Avatar (James Cameron film)

Do you have a problem with Nolan or something? The settings of his movies aren't exactly hard to remember.

But yeah, Avatar is a film to watch for spectacle, but it's plot isn't some instantly forgettable thing either. Not every film needs to be a great work of art.

edited 19th Apr '16 1:54:23 PM by TheAirman

If it's going to be the number one grossing movie of all time, it should be.

And yeah, Pacific Rim's plot was cheesy, but it was deliberately a homage to cheesy kaiju and mecha movies with folks in rubber suits and toy buildings. Avatar is caught in a weird place of both trying to be revolutionary and yet mining for every cliche.

edited 19th Apr '16 2:08:59 PM by Tuckerscreator

Guillermo del Toro wasn't worried about the story of Pacific Rim. It was still there, of course, and I definitely liked it, but he knew that people weren't coming into the theater for that. "It is my duty to commit to film the finest fucking monsters ever committed to screen and it is my duty to create the greatest fucking robots ever committed to screen."

Also the giant monster fighting action served the theme of people coming together to fight trauma and also giant monsters.

You can do this quote replacing "Del Toro" by "Cameron", "monsters" by "imaginary animals" and "robots" by "planet", more or less.

I have no problem with Nolan, love his movies, but he loves complexity. Inception or The Dark Knight have significantly more layered plots than your average AAA like Avengers.

edited 19th Apr '16 2:22:02 PM by Julep

If Avatar had been just the planet and the animals, I probably would've liked it a lot better. But instead those 'engineered in a computer lab to look sexy' Na'vi take up most of the screentime. I quote Nathan Rabin.

edited 19th Apr '16 2:34:23 PM by Tuckerscreator

Hmm. I don't know. The people declaring Avatar "forgettable" are just indulging in bog standard hyperbole. The basic premise, some of the characters/characters' names, the general look of the movie, and, of course, the 3D are easy enough to remember, sure. The issue seems to be that, while not that difficult a movie to remember, it isn't exactly iconic the same way The Dark Knight or Cameron's own Titanic are. TDK was released around the same time, and yet it is significantly easier to find someone who can give you a basic plot synopsis, quote-mine it, cite myriad famous scenes, and find one aspect of it that they unabashedly love, such as Ledger's performance. The same is true for Titanic, even at the nadir of its Hype Backlash.

Once the "Dances with 3D Smurfs in Space" jokes ran their course by about 2012, Avatar seemingly dropped off of the pop culture radar. The last I heard of it irl was when an out-of-touch biology professor of mine showed the class a photo of Navi-House during one of her powerpoint presentations back in Spring 2013 (I don't know why either). Even on the internet, I'm only reminded the movie exists because of the occasional article inquiring why/if Avatar is forgotten, ironically enough.

So yeah, being remembered solely for being a Tech Demo Movie that made tons of cash and popularizing a technique, stereoscopic 3D, that most see fit to half-ass, which in turn has soured public perception toward the technology, isn't the best foundation for a beloved, memory-enduring movie franchise.

You compare Avatar - a brand-new franchise which popped out of nowhere in popular culture - to A) the most famous comic book character of all time, who has been up, running and popular for more than fifty years now (60's TV show, Burton movies, BTAS, all were very influential) and B) a movie based on a historical event, whose word became part of the common language when you need to designate a colossal failure. Avatar started at a disadvantage.

Yet I do not think it is less influential than TDK in common culture. TDK is simply brought back repeatedly in discussions because 10.000 comic book movies are released every year and all are compared to this one.

ah, Avatar, a ham fisted environmental message (the blue alien cat people are better than humans because they're in tune with nature... ARE THEY EXPLORING THE STARS!?!? I THINK NOT!!!) wrapped in a bad, ripped off, plot, filled with deus ex machina, loads of plot holes, bad writing, a lack of understanding of physics or biology, let alone modern (as in present day) mining techniques that would have solved the plot of the film! and it sold well because it looked nice! we're like a bunch of fucking stupid magpies! Cameron can only ride the good will from Terminator and Aliens for so long!

I'm unsure as to whether you are assassinating the movie, or mocking its most violent critics, or both.

attacking the movie, I fucking hate it, it is bad, a bad bit of film making, it just looks pretty

No, it really was just kind of forgettable. Not in the literal sense, necessarily (though I don't remember any character's name besides Neytiri), but in the sense that it was thoroughly mediocre in every way except its visuals and nothing about it was particularly interesting. So really I don't consider it a hyperbole or kneejerk reaction at all.

I don't know how you get away with saying that given that TDK is still considered one of the most important superhero films of all time and while obviously some people are more critical of it now, still well-liked, and is frequently brought up in discussions. Heath Ledger's Joker won an award and is one of the most well-regarded adaptations of the character.

Meanwhile what does Avatar have to its name besides its claim to fame of being the number one grossing movie and a bunch of jokes about DANCES WITH WOLVES IN SPACE and blue furries? Sure, obviously SOME people liked it, but nobody talks about that movie anymore, and few people are really that excited for a continuation of it.

edited 20th Apr '16 8:04:35 AM by wehrmacht

Avatar is completely forgettable for me. I have to look on a webpage like this to find out who the fuck the characters were, where the film was supposedly set and what the plot was. So, no, I'm not trying to be any kind of hipster saying it's forgettable because it sucks or whatever bullshit you may direct at me.

Oh, so...

How is a ham-fisted environmental message bad? I mean, okay, the Ghibli movies exist, but those aside, how many American movies have an actual environmental message? At all? And how many of those have one that is not ham-fisted?

Bad filmmaking, plot holes...those are critics that I understand, and sometimes even agree with, but complaining because of the Green Aesop always elevated my blood pressure. We need environmentalist messages, because the alternative to the ham-fisted ones is nothing and going on as if nothing is happening.

If every year we got a new high-profile Princess Mononoke or Pom Poko, then yeah, I would be the first one to say how stupidly black and white Avatar can be when it comes to ecology. But it is so rare in live-action movies that honestly, black and white is better than nothing. At least people got out of the theaters realizing that ecology existed.

Also, as a sidenote, I would love to know more about what is wrong with Avatar's biology and ecology. I am soon to write my thesis in conservation biology, and the few colleagues I discussed the movie with never pointed any huge ecological nonsense in it (even though some of them disliked the movie as a whole).

Because it is that: a superhero film.

How many new space operas have been released since Avatar? There were sequels to famous pre-existing universes (Star Trek & Wars), a couple of hard scifi movies (Gravity, Interstellar), and some movies that were not exactly well-received (such as Jupiter Ascending). That's it. So why mention Avatar at all while talking about other movies?

Meanwhile, you get three, four, five or more new superhero movies every year these days at least. Hell, we already had three and it is still April! So obviously people will talk about superhero movies, will compare them to each other, and TDK will be mentioned because it is one of the very few that got the "critics seal of approval" when Heath Ledger got an Academy Award - and because it is a very good movie. We live in an era where far too many superhero movies are produced (on the grounds that many of them, while entertaining, are extremely forgettable), so any reference in the field is bound to be repeatedly mentioned.

Plus, since TDK, Batman alone got new Comics (well, he kept getting comics), new Video Games (Arkham series, and also Injustice), and new movies (TDKR, BVS), plus I assume some stand-alone cartoons. Batman is fucking everywhere. And when you talk about Batman, you compare it to the references in media - BTAS, The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns CB...and you talk about The Dark Knight. And then Suicide Squad offers a new Joker. So you compare it to Ledger in The Dark Knight.

I am not saying that the movie does not deserve to be talked about (because as far as superhero movies go, it is one of the few that is truly memorable), but that you cannot compare its cultural influence or current popularity to Avatar's, which is kinda alone in its category with no movie whatsoever to be compared to. It is too fantastic for Interstellar, yet not enough for Star Wars. District 9 was out a bit before it. It is obviously inspired by Native American history, yet you cannot really compare it to actual historical movies because it is scifi. And also because there are just no new movies about Native Americans - except The Lone Ranger, but, how to put it...it sucks.

Also, Cameron did not turn Avatar into a cash cow, unlike the MCU, DCCU, or the SWU. There was the movie, there probably was a forgettable tie-in video game released at the same time...and that's it. Considering how fast culture evolves these days, six years without appearing in any form is an eternity, and when you cannot be roped in because people compare you to some new stuff, then you become less influential.

Worse than that, the only reason you compare Avatar to anything these days...is for box-office success. And when a movie is compared to it, it is because it works well, which means (usually) that fans love it, and when they see that Avatar still had higher grossings, then said fans will have the "why isn't MY favorite movie in the 1st place?" reaction, and it does not exactly make Avatar shine brighter in their minds.

edited 20th Apr '16 8:16:06 AM by Julep

The thing is, I doubt people really left the theaters really that gung-ho about helping the environment or whatever. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about the environment or promote its protection, but generally speaking this kind of Green Aesop is viewed very negatively. Mononoke has been the only movie with an environmental message that didn't come across as preachy and annoying.

When it comes to spreading a message, the way you send the message counts a lot, especially when it comes to a story. If the message feels ham-fisted and feels overly moralizing, then it's basically just preaching to the choir and achieves nothing. You can afford to be a bit more blunt with your messages sometimes, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but environmental messages have a poor track record in stories.

I'm not gonna quote everything you said, mostly because I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying per se, but I think that you are failing to take something important into account as to why people aren't talking about anymore, which is simply that most people found the film mediocre and unimpressive beyond its visuals and other technical achievements. If Avatar had been a movie mostly considered good by critics and the general public, sure maybe it wouldn't be talked about as much now exactly because of how pop culture works nowadays, but I'm pretty sure it'd be more along the lines of "oh yeah, that movie was pretty good" rather than "....oh right, i forgot this movie existed because it left no impression on me at all".

So in other words, it's not just that it isn't talked about, but the only thing that it's generally remembered for is being a visual tech demo with an uninspired story and characters.

I'm not gonna deny that this happens but I don't see it as an especially relevant thing to mention since plenty of people find the movie bland on its own merits, without having to be outraged over a metric that has literally never meant anything in regards to the actual quality of a film.

edited 20th Apr '16 8:31:47 AM by wehrmacht

No, people left the theaters talking about how terrible Jake Sully is at his job and how surprisingly reasonable Quaritch was. It's hard for me to really judge the Green Aesop on account of the fact that it's overshadowed by Jake's incompetence. It could have been the most subtle Green Aesop in the universe and it would still have fallen flat next to Jake f*cking two cultures into a war and the Designated Villain's efforts to minimize casualties to his enemy's side.

And also about how the humans were totally going to come back and exterminate the native population like exactly what happened in the historical events the film was attempting to imitate.

The ins and outs of the military drama heavily overshadowed the Green Aesop to the point that it might as well have just not been there.

edited 20th Apr '16 8:34:36 AM by TobiasDrake

I'm...not so sure about that. Most of the people I know IRL and that saw the movie thought it ranged from pretty cool to absolutely awesome (my colleague during the first year of my PhD considers it her favorite movie), even though some indeed think it is clumsy and preachy and have a negative opinion of it.

But none of these people would ever think of posting their opinion on internet forums to discuss the movie. They like watching movies, but they don't love talking about movies. Two of the exceptions of that rule - so, people who like to discuss movie themes and talk about it extensively - also happen to be among the few of my friends that disliked it.

So to use a perilous VG comparison, Avatar is fondly remembered by (I hate that word) "casual" movie fans. People who see movies once in a while, sometimes sit down and watch a DVD, but for whom medias in general are not worth discussing at length. Now, we are on the Tvtropes forum, so even if generalizations are often wrong, I think that pretty much everyone here loves talking about works of fiction and analyzing its contents. And I do think Avatar scores rather low among the "geek" community for various reasons, some of which I understand, some of which I really don't - Quaritch might be charismatic, he is an unrepentant supremacist/colonialist/war criminal and I think there is nothing "cool" about him, he is a good villain, but he is just that, a villain.

And that's also why among "geeks"/people who love talking about movies on forums, Avatar's success is seen at best as weird, and at worst as undeserved: because it is not a movie that targeted them primarily. Just like Titanic in fact - I remember, back in the day, that many jokes were made about Leo & Kate's performances, about the length of the wreck, about the love story being stupid, about Rose not even leaving some room for Jack on her piece of wood...

Yeah, Avatar is basically Titanic 2.0 as far as "place in culture" goes. I can almost guarantee that its status will change as soon as we get a 3.0 that beats its box-office scores.

edited 20th Apr '16 8:45:05 AM by Julep

I'm not sure there's not nearly so large a "silent majority" of Avatar fans. In my own experience, it was really REALLY popular in my high school days, and I was the one of a few outliers who disliked it. But hearing from my high school friends now, many of them barely remember it under a decade later, and one admitted that the last time he saw it was with a Rifftrax playing.

I think a good example of how little impact Avatar has had is how its stars haven't gone on to much else. Remember anything Sam Worthington did after Clash of Titans? As for Stephen Lang, many of his post-Avatar credits have been direct-to-video. Zoe Saldana has been successful, but largely more because of Star Trek which also released in 2009. Contrast this with Titanic, where Kate Winslet and Leo Dicaprio became massive stars. Even at the height of Titanic's backlash, the two of them were still beloved by viewers.

edited 20th Apr '16 11:27:06 AM by Tuckerscreator

I would say Avatar did have an impact, in that it launched the current 3-D movie craze that's only barely starting to cool down today. For a while every studio was (and to an extent, is) seeking to make its own Avatar equivalent, not in terms of story but in just making a lavish CGI world for viewers to gawk at.

I still have to agree with Julep on this, because while Avatar is a very cliché movie, almost every big action blockbuster is just as cliché. There's a certain hypocrisy in criticising Avatar for its lack of originality while at the same time embracing, say, the average Marvel or Star Wars movie for their clichés as so many people do. It makes me think the criticism directed at Avatar has less to do with it being particularly any worse about this than any other blockbuster, and more with resentment about its box office success, and lack of established brand loyalty.

Yeah. Avatar may not have been a great story but its impact on visual effects and film presentation shouldn't be understated. People saying that it's not really a great work of art need to take another look at the amazing world the film built.

Sure, the plot is shit, but the Mona Lisa doesn't do a very good job of keeping me guessing either. As a book, Avatar is pretty barebones, but as a painting, it's gorgeous.

I think the one advantage that the likes of Marvel and Star Wars have over Avatar is that they're properties that have been around for a long time. They existed back when all of those cliches weren't as done to death and the stuff today is just a continuation of that (of the comics in Marvel's case). Avatar came out long after the Dances With Wolves-style story had been done to death and didn't add anything new save its special effects.

Special effects that put a lot of asses in seats, mind you.

It's hard to pinpoint the precise reason why Avatar failed because as the number one highest grossing film of all time with an 83% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Avatar didn't fail. Avatar made more money than God and was beloved by an overwhelming majority.

It didn't go anywhere after that, but the ultimate answer to the question of what Avatar did wrong is that it's really hard to describe one of the most successful films in history as "doing film wrong".

edited 20th Apr '16 11:52:33 AM by TobiasDrake

I'm not talking about films that came out thirty years ago, though. I'm talking about the (very brand-driven) modern blockbuster industry. People tend to be very willing to overlook the clichés of your Ant-Mans or your Forces Awakenses in a way they're not willing to overlook the compareable amount of clichés present in Avatar. There's a double standard there, I think.

Avatar's cliches equivalent to Marvel's? Not at ALL. For one thing, Avatar's unimaginative plot was not aided by its script. The dialogue for the characters is resoundingly cliche, and I was predicting sentences before they'd happen the first time I saw it. The character arcs in Avatar were also pretty flat; Neytiri's growing attraction to Jake is barely glimpsed before they're suddenly together, and Jake's fellow scientist Norm (remember him?) is claimed to be jealous of him then his friend again, all offscreen via narration.

Inversely, Marvel's movies can do fantastic character arcs even with a predictable plot. The Avengers's plot is easily described, but it used the reduced time that would've been spent on plot to flesh out the characters' interactions. Think back to Tony and Steve's rivalry over their differing politics, or Tony becoming Bruce's friend over their wounds, or Natasha and her debt to Hawkeye. Same with Guardians of the Galaxy and its premise of "idiot criminals learn to finally give a s***." It's not an easy feat to make a talking raccoon and mono-phrase tree compelling, or a tattooed berserker hilarious yet tragic, but they did. And those films are full of quotable lines that trump Avatar's by miles.

I don't speak from brand loyalty at all. I wouldn't have seen The Avengers if it weren't for Captain America, and I wouldn't have seen it Cap a year beforehand when my knowledge of him was limited to "guy who wears spangly outfit.".

edited 20th Apr '16 12:02:41 PM by Tuckerscreator

*cough*scottandhope*cough*