*Sorry, Gone With the Wind – we aren’t adjusting for inflation.
Disney had recently announced that the release of Avatar’s upcoming sequel would be pushed back yet another year in the interest of releasing the next few Star Wars titles. People should be mad about this – especially considering the original Avatar released back in 2009 – but they aren’t.
Where are the theories? Where are the online petitions begging Cameron to spare them a scrap of an Avatar 2 spoiler? Do people even want an Avatar 2 spoiler? Where are the die-hard Avatar fanatics? What do you even call die-hard Avatar fanatics?
There are too many questions on the table to guarantee any kind of success.
So, what went wrong?
In retrospect, Avatar had all the components of a quality movie. With high-budget action scenes, earth-shattering CGI, and an amazing story backed by the ever-pressing dilemma VR poses on society, it’s no wonder it was a hit. But, why it did so well even for sci-fi movie standards is still up in the air; unfortunately, it lacked memorability and impact.
Now, cultural impact shouldn’t be used as an indicator of whether or not the film was good, and that’s for good reason. If the alternative were to be the case, Minions would be considered a work of genius. Avatar was an amazing movie! But, when I’d asked my brother what he’d thought about the news, all he could say was: “Wait, we’re talking about Avatar: the Last Airbender, right?”
That a movie as hyped as Avengers: Endgame would be the one toppling a movie that had fallen off the radar faster than it had been on it should say enough about its popularity at the time. The filmmaking technology was new, the story was fresh, and back then, 3D was all the rage. Now? Not so much.
Most other films that did just as well at the box office (Titanic, Star Wars, etc.) benefit from the cult-following they had managed to generate. Granted, it’s much easier for series films to achieve this – especially those that have smaller timeframes in between releases. That is something that Avatar has, unfortunately, gotten the short end of the stick on. It’s hard to imagine that we could have had an Avatar sequel back in 2014. It really isn’t a big deal though – no one is in a hurry.
I mean, let’s be real here. Do you even remember what the plot was, or do you just refer to it as ‘that one movie with blue forest people and machine guns’? I’m willing to bet it’s the latter.
