well behind the likes of Doctor Zhivago and 101 Dalmatians! Even Titanic makes it to #6. For all the hype, "adjusted" is the only fair way to measure box-office success. In US box-office, Avatar's adjusted gross is $773,179,000. The champion is still Gone with the Wind (1939), whose adjusted gross is a huge $1,606,254,800. In 1939 dollars, that was only $198,676,459 - but it means that it was seen by considerably more people than Avatar, and those dollars could buy you a heck of a lot more 71 years ago than Avatar's comparatively meager returns could buy you right now. While it’s impossible to work out the worldwide gross, let’s just say that, even in the UK, the story of Scarlett O’Hara was the biggest film ever. We also heard that Avatar would change filmmaking forever. It’s too early to judge, of course… but we’ve heard it all before. 3D was meant to change cinema back in the 1950s. Cinema changed, as always, but it didn’t go 3D.

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Movie history was made in 2010, when James Cameron’s Avatar surpassed his previous blockbuster, Titanic, as “the most successful movie ever”, based on worldwide box-office. The problem is, this is all Hollywood hype. A look at Box Office Mojo, and their list of the all time top movies adjusted for inflation, shows that it's a mere 14th place, well behind the likes of Doctor Zhivago and 101 Dalmatians! Even Titanic makes it to #6. For all the hype, "adjusted" is the only fair way to measure box-office success. In US box-office, Avatar's adjusted gross is $773,179,000. The champion is still Gone with the Wind (1939), whose adjusted gross is a huge $1,606,254,800. In 1939 dollars, that was only $198,676,459 - but it means that it was seen by considerably more people than Avatar, and those dollars could buy you a heck of a lot more 71 years ago than Avatar's comparatively meager returns could buy you right now. While it’s impossible to work out the worldwide gross, let’s just say that, even in the UK, the story of Scarlett O’Hara was the biggest film ever.

We also heard that Avatar would change filmmaking forever. It’s too early to judge, of course… but we’ve heard it all before. 3D was meant to change cinema back in the 1950s. Cinema changed, as always, but it didn’t go 3D.

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