Look, if you think that Eastern Mysticism got to the mainstream by anything other than the crystalgazer factory, you’re kind of unaware of the last 50 years of pop culture. Every New Ager thought they were going back to the original source too. Your professor in your Comparative Religion class was probably a pot smoking hippy who was blown away by the Gita in 67. Just a speculation though. 
CNN.com’s review, which is mostly positive: Review: 'Avatar' delivers on the hype - CNN.com
Oh, I’m sure it raised awareness, but that doesn’t mean that people didn’t say, “What’s this avatar thing?” and then go read something about Hinduism instead of listening to some tedious New Age moron drone about crystals and pyramid power. The *popularizer *is not necessarily the source.
Actually, he’s a Buddhist. 
ETA:
Morning of the release, we have:
82% fresh.
Fresh reviews: 134
Rotten reviews: 30
Average rating: 7.4/10
Consensus: It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron’s singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking.
BTW the word avatar has been part of the English language decades before the Beatles. Time Magazine has its entire archive of articles going back to 1930. Searchfor the use of the word avatar before 1960 and you can find several examples.
For example an article from 1930:
Note the way the word is used without explanation suggesting that readers would have understood its meaning. That’s not surprising since ideas from Hindu philosophy have influenced Western intellectuals for centuries. Schopenhauer and Emerson to give two famous examples.
Don’t see many movie in theaters and 3D gives me a headache. If I ever see it it will be on a TV. CGI looks REALLY fake on a TV.
Many theaters are showing it in 2D also. And I’m sure it looks absolutely amazing, 3D gives it added depth, but no gimmicks are used that require 3D.
Don’t even bother then.
I shan’t.
That’s pretty much what I meant. New Age crystal gazer types brought the idea to the public. This is a lot of talking for a pithy reply to someone.
The I Ching or Siddhartha then.
Your loss.
Didn’t you just tell him that if he didn’t see it in the theater, he shouldn’t even bother renting it when it comes to DVD?
The US opening was 27 million. Pretty solid and on track for a US total of somewhere close to 300. I bet it will be a huge global hit as well so this is definitely going to make a profit. My hunch is it will be a much bigger hit than the opening suggests. The reviews were good, the IMDB rating so far is excellent and the word of mouth is going to be great. Many people who don’t normally watch science-fiction films will go just to see what the fuss is about. Many people will go twice and thrice just to soak in the visuals. And there won’t be much competition in January and February so this movie could keep on raking the money for a long time.
That’s not even a weekend total, that’s just for the Thursday night midnight shows and Friday. We’ll know the weekend totals tomorrow night.
Unlike Waterworld, this one has tremendous word-of-mouth and excellent reviews. It’s not going to come anywhere near Titanic, but it will make its money back, easy, and we’ll get the two sequels Cameron wants to make.
The estimatesfor the worldwide boxoffice are 220 million including 73 million in the US despite blizzards in the Northeast. It actually beat Return of King’s opening US weekend a few years ago though I imagine higher 3-D ticket prices played a role.
300-350 million in the US seems likely and perhaps around about a billion worldwide which should be enough for a solid profit at least. A lot more if Avatar develops serious word of mouth and repeat viewing which is still my hunch.
I didn’t know Cameron was planning sequels. I hope he manages to add some complexity to the characters and plot and makes this a truly great science-fiction epic.
Here’s the L.A. Times’s take on Avatar’s opening weekend, and prospects for coming days: Weekend box-office results
Past the first weekend and still 83% fresh. I’m sold.
Don’t tell anybody, but I’m getting tempted.
One thing I appreciated about Cameron’s use of CGI in “Titanic” was that he finished the real props to match the CGI, rather than to pretend the tech was good enough. I’ve worked with computer graphics since 1982 and I found it pretty much seamless. Looks like he’s doing it here, too.
Gave up reading the thread after a few pages, so apologies if I’m just regurgitating stuff that’s been mentioned already.
I saw it Saturday with my kids, and I’m going again tomorrow. We saw it in 3D because my kids wanted to, and I’m seeing it in 3D (again) on an IMAX screen tomorrow. This is the only 3D movie I have ever enjoyed, and I thought it added greatly to the overall effect.
In sum, I thought it was a great movie. Not my favourite of all time, but well worth the money. The character development is good, the action is great, and the CG is brilliantly done. In particular, despite my years of experience in mo-cap and character animation, I was very impressed with the alien creatures. Quite spectacular, for the most part.
boxofficemojo.com says $241,571,046 (world-wide) so far. I’ve heard that the total production and marketing budget is maybe $500 million, so it’s certainly on track to at least “break even” (if such a thing is possible under Hollywood accounting voodoo).
Sunday turned out to be better than expected so Avatar made77 million instead of the estimated 73. The 3D shows made 55 out of the total making it the biggest 3D opening ever. I would say this film clearly establishes the viability of 3D at the box office and we should a lot more live action films in the format in the future.
If you believe that $500M, I’d guess that for it to “break even” (under Hollywood accounting voodoo) it’ll have to make something north of $800M, depending on how the sliding scale for the box office share was set and the subsequent DVD/TV/merchandising rights play out. But I suspect that the budget and production were lower than $0.5B.
One of the tech geeks I work with told me this:
I saw it today. We shut down work for three hours and went to view it on the company’s dime. Visually amazing but the story line was too formulaic and thus you knew the end of the movie within the first hour. I saw it at Cinerama in digital 2D. I’ll probably watch it again in 3D. This time I’m bringing a date. It is definitely a “chick flick.”