The (lack of) cultural impact of Avatar

[Chronos]

Of course, we only saw one small portion of Pandora. Who’s to say that it doesn’t have deserts and tundra and savannas and all the rest? But the story we were watching was set in a jungle.

And really, a desert or tundra on any human-habitable planet is going to look pretty much the same.

[k9bfriender]

@Chronos

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.

I was of the theory that they were actually a very advanced species that genetically engineered their habitat so that they could play native, while the massive computers in the planet kept everything going. Maybe not even native to this world itself.

As much was said about the biodiversity that was created for the movie, it was actually pretty low amount of biodiversity compared to an actual rain forest.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Colibri

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.

If you don’t already have a copy, you should get Dougal Dixon’s Expedition. (It is OOP and expensive–I got my copy in the early 1990s when it was OPP and cheap at a remainders book store.) I think that much of the life in Avatar was based by Dixon on the life from Expedition. (Though as I mentioned earlier, I have seen only part of the movie.)

(I’d love to see Expedition made into a movie or even a series–and not the piece of shit *Alien Planet *that was supposed to be based on it.)

[asterion]

@Filbert

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.

It was also almost impossible to get in a 3D version for home viewing. Even if you have a 3DTV (I do) and a 3D source (I do), it was impossible to get a copy unless you bought a Panasonic TV or 3D-capable Blu-Ray player that had it packed in. It was basically three years before you could just go to a store and buy it. By late 2012, nobody really cared anymore and 3DTV was basically a dead novelty. I sure wasn’t going to go buy a Blu-Ray player I didn’t need (I was using a PS3) just for one movie. The promised 3D cable channels never came out, I think the last movie I bought that had 3D playability was The Avengers, and there was never support for the download/streaming rental market. I could never throw a small party, loan out my several pairs of 3D glasses that came with the TV, and watch Avatar when people still might have wanted to see it.

The most I have ever used the 3D capability for was video games. I have several, and playing something like Arkham City in 3D actually worked. But even then it was always more of a novelty, especially since anyone watching either needed to wear a set of glasses as well or see everything all blurry.

[mhendo]

@asterion

It was also almost impossible to get in a 3D version for home viewing. Even if you have a 3DTV (I do) and a 3D source (I do), it was impossible to get a copy unless you bought a Panasonic TV or 3D-capable Blu-Ray player that had it packed in.

I didn’t know that.

I actually bought a Panasonic plasma 3D TV in 2011, and the 3D glasses came with a Blu-Ray of Avatar. We watched about 30 minutes of it, just to see if the 3D features were any good, and then put the disc and the glasses in a cupboard where they have sat ever since. We never used the 3D capability of our TV again.

[MarvinKitFox]

@Two_Many_Cats

Unfortunately, impressive does not automatically mean memorable.

This describes Avatar in a nutshell.
It has, especially for its time, awesome graphics.
It’s a War movie… but there are many better
It’s Sci-Fi, but there are MANY better
It’s romance, but… actually, skip that.
.
Even though I have re-watched it, and know the plot + dialogue + etc quite well,
The ONLY real memories that Avatar leaves me are…
“WOW that’s a big tree”
and
“Boobies? No, not quite, but close”
That is NOT enough to raise Avatar to my top 10 list, nor likely to my top 100 list.

[shantih]

@dzeiger

The Pandora area actually opened last year. And it is possibly telling that while it is an amazing place in terms of visuals and ride technology, they set the area 20 or 30 years after all of Cameron’s proposed sequels. So they took the visuals and the basic world concepts and basically completely created their own stories around it.

@sinjin

Aside from not being able to get onto the two rides without a fast pass obtained 30 days in advance the area is totally meh. The waits for both rides were over three hours without the fast pass. We got one for the river ride and we were both “REALLY??” It was totally meh. Didn’t get on the other ride and maybe it’s amazing, but the whole area is just fakey goofy flowers and stuff, very plastic. I suspect this will not last long.

I was at Disney World week before last and experienced the Pandora area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom for the first time. I was also struck by how they basically brushed past the movie and focussed exclusively on the landscape and creatures of an alien world (and did a bang-up job of it, too, particularly with the lighting and luminescent effects at night).

If you don’t get a FastPass for the other ride (Flight of Passage) 60 days in advance, you can expect to wait for at least two hours, which is beyond what I’m willing to do for anything. Luckily, I had one and it truly is unbelievably spectacular – I was with friends, one of whom had been there with her family the summer before and who had waited over 3 hours for it and considered it well worth it. The river ride was pretty and enchanting, but again, I wouldn’t have waited longer than the 20 minutes we did.

I only saw the movie once and not in a movie theater, but at a friend’s house projected on a screen. Even not in 3D, I thought it was visually astounding but a rousing meh when it came to the storytelling. I like the theory from earlier in the thread that a big reason behind it not having more of an impact is that it was impressive for the visuals and nothing else, and so you couldn’t really experience or use it in any way other than to watch it in a theater. Once it left the theaters, it left the popular consciousness.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

A cute little piece of CGI fluff.
And that’s all.
Cinematic cotton candy.

[MrDibble]

@eschereal

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.

We do see both plains and ocean in the movie - the direhorse clans and the seaside flyers are summoned for the big final battle. We see their homelands then. So you recall incorrectly.

Personally, I loved the movie when it came out, for much the same reason as Colibri enjoyed it. Unlike him, I own it and rewatch it occasionally - not for the storyline, just the worldbuilding.

And Michelle Rodriguez. I’ll watch anything for Michelle Rodriguez.

[MrDibble]

@Darren_Garrison

If you don’t already have a copy, you should get Dougal Dixon’s Expedition.

*Expedition*is by Wayne Barlowe, not Dixon. And yes, his design stamp is all over *Avatar *- which is no surprise, he was a creative consultant on the movie.

[Sam_Lowry]

@SenorBeef

Entertainment is plentiful and fragmented. There are very few movies that enter the cultural zeitgeist in the way that Star Wars did, and Star Wars did because it basically invented the concept of the blockbuster.

What movies that have come out in the last 20 years that have had a cultural impact at all like that? The last one I’d say had an impact like we’re discussing was The Matrix and that was almost 20 years ago. Maybe Titanic? But a lot of the cultural impact was based on mockery in that case.

Our culture is too rich in diverse entertainment for everyone to be on the same page like they used to. Most of the examples in this thread about movies with cultural impact are 40 or more years old.

There can be arguments about what movies have made a cultural impacts, I’d say that There Will Be Blood, Inception, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, Cloverfield and some others all had big impacts.

But there are definitely lots of movies that have entered the cultural zeitgeist much more than Avatar. As a very unscientific experiment, I looked at ThinkGeek, AllPosters, Hot Topic, and Funko Popsto see if there was any Avatar merchandise available, and I couldn’t find any. It has been nine years since the movie, so maybe there was merchandise and there isn’t any more, but AllPosters has posters for other movies from 2009 like The Hangover, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Hurt Locker, but not Avatar. And if there was a demand for merchandise you’d think that there were be at least a few geek things available on the other sites.

Also, there are sites like TeePublicand Red Bubble where independent artists can make their own designs. You’ll find lots of Harry Potter and Star Wars and various other things. But if you search for Avatar, it looks like all of the results are Avatar the Last Airbender related (though it’s definitely possible I’m missing one or two).

Merchandise is an imperfect way to measure a film’s impact, but it does seem like a decent way to measure a blockbuster’s impact, and by that measure Avatar has left little impression.

[Miller]

@SenorBeef

“Unobtanium” is such a weird thing to get hung up on. People in movies read sci-fi and make jokes, too. It’s entirely plausible that the scientists who studied the first samples from exploring the planet said something like “this is the unobtanium we’ve been looking for” or “the properties this material shows is basically unobtainium” and the name stuck colloquially. Having the first scientist’s in-joke sticking like that is something completely plausible in the real world.

This is way more plausible than thinking that the scriptwriter didn’t understand the connection when he wrote it and just picked that name at random, or thought he was making some sly reference that would go over the audience’s head.

In a good script, that could work. A McGuffin is fine, if it serves a plot that has interesting characters, or engaging action. It doesn’t matter what’s on the microfilm: what matters is watching Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flirt. The Ark of the Covenant isn’t really important to the movie, it’s just an excuse to watch Harrison Ford punch Nazis. A clever scriptwriter can even wink at the audience. “You and I both know that what’s on the microfilm doesn’t matter, so here’s a little joke to acknowledge why we’re all really here.”

The problem with Avatar is that it didn’t have interesting characters or engaging action. There’s neither Cary Grant flirting with Eva Saint Marie, or Harrison Ford punching Nazis. It’s just a bunch of very pretty pictures with virtually no emotional weight behind them. Functionally, it’s not a redirection to the part of the script that’s important, it’s an admission that nothing in the script is important. It’s the film admitting, “We didn’t care, and there’s no reason you should care, either.”

[Colibri]

@eschereal

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.

As has been pointed out, this is quite wrong. We do see other environments when the N’avi clans are gathering. And the fact that you think a planet must have varied environments is a bit of Terra-centrism. Before the Earth’s climate cooled in the Neogene, “tropical”-type forests could sometimes be found from pole to pole.

And in Star Wars it’s far worse. Almost every planet or habitable moon has one single emblematic environment (or at least that’s what we are shown): Tatooine and Jakku = desert, Hoth = arctic, Yavin 4 = tropical forest, Dagobah = tropical swamp, Endor = temperate rain forest.

[Colibri]

@MrDibble

*Expedition*is by Wayne Barlowe, not Dixon. And yes, his design stamp is all over *Avatar *- which is no surprise, he was a creative consultant on the movie.

Thanks for the tip. That’s something I would find interesting. I love Barlowe’s art (he’s much much better than Dougall Dixon.) Unfortunately I just check on Amazon and the cheapest new copy is $122, and the cheapest used is $54.:eek:

[MrDibble]

@Colibri

Thanks for the tip. That’s something I would find interesting. I love Barlowe’s art (he’s much much better than Dougall Dixon.) Unfortunately I just check on Amazon and the cheapest new copy is $122, and the cheapest used is $54.:eek:

Yeah, thankfully our city library has a copy. There’s a bit of a samplerat his own site

[kenobi_65]

@MrDibble

*Expedition*is by Wayne Barlowe, not Dixon. And yes, his design stamp is all over *Avatar *- which is no surprise, he was a creative consultant on the movie.

I have Barlowe’s “Guide to Extraterrestrials” and “Guide to Fantasy” books, from when I was in the Science Fiction Book Club in the 1990s. When I watched Avatar for the first time, I thought to myself, “dang, these creatures so feel like Wayne Barlowe designed them”…and, then, I saw his name in the credits.

[Penfeather]

Also it was pinched off the old John Smith and Paul Marshall 2000AD strip Firekind. Like, really pinched.

[MrDibble]

@Penfeather

Also it was pinched off the old John Smith and Paul Marshall 2000AD strip Firekind. Like, really pinched.

Also: Call Me Joe, by Poul Anderson: Wheelchair-bound human remotely drives a created alien body on a hostile world, eventually leaves old body for new one (kind of).

[RickJay]

@Penfeather

Also it was pinched off the old John Smith and Paul Marshall 2000AD strip Firekind. Like, really pinched.

I guess one would have to read Firekind, because from your links it’s just not apparent to me Avatar is an actual ripoff of it. The story similarities are common to a lot of sci-fi/fantasy stories, and just in the short summaries provided, there’s at least three very significant differences in storyline. Similar types of stories are likely to have a lot of similarities.

[DesertDog]

@Colibri

And in Star Wars it’s far worse. Almost every planet or habitable moon has one single emblematic environment (or at least that’s what we are shown): Tatooine and Jakku = desert, Hoth = arctic, Yavin 4 = tropical forest, Dagobah = tropical swamp, Endor = temperate rain forest.

It was raining on Mongo that morning.