There are few things that are less meaningful or interesting than news stories about mediocre films making tons of money. It really, really doesn’t matter to anyone of any depth or consequence. Obviously windfalls matter to certain people, of course, but they’re not the stuff of headlines. Or they shouldn’t be. They should be listed like stock prices and that’s all.

If anything, the massive success of The Hunger Games is a confirmation of a kind of cultural vapidity or failure. It says “look how malnourished and under-developed we are…look at the spiritual junk food we’re eating!”

Monster revenues can matter only to those directly benefitting in terms of payments and dividends, and even for them wealth isn’t all that interesting because they’ve been used to it for a long time, and if they’re young and new to having money (like Jennifer Lawrence) they have to learn how to keep themselves fresh and attuned despite the anesthetizing effect of being on easy street, and that’s more of a challenge than you might think.