# The (lack of) cultural impact of Avatar **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 8, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261 "2018-03-08T21:18:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/61 "2018-03-09T17:53:53Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > But the hypocrisy is that people love visually spectacular movies with basic plots all the time. Star Wars is just the super generic Heroes Journey story. As a fairly recent example, Jurrassic World is far dumber than anything in Avatar, but everyone loved that pile of shit, because for whatever reason it didn’t become the popular and cool thing to go out of your way to talk about how dumb it is and how you’re too cool to like it. I don’t think there was any concerted effort to NOT like Avatar. It just failed to connect in any sort of meaningful or lasting way. Shit, it was “cool” to dislike Titanic but people still relate to “I feel like I’m flying” on the bow of a ship or “draw me like one of your French girls” or the floating door. Avatar didn’t accomplish that much – it managed to be almost completely forgettable within a year to the point where we’re struggling to remember the names of the characters. That’s not because of some “too cool to like this movie” clique, that’s just some basic failing of the movie (which the OP is curious about). Unobtanium probably gets mentioned because it’s one of the few solid things anyone remembers about the film and that’s only because it sounded so stupid. I doubt that anyone will really be talking about the impact of Jurassic World in ten years either, unlike Jurassic Park where people still quote “Clever girl”, spoof the vibrating glass of water, remember hiding from raptors in the kitchen, etc. And, in that movie, people mocked the Linux hacking without mercy the same way “Unobtanium” is mocked but the film itself stayed a classic regardless. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/62 "2018-03-09T17:55:32Z")
Personally, I think that it’s clear that the plot was intended to be nothing more than a vehicle for the spectacle, and it was perfectly adequate for that purpose, and the spectacle was amazing. When you’ve got a spectacle that great, there’s nothing wrong with making the plot subservient to it, and if you were disappointed in the plot, you were seeing it for the wrong reason. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/63 "2018-03-09T21:46:25Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Everyone apparently thinks they’re cool for shitting on the highest grossing movie of all time. _Avatar_ has done an adequate job of shitting on itself. That is the point of this thread. It was a visually stunning movie that is now “_oh, yeah, I remember that one_” but not much more. In an era of shit like Thor and Justice League, _Avatar_ just does not stand out as particularly special. > [@](#): > > But the hypocrisy is that people love visually spectacular movies with basic plots all the time. Star Wars is just the super generic Heroes Journey story. The plot of _Star Wars_ was not so amazing. But the second movie came out within a few years, and it got better. The second movie played a huge part in keeping the franchise in the public consciousness. Lucas used some particular techniques to make the original _Star Wars_ series interesting. He stole from Kurosawa’s _Hidden Fortress_ to frame the story from the perspective of semi-peripheral characters (r2d2 & c3p0). And he gave the central characters depth; in _Avatar_, all the characters are basically one-dimensional. More importantly, _Star Wars_ is loaded with comic relief. The interplay between Han, Chewy and Leia, the foibles of the droids, the charming dickishness of Yoda, these things have no real analogues in _Avatar_ – it tries to have funny moments, but they are brief and uninteresting and not helped by the pixarish exaggeration of the blue people’s facial expressions (IIRC). In sum, _Avatar_ is spectacular but lacks stamina. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/64 "2018-03-09T22:44:07Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > But the hypocrisy is that people love visually spectacular movies with basic plots all the time. Star Wars is just the super generic Heroes Journey story. As a fairly recent example, Jurrassic World is far dumber than anything in Avatar, but everyone loved that pile of shit, because for whatever reason it didn’t become the popular and cool thing to go out of your way to talk about how dumb it is and how you’re too cool to like it. > > People go way out of their way to hold it to standards they won’t hold anything else to. “Oh it’s just like Fern Gully/Pochahontas/Dances with Wolves” - well, if those three movies have identical plots, why aren’t any of them criticized for it? Do you think any of them even invented the basic “outsider sent to exploit natives, outsider goes native himself” story archetype? I think there’s something to this, but for me, enjoying a film is not necessarily the same as thinking it’s a good movie. I know that there are some people who claim that, if you enjoy a movie, then by definition you must consider it good. I don’t really agree. I happen to agree with your characterization of _Star Wars_ and _Jurassic World_, and i tend to think of them in somewhat the same terms as i think of _Avatar_: fun but not very good movies. Here’s what i said about Avatar on this board when it first came out: > [@Avatar was a bad movie.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/avatar-was-a-bad-movie/531738/39): > > I enjoyed the hell out of _Avatar_. It was a fun two-and-a-half hours, and my wife and i actually contemplated shelling out another $16.50 each to see it on IMAX a second time. > > I also thought it was an incredibly awful movie. Ham-fisted allegory, embarrassingly bad dialog, caricatures for characters, mediocre acting, and a storyline as banal as laundry day and as predictable as sunrise. > > It had everything and nothing. It was a triumph of technology and visuals, and a disaster in every other respect. I think its long-term significance will be simply as a vehicle for introducing audiences to the new technology\*; in the future, much better film-makers than James Cameron will combine that technology properly with the other aspects of film-making to produce well-rounded, interesting, and truly great movies. > > - And also the oodles of money it made. And that is also pretty much my answer to the OP’s question in this thread: it has little cultural impact because it just wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t even very new, in terms of what it offered as a movie-going experience. For me, one of the tests of a big-budget visual blockbuster like _Avatar_ is whether i’m at all interested in sitting down and watching it in my living room, away from the massive screen and the immersive experience of the theater. For _Avatar_, the answer to that question is definitely “no.” For something like _Mad Max: Fury Road_, however, the answer is yes. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/65 "2018-03-09T23:11:56Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > …Recall, it made $2.7 billion worldwide. That’s a lot of fannies in seats. The others that sit atop that list include the MCU, Star Wars, Titanic and so forth. > > [Highest gross adjusted for inflation.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_films_adjusted_for_inflation) > > Gone With the Wind > Avatar > Star Wars > Titanic > The Sound of Music > ET > Ten Commandments > Doctor Zhivago > Jaws > Snow White and the Seven Dwarves > > Arguably, these are some of best movies of all time. They’re quotable and have had an impact on popular culture. Except Avatar, really. > Weird. Not necessarily weird–just proof of the overarching importance of _story_. (As many have been noting throughout the thread.) In your list of movies that have been more influential and resonant than _Avatar_, we see, arguably, three disaster movies (_Jaws_, _Titanic_, and _Doctor Zhivago_). In these the protagonist emerges as a survivor who has kept his or her dignity and honor intact in the face of a harrowing experience. (In two of them the protagonist dies, but gloriously–impacting the future via poetry or grandchildren; ‘life well lived’ stuff.) In all the others, the protagonist emerges a winner. He or she wins power, or wealth, or glory, or everlasting fame, or at least (in the case of _ET_) a powerful friend. Scarlett O’Hara may have watched her husband walk away, but she’s still young, rich, and beautiful. She’ll get him back. Luke is a hero and future Force master. The _Sound of Music_ people have a wonderful life and career and fame coming after they escape the Nazis. Moses is the star of a book of the Bible. Snow White has her prince (and, presumably, a kingdom of which to be future queen). Viewers enjoy identifying with all of these outcomes–even the tragic ones, because they include some combination of power and glory and fame (even if it comes after death. Humans are funny, that way.) With _Avatar_, we had a guy who did end up being able to walk after not being able to, and did end up being, apparently, the son-in-law of a shaman or such. But he was leaving the world of powerful machines and fortunes and big guns and multiple planets and opportunities, for one planet of pretty flowers and nice dragons who’d fly you around. Fun-----but it’s no power fantasy. People just didn’t quite want to identify with that. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/66 "2018-03-10T01:11:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Personally, I think that it’s clear that the plot was intended to be nothing more than a vehicle for the spectacle, and it was perfectly adequate for that purpose, and the spectacle was amazing. When you’ve got a spectacle that great, there’s nothing wrong with making the plot subservient to it, and if you were disappointed in the plot, you were seeing it for the wrong reason. True. Once you take away or minimize the technical spectacle by viewing the movie somewhere other than a big theater (e.g., on television), what’s left is often barely worth watching. **Avatar** was like another film, 1952’s **The Robe** , in that it was primarily a vehicle to demonstrate start-of-the-art visual technology. With **The Robe** , the “new” technology was [CinemaScope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinemaScope)) while with **Avatar** , it was 3D effects and “realistic” looking CGI. When viewed on TV instead of a movie theater, **The Robe** is an above-average example of the ancient epics Hollywood churned out during the 50s and not that special. Likewise, **Avatar** loses a lot seen on TV and only further calls attention to the fact we’ve all seen its story before (e.g., **Dances with Wolves** ). ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/67 "2018-03-10T01:45:38Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > It’s a good example of how motivated people are to very publically and very loudly declare that the movie is dumb and they’re too smart and too cool for it. Everyone apparently thinks they’re cool for shitting on the highest grossing movie of all time. That’s making a huge assumption and painting with a broad brush. None of that is true for me. I was prepared to like. The fact is, aside from the stunning effects, it just wasn’t a good movie for a lot of people. It’s really no more complicated than that. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/68 "2018-03-10T02:12:03Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I guess this thread will be a lot of repeating the same thing: It was pretty but lacked a decent story, script or memorable characters. Aside from “Wasn’t that neat to look at?” there was nothing to really discuss about it or draw off of. This argument summarizes the entire thread but fails to address the central question: **If it wasn’t a very good movie, why is it the second highest grossing movie of all time?** The mystery here isn’t that some movies aren’t very good; it’s that Avatar is a unique, paradoxical case; it was ludicrously successful, but unlike similarly successful movies, simply didn’t make a lasting cultural impression. “It didn’t make a lasting cultural impression because it’s mediocre” is true of a thousand movies you don’t remember; none were more successful at the box office that frickin’ Star Wars. What I find baffling is why Avatar did something no other movie did; attain absolutely staggering box office success, BUT not make a lasting impression. Of course other movies have been very successful despite being shitty, like “Transformers” movies.\*\* But they weren’t Avatar successful.\*\* ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/69 "2018-03-10T02:37:15Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > What I find baffling is why Avatar did something no other movie did; attain absolutely staggering box office success, BUT not make a lasting impression. This is indeed something of a conundrum, and it’s something for which we may never have very much apart from speculation. And for each of us that speculation will probably be filtered through our own opinions of the movie, and our own more general sense of what makes a movie “good” or not. For example, i find **Sherrerd** ’s explanation, a few posts up, to be completely unconvincing. > [@Sherrerd](#): > > With _Avatar_, we had a guy who did end up being able to walk after not being able to, and did end up being, apparently, the son-in-law of a shaman or such. But he was leaving the world of powerful machines and fortunes and big guns and multiple planets and opportunities, for one planet of pretty flowers and nice dragons who’d fly you around. Fun-----but it’s no power fantasy. > > People just didn’t quite want to identify with that. This all striikes me as far too neat and convenient, and seems more like post-hoc rationalization rather than actual explanation. I don’t necessarily claim to have a better answer, but then again, there are other staggeringly successful (and culturally significant) movies like _Titanic_ that i also find rather forgettable once you’ve left the cinema, and that i have no desire to watch again in my living room. For me personally, i think that one thing that weighed against _Avatar_ was that i just couldn’t bring myself to care very much about the characters. Star Wars might have a rather trite storyline, but i found some of the characters appealing and relatable in a way that i never did with Avatar. Of course, that’s probably (at least partly) a product of my age when i saw them. I was not even ten years old when _Star Wars_ came out, but was nudging 40 when i saw _Avatar_. I’d be interested to know what the pre-teens and teens who saw _Avatar_ thought of it. I wonder if the glut of sci-fi and fantasy and comic-book blockbusters that movie studios churn out now is part of the reason for its apparently descent into historical obscurity? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/70 "2018-03-10T03:03:58Z")
To throw another wrench into the works, one thing might be worth noting. I recall seeing _Jaws_ in playing store windows in the late '70s/early '80s as a come-on to sell LVD machines. Apart from that, only _Titanic_ and _Avatar_ (from that list) are video-era movies. They held off for a decade before allowing _Star Wars_ onto the small screen. Which means that the Cameron movies were the only ones that filled theaters in a time when the theatrical-release-to-video timeframe was on the order of 2~3 months. An impressive feat for any movie in this day and age. ---
**Author:** ![icon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c6cbf5/32.png) [@icon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/icon)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/71 "2018-03-10T10:41:53Z")
One of the things people seem not to factor in when it comes to how much money the movie made is that the cost of tickets was higher. Not due to inflation, which is accounted for, but because paying for a 3D film ticket is more expensive than regular admission, especially at the time it came out. Since everyone agreed that watching it in 3D was the way to go, then you can have less ticket sales but end up with a larger number. Of course that does not completely account for the fact that it made so much money, but it does factor in. As to why I did not have a cultural impact as other films did is precisely because of the visuals. This was a movie that you had to see in the theater in order to be immersed in its world. Once the film was not in theaters then its main selling point was lost. For other movies, the theater experience was only part of what made it have an impact. Star Wars is a good example because a lot of it was made to seem worn, used and shabby, which is something that you can relate to in the real world™ and therefore translates better into your life once you leave the theater. //i\ ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/72 "2018-03-10T13:42:57Z")
But it still says something that people considered it worth that higher price to go see it. In some ways, it makes the higher box office more meaningful, not less: Movies are a bit odd, as commodities go, in that they’re usually all priced the same. It’d make more sense if really popular movies cost more, just like really popular everything else costs more. Avatar was able to capture a little of that, by costing more (by virtue of the 3D). ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/73 "2018-03-10T19:02:34Z")
It was an awful movie. It featured a race of noble savages—I guess 19th-century racial stereotyping is OK if you transfer the racism to a fictional society. The tree of life wasn’t metaphorical, it was physical. The connections between living things were also physical rather than metaphorical. The bad guys were so over-the-top evil that they were like bad Saturday morning cartoon characters. In other words, the movie treated its audience like naive idiots. I thought the animation was unconvincing. The giant blue people looked fake. A cartoony look can be OK, but not if you mix it with live action in what’s supposed to be a serious story. The animated characters in _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ looked like cartoons because they were supposed to be cartoons. The animated characters in _Avatar_ were supposed to be just as real as the human interlopers. I think this is why the movie has had so little long-term impact. Once the hype was over, people saw how bad it was. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_lining](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@Silver\_lining](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_lining)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/74 "2018-03-10T19:19:33Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > So over in [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=850732) we’re discussing movies and star power. And we’re beating the hell out of poor Sam Worthington. He clearly failed to launch from a star turn in the highest grossing movie of all time. > > But it’s been pointed out that - despite its massive receipts - Avatar has somehow failed to impact the zeitgeist. Sure, it’s going to be at Disney this year, but it hasn’t become a huge cultural touchstone in the way that Star Wars, The Sound of Music and others became. No one’s dropping quotes from Avatar the way they do Casablanca and such. > > I seem to recall seeing people cosplay as Na’vi back when it was in theaters. Ditto people trying to really make a thing out of it. But it seems to have not gotten the traction. > > So what’s the cause of that? Why did Avatar - which certainly made an economic impact - not generate cultural impact? Well, the cat beings were too large to interact with the human characters. And Worthington isn’t A list. I will say Pandora world in Disney World (Animal Kingdom) is pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/75 "2018-03-10T20:13:22Z")
I reckon the major reason it had high box office takings, but low cultural impact is simply because almost everyone who did see it, saw in the cinema, in 3D. I don’t remember ever being told by so many people, friends and film critics, that a film should be seen NOW or not at all. People who would normally just wait til a film came out on DVD (or pirate it) went out to see it, but most didn’t then buy it later and rewatch it\*, so it’s not stayed in the public consciousness to the degree that would be expected just looking at the box office takings. Especially with no follow up, it was effectively an ‘event’, more than any other film of that era. \*Except my parents. Its their favourite film, the one they watch most often. No, I don’t know why. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/76 "2018-03-10T20:15:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But it still says something that people considered it worth that higher price to go see it. In some ways, it makes the higher box office more meaningful, not less: Movies are a bit odd, as commodities go, in that they’re usually all priced the same. It’d make more sense if really popular movies cost more, just like really popular everything else costs more. Avatar was able to capture a little of that, by costing more (by virtue of the 3D). The interesting thing about movies is that it doesn’t cost much to make more copies. That means that a popular movie costs the same to the viewer, but as it has more viewers, has a bigger budget. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/77 "2018-03-10T21:00:58Z")
I think Avatar had all the necessary elements for being great (from a lasting cultural impact standpoint, like Star Wars), but something in the execution was just…off. Characters who were just a little too flat, dialogue that wasn’t quite smart enough, snappy enough, a retread plot with not enough new/different/interesting twists to cover the fact that we were just rollin’ down the highway on bald tires. Call it mediocre editing. Call it mediocre script. Call it mediocre directing, pulling mediocre performances out of the actors. Call it bad timing. Star Wars hit it big at a time when unambiguous Good vs. Evil was not in vogue, yet it was what audiences craved; we wanted to cheer for forthright, plucky/scrappy Good Guys. Avatar hit when we were already feeling morally ambiguous about the never-ending quagmire(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, in spite of its feel-good ending, it was overall just a bit too morally ambiguous as a whole for us to really connect to it emotionally. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/78 "2018-03-10T21:58:39Z")
Count me among those who was absolutely blown away by the movie when it first came out. I saw it twice in 3D in the US, and would have seen it more times if it had played longer. It was actually an emotional experience. As a tropical biologist, it was the most compelling representation I had ever seen of what an alien tropical environment would look like. And unlike almost any other science fiction film ever, they actually put some effort into making the animals look like they were derived from the same evolutionary history. Most science fiction worlds just slap together wildly different animals just because they look cool. In Avatar, the animals looked consistent. (This didn’t apply to the N’avi, who had to look like humans for audience identification.) But I’ve never watched it again. I’ve never bothered to get the DVD or watch it otherwise, since I knew the original experience could never be repeated. Because I liked the movie so much for its visuals, I hated to admit that it was a clunker otherwise. But yeah, I have to agree that the movie was lacking in plot, dialogue, and characterization. _Star Wars_ had cool visuals but a hackneyed plot too, but it had characters with chemistry, better actors, and quotable dialogue. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/79 "2018-03-10T22:17:34Z")
> [@](#): > > In Avatar, the animals looked consistent. (This didn’t apply to the N’avi, who had to look like humans for audience identification.) I’ve a hunch that this is actually the in-universe explanation, too. Eywa saw that some of the organisms the next star over over were starting to get pretty clever, and foresaw that she would eventually need to interact with us in some way. So she developed an organism for the purpose of interacting with humans. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261/80 "2018-03-10T22:33:32Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > As a tropical biologist, it was the most compelling representation I had ever seen of what an alien tropical environment would look like. And unlike almost any other science fiction film ever, they actually put some effort into making the animals look like they were derived from the same evolutionary history. Most science fiction worlds just slap together wildly different animals just because they look cool. In Avatar, the animals looked consistent. You know, the Earth has slapped together a bunch of wildly different animals, and plants, in a haphazard way. Not a failing of _Avatar_, _per se_ (cf. _Star Wars_, _Dune_, _Star Trek_, hundreds of others) but on Pandora, we never see deserts, oceans, savannas, alpine meadows, only jungle (that I can recall). The unisystemic world, seen across the spectrum of literature, seems somehow improbable, and that movie world’s tropical trope is just one more aspect that fails to set it apart from the hoi polloi. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lack-of-cultural-impact-of-avatar/810261.md?page=5)