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Even before its official release date, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams, was breaking box office records. (It made $57 million from its Thursday night previews.) After that, it seemed the movie was setting new records on a daily basis. But as is usually the case, it didn’t take long for the excitement to turn into a backlash. People looking to knock the movie and its fans down a couple of notches readily pointed at the rising ticket prices.

Basically, the argument states that the only reason The Force Awakens is making so much money is because of how much movie tickets cost these days. If we were to adjust ticket prices for inflation, a lot of other films would have actually made more money. And this, many would have you believe, is supposed to render all of the records The Force Awakens claimed meaningless. (Or at least make them less impressive)

This is hardly the first time this argument has reared its head. Countless think pieces and comments popped up in 2009 when, the former domestic box office champion, Avatar was writing itself into the record books with its own historic theatrical run. While this argument is not without merit, it is biased in that it only analyzes one side. The fact is that the world today is a very different place than it was in 1939. That is the year Gone with the Wind was released. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, it would be the box office champ with over $1.7 billion domestically.

But if you examine the world at the time Gone with the Wind was released, you will notice some very big differences from today. For starters, one can’t underestimate the power of novelty. At the time, cinema was still a nascent medium. And the simple ability to see moving images - with sound, no less - on the big screen was enough to attract a lot of moviegoers. These days, movies have to work a lot harder to entice audience interest.

Also, in 1939, Audiences weren’t allowed to be as picky about the movies they saw in theaters. Even if a movie only seemed kind of interesting, they had to make the trek to their local cinema or miss it completely. They didn’t have the option of waiting for the Blu-ray - or any other kind of home video release - to come out.

These days, people do have that option as well as many others. In 1939, people also did not have televisions. Now there are hundreds of shows, movies on demand and many other programs on TV that people can view in the comfort of their homes. In 1939, people couldn’t even dream of this. One could actually argue that a lot of the TV shows now have the quality and production value to rival theatrical releases. The video on demand release strategy does seem to be gaining popularity. This is yet another thing that didn’t exist in 1939 when the only option you had was to see a movie in the theater.

Of course, we can’t leave out one more small thing that didn’t exist in 1939, the Internet. These days, people can go to websites like Rotten Tomatoes and see hundreds of reviews of a movie and then decide if they still want to see it. Back then they had a few trade magazines, but for the most part if someone wanted to know if a movie was good, they had to see it. (Or know someone who saw it.) These days, with the advent of social media, people are barely getting out of the movie before they inform friends and followers what they think of it. Social media buzz, for better or worse, is not something movies had to deal with in 1939.

Another thing that Gone with the Wind did not have to worry about is piracy. These days, you can pay to see a new movie in theaters or you can pay five dollars - buy four and get one free - to someone on the street and just enjoy it at home. People can even download perfectly good working copies off the Internet for free. Obviously, that is something that people could not do in 1939.

Even the way movies are released has changed significantly since 1939. Back then, there was a lot less competition and movies stayed in theaters for a longer time. These days, theaters are much more crowded. Generally speaking, new releases usually only have a couple of weeks before the next would-be blockbuster hits the big screen. Also, people actually tend to forget - or don’t know - that Gone with the Wind was released in theaters at least nine different times over the span of 60 years. Are there nine different totals for Gone with the Wind? No, they are all simply added together.

Would The Force Awakens be number one if its tickets did not cost as much? That is a fair question, and it probably would not be. But if you are going to ask that question, then you should also ask another one. Would as many people have gone to see Gone with the Wind if they had as many options as modern audiences do? The answer would also be “probably not.”

The fact is that movies are charted by the amount of money they make, not the number of tickets sold. In any movie chart, you will see how much money a movie made but you will not see how many tickets were sold. That is the system for charting movie performance, and you can’t accept it for some movies and question it for others.

It is something to think about when someone only scrutinizes one side of the argument.