Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Flinty wrote:
I had to stop watching Geostorm. It was so poor

Curious. I remember the movie to be super predictable, but not particularly bad besides that.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
But that's not what this thread is about. It's asking a very pertinent question which I will restate: why has Avatar, despite its enormous globe-spanning success, failed to make any lasting impression on the popular culture?

A TV show that didn't even last for three full seasons from 1966 to 1968 has had a far bigger impact. How did that happen?

The answer is that it resonated. Avatar didn't. And I'll give a spoiler here - I didn't see either Avatar film. I don't feel like I missed anything. No one drops lines from Avatar that I feel compelled to look up. Are there any good lines?

Same with scenes or moments. I never saw American Pie, but I know the catchphrase "one time, at band camp," because people use it from time to time.

And that's the point - there's no cultural compelling reason for someone to see it in order to get all the cultural references. What's Avatar's equivalent to "life long, and prosper," or "may the Force be with you?"

At least Titanic had Celine Dion wailing away on every radio station on earth for a few months. "My heart will gooooo ooooonn..."

Ah catch phrases, Avatar has a bunch:

Na'vi:
I see you.
Eywa has heard you!
...We will see if your insanity can be cured.

Jake Sully has a few:
What about this one? Run? Don't run? What?
I was a Marine. A warrior... of the uh... Jarhead Clan.
Maybe I was sick of doctors telling me what I couldn't do.
All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for.
Kiss the darkest part of my lily white...
What do I do? Dance with it?
I may not be much of a horse guy, but I was born to do this.

Dr. Grace Augustine:
Run! Definitely run!
Don't play with that. You'll go blind.
This is gonna ruin my whole day!

Trudy Chacon:
You're not the only one with a gun, bitch.

Quaritch has a few:
You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day.
If there is a Hell, you might wanna go there for some R & R after a tour on Pandora.
Out there beyond that fence every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.
As head of security, it is my job to keep you alive. I will not succeed. Not with all of you.
Well... ain't this a bitch.

Selfridge this one's fun:
What the HELL have you people been smoking out there?

Scoresby: Not smarter than me.
Dr. Garvin: That is setting the bar very low.

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't dislike Avatar. I enjoyed the first one.

Never bothered seeing the second in theaters but sooner or later it'll be somewhere I can stream it and I'll watch it.

I think whether we like Avatar or not has little to do with the actual topic of the thread. We're not even the first people to ask it;

Reddit
Forbes
Some random website
Another random website

Literally from the moment Avatar 2 started approaching and even hitting theaters, people were talking about how weird it was that everyone went to see Avatar, that the movie was generally liked and successful, yet had no staying power on the popular imagination. Avatar 2 will probably be subject to the same discussions, as like Avatar 1 it was commercially successful, well regarded, but as well seems to be on track to have no lasting cultural impact despite its apparent success.

And looking at the links what I see is a bunch of people spouting opinions, because that's what people have, opinions.

The shallowness of assessing cultural impact through 'one-liners' is, well disappointing. But, there again, what do I know?

Eywa has heard you!

Out of that entire list, this is the only one I've ever heard.

And only mockingly, in other fantasy/sci-fi properties.

Avatar is not a quotable movie. The lines are generic movie speak which means they don't stick.
When the first one came out, my friends and I would sometimes use the Navi word for moron but then we stopped less than a year later. Compared to things like Halo (video game I know), Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or even Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatar movie is utterly nonexistent in our quote library despite it being a big part of our youth for a good few years. It was the movie we watched when we were over at each others houses, it was what we watched when we did Warhammer hobby nights, and we put hours into the tie-in video game. But it didn't survive in our cultural memories in a significant way beyond 2011.
When the second movie came back into the spotlight our first thought was "That's still a thing?".
Avatar is an important movie due to its amazing use of CGI and 3D filming tech. The soundtrack is also really damn good but that's because James Horner was a legend.
The plot and characters were generic and the movie is a visual spectacle only.

Voss wrote:

Eywa has heard you!

Out of that entire list, this is the only one I've ever heard.

And only mockingly, in other fantasy/sci-fi properties.

Should that be the only you remember? Of course, if you never watched the movie then you are right.

 Gert wrote:
Avatar is not a quotable movie. The lines are generic movie speak which means they don't stick.
When the first one came out, my friends and I would sometimes use the Navi word for moron but then we stopped less than a year later. Compared to things like Halo (video game I know), Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or even Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatar movie is utterly nonexistent in our quote library despite it being a big part of our youth for a good few years. It was the movie we watched when we were over at each others houses, it was what we watched when we did Warhammer hobby nights, and we put hours into the tie-in video game. But it didn't survive in our cultural memories in a significant way beyond 2011.
When the second movie came back into the spotlight our first thought was "That's still a thing?".
Avatar is an important movie due to its amazing use of CGI and 3D filming tech. The soundtrack is also really damn good but that's because James Horner was a legend.
The plot and characters were generic and the movie is a visual spectacle only.

Arguing for one moment, all you've proved is that for you, this is true.

I'm old enough to remember Star Wars when it came out, and as an adult (barely, but technically true), I was constantly being told by other fans of SF that Star Wars was 'hackneyed old rope' of pulp SF from fifty years previously, and true SF was more than visual spectacle upon the big screen.

For me, you are doing exactly the same thing to me now, as other fans did to me back in 1977. Asserting an opinion as if it is a fact.

For you, the film did not resonate, which is fair. Why should it? To all the people who went and saw the movie there must have been something that did resonate. The promise of a visual spectacle sparked an emotion within them, enough to go see the movie.

The arguments here, and elsewhere, add up to hill of nothing based on opinions.

The truth (if one can state any exist here), is that only time will tell. My guess is that in the long run, all the films that we hold dear, or not, will be forgotten, replaced by new spectacles, because that is the way of things.

Even watching the films multiple times doesn’t make any of those lines memorable. When it comes to quotable lines, Avatar is the anti-Starship Troopers.

 Paint it Pink wrote:

Voss wrote:

Eywa has heard you!

Out of that entire list, this is the only one I've ever heard.

And only mockingly, in other fantasy/sci-fi properties.

Should that be the only you remember? Of course, if you never watched the movie then you are right.

 Gert wrote:
Avatar is not a quotable movie. The lines are generic movie speak which means they don't stick.
When the first one came out, my friends and I would sometimes use the Navi word for moron but then we stopped less than a year later. Compared to things like Halo (video game I know), Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or even Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatar movie is utterly nonexistent in our quote library despite it being a big part of our youth for a good few years. It was the movie we watched when we were over at each others houses, it was what we watched when we did Warhammer hobby nights, and we put hours into the tie-in video game. But it didn't survive in our cultural memories in a significant way beyond 2011.
When the second movie came back into the spotlight our first thought was "That's still a thing?".
Avatar is an important movie due to its amazing use of CGI and 3D filming tech. The soundtrack is also really damn good but that's because James Horner was a legend.
The plot and characters were generic and the movie is a visual spectacle only.

Arguing for one moment, all you've proved is that for you, this is true.

I'm old enough to remember Star Wars when it came out, and as an adult (barely, but technically true), I was constantly being told by other fans of SF that Star Wars was 'hackneyed old rope' of pulp SF from fifty years previously, and true SF was more than visual spectacle upon the big screen.

For me, you are doing exactly the same thing to me now, as other fans did to me back in 1977. Asserting an opinion as if it is a fact.

For you, the film did not resonate, which is fair. Why should it? To all the people who went and saw the movie there must have been something that did resonate. The promise of a visual spectacle sparked an emotion within them, enough to go see the movie.

The arguments here, and elsewhere, add up to hill of nothing based on opinions.

The truth (if one can state any exist here), is that only time will tell. My guess is that in the long run, all the films that we hold dear, or not, will be forgotten, replaced by new spectacles, because that is the way of things.

Do you feel that Avatar has had large cultural impact?
I don't. I enjoyed the first film (saw it in theaters) for the spectacle, but that's about it. I don't plan on seeing the sequel, because the spectacle was enough the first time, but I hold no ill will towards those who do want to see it.

It's good for what it is-a spectacle. The effects and cinematography were absolutely AMAZING... And that's about it. As a result, while it's a fun movie to watch on the big screen, it doesn't have much impact outside that.

 Paint it Pink wrote:
Should that be the only you remember? Of course, if you never watched the movie then you are right.

It's not a quotable movie though and all the ones you picked out are just a variation on what is just generic action movie stuff. The Kansas speech by the Colonel is itself a reference to another film for god's sake. Nobody thinks "Avatar" when the phrase "You/We aren't in Kansas anymore" because it's from The Wizard of Oz, a film with more cultural impact than Avatar will ever have.

Arguing for one moment, all you've proved is that for you, this is true.

I'm old enough to remember Star Wars when it came out, and as an adult (barely, but technically true), I was constantly being told by other fans of SF that Star Wars was 'hackneyed old rope' of pulp SF from fifty years previously, and true SF was more than visual spectacle upon the big screen.

For me, you are doing exactly the same thing to me now, as other fans did to me back in 1977. Asserting an opinion as if it is a fact.

For you, the film did not resonate, which is fair. Why should it? To all the people who went and saw the movie there must have been something that did resonate. The promise of a visual spectacle sparked an emotion within them, enough to go see the movie.

The arguments here, and elsewhere, add up to hill of nothing based on opinions.

The truth (if one can state any exist here), is that only time will tell. My guess is that in the long run, all the films that we hold dear, or not, will be forgotten, replaced by new spectacles, because that is the way of things

Just because people went to see the movie doesn't mean it had a meaningful or lasting impact on them. It had an impact on the film industry as it showed that movies that used huge amounts of CGI were not only possible but could look spectacular.

The difference between Star Wars and Avatar is that when Star Wars came out, it did create a cultural spectacle that spawned two more movies in its original run and one of the biggest franchises of all time. George Lucas was able to fund Empire and Return off the back of the Kenner action figure sales from New Hope.
Avatar was big in 2009 and got re-released in 2010 with the extended edition but then had a decade of nothing until 2022 when the second film came out. In that timeframe, Star Wars got a whole new trilogy, Marvel built a film empire, and DC tried and failed to do the same. Avatar had no follow-up, and no push to keep the franchise relevant. The only thing people ever heard was how it was definitely getting sequels at some point.

So far the only arguments you seem to have are that it made a lot of money and that because you can quote the film, everyone else is wrong. Sorry if I don't find that very convincing.

i wouldn't call the new trilogy something that had impact at all either tho. contrary, it pretty much destroyed star wars for most people

The point I was making in regard to the sequel trilogy was more to the idea that we have done the entire Star Wars cycle in the time it took for a second Avatar film to come out.
Hype for the new trilogy, big divides form, the online fanbase gets super toxic and harrases actors off of social media, everything settled down a while after the final film was released, and now a whole new movie featuring the main character from that trilogy has been announced.
And just to point out, there was an impact even if it was largely negative.

Not Online!!! wrote:
i wouldn't call the new trilogy something that had impact at all either tho. contrary, it pretty much destroyed star wars for most people

That IS an impact.
Not a good one, but an impact all the same.

Not Online!!! wrote:
i wouldn't call the new trilogy something that had impact at all either tho. contrary, it pretty much destroyed star wars for most people

That’s a pretty big impact. They killed a $4-$12 billion franchise and embittered millions. When Fonzie jumped the shark, he only cost the studio a few hundred thousand at best, and we still remember.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do you feel that Avatar has had large cultural impact?
I don't. I enjoyed the first film (saw it in theaters) for the spectacle, but that's about it. I don't plan on seeing the sequel, because the spectacle was enough the first time, but I hold no ill will towards those who do want to see it.

It's good for what it is-a spectacle. The effects and cinematography were absolutely AMAZING... And that's about it. As a result, while it's a fun movie to watch on the big screen, it doesn't have much impact outside that.

The answer to that is that feelings are not facts.

The only facts that can be measured are the revenues, and even they are arguable.

As I said before, if I were looking for fans of Avatar to bond with, I wouldn't come here, because here there are none.

 Paint it Pink wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do you feel that Avatar has had large cultural impact?
I don't. I enjoyed the first film (saw it in theaters) for the spectacle, but that's about it. I don't plan on seeing the sequel, because the spectacle was enough the first time, but I hold no ill will towards those who do want to see it.

It's good for what it is-a spectacle. The effects and cinematography were absolutely AMAZING... And that's about it. As a result, while it's a fun movie to watch on the big screen, it doesn't have much impact outside that.

The answer to that is that feelings are not facts.

The only facts that can be measured are the revenues, and even they are arguable.

As I said before, if I were looking for fans of Avatar to bond with, I wouldn't come here, because here there are none.

I mean quite a few have said that they liked and enjoyed it. Clearly there ARE fans here; just not die-hard ones.

Heck a good many have expressed that they really like the CGI work from a technical standpoint; and also the artistic and style designs used in the film. Visually many of us are fans; the issue is that the story and setting and presentation of both are very casual/plane/simple and that results in a setting that hasn't "hooked" people the same way other films have.

 Paint it Pink wrote:
The answer to that is that feelings are not facts.

The only facts that can be measured are the revenues, and even they are arguable.

As I said before, if I were looking for fans of Avatar to bond with, I wouldn't come here, because here there are none.

Then where would you go? Give examples of where the apparently massive Avatar fanbase is.
You're saying people here are wrong or only using feelings instead of facts but all you've offered up is opinion. You keep saying that those who say the movie didn't have a cultural impact are wrong but haven't provided any evidence to the contrary. The only thing you mention is that the movies made a lot of money.

 Paint it Pink wrote:
Ah catch phrases, Avatar has a bunch:

All of those lines are generic and most of them include references to other, more memorable movies.

And looking at the links what I see is a bunch of people spouting opinions, because that's what people have, opinions.

That's why we're here! I save my "facts don't care about your feelings" discussions for the rules disputes.

The shallowness of assessing cultural impact through 'one-liners' is, well disappointing. But, there again, what do I know?

How else can one assess it? Punch in some of your favorite Avatar lines into a search engine and compare the number - and popularity - of hits vs "May the Force be with you," or "Live long and prosper."

I'll even go farther, I'll say that the Airbender Avatar has a far larger impact. "Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked," is a line I've used many times and it always gets a response. Lots of kids (and their parents) saw that series, which is why - despite an awful live-action film - the franchise still has legs.

Honestly there's maybe something worth considering that, assuming cultural memory works on an economy of sorts, Avatar the Last Airbender maybe muscled Avatar the movie out a bit. By sharing the same name, and existing at roughly the same time, one Avatar by being so much more memorable and popular generally than the other, occupied the entire cultural economy for things named 'Avatar.' And Last Airbender was a bit forgotten for a time until the show hit Netflix and was all the rage on social media for 2-3 months with thousands of new memes being spawned by resurgent interest in the show.

That could squeeze in with the idea that the movie's struggle to be relevant owes a lot to its lack of distinctiveness. Its plot and characters are frequently compared to Dances with Wolves and Ferngully but in space. It's most distinct distinction is marvelous effects and CGI, but those tend to have limited staying power in isolation. Even it's title is ultimately eclipsed by something far more popular and memorable.

And the end result is just that everything good about Avatar is good, but not distinctive enough to be more memorable than anything else it shares names, motifs, or features with.

Is Avatar the Last Airbender the series where “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” comes from?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is Avatar the Last Airbender the series where “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” comes from?

That and 'until the fire nation attacked' are probably it's most famous memes.

And 'there is no war in ba sing se' also goes into how cultural memory plays with and off of current events, as that meme especially hit a huge peak on the internet during the years of 2019-2021 during COVID as a response to <censored political topics> that won't be mentioned here, but that's another way something just kind of endures culturally. It has something about it that gets picked up on, spreads, and persists because for some reason or another it's seen as currently relevant. And that hasn't happened with anything from the Avatar film as far as I know.

The furthest anything got on that front were jokes about 'tail head sex' spawned by a robot chicken gag skit.

I am more likely to run across a Big Trouble in Little China reference this week than an Avatar one.

 Paint it Pink wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do you feel that Avatar has had large cultural impact?
I don't. I enjoyed the first film (saw it in theaters) for the spectacle, but that's about it. I don't plan on seeing the sequel, because the spectacle was enough the first time, but I hold no ill will towards those who do want to see it.

It's good for what it is-a spectacle. The effects and cinematography were absolutely AMAZING... And that's about it. As a result, while it's a fun movie to watch on the big screen, it doesn't have much impact outside that.

The answer to that is that feelings are not facts.

The only facts that can be measured are the revenues, and even they are arguable.

As I said before, if I were looking for fans of Avatar to bond with, I wouldn't come here, because here there are none.

Revenue=/=Cultural Impact

Evident by basically most Michael Bay movies, nearly all of which bring in the bucks but only a handful have any meaning beyond jokes about Bay himself.

Hilariously, michael bay as a man is probably more relevant culturally than any of the movie's he's made.

It’s odd that I feel more impact and more presence from an Avatar I’ve never seen than from the two movies I have seen.

 Ahtman wrote:
I am more likely to run across a Big Trouble in Little China reference this week than an Avatar one.

Indeed!

The power of memes and cultural osmosis is a might power.

When it comes to revenue, I think merchandise sales and memorabilia would be a better way to measure cultural impact than box office revenue.

Aash wrote:
When it comes to revenue, I think merchandise sales and memorabilia would be a better way to measure cultural impact than box office revenue.

Can anything touch Starwars or Bond then?

Granted those are also big cultural impacts, but its missleading in the sense that a culturally impactful film might just be one film; whilst a big saga that keeps running can generate insane sums from revenue.


Plus money reporting from Hollywood is a wild and crazy thing depending on how you put the numbers together. Being such massive complex beasts that they are the finances are also complicated. Is that revenue per film; revenue per film within X number of years after release etc...


Granted you can indeed get a generalist sense of impact.


Also lets not forget some big impactful films just don't have legions of merch made for it. Meanwhile some other films are built with merchandise in mind from the get-go. So some films are going to generate insane merch profits even if the film itself is only average; whilst others might generate very little in merch, but had a huge cultural impact.




Edit - eg Cars apparently hit over $10Billion; as reference on the 5seconds of googling the same site listed Starwars as $12Billion.
So yeah make a film for kids and merch the heck out of it and a film that likely has very low cultural impact, can generate a fortune in toy sales (which isn't saying Cars is a bad film)

 LordofHats wrote:
And the end result is just that everything good about Avatar is good, but not distinctive enough to be more memorable than anything else it shares names, motifs, or features with.

That's exactly it. It is pleasant, pretty, but beyond that, unremarkable.

To be memorable, a film should stir powerful emotions. The divide over Blade Runner is indicative of this. People love it or can't bear to get through it.

And for the record, Big Trouble in Little China is a great film.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
And the end result is just that everything good about Avatar is good, but not distinctive enough to be more memorable than anything else it shares names, motifs, or features with.

That's exactly it. It is pleasant, pretty, but beyond that, unremarkable.

To be memorable, a film should stir powerful emotions. .

I think it should also ask questions and leave some parts of the story or characters unresolved.

This was one of the big things that I noticed when I first got into watching anime. Many western TV series tend to wrap everything up at the end of each season; only leaving story cliffhangers rarely and often only if they 100% know they are getting a next season. Otherwise you hit the end and its all over.

Anime often ended things with a sense of the world, characters and setting living on; often ending on a cliffhanger. Granted as I watched more I learned this is oft the result of the series either running out of funding or catching up and hitting the limit of the manga at the time and having to wait (during which time it can, again, run out of funding).

But still there is a sense of a different style of storytelling. Even within the stories there's often lots of little bits that don't get fully explained; meanwhile your standard western/hollywood film often hand-holds you explaining everything it can to leave no questions. Everything must be in-your-face-basic, which can mean that by the end of the film there isn't really anything to debate or discuss. There's no "ooh what if' element or "well I think it could be XYZ because of that scene where so and so said ZYE" etc....

Of course there's a balance, answer too few questions or answer them too late and you cna lose interest of the audience as they are left too confused.

 Overread wrote:

Aash wrote:
When it comes to revenue, I think merchandise sales and memorabilia would be a better way to measure cultural impact than box office revenue.

Can anything touch Starwars or Bond then?

Granted those are also big cultural impacts, but its missleading in the sense that a culturally impactful film might just be one film; whilst a big saga that keeps running can generate insane sums from revenue.


Plus money reporting from Hollywood is a wild and crazy thing depending on how you put the numbers together. Being such massive complex beasts that they are the finances are also complicated. Is that revenue per film; revenue per film within X number of years after release etc...


Granted you can indeed get a generalist sense of impact.


Also lets not forget some big impactful films just don't have legions of merch made for it. Meanwhile some other films are built with merchandise in mind from the get-go. So some films are going to generate insane merch profits even if the film itself is only average; whilst others might generate very little in merch, but had a huge cultural impact.




Edit - eg Cars apparently hit over $10Billion; as reference on the 5seconds of googling the same site listed Starwars as $12Billion.
So yeah make a film for kids and merch the heck out of it and a film that likely has very low cultural impact, can generate a fortune in toy sales (which isn't saying Cars is a bad film)

I wasn’t trying to say it’s a perfect metric or anything close, just that merchandise sales is primarily a better metric than box office for indicating a film’s cultural impact. And I think the cars franchise probably has a bigger cultural footprint than Avatar, especially amongst the generation it was aimed at.

It’s worth noting that the revenue figures you quoted appear to be for one year, not an overall total.

 Overread wrote:
I think it should also ask questions and leave some parts of the story or characters unresolved.

This was one of the big things that I noticed when I first got into watching anime. Many western TV series tend to wrap everything up at the end of each season; only leaving story cliffhangers rarely and often only if they 100% know they are getting a next season. Otherwise you hit the end and its all over.

"Western TV" is a pretty broad category. British TV famously does single-season story arcs, which are generally self-contained, but at least have a story arc.

American TV traditionally came up with a premise, and milked it until the audience got bored. Cliff-hangers were a way to keep the audience hooked on the show, even though there wasn't an actual story arc.

The "jump the shark" concept comes from an American show ("Happy Days") that just went on too long. The ultimate cliff-hanger was the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of "Dallas," which subsequently had to zero out an entire season as a dream sequence.

Obviously, anime is quite different.

I will say that the "leave some things unexplained" concept used to apply Western entertainment until creative exhaustion created the "rise of the prequels," wherein every single aspect of a character had to be plotted out and charted.

This is alien to the Western storytelling tradition, which usually created suggestive but vague backgrounds. All an audience had to know was that someone was "noble," or "wronged," or "a scoundrel," and that was enough. Now we need to plot it with geometric logic [bonus film reference] so that no facet of the character is unexplored.