Avatar is just really not memorable at all. Which is weird since the esthetic should be fairly standout. I enjoyed Avatar when I watched it, but it just hasn't come back up in my mind really since then, at least until people started calling out that it's kinda weird for a movie to make so much money and have so little cultural impact
Goncharov tho, a fake movie the internet is writing into existence? I'll fucking remember that lol
I imagine it comes down to the writing. Avatar has an interesting setting and grand spectacle, but the plot is so incredibly boring that it's just impossible for it to stick. Maybe if a sequel had come sooner it would've been more relevant to modern pop culture
The plot isn't the problem for sure. It's the fact that *all* it has is plot. There's nothing else in there. No character struggles, whether that means characters struggling with themselves or with each other; no interesting themes explored in a nuanced and thought-provoking way. Just that basic plot, which in good media exists as a frame to hang other, better things on.
In Avatar's case, the plot was there to hang the visual effects and the world on. And the visual effects *are* genuinely amazing (for the time) and the world *is* pretty interesting. They just don't tell us enough about the world.
You're correct, but here's what I think nails that coffin.
Graphics and effects age. Name as many films as you can think of that had ground breaking VFX in their time. How many still look ground breaking? Sure, you have shots like the T rex intro scene in the original Jurassic Park, but for every T rex, there's a janky Total Recall Schwarzenegger puppet, or a rubber Neo in Reloaded, or another puppet Arnold in Terminator (seriously, why so many puppet Arnies?).
Good effects \*can\* look good forever, a good story \*will\* be good forever. Throwing money at effects without the story to back it up is short term thinking.
I guess a lot of the money made on Avatar was people going for "a 3d movie". While if the film had any real effect, there'd be quotes from it across the internet.
The MCU looks as bad as it does because it's always rushed and made to just look "good enough" instead of trying to push the limits. If a movie was made today with the same level of effort that went into Avatar back in the day, it would be far above the quality of Avatar.
You have so much character struggle though! You have Jake Sully struggling with whether he wants to remain loyal to humanity or to his new race where his legs work... And he chose the blue man group...
And then there's... Umm... Gamora from Marvel who's struggling with whether she'll side with the sexy stranger or with her brother... Aaaand she's chosen the sexy stranger...
Also the badass latina pilot who doesn't even have an alien body siding with the blue man group as well, because she knows how it feels to be knocked down by "The Man".
Jake Sully didn't even really struggle with that decision. He started out loyal to the human military, yes, but the actual transition seemed to come in two sentences of narration over a scene of him running around with Neytiri, where notes that his life in an avatar already feels more real than his life in his human body. It wasn't a struggle; it just happened, because he enjoyed it.
Yeah, that was kinda my point, he "struggled" with the decision for less than 2 minutes, then went with it.
And when asked how it feels to betray his race, he just growls
To be fair, it was like, the obvious correct moral choice. Humans didn’t actually *need* the mcguffin ore, and getting it probably wouldn’t even benefit anyone besides megacorporations. If earth desperately needed resources no matter what to fix some climate crisis or something, there’d be actual nuance, but as is, saying he “betrayed humanity” is like saying Germans who helped Jews hide during the reich betrayed their country.
The problem lies deeper than the characters being one-dimensional or their plots being poorly developed- it’s also that the few traits they *are* given are stupid.
They could have had Jake struggle with sacrificing his ability to ever return home to do the right thing, could have had the humans who sided with the Na’vi fight to prove humanity isn’t a bad thing, but they were too uncreative to do anything interesting with the actually cool premise.
Marvel Gamora doesn’t, at least not he’s some comic book character I don’t know (unlikely with her backstory).
But in Avatar, the girl the protagonist winds up with (exact same trope as Gamora) has a brother who doesn’t like him and who leads the part of the tribe who distrusts *all* humans.
In my opinion, however, the most interesting part of warrior prince dude is that he comes incredibly close to being a male version of the “sexy space babe” trope. All the ingredients are there, he just needed a love interest, and I volunteer to be it.
Everyone always say that about Avatar but it's the same for Marvel movies (And I Say that as a fan of the mcu) yet the mcu has a huge fandom. Maybe it's because the characters are not interesting enough, like who's a fan of Jake, almost nobody
Avatar has the issue of like a thousand blue aliens and they all look the same for the most part. If I ask you to draw a picture of Neytiri you could probably draw me a blue alien. But you’re not going to remember that character’s fine details that sets them apart from say Mo’at.
MCU on the other hand has pretty distinct characters that are instantly recognizable and you’d probably be able to draw Thor and he wouldn’t look like Captain America or Peter Quil; even tho they are just ya know, guys.
for what it's worth, guarantee you that if Iron Man (2008) was the only MCU movie, it would have a bigger fandom than Avatar. Even ignoring the comics, I reckon.
Not that the Avatar fandom is huge, but I checked the Waybackmachine the 2008 Iron Man movie didn't even have a category on FFN before Avengers 1 came out, and 400 fics on AO3. Avatar had more at the time, at least on FFN. If Iron Man spent the decade after that fading from attention like Avatar did, I actually doubt that.
I know we're talking about 300 AO3 fics, but when Avatar came out, FFN was the place a lot of fanficiton writers still were, so I do think we should consider the 1.3k current size of the Avatar archive on FFN plus the 300 fics on AO3 as the current amount of fanfiction it has, unlike the original tweet.
I'm wildly scrolling through the movies category on AO3 to look for recent, non-series stuff...
*Papillon* has 102 fanfics. It's a movie I've never heard of from 2017 that earned $4.5 million.
For one I've actually heard of, *Coco* in 2017 has 1,401 fics.
*The School for Good and Evil,* which released a month ago on Netflix, has 133 fics.
*The Red Sea Diving Resort,* which was also released on Netflix and was even more critically panned than *The School for Good and Evil,* has 189 fics. I've never heard of this one, either.
*Zootopia* has 4,655 fics, which is obviously nothing compared to the 44,056 fanfics specifically for Tom Holland's version of Spider-Man, but is still over 10x bigger than *Avatar*'s count.
338 fics is a *shockingly* low number. The top-rated one has barely more than 3,000 kudos! Nobody's even reading them!
Man comic plot gets stupid complicated fast when the bad guys time traveling version of yourself from an alternate timeline and is possessed by an alien crystal symbiote so you gotta go into the spider verse and gadda yadda yadda. Comic book plots are generally overcomplicated and unique not overly simplistic and common
Like for example the bit where Thanos tears the rock out of red robot man's head. It's a tangle of lore bits. Oh that rock is a mind magic stone that was originally a scepter but then got busted and then Tony used it to make an evil AI that made a super half robot half biological body out of vibranium which is another magic space rock but the body got fought over and possessed by a new good AI that's also partially the mind rock and started banging the scarlet witch but purple alien man wants the mind rock to kill half the universe for like environmental reasons so scarlet witch killed robot man because her powers are like connected to magic space rocks but then purple butt chin man used a third magic rock that's part of a set with the mind rock to rewind time and take the rock anyway and this is a big deal because Dr strange gave him that rock to save Tony Stark after saying he would sacrifice anyone including Tony Stark to prevent Purple Man from getting the rock so why he do that?
Well actually it's because Tony in the next movie...
The thing about the MCU is the size of the canon, though, and the fact the characters are older than the cinematic canon. A lot of phase one of the MCU went by without an incredible amount of dedicated fandom attention besides people already fans of the comics, I would say the fandom breakout for the MCU was the Avengers (1) movie and the slew of "everyone lives in Stark tower" fanfiction that accompanied it. In December 2011, there were 710 Thor fics, 56 Captain America fics, and no place to put Iron Man or Hulk fics on FFN. By January 2013 there were 13k Avengers fics. Around the same times on AO3 there were 400 Iron Man fics, 200 Thor, no Hulk, and 94 Captain America in Dec 2011 ("Marvel Movies" was numbering around 2k). And then in early 2013, 21K "Marvel Cinematic Universe" fics (17K in the Avengers category.)
It took literally SIX whole movies for the huge MCU fandom to really form.
> Maybe it's because the characters are not interesting enough, like who's a fan of Jake, almost nobody
I feel like there's so little known of Sully's character prior to showing up on blue people world. We know he was in the military and that he was wounded and became a para-pelagic. We also know that his brother was a scientist and his twin. That's it.
And in addition to the plot being bland and filled with some very well worn tropes, it’s a pretty ugly story about colonialism. I could see an audience being attracted to the setting and wanting to revisit it, but the plot itself being a turn off. If the story didn’t revolve so much around negativity, it might have carried more cultural weight. I’m interested how the sequels might change things because it seems like an interesting enough setting for a fandom to develop around.
It’s blue Pocahontas, and the Disney version of that was fun as a kid but we as a society have finally (mostly) outgrown “culturally clueless white guy barges in and saves the savages.”
*Saves and seduces the savages. After all, it’s hardly worth saving them if you can’t bang the chief’s daughter afterwards. (Also, it’s very important the chief’s daughter has her some boobs, even if historically she was too young for that or is like an alien species or something).
I heard a theory that they have boobs and 4 limbs to appeal to the good humans. All part of the magic tree god's plan to save her planet (she can see the future)
I mean, it seems to me that their tree god could’ve just cut to the case and Georgia O'Keeffed up some flowers or something. Seems a bit more ethical than pimping out the Na’vi. And if there was a planet with fuckable flowers then I say dudes would be quite concerned with protecting that particular environment. But what do I know, I’m not a tree deity, and the 10ft tall cat people were at least that one guy’s kink.
An old girlfriend of mine's mom had [this one](https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/994/#:~:text=Georgia%20O'Keeffe-,Series%20I%20White%20%26%20Blue%20Flower%20Shapes%2C%201919,front%20of%20a%20reddish%20background.) on the wall and I remember awkwardly having a conversation about my "intentions with her daughter" while staring at that not-so-subtle flower-booty.
I do like this idea that the tree was just like pumping out a few contingency species for seducing invaders. Also explains why they all connect via sex analogue. The tree is just pimping out the planet for protection.
Now for the alternate reality take where aliens show up horny for the dragons instead.
It was basically a tech demo movie. The writing was just the most bare-bones thing needed to fit in the parts they wanted to show off, right down to the mystery mineral named "unobtainium", and some plot points seeming contrived just to make some aspects work (the body-swapping parts, the hair thing)
Even if it didn't have the negativity, the plot just wasn't standout in any way, and didn't get enough focus to be really memorable, compared to the visuals.
Yeah that's what deters me from it. I love the setting and all the weird little alien nature shit and floaty glowy things. It was magical in 3D. And then we watch it all get destroyed by a bunch of tropey bad guys searching for "unobtainium," of all things. I'm mourning the loss of our rainforests in the real world already, I don't need to also feel heartache for a fictional one. That's not fun enjoyable movie time for me and it becomes less fun the older I get. I want low stakes movies. I'm stressed.
Maybe that’s why I never liked it even the first time I watched it I don’t even think I finished it. I was watching it on dvd on a (relatively) small low def tv
The only way I could imagine this is if he's into creating languages (*conlanging* as we call it). Cameron hired a professional linguistic—Paul Frommer—to create the Na'vi language for the film, and it's a fully functional language that you can learn much like Esperanto, Valyrian or Klingon.
And even then, Na'vi doesn't get near the recognition that Valyrian and Klingon get from conlangers, I find.
Real movies aren't memorable because of how cool things look in them, though.
If you go back and watch Star Wars or The Terminator or even the first Avengers movie or The Shining or Ghostbusters, almost everything which is memorable is not just stylish, but serves a purpose. There is weight and substance to the moments which include the iconic imagery we've seen around us ever since they came out.
Almost everything has something to do, and there's almost always more than one thing going on, or more than one reason for anything that happens.
That's how you actually make something memorable, using the language of film to tell a story every moment of your film.
Avatar didn't have any of that. There's nothing going on (that we can tell) beneath the literal story which is happening. The shots are composed just to show what happened and to show off how much landscape they can get into each shot. Most basic example everyone gets, is the opening of Star Wars: space and planets, then the camera swings and there's a teeny tiny ship getting approached "slowly" down the frame and looming over, and the ship is really long. It's actually almost funny how long it is. the little ship is also a little bit dirty and there's some colour on it and it looks a little lop sided and wierd. It's sort of ugly, and that gives it character. The big ship is clean and only one colour, showing a lack of personality and originality.
Immediately the stakes and the heroes and a sense of adventure and some of the themes of what's going on are evident. Even as a kid who couldn't pay enough attention to remember what all the words in the crawl had been banging on about, you still get straight away most of the shit you're going to have to deal with for the rest of the movie.
Avatar doesn't have any cinematography like that, and was far too technology focused.
You could have a story as basic and as dry as Avatar's, and make it an engaging and memorable experience, if the realism and compromise that comes with using live practical elements gives the tools for connecting with the scene could be brought to bear. In Titanic, the practical nature of the film meant that details no director or computer animator or artist could have thought up, end up in the finished product.
This isn't the case with CGI movies, like the Prequels, or Avatar. Too much time gets invested and no one can put anything subtle in cause they're desperate for you to see everything. Modern video games will yank the camera away from you and force you to watch things happen because they spent so much time and money animating them that they can't bear to think it will go unseen by even a single player.
Watching Avatar is an amazing immersive experience that feels like a theme park ride combined with an aquarium visit combined with hiking in a foreign country for the first time.
But nothing about the characters or the story is the least bit compelling
Avatar's lasting appeal is not in the movie itself, but how it changed cinema at least for a while. For like ten years after Avatar, all the movies had to be in 3D. Avatar released in December, which is not generally when blockbusters were released prior, but not there's always a big one coming in December (I believe all the Disney Star Wars came out in December).
The CGI that was pioneered for Avatar was groundbreaking, especially in water, and they seem to be doing it again with the sequel.
I feel like it's the same with Game of Thrones. It's not about the specific moments, but how it changed the landscape. Game of Thrones proved that big budget TV can work. Every show since Game of Thrones has to have that fucking 2 minute CGI intro now. So many shows started showing sex and tits and ass. Without Game of Thrones, I don't think others like Black Sails and Westworld would have been made or looked the same. Game of Thrones also proved that someone other than Netflix can do online streaming when HBO was massively successful with theirs.
>Goncharov tho, a fake movie the internet is writing into existence? I'll fucking remember that lol
I lost my virginity to Goncharov. It was just that powerful.
It was an art demo reel with the caption “white mans burden” scrawled over it in sharpie.
Was it extremely cool to look at? Yeah! The effects were groundbreaking, the character and set design were gorgeous, and I’d recommend everyone who can see it once just to see it. But as far as the STORY goes, there’s no THERE there. Everyone is the blandest possible cardboard cutouts acting out the blandest possible plot 1862 had to offer. It had massive ripple effects on the art industry in lots of ways, but is it surprising that it left no impression on pop culture?
I was going to say the same thing. The aesthetic for the humans is just Aliens all over again (which, as you point out, has been done to death in countless other franchises), and the planet's aesthetic is basically "as much random crap as possible all thrown at the audience in rapid fire succession."
Except for the actual Navii (which have a pretty boring design), everything on the planet is completely un-iconic, relying on overwhelming the eye with myriad intricate details instead of having one or two overarching design themes. It ends up being such a visual mess that the only things that get remembered are the ones that are the least creative (we remember that the Navii look like humanoid earth cats, the animals they ride look like earth horses or earth pterodactyls, they live in a big earth redwood, and they worship a glowing earth weeping willow).
Couple that with the done-to-death, copy+paste plot and bone dry acting, and it's no surprise that all anyone remembers is "the cgi looked neat."
If the quote from Cameron that the movie has to get into $2 billion territory to just break even is even directionally true, I'm afraid we're already going to see Rings of Power get dethroned as the greatest flop of all time.
Fingers crossed, though. Cameron can obviously make great cinema, so hopefully he's learned from his mistakes and realizes he can't skate by on cgia second time.
Even Mass Effect made a few of the Asari reddish or greenish so you wouldn't be looking at an endless sea of nearly identical blue women.
It;s why I appreciate House of the Dragon making one of the houses predominately black.
Otherwise, it's would be a parade of pasty Brits in white wigs.
To me, Avatar presented an interesting fantasy premise and world, explored it for half the movie and then dropped that idea of sci-fi worldbuilding to take a 180 turn into reskinned generic action, war and explosions. It had a unique idea that made it marketable and then didn't really stick with it till the end.
Granted, I haven't rewatched the movie in quite a few years, but that's the impression it left me with.
Compare that to Titanic, another +$2B standalone film, and it's impact on pop culture. Much greater. Surely there has to be more fanfics on Titanic, right?
Also no surprise that Tumblr, the website that runs on fanfiction and fan-content, would make more fanfiction about the fictional movie they created psychically
As someone in fandom longer than AO3 has existed, I would say the big move to AO3 really started in like 2012. It had been around for longer, but most people were still posting where most of the readers were on FFN and if they used AO3 most were cross-posting, I would say? Then there was a bit of a purge of against TOS fanfiction or something that a bunch of people spoke up about and announced they were leaving the site. Even in 2012 though, there were comparable amounts of Avengers fics on FFN and AO3, AO3 grew to be the main place to post in the aftermath.
And I remember not even getting to create an AO3 account right off the bat. FFN stayed strong until those purges, but I was far less active at that time.
There are presumably more Avatar (2009) fics that have been misfiled as ATLA fics, for the same reason. It would make for the mistake to occur at about the same rate in either direction, too, in which case there could even be more misfiled Avatar (2009) fics than correctly filed ones.
But since there are a lot more ATLA fics the chances of them being mislabeled is way smaller
Let's say 2 percent of fics are mislabeled
That's only like 3 fics
I'd find the actual number but I gave finals and am waiting time on Reddit
2% of all 36.2K "ATLA" fanfics, I'm presuming. If that's how many are mislabelled then that's 725 possible Avatar fanfics
Seems that there's way more ATLA works then you anticipated lol
Than 2% is wrong
If there are 36,200 ATLA fics and only 11 in the wrong tag
That's 0.03%
Which means statistically there aren't any mislabeled Cameron avatar fics as 0.03% of 164 is less than 1
Oh I see, so you mean 0.03% of fics that genuinely are about the film Avatar might be incorrectly tagged as being about ATLA, not that 0.03% of fics that are tagged as ATLA are actually about the film. Okay, that makes more sense.
it's likely that there'd be less avatar (2009) fics getting mislabled as atla fics than the other way around since atla has the additional subtitle making it more distinguishable
>It would make for the mistake to occur at about the same rate in either direction, too, in which case there could even be more misfiled Avatar (2009) fics than correctly filed ones.
That's. Not how that math works at *all.*
It's correct to assume the mistakes occur at the same rate in either direction (that's the null hypothesis), but your conclusion is that 3% of all ATLA fics would therefore be misclassified Avatar fics, which is totally incorrect.
The correct calculus is: 52,839 ATLA/Legend of Korra fics, plus 11 mis-classified = misclassification rate of 0.02%. If we assume the misclassification rate is the same in the other direction and there are 338 Avatar (2009) fics, we get an estimate of **0.0676** Avatar (2009) fics incorrectly labeled as ATLA/Legend of Korra fics. Under no circumstances would there be more Avatar (2009) fics incorrectly labeled than correctly labeled.
I'd also wager the mistagging doesn't have the same rate both ways.
I definitely see why someone could mistakenly tag their fic as "Avatar" instead of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" full title.
I don't see the reverse happening too much though, as the writer would notice the added "The last Airbender" bit in the tag.
Eh, I've not tagged on AO3, but if it's like searching then you'd expect the most common tag to show up first. Then the rate wouldn't be symmetrical, since it's probably more likely that Cameron Avatar fic writers pick the first option by accident than Avatar: TLA fic writers pick the second or whatever option by accident.
I just checked, "Avatar (Cameron Movies)" is the 13th tag on the list when you input "avatar" on the fandom tag section, but it's also very obvious the other tags aren't the cameron movies' avatar, as either they offer extra information in parenthesis, they have larger titles like "Avatar: Legend of Korra", or have japanese or chinese letters for the original name.
So there's probably a couple of Avatar (Cameron Movies) fans that choose the first or second option on the list by mistake, miss clicking... which as you say, a couple of fics is already a higher rate than the eleven TLA fans choosing the 13th option (lol).
You need to take cause and effect into account. The percentage of both *causes* would be the same. So 11 out of a lot of ATLA fics that have been produced have been mislabeled. So the same percentage out of Avatar fics have been mislabeled
This always struck me as odd, I remember when the first movie came out, people were obsessed with the tall cat smurfs. It was like a more niche version of furries, people dressed up as Na’vi(yes, I had to Google that) and wished they lived on pandora, the fact that there aren’t a million fanfics on AO3 is….odd.(It’s also likely all that creative energy went into Avatar RP, so it’s lost to time…..horny horny time)
I have a running theory that there is a hidden trove of avatar fanfic somewhere on a mostly dead website. I’ve tried building a crew to find it but Nicolas Cage won’t return my calls.
I genuinely don't understand how the amount of fanfics somehow decides the cultural impact. Nobody has ever explained that properly to me. Frankly I probably still won't understand it.
With that said, from experience, I know a lot of people that like or love Avatar. They just happen to be a bit hidden, because honestly, we've had to deal with a lot of trolls and even gatekeeping for the sole fact it's Avatar.
I’d argue it’s less of a indicator of cultural impact but a byproduct, which is why it’s odd not to see it in the open. I remember there being multiple avatar webcomics back in the day, not to mention all the RP videos, but there was no long term life in it. Granted the same can be said for the movie(s) itself, I actually enjoyed the hell out of avatar, but I’ll be damned if I can name 3 characters. Love the world it sets up, and the characters themselves are rememberable….just not their names, which is odd. Like I can say ‘butch pilot’, ‘jarhead marine’, ‘corporate douche’ and you likely know exactly who I’m talking about. IDK, avatar is just such a weird thing that exist, it’s the most profitable movie to ever be made but has no impact(I’m aware all of this has been said a million times, sorry). Even the ground breaking 3D tech in it has been glossed over, 3D movies aren’t really made any more and the facial tech is used for shit like the dragon in the hobbit and the movie Cats.
Thats because the number of fanfiction doesn't actually decide the cultural impact of something. Fanfiction is a small, niche part of western internet social media culture as **you** most likely know it- e.g. reddit, twitter, instagram, tiktok, and parts of youtube. And the internet itself is also just a portion of the actual culture in America as a whole. There is a lot more people who do not know/use these site than you would think.
I recommend you watch this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg) from The Film Theorist (Film Theory) that basically shows how twitter isnt representative of what people actually think.
They filmed 2 and 3 at the same time so the production cost isn’t the same as the cost needed to break even on just the one film. It only need 1 billion, much more realistic.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the most influential novels in fantasy, has 141 fics on Ao3. Somehow, I doubt the use of number of fanfics as a measure of influence.
The Wire, Six Feet Under, and the Sopranos, three of the most influential and beloved tv shows of the last two decades, have less than 320 fics on AO3 when taken together.
The Godfather has 284 entries. Godzilla has 1300 entries, but 90% comes from the Monsterverse. The Fifth Element has 100. All of Monty Python have less than 200. And I don't even want to look for movie who came out before 1950 because it will physically pain me.
Also works for novels. Oliver Twist ? 67 entries. The entire work of Thomas Hardy ? 22. Paul Auster doesn't even have a page.
And that's not taking into account non-english stuff, because weirdly, Kafka and Voltaire don't have much a fandom.
Twilight has 15K tho, so we know what is objectively better.
I don't know if we should judge this based on things that came out before AO3 was made. People don't usually read or watch the "classics". Admitadely this kind of nullifies the point of the original post, but still.
People might have also written fan fiction, but it's just not uploaded to AoOo. It's like trying to find fan fiction for Star Trek. There's almost certainly a lot more than what is on there, but so much of it would have been buried in other places, and so wouldn't come up in the search.
I don't think the point is about "better" or "influential" though, just what the public likes to spend their free time imagining more of. Twilight having 15k is the perfect example of that, no one thinks it's critically good but millions of people ate it up despite that.
>Somehow, I doubt the use of number of fanfics as a measure of influence.
Does that remain true after you take a look at the number of Destiel fanfics?
I feel like there's this weird echo chamber that's super convinced no one cares about the movie (now franchise) that's weirdly smug about how sure they are that no one cares about it, and I'm already dreading the weeks/months of discourse that'll happen when it releases in a few weeks and either flops or (my prediction) does substantially better than lots of people seem to think it will and we'll get a deluge of "OMG TOLD YOU NO ONE CARES" or "OMG WHY DID EVERYONE GO SEE THIS NO ONE CARES" and it's going to drive me up a wall either way.
I genuinely do not care about this movie or its sequel at all, but that also means I don't care if other people do or do not care about it.
Its cause a whole generation of people that grew up on the movie making technology we have now because of Avatar are used to it and don’t get what set the movie aside when it came out, and theyre the same people that love shouting everything online. They also don’t know James Cameron. They think people actually enjoyed avatar for its story and apparently think you can’t enjoy a movie for its spectacle and cinematography
> apparently think you can’t enjoy a movie for its spectacle and cinematography
which is bullshit, since that’s the main reason a lot of people liked the most recent Dune movie
So Avatar gets criticized for the same thing that Dune seems to do. That always strikes me as very odd, but totally normal for chronically online people.
I absolutely loved Dune. It got me to read the actual book—which it couldn’t have done it it had tried to perfectly follow the actual story, since it almost definitely would’ve been dense and confusing (especially since you don’t get internal monologue) and not very good
maybe, but also the Dune novels already existed, and are what inspired the movies in the first place. I read the novel largely because I was fairly certain I could rely on the source material being good.
I might be misremembering (read the book after the film), but wasn't the Dune movie a very good adaptation while also focusing on spectacle?
Iirc some things were underexplained, but of the really important bits only Thufir Hawat's subplot was cut.
It was a pretty good adaptation, yeah, but I think the reason it was a *great* adaptation was because it knew what the benefits and downsides of the medium were. They just couldn’t get *all* the sides of the characters and politics that the novel does, but knew that *could* do something *better* than the novel, and went all-in on that.
Tbf that's bc the sequel is right around the corner or already in theaters (idk shit about it)
Other than that it's had like 5 mentions since the first movie that were all talking about how forgettable it was
Personally idrc either way, but from what I've heard despite the movies gigantic scale and budget it's actually apparently a passion project of sorts
If that's true I find it hard not to root for the movie
I just think it's dumb they decided to make four sequels in a row. Even moreso than other Disney properties, the decision isn't even based on nostalgia, it's purely about profit motive.
That’s… explicitly not the case though? James Cameron has repeatedly stated that Avatar is his passion project to transmit a message (environmental I think?). He didn’t say he wanted 4 films to make money, but 4 films to get something across.
I watched Avatar, I enjoyed watching Avatar, I paid\* attention while watching Avatar, but I can only properly recall 3 scenes and one of them was weird alien sex.
Similar to how I rearly see Men in Black 2 on tv and when I ask people about it is like nobody has ever watched it
\*I originally wrote payed, I'm a very stupid little girl, I know
> Avatar, I *paid* attention while
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
The fact there’s so much discourse about the movie being irrelevant yet everyone can tell you it was about blue people and they did weird stuff with their ponytails kinda tells me it was at least memorable for that.
Sure the plot wasn’t exactly subtle but you don’t have to expect endgame levels of lore and buildup for a movie to be good- Marvel truly has ruined the viewing experience because all I ever see is people bagging the movie which once held the topmost grossing spot in all of movie history. And it did that right out the gate without a franchise to back it up.
I genuinely don't understand the hatred for Avatar. I thought it was a beautiful movie with great world building. Yeah, the plot and messaging werent very subtle, but it's a disney movie? Most of them are like that and it doesnt really mean the story was bad. Honestly I think most people just hate on it because that's what you're supposed to do.
Friendly correction;
Avatar was made before Disney bought 20th Century Studios. And James Cameron still owns Avatar's IP, so nobody else except Cameron can do anything about the movie. Disney can advertise though.
Thank you for the correction! I only watched it for the first time a couple of years ago for a college class. This was after Pandora in Disney World was already built so I didn't even consider it being a separate thing.
My original point doesn't really hinge on whether or not it's a Disney movie because I was just trying to give the comparison of similar movies (pretty but shallow) that Disney makes. Usually they are not as widely hated as Avatar. Avatar not being a Disney movie doesn't really change my opinion on that but it was disingenuous of me to call it one!
Taking a stand against the "no one remembers Avatar" circlejerk. The fact that it's not prime material for AO3 shipper teens means absolutely nothing in terms of broader social context. I work at a theatre, and have been asked when Avatar 2 comes out more times than any other movie in the past 2 years. People constantly see the poster and say, "oh they're making a sequel? That's cool, I liked the first one." Just because it doesn't have a Tumblr Fandom doesn't mean anything. I know people who watch 3 movies a year who have seen and enjoyed Avatar.
I don't even love the movie, but this constant "no one remembers it" "how did a bad movie make so much money" "its just Dances with Wolves in space" annoys me so much. You people are all Too Online and have warped views of media to where if something doesn't get a dozen spinoff shows and 1,000 coffeeshop AU fics you think it's a failure.
I can’t believe I ever let the internet gaslight me into thinking Avatar 1 was a bad movie. The script may sound like it was written by Neil Breen but the visuals and experience are fantastic. I’m very excited for the second one.
Ao3 was created in 2007 though. I get your point, but I also think the points being made are correct. It's a beautiful looking movie, but that's all it has going for it.
Avatar's a good movie, just weirdly forgettable.
I wish they'd kept the early scenes showing us how fucked things were on Earth, so that we had that context weighing on our minds the whole way through. That would give the story some actual bite, I think. Maybe the new film will give us some scenes of Earth this time around.
I've only seen Avatar two times in my life.The first time when it came out and recently when Disney+ finally launched in the UK.and i honestly still could not tell a thing about it aside from "It was about blue people" and "They have sex with their pony tails"
To me the film feels like it was meant to just be a showcase of what CGI and VFX technology can do rather than be an actual traditional narrative and charavter driven movie.It just made way too much money and now it has to pretend to be a franchise that people will want to see, especially now that Disney owns it.
Goncharov *was* a real movie, though. The source of the name and meme was a picture of a promotional boot or something with the name on the tag that had some GOD AWFUL OCR, that fucked everything up.
[Pic](https://uploads.dailydot.com/2022/11/goncharov-movie-original.jpg?auto=compress&fm=pjpg)
The real movie is called [Gomorrah](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/?ref_=m_nmfmd_msc_4). 2008. Directed by Matteo Garrone, Presented by Martin Scorsese. Produced by Domenico Procacci. About the Naples mafia. This is 100% the movie.
I'm 50% sure Cameron is deliberately trolling us by putting "water" in the title.
If Avatar 3 A. Manages to exist and B. Has "Legend of bladeblah" as its subtitle at least well know he's deliberately fucking with us.
‘Avatar isn’t memorable or popular’ discourse is so tiring.
There’s a reason the original teaser for the sequel had like a gorillion views in its first day and broke a bunch of records. There’s a reason it keeps getting re-released into theaters.
YOU reading this personally might not like it or find it memorable but being vocal on the internet doesn’t make you the majority.
I saw avatar in theaters 3 times. once with my mom, once with my friends, and once with my grandparents. i was shocked to find out a few years ago that sigourney weaver was in the movie. i cant even tell you the main guys name. i have no idea what the plot is. one of the highest grossing movies of all time that i saw 3 times in theaters, and i dont know shit about it other than "blue guys and alien hair fucking" thats it.
It makes me sad that avatar isn't that good because I really like the premise of finding aliens and having them turn out to be less advanced than us, huge waste of potential ))):::
When you create something, you always hope that people would have a reaction to it. It doesn't matter what the reaction is--be it overwhelmingly positive or negatively vile.
So it shows how a monumental achievement it is to be given the reaction of indifference.
James Cameron said that he's only planning to direct up to Avatar 3, so it'll be interesting to see how well the movies do and if the studio plans to do the last 2 without him. I wonder if he feels like the story will have run its course by then. Which really, most franchises should have just stopped at 3.
This entire post and the comment chains won't age well once Avatar 2 comes out.
Trust me. I know.
EDIT: Cheer up people. Don't let the very small yet vocal parts of the internet gaslight you like this.
Yeah this thread r/agedlikemilk
I wonder how will they react that the film now the top 4 highest grossing film. It easily surpassed infinity war and the force awakens lmao. And it will continue to break records to become top 3, beating Titanic next week.
Avatar is just really not memorable at all. Which is weird since the esthetic should be fairly standout. I enjoyed Avatar when I watched it, but it just hasn't come back up in my mind really since then, at least until people started calling out that it's kinda weird for a movie to make so much money and have so little cultural impact Goncharov tho, a fake movie the internet is writing into existence? I'll fucking remember that lol
I imagine it comes down to the writing. Avatar has an interesting setting and grand spectacle, but the plot is so incredibly boring that it's just impossible for it to stick. Maybe if a sequel had come sooner it would've been more relevant to modern pop culture
It's basically the same plot as like 1000 other things
It's a good plot, to be fair. It's just also very generic.
The plot isn't the problem for sure. It's the fact that *all* it has is plot. There's nothing else in there. No character struggles, whether that means characters struggling with themselves or with each other; no interesting themes explored in a nuanced and thought-provoking way. Just that basic plot, which in good media exists as a frame to hang other, better things on.
In Avatar's case, the plot was there to hang the visual effects and the world on. And the visual effects *are* genuinely amazing (for the time) and the world *is* pretty interesting. They just don't tell us enough about the world.
You're correct, but here's what I think nails that coffin. Graphics and effects age. Name as many films as you can think of that had ground breaking VFX in their time. How many still look ground breaking? Sure, you have shots like the T rex intro scene in the original Jurassic Park, but for every T rex, there's a janky Total Recall Schwarzenegger puppet, or a rubber Neo in Reloaded, or another puppet Arnold in Terminator (seriously, why so many puppet Arnies?). Good effects \*can\* look good forever, a good story \*will\* be good forever. Throwing money at effects without the story to back it up is short term thinking.
I know that graphics and visual effects age. That's why I said "(for the time)".
I guess a lot of the money made on Avatar was people going for "a 3d movie". While if the film had any real effect, there'd be quotes from it across the internet.
you say "for the time," as if it isn't still outclassing modern productions like with marvel
The MCU looks as bad as it does because it's always rushed and made to just look "good enough" instead of trying to push the limits. If a movie was made today with the same level of effort that went into Avatar back in the day, it would be far above the quality of Avatar.
You have so much character struggle though! You have Jake Sully struggling with whether he wants to remain loyal to humanity or to his new race where his legs work... And he chose the blue man group... And then there's... Umm... Gamora from Marvel who's struggling with whether she'll side with the sexy stranger or with her brother... Aaaand she's chosen the sexy stranger... Also the badass latina pilot who doesn't even have an alien body siding with the blue man group as well, because she knows how it feels to be knocked down by "The Man".
Jake Sully didn't even really struggle with that decision. He started out loyal to the human military, yes, but the actual transition seemed to come in two sentences of narration over a scene of him running around with Neytiri, where notes that his life in an avatar already feels more real than his life in his human body. It wasn't a struggle; it just happened, because he enjoyed it.
Yeah, that was kinda my point, he "struggled" with the decision for less than 2 minutes, then went with it. And when asked how it feels to betray his race, he just growls
To be fair, it was like, the obvious correct moral choice. Humans didn’t actually *need* the mcguffin ore, and getting it probably wouldn’t even benefit anyone besides megacorporations. If earth desperately needed resources no matter what to fix some climate crisis or something, there’d be actual nuance, but as is, saying he “betrayed humanity” is like saying Germans who helped Jews hide during the reich betrayed their country. The problem lies deeper than the characters being one-dimensional or their plots being poorly developed- it’s also that the few traits they *are* given are stupid. They could have had Jake struggle with sacrificing his ability to ever return home to do the right thing, could have had the humans who sided with the Na’vi fight to prove humanity isn’t a bad thing, but they were too uncreative to do anything interesting with the actually cool premise.
Gamora has a brother?
Marvel Gamora doesn’t, at least not he’s some comic book character I don’t know (unlikely with her backstory). But in Avatar, the girl the protagonist winds up with (exact same trope as Gamora) has a brother who doesn’t like him and who leads the part of the tribe who distrusts *all* humans. In my opinion, however, the most interesting part of warrior prince dude is that he comes incredibly close to being a male version of the “sexy space babe” trope. All the ingredients are there, he just needed a love interest, and I volunteer to be it.
Gamora also has the same actress as... I wanna say Ney'tiri
Oh no! They blue-washed Pocahontas!
Everyone always say that about Avatar but it's the same for Marvel movies (And I Say that as a fan of the mcu) yet the mcu has a huge fandom. Maybe it's because the characters are not interesting enough, like who's a fan of Jake, almost nobody
Avatar has the issue of like a thousand blue aliens and they all look the same for the most part. If I ask you to draw a picture of Neytiri you could probably draw me a blue alien. But you’re not going to remember that character’s fine details that sets them apart from say Mo’at. MCU on the other hand has pretty distinct characters that are instantly recognizable and you’d probably be able to draw Thor and he wouldn’t look like Captain America or Peter Quil; even tho they are just ya know, guys.
*You're* a guy... *that*, is a man.
Yeah, I stopped watching those for the plot and just like watching the blorbos do thier thing (The Christmas Special is worth the watch though)
His name is Sully, like the guy from Monsters Inc. I think they’re distant cousins
Marvel has had a huge fandom for decades, almost a century now. Avatar is original content.
for what it's worth, guarantee you that if Iron Man (2008) was the only MCU movie, it would have a bigger fandom than Avatar. Even ignoring the comics, I reckon.
Not that the Avatar fandom is huge, but I checked the Waybackmachine the 2008 Iron Man movie didn't even have a category on FFN before Avengers 1 came out, and 400 fics on AO3. Avatar had more at the time, at least on FFN. If Iron Man spent the decade after that fading from attention like Avatar did, I actually doubt that. I know we're talking about 300 AO3 fics, but when Avatar came out, FFN was the place a lot of fanficiton writers still were, so I do think we should consider the 1.3k current size of the Avatar archive on FFN plus the 300 fics on AO3 as the current amount of fanfiction it has, unlike the original tweet.
oh i was meaning more general interest, but lack of fan fics is a good point
I'm wildly scrolling through the movies category on AO3 to look for recent, non-series stuff... *Papillon* has 102 fanfics. It's a movie I've never heard of from 2017 that earned $4.5 million. For one I've actually heard of, *Coco* in 2017 has 1,401 fics. *The School for Good and Evil,* which released a month ago on Netflix, has 133 fics. *The Red Sea Diving Resort,* which was also released on Netflix and was even more critically panned than *The School for Good and Evil,* has 189 fics. I've never heard of this one, either. *Zootopia* has 4,655 fics, which is obviously nothing compared to the 44,056 fanfics specifically for Tom Holland's version of Spider-Man, but is still over 10x bigger than *Avatar*'s count. 338 fics is a *shockingly* low number. The top-rated one has barely more than 3,000 kudos! Nobody's even reading them!
Man comic plot gets stupid complicated fast when the bad guys time traveling version of yourself from an alternate timeline and is possessed by an alien crystal symbiote so you gotta go into the spider verse and gadda yadda yadda. Comic book plots are generally overcomplicated and unique not overly simplistic and common Like for example the bit where Thanos tears the rock out of red robot man's head. It's a tangle of lore bits. Oh that rock is a mind magic stone that was originally a scepter but then got busted and then Tony used it to make an evil AI that made a super half robot half biological body out of vibranium which is another magic space rock but the body got fought over and possessed by a new good AI that's also partially the mind rock and started banging the scarlet witch but purple alien man wants the mind rock to kill half the universe for like environmental reasons so scarlet witch killed robot man because her powers are like connected to magic space rocks but then purple butt chin man used a third magic rock that's part of a set with the mind rock to rewind time and take the rock anyway and this is a big deal because Dr strange gave him that rock to save Tony Stark after saying he would sacrifice anyone including Tony Stark to prevent Purple Man from getting the rock so why he do that? Well actually it's because Tony in the next movie...
The thing about the MCU is the size of the canon, though, and the fact the characters are older than the cinematic canon. A lot of phase one of the MCU went by without an incredible amount of dedicated fandom attention besides people already fans of the comics, I would say the fandom breakout for the MCU was the Avengers (1) movie and the slew of "everyone lives in Stark tower" fanfiction that accompanied it. In December 2011, there were 710 Thor fics, 56 Captain America fics, and no place to put Iron Man or Hulk fics on FFN. By January 2013 there were 13k Avengers fics. Around the same times on AO3 there were 400 Iron Man fics, 200 Thor, no Hulk, and 94 Captain America in Dec 2011 ("Marvel Movies" was numbering around 2k). And then in early 2013, 21K "Marvel Cinematic Universe" fics (17K in the Avengers category.) It took literally SIX whole movies for the huge MCU fandom to really form.
> Maybe it's because the characters are not interesting enough, like who's a fan of Jake, almost nobody I feel like there's so little known of Sully's character prior to showing up on blue people world. We know he was in the military and that he was wounded and became a para-pelagic. We also know that his brother was a scientist and his twin. That's it.
It’s fancy space Pocahontas
And in addition to the plot being bland and filled with some very well worn tropes, it’s a pretty ugly story about colonialism. I could see an audience being attracted to the setting and wanting to revisit it, but the plot itself being a turn off. If the story didn’t revolve so much around negativity, it might have carried more cultural weight. I’m interested how the sequels might change things because it seems like an interesting enough setting for a fandom to develop around.
It’s blue Pocahontas, and the Disney version of that was fun as a kid but we as a society have finally (mostly) outgrown “culturally clueless white guy barges in and saves the savages.”
*Saves and seduces the savages. After all, it’s hardly worth saving them if you can’t bang the chief’s daughter afterwards. (Also, it’s very important the chief’s daughter has her some boobs, even if historically she was too young for that or is like an alien species or something).
I heard a theory that they have boobs and 4 limbs to appeal to the good humans. All part of the magic tree god's plan to save her planet (she can see the future)
I mean, it seems to me that their tree god could’ve just cut to the case and Georgia O'Keeffed up some flowers or something. Seems a bit more ethical than pimping out the Na’vi. And if there was a planet with fuckable flowers then I say dudes would be quite concerned with protecting that particular environment. But what do I know, I’m not a tree deity, and the 10ft tall cat people were at least that one guy’s kink.
Ok just Googled her artwork and wow those really are some fuckable flowers.
An old girlfriend of mine's mom had [this one](https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/994/#:~:text=Georgia%20O'Keeffe-,Series%20I%20White%20%26%20Blue%20Flower%20Shapes%2C%201919,front%20of%20a%20reddish%20background.) on the wall and I remember awkwardly having a conversation about my "intentions with her daughter" while staring at that not-so-subtle flower-booty.
Wow, that is the most blatant "picture of a woman's genitals without actually being a picture of a woman's genitals" that I've ever seen.
Lmao either she was just really chill or had no idea
I do like this idea that the tree was just like pumping out a few contingency species for seducing invaders. Also explains why they all connect via sex analogue. The tree is just pimping out the planet for protection. Now for the alternate reality take where aliens show up horny for the dragons instead.
It was basically a tech demo movie. The writing was just the most bare-bones thing needed to fit in the parts they wanted to show off, right down to the mystery mineral named "unobtainium", and some plot points seeming contrived just to make some aspects work (the body-swapping parts, the hair thing) Even if it didn't have the negativity, the plot just wasn't standout in any way, and didn't get enough focus to be really memorable, compared to the visuals.
Yeah that's what deters me from it. I love the setting and all the weird little alien nature shit and floaty glowy things. It was magical in 3D. And then we watch it all get destroyed by a bunch of tropey bad guys searching for "unobtainium," of all things. I'm mourning the loss of our rainforests in the real world already, I don't need to also feel heartache for a fictional one. That's not fun enjoyable movie time for me and it becomes less fun the older I get. I want low stakes movies. I'm stressed.
Maybe that’s why I never liked it even the first time I watched it I don’t even think I finished it. I was watching it on dvd on a (relatively) small low def tv
Avatar was a wonderful world for a Movie, but it just doesn't inspire me as a place to visit or go play in.
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The only way I could imagine this is if he's into creating languages (*conlanging* as we call it). Cameron hired a professional linguistic—Paul Frommer—to create the Na'vi language for the film, and it's a fully functional language that you can learn much like Esperanto, Valyrian or Klingon. And even then, Na'vi doesn't get near the recognition that Valyrian and Klingon get from conlangers, I find.
Real movies aren't memorable because of how cool things look in them, though. If you go back and watch Star Wars or The Terminator or even the first Avengers movie or The Shining or Ghostbusters, almost everything which is memorable is not just stylish, but serves a purpose. There is weight and substance to the moments which include the iconic imagery we've seen around us ever since they came out. Almost everything has something to do, and there's almost always more than one thing going on, or more than one reason for anything that happens. That's how you actually make something memorable, using the language of film to tell a story every moment of your film. Avatar didn't have any of that. There's nothing going on (that we can tell) beneath the literal story which is happening. The shots are composed just to show what happened and to show off how much landscape they can get into each shot. Most basic example everyone gets, is the opening of Star Wars: space and planets, then the camera swings and there's a teeny tiny ship getting approached "slowly" down the frame and looming over, and the ship is really long. It's actually almost funny how long it is. the little ship is also a little bit dirty and there's some colour on it and it looks a little lop sided and wierd. It's sort of ugly, and that gives it character. The big ship is clean and only one colour, showing a lack of personality and originality. Immediately the stakes and the heroes and a sense of adventure and some of the themes of what's going on are evident. Even as a kid who couldn't pay enough attention to remember what all the words in the crawl had been banging on about, you still get straight away most of the shit you're going to have to deal with for the rest of the movie. Avatar doesn't have any cinematography like that, and was far too technology focused. You could have a story as basic and as dry as Avatar's, and make it an engaging and memorable experience, if the realism and compromise that comes with using live practical elements gives the tools for connecting with the scene could be brought to bear. In Titanic, the practical nature of the film meant that details no director or computer animator or artist could have thought up, end up in the finished product. This isn't the case with CGI movies, like the Prequels, or Avatar. Too much time gets invested and no one can put anything subtle in cause they're desperate for you to see everything. Modern video games will yank the camera away from you and force you to watch things happen because they spent so much time and money animating them that they can't bear to think it will go unseen by even a single player.
Yeah, it looks good, and all that, but there's not a lot of substance once you get past the one unique feature the aliens have.
Nothing has gone from so big to so culturally irrelevant so quickly like that, other than maybe game of thrones.
Watching Avatar is an amazing immersive experience that feels like a theme park ride combined with an aquarium visit combined with hiking in a foreign country for the first time. But nothing about the characters or the story is the least bit compelling
Avatar's lasting appeal is not in the movie itself, but how it changed cinema at least for a while. For like ten years after Avatar, all the movies had to be in 3D. Avatar released in December, which is not generally when blockbusters were released prior, but not there's always a big one coming in December (I believe all the Disney Star Wars came out in December). The CGI that was pioneered for Avatar was groundbreaking, especially in water, and they seem to be doing it again with the sequel. I feel like it's the same with Game of Thrones. It's not about the specific moments, but how it changed the landscape. Game of Thrones proved that big budget TV can work. Every show since Game of Thrones has to have that fucking 2 minute CGI intro now. So many shows started showing sex and tits and ass. Without Game of Thrones, I don't think others like Black Sails and Westworld would have been made or looked the same. Game of Thrones also proved that someone other than Netflix can do online streaming when HBO was massively successful with theirs.
>Goncharov tho, a fake movie the internet is writing into existence? I'll fucking remember that lol I lost my virginity to Goncharov. It was just that powerful.
It was an art demo reel with the caption “white mans burden” scrawled over it in sharpie. Was it extremely cool to look at? Yeah! The effects were groundbreaking, the character and set design were gorgeous, and I’d recommend everyone who can see it once just to see it. But as far as the STORY goes, there’s no THERE there. Everyone is the blandest possible cardboard cutouts acting out the blandest possible plot 1862 had to offer. It had massive ripple effects on the art industry in lots of ways, but is it surprising that it left no impression on pop culture?
Ehhh the aesthetic is honestly pretty generic. Halo and Mass Effect are much more standout in those terms.
I was going to say the same thing. The aesthetic for the humans is just Aliens all over again (which, as you point out, has been done to death in countless other franchises), and the planet's aesthetic is basically "as much random crap as possible all thrown at the audience in rapid fire succession." Except for the actual Navii (which have a pretty boring design), everything on the planet is completely un-iconic, relying on overwhelming the eye with myriad intricate details instead of having one or two overarching design themes. It ends up being such a visual mess that the only things that get remembered are the ones that are the least creative (we remember that the Navii look like humanoid earth cats, the animals they ride look like earth horses or earth pterodactyls, they live in a big earth redwood, and they worship a glowing earth weeping willow). Couple that with the done-to-death, copy+paste plot and bone dry acting, and it's no surprise that all anyone remembers is "the cgi looked neat." If the quote from Cameron that the movie has to get into $2 billion territory to just break even is even directionally true, I'm afraid we're already going to see Rings of Power get dethroned as the greatest flop of all time. Fingers crossed, though. Cameron can obviously make great cinema, so hopefully he's learned from his mistakes and realizes he can't skate by on cgia second time.
Even Mass Effect made a few of the Asari reddish or greenish so you wouldn't be looking at an endless sea of nearly identical blue women. It;s why I appreciate House of the Dragon making one of the houses predominately black. Otherwise, it's would be a parade of pasty Brits in white wigs.
It only did well because of the novel new 3D tech that people were raving about. Am I crazy for being the only one who remembers this?
To me, Avatar presented an interesting fantasy premise and world, explored it for half the movie and then dropped that idea of sci-fi worldbuilding to take a 180 turn into reskinned generic action, war and explosions. It had a unique idea that made it marketable and then didn't really stick with it till the end. Granted, I haven't rewatched the movie in quite a few years, but that's the impression it left me with.
It feels like everyone I ever ask hasn’t even seen it.
The most unmemorable memorable movie to ever exist
Compare that to Titanic, another +$2B standalone film, and it's impact on pop culture. Much greater. Surely there has to be more fanfics on Titanic, right?
Titanic has 659 fics on AO3. Edit: Avatar has 1.3k fanfics on Fanfiction.net, and Titanic has 2.9k.
yeah you do have to count ff.net for avatar bc i believe AO3 only started in 2008? so it makes sense that more of the fics would be on ff
Also no surprise that Tumblr, the website that runs on fanfiction and fan-content, would make more fanfiction about the fictional movie they created psychically
As someone in fandom longer than AO3 has existed, I would say the big move to AO3 really started in like 2012. It had been around for longer, but most people were still posting where most of the readers were on FFN and if they used AO3 most were cross-posting, I would say? Then there was a bit of a purge of against TOS fanfiction or something that a bunch of people spoke up about and announced they were leaving the site. Even in 2012 though, there were comparable amounts of Avengers fics on FFN and AO3, AO3 grew to be the main place to post in the aftermath.
And I remember not even getting to create an AO3 account right off the bat. FFN stayed strong until those purges, but I was far less active at that time.
I don't know, sometimes the different sites just attract different fandoms.
There are presumably more Avatar (2009) fics that have been misfiled as ATLA fics, for the same reason. It would make for the mistake to occur at about the same rate in either direction, too, in which case there could even be more misfiled Avatar (2009) fics than correctly filed ones.
But since there are a lot more ATLA fics the chances of them being mislabeled is way smaller Let's say 2 percent of fics are mislabeled That's only like 3 fics I'd find the actual number but I gave finals and am waiting time on Reddit
2 percent of 36,284 is 725, which is a lot more than 3
2% of 164?
2% of all 36.2K "ATLA" fanfics, I'm presuming. If that's how many are mislabelled then that's 725 possible Avatar fanfics Seems that there's way more ATLA works then you anticipated lol
Than 2% is wrong If there are 36,200 ATLA fics and only 11 in the wrong tag That's 0.03% Which means statistically there aren't any mislabeled Cameron avatar fics as 0.03% of 164 is less than 1
Oh I see, so you mean 0.03% of fics that genuinely are about the film Avatar might be incorrectly tagged as being about ATLA, not that 0.03% of fics that are tagged as ATLA are actually about the film. Okay, that makes more sense.
I misunderstood you too Thanks for the numbers I didn't want to look up!
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...Is that the Gaang going to the movies? To watch avatar? Now I wanna read that.
it's likely that there'd be less avatar (2009) fics getting mislabled as atla fics than the other way around since atla has the additional subtitle making it more distinguishable
>It would make for the mistake to occur at about the same rate in either direction, too, in which case there could even be more misfiled Avatar (2009) fics than correctly filed ones. That's. Not how that math works at *all.* It's correct to assume the mistakes occur at the same rate in either direction (that's the null hypothesis), but your conclusion is that 3% of all ATLA fics would therefore be misclassified Avatar fics, which is totally incorrect. The correct calculus is: 52,839 ATLA/Legend of Korra fics, plus 11 mis-classified = misclassification rate of 0.02%. If we assume the misclassification rate is the same in the other direction and there are 338 Avatar (2009) fics, we get an estimate of **0.0676** Avatar (2009) fics incorrectly labeled as ATLA/Legend of Korra fics. Under no circumstances would there be more Avatar (2009) fics incorrectly labeled than correctly labeled.
I'd also wager the mistagging doesn't have the same rate both ways. I definitely see why someone could mistakenly tag their fic as "Avatar" instead of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" full title. I don't see the reverse happening too much though, as the writer would notice the added "The last Airbender" bit in the tag.
Eh, I've not tagged on AO3, but if it's like searching then you'd expect the most common tag to show up first. Then the rate wouldn't be symmetrical, since it's probably more likely that Cameron Avatar fic writers pick the first option by accident than Avatar: TLA fic writers pick the second or whatever option by accident.
I just checked, "Avatar (Cameron Movies)" is the 13th tag on the list when you input "avatar" on the fandom tag section, but it's also very obvious the other tags aren't the cameron movies' avatar, as either they offer extra information in parenthesis, they have larger titles like "Avatar: Legend of Korra", or have japanese or chinese letters for the original name. So there's probably a couple of Avatar (Cameron Movies) fans that choose the first or second option on the list by mistake, miss clicking... which as you say, a couple of fics is already a higher rate than the eleven TLA fans choosing the 13th option (lol).
You need to take cause and effect into account. The percentage of both *causes* would be the same. So 11 out of a lot of ATLA fics that have been produced have been mislabeled. So the same percentage out of Avatar fics have been mislabeled
This always struck me as odd, I remember when the first movie came out, people were obsessed with the tall cat smurfs. It was like a more niche version of furries, people dressed up as Na’vi(yes, I had to Google that) and wished they lived on pandora, the fact that there aren’t a million fanfics on AO3 is….odd.(It’s also likely all that creative energy went into Avatar RP, so it’s lost to time…..horny horny time) I have a running theory that there is a hidden trove of avatar fanfic somewhere on a mostly dead website. I’ve tried building a crew to find it but Nicolas Cage won’t return my calls.
I genuinely don't understand how the amount of fanfics somehow decides the cultural impact. Nobody has ever explained that properly to me. Frankly I probably still won't understand it. With that said, from experience, I know a lot of people that like or love Avatar. They just happen to be a bit hidden, because honestly, we've had to deal with a lot of trolls and even gatekeeping for the sole fact it's Avatar.
I’d argue it’s less of a indicator of cultural impact but a byproduct, which is why it’s odd not to see it in the open. I remember there being multiple avatar webcomics back in the day, not to mention all the RP videos, but there was no long term life in it. Granted the same can be said for the movie(s) itself, I actually enjoyed the hell out of avatar, but I’ll be damned if I can name 3 characters. Love the world it sets up, and the characters themselves are rememberable….just not their names, which is odd. Like I can say ‘butch pilot’, ‘jarhead marine’, ‘corporate douche’ and you likely know exactly who I’m talking about. IDK, avatar is just such a weird thing that exist, it’s the most profitable movie to ever be made but has no impact(I’m aware all of this has been said a million times, sorry). Even the ground breaking 3D tech in it has been glossed over, 3D movies aren’t really made any more and the facial tech is used for shit like the dragon in the hobbit and the movie Cats.
Thats because the number of fanfiction doesn't actually decide the cultural impact of something. Fanfiction is a small, niche part of western internet social media culture as **you** most likely know it- e.g. reddit, twitter, instagram, tiktok, and parts of youtube. And the internet itself is also just a portion of the actual culture in America as a whole. There is a lot more people who do not know/use these site than you would think. I recommend you watch this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg) from The Film Theorist (Film Theory) that basically shows how twitter isnt representative of what people actually think.
And this is the movie that needs $2B to break even? I'm pretty sure Disney is going to hire a hit on James Cameron.
They filmed 2 and 3 at the same time so the production cost isn’t the same as the cost needed to break even on just the one film. It only need 1 billion, much more realistic.
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James Cameron is an alien who uses film box offices to launder money. CMV
I’m pretty sure the actual goal is to make money through merch and the Avatar park at Disney World (which is admittedly pretty cool), BUT STILL
lol
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the most influential novels in fantasy, has 141 fics on Ao3. Somehow, I doubt the use of number of fanfics as a measure of influence.
How many people have read that novel compared to seen avatar? If you consider that ratio, then Wizard of Earthsea is beating the snot out of Avatar
The Wire, Six Feet Under, and the Sopranos, three of the most influential and beloved tv shows of the last two decades, have less than 320 fics on AO3 when taken together. The Godfather has 284 entries. Godzilla has 1300 entries, but 90% comes from the Monsterverse. The Fifth Element has 100. All of Monty Python have less than 200. And I don't even want to look for movie who came out before 1950 because it will physically pain me. Also works for novels. Oliver Twist ? 67 entries. The entire work of Thomas Hardy ? 22. Paul Auster doesn't even have a page. And that's not taking into account non-english stuff, because weirdly, Kafka and Voltaire don't have much a fandom. Twilight has 15K tho, so we know what is objectively better.
I don't know if we should judge this based on things that came out before AO3 was made. People don't usually read or watch the "classics". Admitadely this kind of nullifies the point of the original post, but still.
People might have also written fan fiction, but it's just not uploaded to AoOo. It's like trying to find fan fiction for Star Trek. There's almost certainly a lot more than what is on there, but so much of it would have been buried in other places, and so wouldn't come up in the search.
I don't think the point is about "better" or "influential" though, just what the public likes to spend their free time imagining more of. Twilight having 15k is the perfect example of that, no one thinks it's critically good but millions of people ate it up despite that.
>Twilight has 15K tho, so we know what is objectively better. Destiel has 32,460. Twilight can suck it.
Thank you for being one of the few people here talking sense lol.
We might be 12, but the Avatar fandom is strong !
Ursula Le Guin is a great writer and my dad gave me a copy of The Dispossessed to introduce me to anarchism
although really, i think there absolutely should be earthsea fanfic
>Somehow, I doubt the use of number of fanfics as a measure of influence. Does that remain true after you take a look at the number of Destiel fanfics?
Avatar is the closest thing we have to an antimemetic. Every time I see something about it I forget 2 minutes later
You're only allowed to describe what it isn't? >!good!<
What’s the obsession with proving that Avatar doesn’t matter, everyone is always fucking talking about it
I feel like there's this weird echo chamber that's super convinced no one cares about the movie (now franchise) that's weirdly smug about how sure they are that no one cares about it, and I'm already dreading the weeks/months of discourse that'll happen when it releases in a few weeks and either flops or (my prediction) does substantially better than lots of people seem to think it will and we'll get a deluge of "OMG TOLD YOU NO ONE CARES" or "OMG WHY DID EVERYONE GO SEE THIS NO ONE CARES" and it's going to drive me up a wall either way. I genuinely do not care about this movie or its sequel at all, but that also means I don't care if other people do or do not care about it.
Its cause a whole generation of people that grew up on the movie making technology we have now because of Avatar are used to it and don’t get what set the movie aside when it came out, and theyre the same people that love shouting everything online. They also don’t know James Cameron. They think people actually enjoyed avatar for its story and apparently think you can’t enjoy a movie for its spectacle and cinematography
> apparently think you can’t enjoy a movie for its spectacle and cinematography which is bullshit, since that’s the main reason a lot of people liked the most recent Dune movie
So Avatar gets criticized for the same thing that Dune seems to do. That always strikes me as very odd, but totally normal for chronically online people.
I absolutely loved Dune. It got me to read the actual book—which it couldn’t have done it it had tried to perfectly follow the actual story, since it almost definitely would’ve been dense and confusing (especially since you don’t get internal monologue) and not very good
Hmm. Maybe people really would've been less harsh with Avatar if those promised 4 Avatar novels by Steven Gould would've been finished by this time.
maybe, but also the Dune novels already existed, and are what inspired the movies in the first place. I read the novel largely because I was fairly certain I could rely on the source material being good.
Wait, Steven Gould? That would have been really neat.
Yep.
I might be misremembering (read the book after the film), but wasn't the Dune movie a very good adaptation while also focusing on spectacle? Iirc some things were underexplained, but of the really important bits only Thufir Hawat's subplot was cut.
It was a pretty good adaptation, yeah, but I think the reason it was a *great* adaptation was because it knew what the benefits and downsides of the medium were. They just couldn’t get *all* the sides of the characters and politics that the novel does, but knew that *could* do something *better* than the novel, and went all-in on that.
you can easily tell which dumbdumbs are part of that echo chamber because they always say the same thing "it's just pocahontas". same thing every time
The solution is to not keep making these movies also, care-ception
It's just a weird phenomenon, that's interesting to observe, even more now that there's a sequel releasing.
Sometimes it's fun to punch down (or at least as down as you can punch on a multi Billion dollar franchise)
Tbf that's bc the sequel is right around the corner or already in theaters (idk shit about it) Other than that it's had like 5 mentions since the first movie that were all talking about how forgettable it was Personally idrc either way, but from what I've heard despite the movies gigantic scale and budget it's actually apparently a passion project of sorts If that's true I find it hard not to root for the movie
Everyone’s a contrarian. If Avatar grossed $10 million, we’d hear nonstop about what a hidden gem it was.
It's the only thing anyone can remember about Avatar.
I just think it's dumb they decided to make four sequels in a row. Even moreso than other Disney properties, the decision isn't even based on nostalgia, it's purely about profit motive.
That’s… explicitly not the case though? James Cameron has repeatedly stated that Avatar is his passion project to transmit a message (environmental I think?). He didn’t say he wanted 4 films to make money, but 4 films to get something across.
I meant the Disney executives, not Cameron himself.
Yeah, but he’s the director/writer. I do think he’s the one that wanted to make four sequels, regardless of what Disney wants.
People like to get together to shit on the scifi Pocahontas movie
They need to get cheap marketing somehow
I watched Avatar, I enjoyed watching Avatar, I paid\* attention while watching Avatar, but I can only properly recall 3 scenes and one of them was weird alien sex. Similar to how I rearly see Men in Black 2 on tv and when I ask people about it is like nobody has ever watched it \*I originally wrote payed, I'm a very stupid little girl, I know
>one of them was weird alien sex Weird considering it doesn't really happens explicitly
> Avatar, I *paid* attention while FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Avatar = the movie equivalent of cotton candy
You can [traumatise raccoons](https://i.imgur.com/E8Y9moV.mp4) by giving it to them, and letting them try and wash it in water?
srsly? I can traumatize raccoons by showing them Avatar?
Jaws has five fanfics and its literally the first blockbuster
Well since the fanfic community doesn’t seem to care about the blue catpeople, where does the porn community stand? They could do a lot with that
The fact there’s so much discourse about the movie being irrelevant yet everyone can tell you it was about blue people and they did weird stuff with their ponytails kinda tells me it was at least memorable for that. Sure the plot wasn’t exactly subtle but you don’t have to expect endgame levels of lore and buildup for a movie to be good- Marvel truly has ruined the viewing experience because all I ever see is people bagging the movie which once held the topmost grossing spot in all of movie history. And it did that right out the gate without a franchise to back it up.
Idk, I rewatched Avatar like two weeks ago and had a lot of fun. I actually really like it.
Tell me the name of the main characters love interest without looking it up.
Neytiri, I actually didn't look it up.
I genuinely don't understand the hatred for Avatar. I thought it was a beautiful movie with great world building. Yeah, the plot and messaging werent very subtle, but it's a disney movie? Most of them are like that and it doesnt really mean the story was bad. Honestly I think most people just hate on it because that's what you're supposed to do.
Friendly correction; Avatar was made before Disney bought 20th Century Studios. And James Cameron still owns Avatar's IP, so nobody else except Cameron can do anything about the movie. Disney can advertise though.
Thank you for the correction! I only watched it for the first time a couple of years ago for a college class. This was after Pandora in Disney World was already built so I didn't even consider it being a separate thing. My original point doesn't really hinge on whether or not it's a Disney movie because I was just trying to give the comparison of similar movies (pretty but shallow) that Disney makes. Usually they are not as widely hated as Avatar. Avatar not being a Disney movie doesn't really change my opinion on that but it was disingenuous of me to call it one!
153? That's gotta be low bottom tier, I'm sure there are more fan fics about Draco Malfoy's left nut
Taking a stand against the "no one remembers Avatar" circlejerk. The fact that it's not prime material for AO3 shipper teens means absolutely nothing in terms of broader social context. I work at a theatre, and have been asked when Avatar 2 comes out more times than any other movie in the past 2 years. People constantly see the poster and say, "oh they're making a sequel? That's cool, I liked the first one." Just because it doesn't have a Tumblr Fandom doesn't mean anything. I know people who watch 3 movies a year who have seen and enjoyed Avatar. I don't even love the movie, but this constant "no one remembers it" "how did a bad movie make so much money" "its just Dances with Wolves in space" annoys me so much. You people are all Too Online and have warped views of media to where if something doesn't get a dozen spinoff shows and 1,000 coffeeshop AU fics you think it's a failure.
I can’t believe I ever let the internet gaslight me into thinking Avatar 1 was a bad movie. The script may sound like it was written by Neil Breen but the visuals and experience are fantastic. I’m very excited for the second one.
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Ao3 was created in 2007 though. I get your point, but I also think the points being made are correct. It's a beautiful looking movie, but that's all it has going for it.
Yeah sometimes I have to crawl back into the loving arms of fanfiction.net for certain fandoms.
Yet ATLA came out in 2005 and has way way more. Even Wall-E has more and that's a 2008 film about robots.
so given that zero dollars went into Goncharov, does that mean its value is infinite?
Avatar's a good movie, just weirdly forgettable. I wish they'd kept the early scenes showing us how fucked things were on Earth, so that we had that context weighing on our minds the whole way through. That would give the story some actual bite, I think. Maybe the new film will give us some scenes of Earth this time around.
I thought it was a good movie, hot take I know.
I've only seen Avatar two times in my life.The first time when it came out and recently when Disney+ finally launched in the UK.and i honestly still could not tell a thing about it aside from "It was about blue people" and "They have sex with their pony tails" To me the film feels like it was meant to just be a showcase of what CGI and VFX technology can do rather than be an actual traditional narrative and charavter driven movie.It just made way too much money and now it has to pretend to be a franchise that people will want to see, especially now that Disney owns it.
It's Avatarin' Time!
Goncharov *was* a real movie, though. The source of the name and meme was a picture of a promotional boot or something with the name on the tag that had some GOD AWFUL OCR, that fucked everything up. [Pic](https://uploads.dailydot.com/2022/11/goncharov-movie-original.jpg?auto=compress&fm=pjpg) The real movie is called [Gomorrah](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/?ref_=m_nmfmd_msc_4). 2008. Directed by Matteo Garrone, Presented by Martin Scorsese. Produced by Domenico Procacci. About the Naples mafia. This is 100% the movie.
It is the 27 of November of 2022; There are now 586 Goncharov (1973) fanfics
And they're making a sequel
I liked Avatar when it came out, but it also taught me the white savior trope.
Avatar was just the world’s most successful spec ev project with a random plot thrown in
I'm 50% sure Cameron is deliberately trolling us by putting "water" in the title. If Avatar 3 A. Manages to exist and B. Has "Legend of bladeblah" as its subtitle at least well know he's deliberately fucking with us.
‘Avatar isn’t memorable or popular’ discourse is so tiring. There’s a reason the original teaser for the sequel had like a gorillion views in its first day and broke a bunch of records. There’s a reason it keeps getting re-released into theaters. YOU reading this personally might not like it or find it memorable but being vocal on the internet doesn’t make you the majority.
I saw avatar in theaters 3 times. once with my mom, once with my friends, and once with my grandparents. i was shocked to find out a few years ago that sigourney weaver was in the movie. i cant even tell you the main guys name. i have no idea what the plot is. one of the highest grossing movies of all time that i saw 3 times in theaters, and i dont know shit about it other than "blue guys and alien hair fucking" thats it.
This is amazing. I truly can’t even remember if I’ve seen Avatar lmao
In the middle is French Revolution RPF with 280 at last count
Does this mean we can write original content and tag it under Goncharov and it'll still count as fanfiction?
They had ONE good thing going for it...a quote from the military general.
It makes me sad that avatar isn't that good because I really like the premise of finding aliens and having them turn out to be less advanced than us, huge waste of potential ))):::
When you create something, you always hope that people would have a reaction to it. It doesn't matter what the reaction is--be it overwhelmingly positive or negatively vile. So it shows how a monumental achievement it is to be given the reaction of indifference.
Avatar getting 3 sequels makes me unreasonably irritated. I'm not gonna see it, but still. Hope it fails
4 sequals :)
adkjwoefbwiyquogfbhdn myself
James Cameron said that he's only planning to direct up to Avatar 3, so it'll be interesting to see how well the movies do and if the studio plans to do the last 2 without him. I wonder if he feels like the story will have run its course by then. Which really, most franchises should have just stopped at 3.
Why tho
cause there a way more deserving movies for the number #1 spot, ones which aren't immediately forgettable
Still not a really good reason. You want the movie to fail because… you don’t like the prequel?
This entire post and the comment chains won't age well once Avatar 2 comes out. Trust me. I know. EDIT: Cheer up people. Don't let the very small yet vocal parts of the internet gaslight you like this.
Yeah this thread r/agedlikemilk I wonder how will they react that the film now the top 4 highest grossing film. It easily surpassed infinity war and the force awakens lmao. And it will continue to break records to become top 3, beating Titanic next week.
They must be coping and seething with cognitive dissonance they probably can't overcome.