I agree with your post, but it isn’t so much about shitting on a high-grossing movie as it is about shitting on a movie where the visuals are central.
People like to pretend that they don’t like visual effects taking center stage. Therefore, any movie which is primarily interested in its visual effects is derided as being stupid, especially if it focuses on visual effects which are newer and haven’t had a chance to “prove themselves” yet. This is why CGI and 3D get more stick than color and lighting.
It comes back to people with limited critical abilities wanting to analyze movies using the only tools they have, which are the ones they learned in English class for taking apart novels. Anything which can’t be analyzed that way is seen as unserious, if not actively harmful, never mind the fact novels were seen in precisely that way for the first part of their existence.
Excellent stealth insults there. Kudos. A perfect example of calling a whole bunch of people in this thread stupid without actually violating the board rules. It doesn’t really matter that your explanation misses a whole bunch of key issues that people have been discussing, and oversimplifies the criticisms they have been making; you got the jab in, and that’s all that matters, right?
I’ll repeat what I said before: there’s no cabal of elitists who are blocking Avatar from being memorable, it just wasn’t memorable. It was seen by a bajillion people and no handful of “limited critical thinking” CGI haters were going to prevent it from becoming part of the public consciousness. Instead, it came into town, everyone went “Ooooohhh… pretty!” and then blew on out the other side.
Other visual spectacle movies have done just fine. Jurassic Park was all about “OMG did you see that?” and buzz about the new tech and effects and we still remember and talk about Jurassic Park. More than we talk about Avatar, that’s for sure. Avatar just didn’t have a lasting hook.
I remember the same thing about Independence Day when it first came out. Very impressive in the theater. On the small screen, the acting and plot made it feel like a “made for TV” movie on the Sci Fi channel. Maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.
But even ID4 made more of a cultural impact. The shot of the aliens blasting the White House with their laser is practically stock footage. Plus it was a fun movie to watch, thanks to the likes of Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman (or was it Bill Paxton?), Judd Hirsch and Randy Quaid.
But I’m going to go in a different direction from other posters. I don’t think Avatar was a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do I feel that it’s Dances With Wolves in Space plot detracted from its cultural impact. I just think that in spite of it’s visuals, there wasn’t a whole lot of fun moments in Avatar. James Cameron is certainly able to add a bit of levity to even the darkest, most serious films. We all remember Bill Paxton’s (or was it Bill Pullman’s?) character from Aliens. Game over, man!
This is getting off topic but I recently wrote a really long blog post in which I considered what movies I’d have given Best Picture every year for the last 40.
After a fairly considerable amount of thought, I decided the 1985 award should go to “Back to the Future.”
This wasn’t a fanboy pick; I thought about it quite a lot to make sure it wasn’t, but I am quite certain “Back to the Future” was the finest work of cinema that year, and in fact is better than most Best Picture winners. It’s flawless. The script is perfect, and it’s perfectly edited; not one moment is wasted. The acting is flawless. The set and costuming are magnificent. Terrific score. Terrific direction. Perfectly paced. It’s as perfect a movie as I’ve ever seen. they gave Best Picture to “Out of Africa,” which was not nearly as good a movie. Back to the Future was not nominated.
Why is that? Well, because Back to the Future wasn’t serious enough. It’s not particularly ripe for literary criticism, if you will.
I always thought Avatar was just an animated Tarzan movie: white guy is able to out native the natives, or as someone else called it, “Dancing with Elves.”
As long as we have this little sidebar, I’ve long thought Jaws is a perfectly-constructed film, for essentially the reasons you give for Back To The Future having deserved Best Picture in 1985: It sets a goal for itself and achieves it, without a single wasted shot or line, and with costuming and settings and props adequate, or most nearly adequate, for the purpose. The only flaw is, as you might have guessed, Bruce, the mechanical shark, which looks too fake. The fact Bruce gave them so much trouble while shooting the film improved the end result, however, by forcing them to not show the shark nearly as much as they originally planned.
Of course, the best example of how good Jaws is comes from how terrible most of its imitators are, but a film can’t be blamed for what it inspired.
Not strictly visuals, but familiar and relatable premises – what’s called a Milieu
The theater experiences gave Star Wars, Jaws, Ten Commandments, Sound of Music, et cetera impact. The problem with Avatar is that, unlike those others, it didn’t resonate. It didn’t resonate because they wasn’t familiar. Sure, it was sensational and visually stunning and people talked about the experience and the scenes and the imagery for months and TV shows talked about how groundbreaking it was with the 3D technology for weeks before and weeks after it opened.
But, as many have pointed out, those astounding visuals needed a good story. That’s because it’s the story that resonates; it’s the story that affects the characters and it’s the story that audiences related to (or don’t).
I remember seeing an essay in the 1980s by Stephen King, analyzing what made Jaws such a great movie* in the mid-1970’s. King noted that Jaws didn’t suddenly make average people afraid of sharks. What Jaws did was make average people afraid of the water – mostly afraid of natural bodies of water (not swimming pools or bathtubs). And who had never visited a body of water? Who didn’t have at least one relative who lived within driving distance of a coastal beach?
And Titanic was a familar-enough story because absolutely everyone knew the tale. It had been woven into everyone’s education as part of the history lessons*. And, even if you had never heard of the stupid boat, there was an epic romance integrated into the tale and everyone can/could related to being young and falling in love; to being old and reminiscing about the grand old times. Who doesn’t (didn’t) have at least one relative (if not him-/herself) who shared richly detailed stories of their first love?
And Ten Commandments, well, even this die-hard atheist is familiar enough with the Torah and its most dramatic and deeply characterized legends – like the Exodus. And, if not, the characterizations were iconic enough that the tale is easy to grasp. It’s the stuff of mythology and fairy tale!
Speaking of which, the Fairy-Tale-in-Space called Star Wars resonates specifically because all cultures have their own versions of fairy tales with the same repeating themes and they are taught to our young as a means of transmitting culture from one generation to the next. The result (more like a byproduct) is that children invariably% learn to imagine themselves as the princess or hero so that, once the a fairy tale was placed on the silver screen, it was easy enough to identify with Luke or Leia, to know what to expect of Obi-Wan (guidance) and that towering figure in black (malevolence).
Avatar didn’t resonate after it was over. Avatar didn’t continue to echo in the viewers’ hearts long after they left the theater. The world was cool to see, but those same stunning visuals also gave viewers an easy way to say, “Hey, that’s not my world. I will never be ten feet tall – or blue. I will never work for a megacorporation that’s hell-bent on destroying a native population just to acquire its resources – well, at least not an interstellar one.” And, while it was seen as a considerable triumph for handicapped/disabled persons to be able to shift into a fully-able body, not enough viewers contemplated that triumph, some of the handicapped/disabled interpreted that resolution as insulting, and ultimately the character wasn’t built-up enough for most viewers to care about the matter. Years after Jaws (and whether or not you bothered with the sequels) people were afraid to go into the ocean. Even today people ask my coworker who SCUBA dives, “What, aren’t you afraid you’ll see sharks?” Years after Titanic, boys falling in love would scream to the heavens, “I’m king of the world!” Years after the original Star Wars, boys who were unhappy with their mundane chores would dream of getting away and doing something spectacular and noteworthy; Decades after the Ten Commandments, people feeling like they’re doing thankless drudgery would dream of an appointed (annointed?) leader who would intervene and put an end to the heartless master’s abuse.
Avatar might have resonated (slightly) with viewers from Central and South America, from Africa, from indigenous tribes in the United States - and, even then only somewhat weakly – because it was about an external entity coming in to steal resources and abuse the natives, then getting trounced& when the natives unified to fight back. But such resonance would only be about wishful revisionism because that’s not what earth history has shown, basically anywhere. Invaders have generally# succeeded in laying waste to indigenous populations and gaining control to the resources they seek.
I might argue that John Carter was a more resonant film than Avatar, partly because it rooted itself in timeless themes like racial division/unity and the exercise/abuse of power/authority. However, it was largely panned for being just another 3DFX movie and the awe-inspiring Avatar had already trampled those same themes. Inception made excellent use of 3DFX without trying to tread the same ground but, again, because it came so close on the heels of Avatar, a lot of people just thought it was another quick flick exploiting the new technology. The harder SciFi content also tends to resonate less with general audiences – let’s face it, it got confusing at times!
–G!
% I suppose I’m using the term too loosely, here; there may of course be exceptions and variations to thie claim.
The same can be said of Pearl Harbor, which was seen as a clear attempt to capitalize on the elements that made Titanic succeed but the characters and the romance they tried to weave into the historical backdrop were just not compelling enough.
& Even then, the trouncing required assistance from the invaders’ turn-coats in order to succeed.
Someone will cite Algeria, Dienh ven Phu, or even India but the rarity of such counterexamples tends to reinforce the point.
I thought it was a really cool movie. Avatar would have had a much greater chance of making a real cultural impact, if Cameron hadn’t waited all this time to make a sequel.
My interest has faded so much that if he announced it was canceled I wouldn’t really care.
On the other hand, we should also keep in mind that, while the movie was in the theaters and shortly afterwards, people were wondering why it had so much cultural impact. There were people identifying as Na’vi, and a lot of them.
I don’t want to just be negative, but I disagree. I think Avatar would still have close to zero cultural impact even if the sequel had come out at [whatever is perfect timing for a sequel].
Here’s why, in my opinion (and it’s probably already been said better)
Jaws: “Watch out - something menacing is out there”
Star Wars: “You must overcome the forces of darkness outside you by overcoming the forces of darkness inside you”
Titanic: “Love transcends all and endures forever”
I remember while I was watching the movie that a particular majestically swooping vista was a lot like the previous two or three majestic swooping vistas, and thus the wonder and charm of majestically swooping vistas began to fade, and then there was a rather extended bit where Whiteboy McGoneNative climbs a Wile E. Coyote-sized cliff (much like several previous Wile E. Coyote-sized cliffs) to the nest of the glider-critters, being told all the while that the bond between a Navi and the glider-critter he or she tames is sacred and unbreakable and will last eternally etc. Naturally, Whiteboy McGoneNative promptly tames a glider-critter.
Also naturally, when he later hears about a fire-engine-red glider-critter that is way way more awesome, he dumps his now-boring blue-grey glider-critter for the trade-up with a casual alacrity almost Trumpian in its efficiency.
Until I am assured that the original glider-critter made its peace with this (possibly after several evenings of sobbing, watching romcoms and eating ice cream directly from the carton) and realized it was better off, I shall never be able to feel any sense of fondness in recalling my viewing of Avatar.
