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So both Avatar and the sequel were huge box office successes, by a well regarded director and a huge budget.

But I've seen the first one and couldn't tell you anything about it, and I've seen no mention of either of them by anyone, there's been no memes, they just don't seem to have existed as far as any cultural awareness or legacy is concerned.
Even Googles auto-complete for "avatar" shows "the last airbender" before the movies.

So why have we as a culture just forgotten that the exist? Have they really had zero impact? Were they just a successful action/adventure movie distilled down to be so generic that there's nothing of note to them?

Are there any other "successful" movies we've just totally forgotten about?

Herzlos wrote:
So both Avatar and the sequel were huge box office successes, by a well regarded director and a huge budget.

But I've seen the first one and couldn't tell you anything about it, and I've seen no mention of either of them by anyone, there's been no memes, they just don't seem to have existed as far as any cultural awareness or legacy is concerned.
Even Googles auto-complete for "avatar" shows "the last airbender" before the movies.

So why have we as a culture just forgotten that the exist? Have they really had zero impact? Were they just a successful action/adventure movie distilled down to be so generic that there's nothing of note to them?

They are too pitch-perfect; nothing in it deviates from the dramatic arc or from Hollywood norms and conventions in any way - if you told anyone who has watched 'the Classics' the expose or set-up of these movies, they could tell you the whole film, including details, almost perfectly. As a result, nothing deviates from the norm and nothing in the movie is in any way memorable. It leaves a short, flashy event, but it does not engage with your imagination at all like e.g. Star Wars or Star Trek did. These good movies have an intense feeling that there's a whole world beyond what we're shown on screen, that is interesting and fun to visit again, and you automatically start to wonder about it. Avatar, in contrast, feels like a theater stage that is fundamentally empty and just furnished with set pieces for the movie - once it told its entirely predictable story, all the figures become limp and go back to their storage boxes.

There are memes, they just aren't funny.
I'd argue that the first movie was a really big deal with the CGI and 3D stuff but the amount of time between it and the second one just meant that the hype for the sequel had come and long gone.
How James Cameron still has the studio on-side for the three more sequels I'll never know.

 Gert wrote:
There are memes, they just aren't funny.
I'd argue that the first movie was a really big deal with the CGI and 3D stuff but the amount of time between it and the second one just meant that the hype for the sequel had come and long gone.
How James Cameron still has the studio on-side for the three more sequels I'll never know.

James Cameron has made three movies that earned over 2 billion dollars each, and held the record for the highest-earning film of all times at several points in time. He also has a personal net worth somewhere between 700 million and 1,2 billion dollars, and is not averse to putting some of it towards movies if they're short on cash, like he did for Titanic. Avatar 2 still had a box office of 2,32 billion dollars and is the third-highest grossing film of all time, behind Avatar 1 and Avengers:Endgame, and the highest-grossing ever in about 20 countries.

I guess 'I can make you 6 to 8 billion dollars' is a very good argument.

$$$

Yes, a complete mystery that one Gert.

$$$

Edit: Darn you Tsagualsa! I checked no one else had replied just before I wrote this. :(

They're not very good/deep stories, nor original, and don't ask any questions of their universe beyond puddle- depth.

They mostly exist as a tech showcase, with a very mild environmentalist message stretched over the top.

I've not got around to Avatar 2 yet, but 1 was just.... Well visually its amazing with the technology and I've heard that those who saw it at the Imax and such really were blown away by the visuals.

However I'd say that the visuals are insanely impressive on a technological front, but perhaps not as amazing in art.

For example I find that many scenes in Starwars 8 are by far and away more intense and cinematic and awesome and memorable.

In contrast Avatar is technologically stunning, but it lacks "cinema" or cinematic quality. It's a subtle thing all told and there are various styles, but I feel like it doesn't lean into actually telling a story or a scene with the visuals.

It's very much a tell not a show kind of film.

If you want the opposite end you could look at things like the Spaghetti Westerns where you might have 5 min scene where hardly anything happens. No action, no shooting, no big event and yet the presentation and style from the visual to the musical elements hooks you into the scene.




The next layer is the story itself which in Avatar 1 I felt lacked on two fronts
1) It doesn't really have a very good story. It's really simple and, as noted above by another, it doesn't feel like there's a world around the story or a setting. There's no government, or planet home, or even tribes outside of the single one we interact with. Everything is neat and simple and tightly contained with no sense of a wider setting or world. Which when the story itself is both simple and tries to be far reaching to a global scale; ends up feeling really hollow.

2) The characters are under-developed. Granted a big part of this is them covering too much in too little time; but many of the characters don't feel like people but rather roles. Unless its the lead character; most of the others feel shoe-horned into specific tropes and themes and that's it. They don't deepen nor get screen time enough to be people and diverse characters.










So yeah Avatar is visually stunning and it captured people for a moment in time to be a massive box-office-hit.
However the lasting impact is that story and cinematic wise it wasn't as big an impact; which means it sits in the mind far far less. As a result it ends up being a blip.


Also I'd argue that whilst you could say the same for something like Jurassic Park; I'd argue that whilst JP was a massive revolution in visual technology; Avatar is more an evolution of what we already have. At least for those seeing it in normal cinemas and at home. Had it come with home 3D cinema style screens and such being affordable for the lay person en-mass then it might have had more impact on that front.





So its not outright bad, its just shallow with everything except the CGI budget.

They're extended (fake) nature documentaries with the Sir Attenborough's commentary taken out and replaced by bad war journalism.

There just isn't anything worth remembering.

They're visually spectacular... but the story is very shallow. So the visuals are what sticks, because there's really nothing else to the movie.

Although I do have to give him kudos in the sequel. Jake is actually portrayed as an involved and competent father, something which is generally anathema to modern Hollywood. Nowadays dads are either uninvolved deadbeats, or rather stupid and incompetent.

Avatar is just an utterly empty story. There's nothing particularly memorable or exciting about it. It's not really saying anything interesting, the plot is obvious and the technology it was designed to demo feels similarly empty and soulless, probably because of how it doesn't really help the story at all.

Contrast that with a similar Cameron movie that showcased a CGI leap forward: Terminator 2. Sure, it was helped by being a sequel to a great movie, but T2 was itself a very good movie and the new tech helped realise the story in a way that would have been impossible previously. The two are linked and help service one another.

 Overread wrote:



Also I'd argue that whilst you could say the same for something like Jurassic Park; I'd argue that whilst JP was a massive revolution in visual technology; Avatar is more an evolution of what we already have. At least for those seeing it in normal cinemas and at home. Had it come with home 3D cinema style screens and such being affordable for the lay person en-mass then it might have had more impact on that front.

Jurassic Park is a good comparison because it demonstrates in many ways what Avatar lacks:

It's got several narrative strands (the Science plot with the visitors debating Hammond, the egg-thief subplot that leads to the disaster, the lost children plot with the chase/action/suspense scenes) that weave in and out of each other and flow together organically to form the overall arc of suspense and a coherent plot

It's got memorable, multi-dimensional characters that have actual dialogue and voice opinions that the audience can evaluate without forced exposition

While it involves a lot of innovative, top-of-the-line (for the time) technology, it does not do so indiscriminately, and does not rely on the technology to carry scenes or the plot overly often. Coincidentially, this is stuff the JP sequels fail to do, and they are worse movies for it.

I think this is an easy question to half answer. As has been said, the story is pretty stock template, Dances with the Last Samurai, stranger in a strange land, white savior tropes. There's no particularly interesting systems in place or lore to chew on and it doesn't have the sort of wish fulfillment fantasy behind it to give people a place to see themselves in the world.

What that fails to answer is why the movies are so incredibly successful in spite of its well known shortcomings. I think that entirely comes down to it being more of a sensory experience than a traditional narrative film. Like, despite multiple attempts to prove otherwise, roller coasters and other attractions don't really carry a lot of lore, but people love to repeat the experience. I think Avatar caters to a similar crowd, which, lets be clear is a pretty huge crowd given my experience with theme parks in general. There are just a lot of people perfectly happy to take that sensory thrill ride at face value, repeatedly and don't really need it to exist outside of the moment for it to create a cultural touchstone like other major franchises.

You never bet against Cameron. Anytime someone says "No one cares about Avatar!", they are proven wrong a few billion times over.

Yes, the films do not have the cultural zeitgeist, like, at all. They do not linger. We are not talking about them a month after they happen. But we all go see them, and go see them more than once, enough to raise them to the levels of highest grossing movies in the history of movies.

10 years from now people will still be able to articulate their exact feelings on the final season of Game of Thrones. They'll also say "Yeah it was alright I guess" when you ask them about Avatar. But by then the Avatar series will probably have hit $10 billion overall, and it won't matter if people think they're just ok.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You never bet against Cameron. Anytime someone says "No one cares about Avatar!", they are proven wrong a few billion times over.

Yes, the films do not have the cultural zeitgeist, like, at all. They do not linger. We are not talking about them a month after they happen. But we all go see them, and go see them more than once, enough to raise them to the levels of highest grossing movies in the history of movies.

10 years from now people will still be able to articulate their exact feelings on the final season of Game of Thrones. They'll also say "Yeah it was alright I guess" when you ask them about Avatar. But by then the Avatar series will probably have hit $10 billion overall, and it won't matter if people think they're just ok.

Ironically (considering its themes) it operates on the same core principles as McDonalds: it hits the lowest common denominator, and hits that exactly the same, every time, and makes tons and tons and tons of money with mediocre blandness. Can't hate a playa for winning the game.

Lets also not ignore the fact that it gets marketed like crazy. Sometimes amazing films get overlooked just because they aren't marketed enough; or don't have a big famous superstar in a lead role or are in a medium that people have the wrong expectations about (its animation, its for kids)

So sometimes that too plays a huge part in blockbusters. Sure you've still got to have a solid film underneath it for enough of a market; but you can get away with insane marketing to get bums on seats.


Heck I'd argue that's how the Transformers films keep happening despite having insanely bad writing

I enjoyed the first avatar the first time I watched it but found it less interesting the next times. It's just kinda meh. Not bad just noting to write home about, imop. I've seen this movie called a Tarzan movie and that's not meant as a complement by the people who called it that. Their point is valid.
Haven't seen the second one mostly due to no excitement to see it on my part. I feel like the sequel is several years too late.

Didn't care for any of the transformer movies. I don't fee like they translate well to live action. I sat there and wondered - "why are the robots talking". And the granular bits of robot all animated as I recall , poorly, during their movement or transformations or what ever was just difficult to look at and know what I was seeing. The best bits for me were the army dudes who seemed really out of shape in one of the movies. But beyond that total Meh. Big pass.

Not really a fan of either franchise I guess.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You never bet against Cameron. Anytime someone says "No one cares about Avatar!", they are proven wrong a few billion times over.

Yes, the films do not have the cultural zeitgeist, like, at all. They do not linger. We are not talking about them a month after they happen. But we all go see them, and go see them more than once, enough to raise them to the levels of highest grossing movies in the history of movies.

10 years from now people will still be able to articulate their exact feelings on the final season of Game of Thrones. They'll also say "Yeah it was alright I guess" when you ask them about Avatar. But by then the Avatar series will probably have hit $10 billion overall, and it won't matter if people think they're just ok.

Well, it matters if you want to talk about movies in terms of craft or narrative or characters or story.

If you just want to think of movies simply as an inconvenient way to move money around, I guess that's fine.


Also, for the record: I haven't seen them. I doubt I'm alone, 'highest grossing' nonsense or not.

It's a set of dangling shiny keys and mass audiences are raccoons; it doesn't have to be good it just has to get their attention momentarily.

I have never seen either Avatar movie.

You watch A star for the amazing vehicle design surely. The VTOLs and mechs from the first one are awesome. Not seen the second yet.

Military bad. Primitives good.

In those four words, I just summed up the first movie. That's why I didn't bother seeing the second one.

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:
Military bad. Primitives good.

In those four words, I just summed up the first movie. That's why I didn't bother seeing the second one.

But you summed up the second movie’s plot so perfectly!

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:
Military bad. Primitives good.

In those four words, I just summed up the first movie. That's why I didn't bother seeing the second one.

This dismisses the subtext: military has cool toys.

Such cool toys.

Voss wrote:
Well, it matters if you want to talk about movies in terms of craft or narrative or characters or story.

Yes for the former, not so much for the latter two.

Avatar is remarkable from a technical standpoint, but not from anything else. I think it's greatest achievement is that you can be two hours into Avatar 2 and completely forget the fact that damn near everything you're watching is 100% CGI.

Voss wrote:
Also, for the record: I haven't seen them. I doubt I'm alone, 'highest grossing' nonsense or not.

You can call it nonsense all you like, but if a guy gets one of his films to the top 5 of all time, it's a success. Twice it's amazing. Three times, well, there's something there. He's no fluke.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Voss wrote:
Well, it matters if you want to talk about movies in terms of craft or narrative or characters or story.

Yes for the former, not so much for the latter two.

Avatar is remarkable from a technical standpoint, but not from anything else. I think it's greatest achievement is that you can be two hours into Avatar 2 and completely forget the fact that damn near everything you're watching is 100% CGI.

I 100% don't believe you. There is zero way to not know you're watching CGI.

Voss wrote:
Also, for the record: I haven't seen them. I doubt I'm alone, 'highest grossing' nonsense or not.

You can call it nonsense all you like, but if a guy gets one of his films to the top 5 of all time, it's a success. Twice it's amazing. Three times, well, there's something there. He's no fluke.

Fluke isn't the issue. Or even suggested. I don't give a festering rat carcass if a film makes millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions (and honesty the scale there is kind of gross and wasteful, frankly). If it doesn't have craft or narrative or characters worth watching (which you just acknowledged is actually the case), I don't find it worthwhile.


Also, the tech stuff isn't Cameron. He puts the scenes together as a film, but the CGI and the tech aspect is tens of thousands of hours by hundreds of artists, animators and programmers.
The 'technical improvements' aren't on this one guy with his name on the movie.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You can call it nonsense all you like, but if a guy gets one of his films to the top 5 of all time, it's a success. Twice it's amazing. Three times, well, there's something there. He's no fluke.

Is that in constant dollars? Because otherwise there's an inherent bias towards modern films.

There is now a global audience that values spectacle rather than characters or plot. See also: superhero movies.

I haven't seen either movie and never felt the need to do so.

I suspect that Blade Runner - which was regarded as a commercial failure when released - has had a far larger cultural impact.

Voss wrote:
There is zero way to not know you're watching CGI.

*sigh*

I didn't say "not know". Of course you know it's CGI. You'd have to be some kind of blithering idiot (or a young child, I suppose... that's fair) not to know. What I said was that you forget. The FX are so good that you adjust and nothing seems like it's obviously standing out as CGI vs real.

Voss wrote:
If it doesn't have craft or narrative or characters worth watching (which you just acknowledged is actually the case), I don't find it worthwhile.

So often I see this sentiment as a justification for dismissing the Avatar films. It usually falls into the spectrum of the "Nobody cares about Avatar!" argument, and argument that is so clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Voss wrote:
Also, the tech stuff isn't Cameron.

That's like saying Lucas had nothing to do with ILM. Cameron is the driving force behind all of it. Guy spends his life - to use a South Park trope - raising the bar. He's a nut-case, and always has been, but he is always driving things forward in the process of film making with his films. To say that it "isn't him" is ludicrous.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
I suspect that Blade Runner - which was regarded as a commercial failure when released - has had a far larger cultural impact.

For real? Avatar may not have an attachment to the cultural zeitgeist, but it is ubiquitous. Blade Runner though?

That's obscure sci-fi at best for most people.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For real? Avatar may not have an attachment to the cultural zeitgeist, but it is ubiquitous. Blade Runner though?

That's obscure sci-fi at best for most people.

When Rutger Hauer died, the final words of "Roy" were clogging the internet, as they should have.

Are there any memorable lines from Avatar?

I feel like one reason its kind of culturally blank is because the lead is Sam Worthington. While I liked him in Manhunt: Unabomber, the rest of his stuff just falls flat. Dude is just plain vanilla.

Matt Damon was offered the role but the timing interfered with his Bourne series. I feel like had it been a Damon starred project, it might’ve had a greater impact. Coincidentally, the Bourne series, for better or worse I feel did have a cultural impact.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Are there any memorable lines from Avatar?

When John Scurvy loads his weapon before the big fight and says "It's Avatarin' time!"