I remember avatar being really pretty, and then realizing as the credits rolled that if what they said about unobtainium is true, that it’s a room temperature semiconductor and that these are the only proven deposits of it, and that the Earth is a dying planet that needs unobtanium to stay habitable for billions and billions of people, RDA would probably just throw a big rock at Pandora and comb through the rubble. Us or them.
Nahh! Another cultural impact is, that if you are one with natur it is acceptable to put your tentacle thingies into your girl, pull out, and into an animal it goes. You can even force it into a bird and people will like you for it. I newer saw them wash it after pulling out of an animal, probably it went straight back into the girl off screen.
I know someone who went to see the second one, and there was a power cut part way through. He said he was relieved he didn’t have to see the rest.
I didn’t bother seeing that one.
I was thinking about this the other day - I saw the movie and I know what a Navi is, but I can’t recall a single memorable quote or name a character. There is no memorable SNL sketch except the one masking fun of the Papyrus font. There is no fandom, there is nothing
I do remember a few notable scenes, one being him jumping onto the massive bird.
I’m just focusing on the fleshlight in the back…
Ferngully did it better.
I was entertained, it was pretty, it pushed for better facial animations. Other than that it’s no real major impact.
the Cinema version if “this meeting should have been an email”
“This movie should have been a 5 minute tech demo”
it pushed for better facial animations
It genuinely pushed for a lot of technical achievements. Knowledge/skills that will be able to improve future films. Sure, the Avatar films may not be good films on their own. But they are being used to develop technologies which will make for better films from other people who actually want to make good films.
I remember south park making fun of Avatar for being so painfully generic.
One word: Papyrus
HE KNOWS WHAT HE DID!
When I saw it in the theater back when it came out, it was with my extended family and I knew nothing about it. I assumed it was an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie (which I also knew almost nothing about other than the name). It was a ways into the movie before I realized that I was watching the movie and not some sort of extended preview of another one.
The movie was fine. Great visuals, mediocre plot. It doesn’t deserve to have had much of a cultural impact.
Pocahontas, in space!
I’ve watched both of the sequels now (on the high seas), and they were actually pretty entertaining.
But I agree that they aren’t nearly as culturally significant as the PR would like you to believe
Does it have a cultural impact? The franchise seems to have very few hardcore fans and hardly any casual fans. I was at a comic con this weekend and i have seen a guy dressed as a navi. That was the only cosplay i have ever seen. There is also a guy that has his car airbrushed with avatar stuff ever since the first movie came out. Other than that i don’t think i have ever even seen an avatar tshirt
Never seemed to be marketed that way.
I like the films - then again, I’m a sucker for big cinema and IMAX 3D, so from an eye-candy perspective, it’s glorious. Is the story anything earth-shaking? Of course not. It’s escapist fluff… but oh… how it looks.
I feel like saying “James Cameron made a film about nothing” is unfair. I don’t think it’s about nothing. It’s about colonialization. It’s about inter-species racism, but in like a corporate kind of way.
And yet, it really feels like a film about nothing. I wonder why that is.
Is it just that it has nothing interesting to say about how colonialization works? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the film, but I do sort of remember it coming to really obvious conclusions.
I think it fell into a ton of tropes is all. Eh, it was a product of it’s time - as all films are - and I found it similar to Dances With Wolves. Banged up protaginist, left broken by his service goes to the frontier and finds a new life…
There it is…
iirc that was all it was ever really touted as.
Supreme eye candy, nothing more, nothing less.
Didnt Disney build an entire theme park section based on the franchise?
They built an area in the Animal Kingdom part of Disney World that is more or less just a bit of fake jungle and rocks that looked like it could be on the planet the movie takes place on. Like the A Bug’s Life section that they had years ago. I don’t even know if it had a ride.
The park itself (Disney Animal Kingdom) is just basically a zoo. And not even a good one.
The pacing of releases was whack.
Too long between 1 and 2, not long enough between 2 and 3.
I also heard that 2 and 3 were basically the same movie, and that they weren’t even that good.
I didn’t even know there was a 3rd one, I thought everyone was talking about the second one this whole time.
I mean, 1 didn’t make me crave sequels, even if they were soon available.
It was a fun action movie, sure. A visual spectacle. But not a world I felt invested in.
I felt like it was a world where a loooot of effort was put into certain aspects and then other parts of the world were neglected. Seemed like a waste of potential. For example some of the visual effects are kinda good even today, not just cause of the fidelity but also cause it seems like one cohesive piece. Talking about cohesion, the first and second halfs of this movie are two different movies, both with the storytelling and the visual effects and i like the first half muuuch more. Feels like if the movie focused on the Na’vi more it wouldve been better. An actually interesting story about slowly fitting more and more into a different culture got turned into some generic about natives fighting back, which you can do but then use one of the thousand examples irl, dont waste such a good oppurtunity to make something special. This is why i think so few fancy, high-budget movies tell good stories, without visual effects and huge sets you actually have to tell a story worth hearing to make your movie special. This of course doesnt mean visually captivating movies cant be narratively engaging, im just saying its rare.
That’s overcomplicating it.
Maybe that’s the issue.
The characters just… weren’t charismatic/engaging. I can’t name a single one. The world was intricate, and exotic, and gorgeous, and… kind of superficial?
I think the other Avatar is a perfect contrast.
Iroh. Zuko. Toph. Azula. Korra, Tenzin, Zaheer. To me, these character are instantly memorable because they were so distinct in purpose and culture, even extending to minor characters like Suki or Su.
And take bending. It’s a concept as simple as a rock, but they embed it in everything, from mundane chores to personalities and cycles to martial arts scenes. They never need to explain anything about it in words or narration.
Hence it’s be cool if the James Cameron Avatar characters where sharp, so distinct you could cut yourself on them. If their nature synergy, dependence on unobtanium or whatever was really woven into mundane life and such, to make it feel like an important system. There’s nothing wrong with another “natives fighting back” story, but I didn’t feel anything pull me into the struggle.
Yeah, I think movies could really be used to great effect in sci fi and fantasy where setting is a major character, but it’s rarely done. I understand why, it’s a more artsy thing to do, but one that demands large budgets. However I do think it’s something Avatar should have leaned more into and it’s something I really liked in the Dune movies.
Amazing VFX though 🤌💋
Number 1 was a retelling of Ferngully the Last Rainforest. https://spotlightonfilm.com/2012/05/13/avatar-vs-ferngully-the-last-rainforest-a-case-of-plagiarism/
Or dances with wolves
Interesting.
I’d bet it’s an example of coincidental convergence. Take the median/average of the tropes for that premise, and I can see writers coming up with a similar story.
As someone who hasn’t watched FernGully (but should), I’m increasingly skeptical of these types of “plagiarism” comparisons between movies. Lindsay Ellis recently broke down the “Aladdin was stolen” narrative and compellingly showed “it’s complicated”, and more obviously, YMS five years ago fucking eviscerated the then-popular argument that The Lion King was a ripoff of Kimba the White Lion.
(Edit: I’d say this especially goes for someone like James Cameron who clearly takes immense pride in his work and setting himself apart. That’s circumstantial, of course, but it seems totally out-of-character.)
Was Kimba also based on Hamlet or something? As far as I’m concerned that plotline is in the public domain. Or is it just using lions to tell the story that was supposedly stolen?
Also, how could Aladdin be “stolen” when it obviously takes direct inspiration from several stories in 1001 Arabian Nights? Are people claiming that it was stolen from some other story that was inspired by the same book?
The Aladdin bit is that there was another project in the Disney pipeline by a famed director that also had a lot of Arabian aesthetics, and I think a lot of the people upset are bitter that the other one just didn’t turn out very well.
You should watch the Lindsay Ellis video, it’s pretty good.
- The accusation for Aladdin is complicated and is based on The Thief and the Cobbler.
- On the other hand, your instincts are entirely right about The Lion King, and when I say “YMS eviscerated it”, I mean that it’s the most comically ridiculous yet superficially believable accusation of plagiarism you could possibly come up with. This is genuinely worth 147 minutes of your time, and it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever watched. One of the comments summarizes it best: “Damn, can’t believe kimba invented Africa, and real life just ripped them off like that.”
I see. From wikipedia:
In 1973, a promotional booklet was released with a public announcement by Williams about the status of his project:
Nasrudin was found to be too verbal and not suitable for animation, therefore Nasrudin as a character and the Nasrudin stories were dropped as a project. However, the many years work spent on painstaking research into the beauty of Oriental art has been retained. Loosely based on elements in the Arabian Nights stories, an entirely new and original film is now the main project of the Williams Studio. Therefore any publicity references to the old character of Nasrudin are now obsolete.
So it seems the Thief and the Cobbler was based in part on the Arabian Nights, and the original plot was also from Arab folklore.
So in other words, Aladdin is merely based on the same work of classic literature, which I believe is public domain. So allegations of plagiarism are foolish, unless all references to Arab folklore are now off the table too.
One of the comments summarizes it best: “Damn, can’t believe kimba invented Africa, and real life just ripped them off like that.”
That’s pretty funny. I might watch the video another day. From your comment I gather enough to conclude that the main premise of the accusation is “Shakespeare told by animals,” and I concur that that’s laughable.
I saw both. Avatar is a marvel of VFX, but the story is definitely ferngully.
The end action sequence was just the end action sequences from the first 2 films stacked on top of each other.
The thing is, it was still visually gorgeous, and I loved watching it in the theatre. Avatar is eye candy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Oh - and I do think the idea of trees with shared root systems forming a planet-wide distributed consciousness is actually pretty awesome sci-fi.
This is what frustrates me. The Avatar universe has the bones to have some amazing lore and world building, but really missed on execution.
Oh - and I do think the idea of trees with shared root systems forming a planet-wide distributed consciousness is actually pretty awesome sci-fi.
Spot-on.
Oh yeahhh, they made a third one too. I forgot about that.
It was basically 2 part 2
They are stellar if you like worldbuilding and pretty worlds. They are ok to good story-wise. In terms of worldbuilding, for me, they stand on the same level as the LotR movies (not the books mind you).
I made it through maybe 10 minutes of the second one before turning it off because the plot was just that fucking dumb.
Sawfisch
What fisch tho?
At this point, I think its most lasting cultural impact is everyone’s opinion on how little cultural impact it had.
The other Avatar, on the other hand…
Flamey-O! That’s Toph to answer.
I see that you, too, are a hotman of culture
I never even saw it. From what I heard it’s basically Pocahontas in space. The main new thing was that it was the first major 3D movie, so I’m not very surprised it didn’t stick.
“Dances With Smurfs”
It was pretty but forgettable, unless you saw it on mushrooms then it was pretty unforgettable
I’ve never seen it, because even as a kid, I knew James Cameron was a hack and it would be some rehashed story with new paint that he’d call the next big thing.
Turns out it was basically Dances With Wolves with blue aliens.
Edit: Or so I have been told.
