Avatar broke box office records, is still the second highest grossing movie ever, and won a bunch of awards and acclaim. Fox/Disney has ordered four sequels too and most people seemed to at least like the movie. But it seems to have zero relevance in pop culture. Sam Worthington isn't a star, Zoe Saldana is probably better known for playing Gamora, and Sigourney Weaver is much better known for the Aliens franchise and even Ghostbusters. Aliens is a high bar, but you'd think a hugely successful movie would be able to work its way in there. Titanic launched DiCaprio's career and has the iconic "king of the world" scene, and more recently Jurassic World sent Chris Pratt to full blown movie star status. Even discounting high grossing movies that come from established franchises (anything MCU, Star Wars, F&F or Harry Potter) franchises like Frozen and Despicable Me were able to become huge breakout hits and sell tons of merch. Maybe the sequels will establish is as a big franchise, but it seems like no one ever talks about it or references it. I even had to title this thread "James Cameron's Avatar" so people wouldn't think I was talking about Airbender. I don't think people are clamoring for four sequels either? All just very weird for a movie that was so successful to fade so fast.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
The curious case of James Cameron's Avatar
- Thread starter Celticpride
- Start date
i was never really that invested in the avatar hype, but wasn't a lot of the appeal/marketing/whatever to do with the 3d? rather than the actual film itself.
Sam Worthington is absolutely a star nowadays, he was utterly unknown before the film happened and is since a known b-lister.
10 years ago I would say the movie DID occupy significant mindshare in pop culture. However this was both 1) the end of the teen fantasy era and 2) the beginning of the superhero era. Bigger fish came along, perhaps a world without avengers would have seen avatar 2 in 2012.
The film also made extremely important contributions towards the acceptance of cgi on screen; until avatar people would probably have discounted cgi backgrounds as star wars prequel garbage. Now it's a rarity to see a real background when you can just generate one instead.
I always find it irritating when people say "nobody can name a character! Nobody can name a single line!" Ok, will you name a line from gone with the wind that isn't "frankly my dear..."? Can you name any characters from doctor zhivago? How about character names of titanic beyond the main pair? Avatar's cgi-centric focus on its main scenes likely contributed to a lack of YouTube/gif sharing (in 2010 YouTube was barely rolling out 720p and "gifs with sound" did not even exist), contributing to a lack of "memes" to be spread, unlike say animated films or stills of lord of the rings.
The film is good, it's cinematographicly adequate, the side characters are awesome, the art looks great. Most people who say it made no impression on pop culture have probably never seen it! I can quote you every line of colonel quaritch and parker Selfridge. To relegate the film to "box office eyeball porn" and not look at the excellent side character story woven in, especially in the director's cut, is a terrible mistake.
-avatar stan
10 years ago I would say the movie DID occupy significant mindshare in pop culture. However this was both 1) the end of the teen fantasy era and 2) the beginning of the superhero era. Bigger fish came along, perhaps a world without avengers would have seen avatar 2 in 2012.
The film also made extremely important contributions towards the acceptance of cgi on screen; until avatar people would probably have discounted cgi backgrounds as star wars prequel garbage. Now it's a rarity to see a real background when you can just generate one instead.
I always find it irritating when people say "nobody can name a character! Nobody can name a single line!" Ok, will you name a line from gone with the wind that isn't "frankly my dear..."? Can you name any characters from doctor zhivago? How about character names of titanic beyond the main pair? Avatar's cgi-centric focus on its main scenes likely contributed to a lack of YouTube/gif sharing (in 2010 YouTube was barely rolling out 720p and "gifs with sound" did not even exist), contributing to a lack of "memes" to be spread, unlike say animated films or stills of lord of the rings.
The film is good, it's cinematographicly adequate, the side characters are awesome, the art looks great. Most people who say it made no impression on pop culture have probably never seen it! I can quote you every line of colonel quaritch and parker Selfridge. To relegate the film to "box office eyeball porn" and not look at the excellent side character story woven in, especially in the director's cut, is a terrible mistake.
-avatar stan
I think the biggest cultural impact this had for me was that it reminds me of a bygone era. The spectacle surrounding it was crazy, and I remember watching it in a packed theater with the 3D glasses and everything. Other than Avengers Infinity War/Endgame I can't remember any movies in the past ten years generating the same kind of hype. It was exciting at the time and the first time I can remember a phenomenon like that happening.
I also watched it again at home a few months later. It was most likely the last movie I ever rented from the local Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/whatever and I certainly remember watching it in my "game room" using my PS2. Nowadays video rental places don't exist, my "game room" is just a basement, and the PS2 is collecting dust somewhere since I mostly use my Switch.
So yeah while I don't remember anything about the movie itself, I have some pretty heavy nostalgia for it since it came out when I was just becoming a teenager. It was the first movie craze I ever participated in, and also marked the end of an era for movie renting. I'll most likely end up watching it again before the first of the many sequels comes out.
I also watched it again at home a few months later. It was most likely the last movie I ever rented from the local Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/whatever and I certainly remember watching it in my "game room" using my PS2. Nowadays video rental places don't exist, my "game room" is just a basement, and the PS2 is collecting dust somewhere since I mostly use my Switch.
So yeah while I don't remember anything about the movie itself, I have some pretty heavy nostalgia for it since it came out when I was just becoming a teenager. It was the first movie craze I ever participated in, and also marked the end of an era for movie renting. I'll most likely end up watching it again before the first of the many sequels comes out.
I also stan Avatar, it's a film I try to re-watch at least once a year and I don't really buy in to the whole discrediting notion of it just being "Pocahontas 2.0". I love sci-fi worldbuilding and it's similar in vein to Halo's extended universe, albeit slightly less technologically evolved. 11 years later it still looks absolutely gorgeous and it's a shame it took this long for sequels to be in the works. Gato hit most of the other points I would've brought up.
Honestly I'm far more baffled by this movie than OP is by Avatar. Whenever you look up lists of the highest grossing movies adjusted for inflation you often see it in the top 10, so it must have been pretty fuckin huge back in its time, not at the level of stuff like Gone With The Wind but still. And yet I swear to god in all my years hanging around the Internet and reading/watching the discussions of everyone from professional critics to Youtube personalities to average consumers I have never heard anyone acknowledge Doctor Zhivago in any capacity. 2001, Psycho, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Dr. Strangelove are all 60s movies which still have lasting legacies to the modern day in some form whether it be praising and acknowledging their achievements or even spawning jokes (e.g. the "I how I learned to stop worrying and love the X" joke derived from Strangelove's full title), but Doctor Zhivago can't even get that. What's the movie about? Was/is it any good? Why did it make bank when it launched? What's its impact and legacy within the film industry, if any? Fuck if I know, and fuck if anyone else knows.
as someone whos seen none of these movies and doesnt really have an opinion on the matter, this is kind of unfair because all three of these movies predate the birth of most users on this site
titanic may be closer to 50/50 but thats neither here nor there. avatar at least came out within the lifetime of everyone itt
duality of manPocahontas in Space just wasn't a very good movie
I had the same feelings when I watched the movie for the very first time but after also every producers tried to make their movies in 3D just because of the hype that Avatar has created and almost every time the final result was... a big disappointment.
this movie is so irrelevant i thought the title was about like a profile-pic avatar and i completely forgot about the movie (this is actually true, i wish it was just a joke)
but yeah, i kinda liked the movie as a kid, but i think what might have happened is: the move was like, okay, but relatively forgettable to the general population so lots of people watched it at the cinemas and then like... never bothered again, unlike something like endgame, which was a huge cultural hit. now what might have caused this is a much harder question to answer... i think a lot of the biggest franchises seem to have some of sequel-ization of sorts, that makes people more likely to follow, and become a part of it's culture, such as the mcu, star wars, lord of the rings, harry potter, etc. and avatar didn't really have that? even something like a disney movie, you can clearly recognize the disney-ness of it, so i think it's somewhat rare to find more references to avatar due to it only being one movie and not having as much to draw off of, compared to these other franchises. avatar felt like a standalone thing, and they never really capitalized on it to try to make it a big cultural hit.
so here's another question: why didn't they make an avatar sequel? why didn't they capitalize on the success of the movie by then as opposed to doing it only 13 years later? and it turns out their main problems seems to have been cameron's ambitions, he had already planned out two sequels by 2006, even before the movie came out, but the team wasn't able to feasibly get it done until now, i guess you can read more about it in this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_2#Production, but basically worldbuilding for a movie of this scope takes a lot of work and effort, and i imagine the production of the original avatar also took plenty of time, with them writing a ton of worldbuilding stuff that didn't even make the movie (you can read about it here: https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki). so yeah, i imagine between that and the technical stuff, it slowed down the production a ton, and the move didn't really have much of a grip in general culture, so it was just kind of forgotten? maybe the sequels will remedy that, who knows? but yeah, definitely an interesting case.
as for me personally, i really enjoyed the movie as a kid, and i've probably grown bored of it due to how many times i watched it as a kid LOL. but yeah it's still a very nice movie! and i'm very eager for the sequels, the only real qualm i have against it, was how the soundtrack of the original was handled, which is really enfuriating, if you wanna know more about the soundtrack, i'd recommend this video by sideways: https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki!
but yeah, i kinda liked the movie as a kid, but i think what might have happened is: the move was like, okay, but relatively forgettable to the general population so lots of people watched it at the cinemas and then like... never bothered again, unlike something like endgame, which was a huge cultural hit. now what might have caused this is a much harder question to answer... i think a lot of the biggest franchises seem to have some of sequel-ization of sorts, that makes people more likely to follow, and become a part of it's culture, such as the mcu, star wars, lord of the rings, harry potter, etc. and avatar didn't really have that? even something like a disney movie, you can clearly recognize the disney-ness of it, so i think it's somewhat rare to find more references to avatar due to it only being one movie and not having as much to draw off of, compared to these other franchises. avatar felt like a standalone thing, and they never really capitalized on it to try to make it a big cultural hit.
so here's another question: why didn't they make an avatar sequel? why didn't they capitalize on the success of the movie by then as opposed to doing it only 13 years later? and it turns out their main problems seems to have been cameron's ambitions, he had already planned out two sequels by 2006, even before the movie came out, but the team wasn't able to feasibly get it done until now, i guess you can read more about it in this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_2#Production, but basically worldbuilding for a movie of this scope takes a lot of work and effort, and i imagine the production of the original avatar also took plenty of time, with them writing a ton of worldbuilding stuff that didn't even make the movie (you can read about it here: https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki). so yeah, i imagine between that and the technical stuff, it slowed down the production a ton, and the move didn't really have much of a grip in general culture, so it was just kind of forgotten? maybe the sequels will remedy that, who knows? but yeah, definitely an interesting case.
as for me personally, i really enjoyed the movie as a kid, and i've probably grown bored of it due to how many times i watched it as a kid LOL. but yeah it's still a very nice movie! and i'm very eager for the sequels, the only real qualm i have against it, was how the soundtrack of the original was handled, which is really enfuriating, if you wanna know more about the soundtrack, i'd recommend this video by sideways: https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki!
I think I watched Avatar on DVD in Ireland when there was still hype around it but I hardly remember anything about it. I remember them jumping out of a helecopter-thing and there being blue people and something about cryogenic freezing, and I remember it looking really good, but otherwise I just draw a blank on it—it didn’t really leave an impression on me.
Granted I was 12 at the time so it may just be a matter of me not fully absorbing it.
Granted I was 12 at the time so it may just be a matter of me not fully absorbing it.
"How quotable is the movie" is a pretty dumb metric for quality but this feels like a very flawed argument. Gone with the Wind and Doctor Zhivago are shit movies but I could still tell you that GwtW also has noteable line "God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again!" and that Doctor Zhivago in fact features one Doctor Zhivago. Titanic probably has a lot of overlap in fans with Avatar so its another weird choice. Billy Zane's most important role ever was as the douche fiance Cal. But then you also have historical characters like captain Smith, "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, and Ismay, who history and the film have gone out of their way to villainize in spite of a seeming lack of wrongdoing on his part. There's also the heroic shipbuilder but I'm blanking on his name. All real people who have gotten a lot of traction in US history and been in multiple movies.
The thing is that the movies I really love and other really popular movies from the time have characters whose names I remember and quotes I remember. Transformers isn't a great movie but I remember that Shia was named Sam Witwicky and I never watched the show so I didn't get it from there. Dark Knight is a tiny bit overrated but has tons of quotes.
It may just be kind of silly that people would say they liked avatar and then not know any characters. If you do, that's not a knock on you. It was a fine watch in theaters but I never felt motivated to rewatch it on a tiny screen.
Last edited:
If you have any interest in Avatar as a weird pop-culture curio I recommend Jenny Nicholson's YT video on the Avatar theme park. Though its focused mainly on the park itself, it does talk about stuff like the unusually large amount of worldbuilding, Disney's fixation with making Avatar profitable, etc.
Billy Zane "is born" as an Biff henchman in "Back to the Future". But I suggest you to see him in "Survival Island" where he's a protagonist of the film, together to Juan Pablo di Pace and (aboveall) Kelly Brock. A movie to watch.
From what I can remember, it was one of the first movies to be shown in 3D (w/3D glasses!). Maybe people wanted to try out the 3D cinema experience so much that they watched Avatar. When people say the effects are a spectacle to watch, it somewhat creates FOMO so more people would watch it.
Also I could recall 2009-2011 released a lot of movies that portrayed humans as villains against other species (Avatar, Rise of Planet of the Apes, District 9, etc.)
Also I could recall 2009-2011 released a lot of movies that portrayed humans as villains against other species (Avatar, Rise of Planet of the Apes, District 9, etc.)