Anyway, you can't change her.

It would be good if the two of you can just agree to disagree. You won't try to force her to watch fantasy/sci fi, but she won't try to stop you from doing so yourself.

Uh, I'm inclined to agree with her about ratings and awards. In general, they aren't very good indicators of the actual quality of things. There are a lot of dumb people, with dumb tastes; awards are often given for dumb reasons, rather than quality.

It wouldn't kill you to give her favorite movies a try, unless you have good reason to know you'll hate them.

As for Lord of the Rings itself, as someone who has read the books a gabunch of times, the movies drive me CRAZY, as nearly nothing in them was in the books.

Just see if she'll agree to let YOU watch it, and you agree to stop insisting SHE watch it. (I can see why you'd want to watch it in the super-quality system, though. All the effects and critters and sets and stuff would be quite stunning.)

What I really think is driving the movie's success is three fold. First of all is the word of mouth. It may not fully embraced by the "geek" culture, but mainstream audiences are loving it. I run a movie theatre and I can't count the number of people I've heard coming out talking about how much they loved it. I'm hearing this from teenagers, adults, and senior citizens; and I'm hearing it from both men and women.

The second reason is that it's become something of an event that people want to be part of. Every time you see anything entertainment related, there's something about Avatar. For this reason, I think there are a lot of people who want to see what the hype is about.

Thirdly, you really can't under state the importance of 3D. 3D is accounting for something like 80% of Avatar's gross. Because of this, the average ticket price is $2.50-$3.00 higher than for other recent blockbusters like Transformers 2. If you were to go strictly by admissions, Avatar is probably only slightly ahead of Transformers 2.

Avatar is going to continue rolling along for at least a few more weeks. By the time it's done, the total North America box office take will probably be in the $650-$700 million range. That will rank it as the highest grossing movie of all time, but after you adjust for inflation, it probably won't be higher than #14-15 on the list – and even lower when you go by number of ticket sold.

*** Below this is additional information of interest ***

The important thing to keep in mind is that the box office charts don't really have any significance beyond giving people something to talk about. The dynamics of the movie industry have changed significantly several different times and it's difficult to compare releases from each period.

For example, Gone With the Wind came out in the pre-television days. Because of the lack of home entertainment options, the picture was able to play for years in theatres around the country – sometimes leaving an area and coming back several years later.

On the other hand, Star Wars had to compete with television which would have sapped away some of the audience.

Movies like ET had to compete with the growth of home video and movies like Batman had to compete with the growth of cable television.

Movies in the last 10 years or so are having to compete with DVD and the growth of movie pirating through the internet. And now Avatar is setting a bench mark for the age of 3D cinema.