It showed up out of nowhere, made the most bank in history (for a movie), refused to explain and disappeared for like 15 years, then came back out of nowhere with a sequel movie, a AAA game, and like 3 more movies in the works.
Edit: I think it now has like a Lego line too?
The first one used some crazy tech that is now regularly part of making video games. The movie itself is rather mid, IMO (I mean, it’s just Fern Gully but sci-fi instead of fantasy 🤷♂️), but the stuff that went into making it is fascinating as hell.
it is unapologetically in favor of preserving nature, anticapitalist, and anti military. the boys from chapo trap house like it and point out that its one of the few movies with a mainstream theatrical release in which the audience is made to cheer on the blue furry hippie throwing a bunch of US marines out of a helicopter to their death.
If you were late teens / early 20’s or older when it first came out, I don’t think it that weird.
It was bloody amazing. And then we’ve just all been waiting for it until the sequels, which are just now starting to roll in. The second one was a bit of a disappointment (bro) in my opinion, but I’m hoping the third one will be a positive surprise.
Basically I went to watch it for nostalgia, as I think a lot did.
AAA-game? Aren’t there like lots of Avatar games?
Yeah, 2009 there was one, online shut down for it in 2014.
Guess you’re talking about “the frontiers of Pandora” from 2023?
There’s also “Pandora rising” from 2020.
The sequels were always in the works. The first movie was an experience and now people are just chasing that high again.
Hell, there’s still tons of people waiting on the continuation on what happens to Jon Snow in the books after he’s stabbed. That’s still in the works with George, hopefully. Since like 2011.
i was, but i also saw disney’s pocahontas as a kid. so uh… it was just that, but in 3d.
Yeah I saw Pocahontas in theaters as well. Loved it. Dad took me. Thanks for unlocking some memories of my late pops. Thanks, for real.
Prolly primed me to like Avatar tbh, or just liked it for the same reasons.
Yes, the similarities are remarkable, but it’s not literally the same story, just mostly similar beats.
But I needn’t remind you that a majority of all stories are more or less the monomyth aka the hero’s journey:
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero’s quest or hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Very much applies to Jakesully in this Avatar as well. Ofc there’s much more that matches up with Pocahontas, I’m just pointing out that “true originality” doesn’t exist, we seem to enjoy more or less similar stories/story structures, and the thing people loved in Avatar was the millions they spend imagining a rather complete world with a tad more complexity than Disney’s -95 animated Pocahontas had. Although it waa beautiful as well. But the world building and animation used doesn’t really compare, does it?
I wonder why people don’t make the same argument for sports players. "It’s just [previous champion] who looks different. Yeah it’s totally different but like… is it totally different? Yes, it is, one is subjective one is objective. This comparison blows.
Food? We invented putting things on bread and have been doing variations of it since. All pretty similar, but also, a million different types. Bread and some filling / topping.
Anyway yeah the first movie is more or less Pocahontas. But like. I don’t see how that matters. It does explain why the second sucked in comparison though. Doing something that has been already established to work but improving on it is the thing.
I only hope they go back from Jakesully family man to at least some semblance of heroes journey in the third. Maybe it’ll be one of his kids idk.
Anyway No spoilers for 3 guys I’m not watching the trailer or reading anything
I wonder why people don’t make the same argument for sports players.
surely you must see how nonsense this sentence is.
people make to same argument for other creative arts all the time. books, music, painting. programming, even.
also, that thing where “everything is the hero’s journey” is based on skewed data. it’s not actually that prevalent.
Oh, “creative arts”? Like… subjective things? Unlike sports, in which there’s usually an objective scoring system. Wish I had thought about that.
Oh wait I did yes.
it’s not actually that prevalent.
In modern books? Probably not.
But in general? Yah, it is.
Keeping unobtainium in the script unironically met bizarrely little criticism.
It’s all a lot less fantastical when you compare it to Pocahontas:
Yeah, that’s kind of the point? Was the comparison between the Na’Vi and native Americans too subtle for you to notice before you saw this meme?
Not for me personally. Just find it funny how 1:1 it is with the original. This meme has been around since the year the movie came out.
Or Fern Gully, or Dances With Wolves… it’s not exactly an uncommon story.
Ah, but before Avatar came along it was never quite so poorly written!
It’s in a unique spot in the 3D space of script quality, time spent refining it, and revenue.
But you could do this with every story/movie trope that’s been repeated throughout our species history. The concept of retelling stories in different contexts is itself not new but for sure reason Avatar gets overly criticised for it.
You don’t see the same criticisms for every bank heist movie that all follow the same basic premises as each other. I just did it a bit weird why so many people are against this particular trope. Is it because it tries to deal with our history of oppression and colonisation? I honestly don’t know.
I doubt there are any truly original stories that couldn’t be shown to be a retelling of another. I would even argue that some genres wouldn’t exist if this wasn’t a thing.
You don’t see the same criticisms for every bank heist movie that all follow the same basic premises as each other
That’s because I generally don’t have to hear about every bank heist movie; you can’t avoid Avatar
For me, I will dog on any kind of retelling like this. If you’re not teaching anything new and are just retelling the story for profit, I don’t care about your story. There were no new story beats and no twists that caught me off guard.
When the movie was new, anytime you threw it shade, the first follow-up question was, “Well, did you see it in IMAX 3D?” That shouldn’t matter. If your story relies on visual gimmick to make it anything more than a reskin, I’m not interested.
I have the same feeling towards the live action Disney movies. They’re not adding anything new. I see about 5-10 new movies a year now compared to the 20-30 I used to because so little is not just a rehash of something from last year.
Dances with Smurfs
Yes but Disney’s Pocahontas was boring to tears while Avatar has cool hair-sex and explosions
And it is otherwise entirely dull and forgettable. Despite making so much money, it barely made any cultural impact. Nobody quotes Avatar like ever.
The reason it was such a hit at the time was mainly its visuals, IMO. Story might be predictable and shallow, but you can’t deny it looks beautiful. All the colorful jungle, alien species, green mountain peaks and needle rocks, it’s all just very pleasant to look at. What also helped it being directed by big Hollywood name.
PS: unrelated, but it has amazing OST.
I’ve always looked at the Avatar movies as being more about advancing movie making technology than about creating a good movie. I think James Cameron will be more remembered for his technical advances than for this storytelling.
On the other hand, he directed Titanic, which probably also had tech advances, but is recognized more for the story. Is that a fair observation? I was still a kid when it came out, so I know less about it than Avatar.
He helped to further submarine technology to get the shots of the Titanic for the movie, and he developed cameras that could withstand the pressures down there. He also helped design a small rover camera called Snoopy that actually went inside the Titanic to get shots of the staircase.
no the tech was very much the focus at the time. they did some incredible stuff for that film.
Agreed, I’ve always seen it as more of a tech demo than a feature film
Also it came out right at the time when 3D movies were at their (very short lived) peak.
And it did a GREAT job using that tech. I’ve never seen better.
The movie is a visual masterpiece and a king of theater-watching cinema.
Sure the story is bland but ain’t nobody watching that movie for the story.
Yep, IIRC someone committed suicide because, in part, he would never see real life floating jungle islands.
Doesn’t help that its dialogue is so boring, its most well known quote is literally just “I see you”.
Pretty sure it now has a theme park or something, doesn’t it?
It’s bizarre how much “stuff” there is for the blue people Avatar franchise, considering what a tiny lasting cultural impact the original movie had.
The original movie was an incredible tech demo. It was an utterly forgettable movie. I had no desire to bother watching the sequel.
It’s bizarre how much “stuff” there is
It’s not…
James Cameron spent a lot of money to make the first one, and wants to keep making them.
So the studio decided to just pretend that everyone wants more, and the entertainment media repeats it so the studio stays happy and tells them things.
The people don’t want, but that doesn’t really matter anymore. Enough will go see anything the media says is good, and just believe it’s good.
Lots of people are idiots, which explains a lot about capitalism
I don’t understand the appeal of Avatar. I really don’t. The writing is beyond lazy, and while the visuals may be impressive or whatever, the things they’re depicting just look weird and unappealing to me.
But even I can’t pretend that its success is only due to hype. There are plenty of successful movies that don’t deserve their success, but you don’t get as successful as Avatar without giving the audience something. People aren’t that dumb.
I didn’t say no one liked the first one.
They loved it, everything about it except the story. It was groundbreaking CGI and visually stunning.
No one wanted it a franchise except James Cameron though.
And when you strip away the story from any movie and rely on flashing visuals…
Dumb is the target demographic, they didn’t care about the story anyways.
The second one is the third highest grossing movie of all time. So clearly some people wanted more.
People aren’t that dumb.
Yeah they are.
Yep.
I have some acquaintances that raved about the movie. I finally read the story and could only think how terrible.
Well…
That your problem, you read it.
The story isn’t why anyone likes Avatar. The visuals were the draw.
Which is why everyone forgot about it pretty quickly
Lol
So the studio decided to just pretend that everyone wants more, and the entertainment media repeats it so the studio stays happy and tells them things.
I think you just described a non-political example of manufactured consent.
Sure, the movies aren’t very deep, but the world-building and visuals are pretty great. The emotional beats tend to hit as they should too so it’s entertaining fluff. Sure, I enjoy a fancy steak, but I’m also going to fully enjoy cotton candy at the carnival too.
Yeah, i remember going to see it mostly because of 3D (which probably helped a lot in becoming one of the most successful movies ever, thanks to the novelty and higher ticket price).
But left so little impact that i can hardly remember anything about it and have no interest whatsoever in seeing the sequels.
The theme park in animal kingdom was fine
Yah I saw the original in 3D and on acid, and it was incredible.
I also will probably never see the sequels.
I had a chance to get to watch it in 3d when it had just come out.
What they failed to tell was that it was with 3d sound but 2d visuals 🥳
Well, 3d all the same. What’s the difference anyway?
Sounds like you saw the 2d version. There was a full visually 3d version that was cool to watch.
I know. That’s what I thought I was going to be shown :D
The Pandora section of Animal Kingdom is pretty cool, especially at night. And the Flight of Passage ride is incredible, a very easy suspension of disbelief once you’re on the “banshee” and feeling it breathe beneath you, and the wind and the spray of water as you fly.
Say what you will about Disney, they know how to make a theme park experience.
Say what you will about Disney, they know how to make a theme park experience.
The only Disney park I’ve been to is Hong Kong. And to be honest, it was a very subpar experience. Much worse than the other parks I’ve been to like Movie World & Dreamworld in Australia, or Lotte World in Korea.
Man, it’s just so friggin boring. I gave up on the second movie halfway through and I struggled through the first one. I don’t understand why it became a global blockbuster.
“Showed up out of nowhere”, ie. in development since the mid 90’s; “made the most bank”, ie. made the 2nd most bank; “disappeared”, ie. Cameron said that there would be 4 sequels and that they’re being worked on; “came back out of nowhere”, ie. the first sequel came out more or less when it was supposed to, and Cameron said in 2020 that filming on Avatar 3 was nearly finished.
i feel like the feeling of them coming “out of nowhere” and “disappearing” is created by how little cultural impact those movies managed to create. like give me a single quote, anything memorable from the story itself. we all remember it is a beautiful film to watch, but the plot might as well be a theme park ride around an alien world
nobody talks about it, there is nothing to talk about
like give me a single quote, anything memorable from the story itself
Well there was the part where the… uh… the guy, whatshisface said…
Wait, no… ok well how about when the… um… there was that one part in… err, either the first or the second movie, one of the aliens did… umm…
You know what, I’ll get back to you on this one
“JakeSully” - Blue catgirl Gamora
See this? That’s Unobtainium.
Isn’t the story alien sideboob? I still remember that, very meaningful
It’s kinda funny how sexualized the aliens in Avatar are when they canonically have no genitalia except for their dreadlocks. It kinda defies the sci-fi trope; a sexy alien species that humans can’t have sex with (unless you get a avatar body with its accompanying penis perm of course).
“I see you” is an insanely easy quote to remember from this movie
me_irl
This should be the cover photo/thumbnail/whatever for the show “Um, Actually” lol
Bet you’re a hoot at parties
Want to have a nice cry about it?
What?
What?
In “How To With John Wilson” he finds an actual Avatar fan group who like to dress up as blue aliens, but it still felt super niche for a multi billion dollar film series. It’s like everyone simply forgets about it when there’s not one on in cinemas.
I absolutely love that show but I can’t recall that episode at all. Guess it’s time for a rewatch!
I want to hear the original version of the soundtrack. I do not care about the actual film at all, but supposedly Cameron hired a bunch of leading ethnomusicologists to attempt to create something unlike any music on Earth, only to then ditch the majority of what they made because it sounded too weird
That would be a fun director’s cut
Am I the only one here that has never seen it or understands what the hype is about?
It was another white saviour movie. It was very strange and not something I ever understood
I’m going off of deteriorated memory but… space pocahontas where the natives of the planet that the humans are invading are tall blue vaguely mammalian-fish looking humanoids with a weird multipurpose tail for controlling animals and apparently also for sex according to supposed axed scene. paraplegic human uses weird technology to control the body of one or something to complete the white man saves the day even though white man cause the problem in the first place trope. I dunno about the sequel maybe he permanently stays in the alien body or something and has alien kids, who knows.
It’s not about the story, it’s about the sfx.
Watch James Cameron’s movies like the abyss, Terminator2 and Titanic. (There’s others as well if you want to put in more effort)
He’s a visionary director and I just mean his own vision, Avatar was an idea he wanted to see on screen but was unhappy with the technology until he felt it was ready to tell the idea he had.
Like some other things, by today’s standards everyone else who saw what he did have been able to refine and expand on what he did so it may seem in unremarkable, but he finally decided to do the biggie when he felt the tech had come far enough for him to do his vision and it made Bank. So. Much. Bank
Again not because it’s an amazing original story, comparisons to fern gully were immediate even when it was new, but it was something that sits in a divide of how sfx can be used to tell a story in a way that people hadn’t otherwise shown. Even with a really unremarkable plot
Maybe its because Cameron is not one of my favorite directors. I love T2, of course but I can’t say the same about Titanic because (you guessed it) I still have not watched it and also didn’t buy into the hype when it was released. I remember that movie theaters were booked solid for weeks and you couldn’t get a ticket. No movie is that good or justifies that kind of hype, so I have skipped it so far.
I watched about 5 minutes of it in an electronics store before getting bored. If I’m not mistaken it is Dances with Wolves in space. There’s also a big blue guy who hangs dong.
Dances with wolves, Ferngully, pocahontas, take your pick lol
It was a very pretty movie
There are dozens of us
It’s shit except the visuals
It’s not “shit.” That’s just an over correction to its relative success for its mediocrity. Excluding the visuals, it’s fine. It’s not stellar, not terrible, just… fine. Simple. There are plenty of worse movie plots, dialogue and acting out there. It’s nowhere near unwatchable.
It’s a vehicle for the visuals and technology showcasing on a basic film frame, yes. But, it’s allowed to be really good at one thing and appreciated for that.
Like a plain chip in some bomb-ass dip. You could’ve scooped it on a dirty shoe and someone would have licked it clean. But, you gave me a plain chip instead, which is better… even if boring. So, thanks.
The writing sucks, the acting is ok, the plot is incoherent, the characters are shallow.
It’s a shit movie except the pretty pictures.
Agree to disagree.
Are we not going to talk about the fact that the logo uses something that is almost identical to the Papyrus font?
“I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!!”
You’re assuming there are people who remember what the logo looks like.
Nyeh-heh-heh
People think it’s so cool to shit on this series and have nothing to say about the Marvel dogshit lol
I saw the first movie, forgot almost completely what it was about. But I have to admit I thought it would be about the the Airbender. Half of the movie I felt stupid and cheated at the same time… Probably why I don’t remember what it was about.
Well, it’s better than the actual ATLA movie.
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.
There also is no live action TV adaptation.
Oddly enough, the Shyalaman movie is my favorite version of that whole franchise.
Ok I’m trying to be as open minded as possible here, but…how?
I didn’t like the art style of the cartoon, that’s a big part of it. I also appreciated the story being condensed - the movie cut out what amounts to about 11 hours of padding. The only thing I saw as being questionable was the Earthbender section (I watched that episode just for Sulu voicing the bad guy), but I think the point of their spirits being broken is even more pronounced when they’re literally on ground, rather than trapped in the water.
So basically, the animation and the time.
I didn’t like the art style of the cartoon
Hard to say much about that. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. Personally, with the exception of a few moments where it goes “all anime” (because personally, I cannot stand anime, and have never found a single anime show that I could stand to watch for very long, in part because of the preponderance of ridiculous over-the-top reactions)
I find Avatar to be one of the most beautifully-animated shows out there. Especially in moments like the climax of Crossroads of Destiny or during the Last Agni Kai.
the movie cut out what amounts to about 11 hours of padding
This I could not disagree with more strongly. And I don’t think this is opinion, but pretty solid fact. There’s a little padding for sure, but on the whole Avatar is an incredible example of how to do serialised storytelling well. With very little exception, every episode makes some major steps towards advancing the main story, deepening the characters, or deepening the worldbuilding to help heighten the stakes. Usually at least 2 of the 3. The first season is definitely the worst in this regard with episodes like The King of Omashu (which adds some worldbuilding that is important later, but is otherwise not a brilliantly-utilised episode), The Great Divide (an infamous joke within the community), and The Fortuneteller (whose only real redeeming quality is its role in effectively kicking off the romance arc). But in a 20-episode season, and for a show where this is the worst season, that’s a pretty damn good record.
but I think the point of their spirits being broken is even more pronounced when they’re literally on ground
That’s something that could be a good point, but the movie doesn’t really do anything to show why their spirits are broken.
The episode does a great job of this, by showing that even once Aang provides them with coal to earthbend, they are too broken to take it up right away. In the movie the prisoners outnumber their guards, and always have done, and there’s nothing stopping them using their powers whatsoever, either in theory or in the narrative.
And in fact, I think when it’s one smallish scene within a much larger movie, it’s always inevitably going to be hard to adequately “show, don’t tell” why the prison is able to break their spirits despite being surrounded by earth. So ironically, this is something that, if they wanted to do it, a longer runtime in a show is what could have made it work.
I watched that episode just for Sulu voicing the bad guy
It really does have a spectacular voice cast. Outside the core cast, Mark Hamill, René Auberjonois, Jason Isaacs, and Clancy Brown are also among those really worth mentioning.
I guess that’s another part of my issue - the setting really never grabbed me or seemed worth the investment that others were putting into it. So that might be why you saw world building and I just saw padding. l only saw “generic anti-authoritarian fantasypunk #367”, you saw something else. Because really, that’s how I see it. It’s fantasypunk, bordering on religious deconstruction. Heck, it’s even messianic, and the core concept is an unwilling messiah accepting his role and the chaos of the world left without a connection to the divine - a deconstruction that was already trite a century before ATLA.
The movie sticks to the beats of the core narrative and the modified Hero’s Journey. The show tries to meander and present multiple heroes - but when the narrative is messianic, you have to get to the point of the messiah saving the world and then departing in some way, leaving the world secure in the knowledge that the divine presence is both with them and apart from them, giving them free will but bearing judgement.
What I think most people like about the worldbuilding is the rich believable cultures that manage to be very obviously inspired by real-world Asian cultures, without being either caricatures or carbon copies. That it has a magic system that is woven seamlessly through the society of the world and doesn’t at all feel like “a medieval society with magic added on as an afterthought”. That the magic system itself does a great job of providing examples for all three of Sanderson’s Laws, being a robust hard magic system with very obvious limitations that gets explored in depth through things like ice and blood and lightning as believable extensions of what already exists. Revelations that make you go “oh yeah, of course!” and “holy shit that’s cool!” simultaneously.
In terms of characters, Aang’s certainly not the most interesting. I think it’s a bit more interesting than you give it credit for, because it’s not just an “unwilling messiah”, but it’s a literal child who’s forced to be a saviour. Not the teenager or young adult that you’d get with most YA fiction, but someone very much characterised as a young child forced to grow up too early. Themes of loss of innocence and the tragedy of war get explored well through him. But as I said, he’s not really the focus.
Zuko is. Zuko’s character arc is frequently cited as one of the best redemption arcs in fiction, and for good reason. It’s one of the best written, most believable arcs I’ve seen. He starts out a bad guy, because he was born on the side of the bad guys. But we later learn that he was banished because he stood up for the little guy. And even though banished, he doesn’t suddenly change the allegiances he’s grown up with his whole life. He believes he can restore his honour by aiding the bad guys and taking out the main good guy. Of course it’s actually a rather classic case of “he needed to find acceptance from within and stop seeking external validation”, which is a well-trod trope, but it’s his path to get there that’s great. Thanks to his contact with the good guys, and the helpful but non-pushy guidance of his uncle, he slowly comes to appreciate that he can be better. But it’s rather shallow and focused on just himself, not on understanding that the ruler of the bad guys is a bad guy. And so when the ruler welcomes him back, he goes. It’s not a smooth curve from bad guy to good guy, there’s a very prominent relapse along the way, due in part to the misaligned reason for his initial growth.
Other characters are also great. Azula’s tragic descent into madness, shown as an extremely believable progression resulting from traits she exhibited in her very first scenes. The understanding that Ozai might be irredeemable because he’s been steeped in the evil of the Fire Nation his whole life, but that the war didn’t start out like that: Sozin was ego-driven and insane, but ultimately got there because of his tragic friendship with Roku turning sour after he was just spreading his nation’s prosperity. Not a redeeming quality by any means, but an understandable one. There’s Hama; captured and tortured for years until she got the chance to turn the tables and became the torturer. And of course, Iroh. So much could be said about Iroh.
Of course there are other things outside of that. The music is sublime. The representation is great—I’ve already mentioned the fact that it’s focused on Asian and indigenous cultures, but also for people with a variety of different disabilities. The fact that it balances tone incredibly well with its serious moments and the light-hearted humour. The fact that it is, without a doubt, a children’s show that nonetheless does not condescend to kids, and even manages to have depth enough to attract a lot of adults (and know personally multiple, as well as having seen stories of people online, who were first introduced to it as adults, so it’s not just nostalgia).
I just…yeah. I cannot say enough good things about it.
Some people just love watching the crashes more than the race…
That’s even weirder really, the movie was so forgettable.
Nope. I knew what I was seeing.
I usually like to challenge anyone who said they liked it to name two chsracters. I think one person ever has succeeded.
🤷♂️
Well, there’s Sully, and, uh… Well the blue people are called the Navi, does that count?
Jake and Colonel Quaritch.
The problem is, the latter is a name recycled from the Aliens franchise, and Jake is so generic that it’s kind of a gimme.
It didn’t help that it came out around the same time as the ATLA movie.
