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?

    • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
      621·
      9 days ago

      Or Fern Gully, or Dances With Wolves… it’s not exactly an uncommon story.

    • Grimtuck@lemmy.world
      61·
      9 days ago

      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.

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
        3·
        8 days ago

        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

      • otacon239@lemmy.world
        2·
        8 days ago

        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.

  • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
    426·
    9 days ago

    “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.

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
      412·
      9 days ago

      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

      • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
        13·
        9 days ago

        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

        • Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 days ago

          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).

  • burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
    221·
    9 days ago

    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.

  • digger@lemmy.ca
    12·
    9 days ago

    Are we not going to talk about the fact that the logo uses something that is almost identical to the Papyrus font?

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    132·
    9 days ago

    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.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    9·
    9 days ago

    I think it made so much money at the box office because it was so visually stunning (for the time) and no one had made a movie like that at that point. It was very much a movie everyone said to go watch on the big screen in 3D, ideally IMAX 3D. I never did and only watched it on a DVD borrowed from my wife’s friend 6 or 7 years ago, and came away less impressed. Like, it’s fine, but the movie itself isn’t exactly the greatest story ever told, and the visuals, while groundbreaking at the time, are now pretty standard.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
    9·
    8 days ago

    Well it had James Cameron as a director which automatically meant was going to make money. Also it was technically very impressive for the time which was kind of the point. Cameron made a huge deal of how this was a story that he’d wanted to tell for ages but hadn’t been able to until the technology got to the point where he could use it.

    After the movie came out there wasn’t really any obvious path forward. It wasn’t supposed to be a franchise it was just a movie that stood on its own. So nothing happened for years.

    Then things like the volume came along and it started getting used even in TV productions, and suddenly a whole new level of capability arose and so they decided that they would make another movie only this time why stop at just one?

  • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
    82·
    9 days ago

    Also, it’s an original movie. It’s not an adaptation or a sequel of any sorts. No other movie in top 50 highest grossing movies is an original. Closest is Titanic, but that’s half based on a real event.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
    83·
    9 days ago

    People think it’s so cool to shit on this series and have nothing to say about the Marvel dogshit lol

    • emmy67@lemmy.world
      71·
      9 days ago

      It was another white saviour movie. It was very strange and not something I ever understood

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      9 days ago

      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.

    • Widdershins@lemmy.world
      4·
      9 days ago

      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.

    • Jarix@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 days ago

      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

      • Quazatron@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 days ago

        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.

  • Zahille7@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 days ago

    Idk, I like the big special effects rollercoasters that James Cameron and Co. have made.

    The first time he flies a banshee in the first movie is a pretty cool scene, the battle in the floating mountains was badass, and the sheer scale of everything on Pandora is incredible to see (even if it’s all CGI).

    The second one was still a CGI rollercoaster that was fun to watch. I liked Spider cause he was actually kinda badass. The underwater scenes were spectacular to watch and there was more world building with the water navi.

    I’ll be interested to see what these other new navi are like and how they fit into everything else. The trailer makes it look like they’re going to partner with the RDA somehow. I kinda want to know why.

  • bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 days ago

    Given that they could accelerate masses to relativistic speeds. It never made sense to me why they bothered to do anything other than shatter the planet (a Chevy engine block could do that job at those speeds) and then collect the now more readily available unobtainium from the vacuum of space with no fighting required or any loses of any kind.

        • Tattorack@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 days ago

          Eyup. Pretty much. There was something about Pandora being the only planet with life they found, and since Earth cannot sustain life anymore…

          This was explained in the second movie.

          • bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
            01·
            9 days ago

            But the moon itself supports life just fine (we contaminated it back when we landed on the moon); we have grown plants on the moon successfully. Are the sci-fi writers explicitly ignoring what we have known for decades to justify a poorly thought out plan to do a search and replace movie?

            • Tattorack@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 days ago

              The Moon isn’t a pressurised environment with a full ecosystem. And considering how developed and gridlocked Earth is, and that interstellar travel is possible, why do you assume the moon hasn’t already been colonised?

              Or Mars? Or Titan?

              An artificial ecosystem doesn’t, and will never, compare to an organically evolved one.

              • bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
                1·
                9 days ago

                Honestly, a swarm of O’Neil cylinders would have more surface area than the planet Earth and need less mass than one of Mars’ moons. That would be vastly superior to even a duplicate Earth of nothing but nature preserves

    • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      Nah. Even if you had the ability to shatter a planet (it would take a lot more mass hitting the planet than that of every automobile ever made) it would just clump back together after a while because, ya know, gravity. And now you’ve sloshed everything around in a molten mess so it’s even harder to process.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
      251·
      9 days ago

      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.