Leah: WHOA check out baby big head! that thing is FREAKY
Juno: excuse me, I am a sacred vessel, ok? all you’ve got in your stomach is taco bell.

George Clooney received a 15 million dollars paycheck for his role in Ocean’s Twelve, while the entire budget for the hit indie film Juno was merely 6 million dollars; Juno grossed 142 million domestically, while the star studded Ocean’s Twelve only grossed 125 million, which is barely enough to cover the salaries of (in no order of famousness) Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and the other 12-5 =7 stars that appeared in the film.

The numbers don’t quite add up. What’s wrong? The movie stars era is, believe it or not, going away. Cascade theory states that if two or more accepts than rejects or two or more rejects than accepts occur, an accept or reject cascade would be born. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience: your friend invite you to a movie that you don’t know anything about. They tell you the plot and you are still not sure whether or not to go because frankly it sounds a little boring. Then they tell you, “but it stars Will Smith!” who cares if the average critic rating was only a B-? you’re in. People have been going to movies to see Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe since the 30s. The cascade is embedded in our culture and strong as ever.

Maybe that’s not quite true. Cascade theory also states that cascades are fragile : if they are so easy to start, they are easy to break as well. If people are able to receive slightly superior information than what’s built in the model, cascades could be overturned. If an individual in an accept cascade receives two reject private signals, the two signals together would be strong enough to offset the accept cascade and allow the person to choose according to his own reject signals, thus overturning the long lived accept cascade.

This concept applies here. For as long as we could remember, the movie industry was all about stars: actors, actresses, directors, you name it. People went to see movies out of admiration for these people as well as an assumed quality guarantee that comes along with it. However, as cinematographic technology rapidly developed and the pop culture revolutionized during the past few years, movies that are designed to address the two aforementioned aspects are proven to be more successful than movies starring people with big names. Just look at Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Transformers, and Spider Man. No one knew Elijah Wood or Daniel Radcliffe before they appeared in these films, yet these movies managed to become the highest grossing films of all time. People’s expectations in movies are shifting from seeing famous actors to great screenwriting, computer graphics, connections to our culture. When people had to choose between Julia Roberts and Transformers, more and more people are rejecting the star and choosing the robots because the extra expectations they have for Transformers outweigh its lack of stardom. As more and more people begin rejecting the big names, a reject cascade would form (it’s already forming), and a new acceptance cascade will appear for movies like 300, or even indie movies like Juno.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721687,00.html