Rumour that Disney will have to sell Lucas Film and some parks to pay for Hulu

[Hatmatter]

I have not seen the second Avatar - take this into account with this comment.

Avatar's cultural impact can be clearly seen (and speculated) in how

1) it popularised 3D in films to an absurd degree, where we still the occasional 3D release of certain films even if they don't really work anymore.

2) there are entire sections across theme parks dedicated to Pandora and the world of Avatar.

3) it was a huge technical marvel that significantly contributed to increasing CGI usage - while the Star Wars prequels got there first, Avatar proved for certain that you could practically have the entire world be CGI in your film and it would work, and be successful

4) I think the aesthetic has been carried forward - Avatar being so bright probably had an impact on the better use of colour across media afterwards. The truly gray and brown days of video games, for example, started to fade after 2010 - while a different genre, I wouldn't be surprised if Avatar's success as something bright and beautiful helped

The thing is, however, is that Avatar's plot, characters and general writing is pretty formulaic and generic; I don't think it was ever going to be influential in that manner, and thus I think that's why it doesn't appeal to quite a lot of Sci-Fi fans.

Very well said, ReshilRE! I agree entirely.

 

[MoonSong]

I have not seen the second Avatar - take this into account with this comment.

Avatar's cultural impact can be clearly seen (and speculated) in how

1) it popularised 3D in films to an absurd degree, where we still the occasional 3D release of certain films even if they don't really work anymore.

2) there are entire sections across theme parks dedicated to Pandora and the world of Avatar.

3) it was a huge technical marvel that significantly contributed to increasing CGI usage - while the Star Wars prequels got there first, Avatar proved for certain that you could practically have the entire world be CGI in your film and it would work, and be successful

4) I think the aesthetic has been carried forward - Avatar being so bright probably had an impact on the better use of colour across media afterwards. The truly gray and brown days of video games, for example, started to fade after 2010 - while a different genre, I wouldn't be surprised if Avatar's success as something bright and beautiful helped

The thing is, however, is that Avatar's plot, characters and general writing is pretty formulaic and generic; I don't think it was ever going to be influential in that manner, and thus I think that's why it doesn't appeal to quite a lot of Sci-Fi fans.

Also, it fails to connect with children. Many popular scifi franchises glorify war and the main characters are warriors/soldiers which children see as aspirational. Avatar, however, casts them as the bad guys which doesn't gel with children play patterns. Without children playing with the toys, there's nobody forming nostalgia for the franchise.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I think it is disquieting to say that nostalgia must form from child play patterns, and that the specific play pattern involves violence and glorifying war. I think that has little to do with Avatar not having nostalgia for it.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Given how successful the first movie was, I was always surprised that it didn't have much of a cultural footprint. I realize francises like Star Wars and Star Trek have had a lot more time to build (and lose) their fanbase, but even among my friends who love science fiction, nobody talks about Avatar.

And yet the squel made billions. I've never seen either of them.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I have not seen the second Avatar - take this into account with this comment.

Avatar's cultural impact can be clearly seen (and speculated) in how

1) it popularised 3D in films to an absurd degree, where we still the occasional 3D release of certain films even if they don't really work anymore.

2) there are entire sections across theme parks dedicated to Pandora and the world of Avatar.

3) it was a huge technical marvel that significantly contributed to increasing CGI usage - while the Star Wars prequels got there first, Avatar proved for certain that you could practically have the entire world be CGI in your film and it would work, and be successful

4) I think the aesthetic has been carried forward - Avatar being so bright probably had an impact on the better use of colour across media afterwards. The truly gray and brown days of video games, for example, started to fade after 2010 - while a different genre, I wouldn't be surprised if Avatar's success as something bright and beautiful helped

The thing is, however, is that Avatar's plot, characters and general writing is pretty formulaic and generic; I don't think it was ever going to be influential in that manner, and thus I think that's why it doesn't appeal to quite a lot of Sci-Fi fans.

5) Everyone grew long ponytails that we now plug together as signs of intimacy.

Wait... am I the only one doing that?

 

[MGibster]

1) it popularised 3D in films to an absurd degree, where we still the occasional 3D release of certain films even if they don't really work anymore.

3D is a fad that Hollywood likes to revisit every few decades. Avatar might have brought the fad back more recently, but it's faded once more. So not a particularly long shadow.

2) there are entire sections across theme parks dedicated to Pandora and the world of Avatar.

Fair. They've got a section at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

3) it was a huge technical marvel that significantly contributed to increasing CGI usage - while the Star Wars prequels got there first, Avatar proved for certain that you could practically have the entire world be CGI in your film and it would work, and be successful

It wasn't just Star Wars, movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sin City were already proof of concept films that came out a few years before Avatar. But I do recognize what a technical achievement it was, but that doesn't mean it has much of a cultural footprint. If I tell someone to "Live long and prosper," "may the Force be with you," or "Phone home," a lot of people will still know what that means and where it came from. Offhand, I can't think of any way that Avatar has had a similar impact on our culture.

I think the aesthetic has been carried forward - Avatar being so bright probably had an impact on the better use of colour across media afterwards.

That's possible. The first really colorful FPS I can remember playing is Farcry 3 which came out in 2012.

The thing is, however, is that Avatar's plot, characters and general writing is pretty formulaic and generic; I don't think it was ever going to be influential in that manner, and thus I think that's why it doesn't appeal to quite a lot of Sci-Fi fans.

And I want to be careful here. I'm certainly not arguing Avatar is a bad movie. Not having a big cultural impact doesn't mean it's bad. It's just that I'm surprised given how successful both it and its sequel are. Maybe it'll continue making a cultural impact as more and more movies are produced. But I don't see kids wearing clothes, playing with toys, or eating food with Avatar slapped all over it.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I think being influential in small ways, without directly being memorable or quotable, still means it has a cultural impact - just indirectly. I see your points however and I find the whole thing fascinatingly confusing.

I was talking to someone who helped ran a discord related to Avatar, where people who had seen the film when they were 10 were highly enthused for the sequel; they roleplayed using the lore of a backdrop, tried to understand and translate the language, speculated about the feature and looked for Easter eggs.

There clearly are people out there who love the property, but I think it's possible it's a community that is rather insular and doesn't discuss it much outside of the community.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it'll continue making a cultural impact as more and more movies are produced. But I don't see kids wearing clothes, playing with toys, or eating food with Avatar slapped all over it.

I mean, that's down to a marketing approach, rather than anything else.

By your logic here, films like all the terrible "Trolls" animated movies have huge cultural impact, because their marketing is entirely directed towards kids and branding for kids. Indeed, all sorts of terrible and immediately-forgotten movies are kind of a big hit with kids, or if not a hit with them, then marketed to them so aggressively that you see them eating their [terrible movie] Happy Meals and so on.

Avatar has done a lot of marketing, but none of it has been child-focused - the focus instead seems to be to market it as a spectacle and a family film.

It feels like the logic here is "Unless it plays out exactly like Star Wars, it has zero cultural impact", which is a pretty weird take, albeit a common one.

I think the other issue that people aren't really processing is that Avatar 1 was a single movie 14 years ago. So expecting it to have a big impact is pretty bizarre. If The Matrix had ended at The Matrix, I think it'd be almost entirely forgotten, for example (as Sky-Captain is, for example, only the nerdiest nerds remember that). There's also a weird double-standard that's applied here, where no-one questions, say, the Bay-era Transformers movies having left essentially no trace on pop-culture apart from Youtube videos about how demented they are. It's like, what exactly are people expecting from a single film? I guess Terminator-style kiss-off lines is the answer, but the original very much wasn't that kind of movie.

The second one, which is a less trope-y and predictable movie still eschews kiss-off lines and the like, but it does have rather more engaging plot, even if it has some overlong sections in the middle. The action finale is on-par with anything Cameron has done. I think the real assessment as to how much impact the series has had won't be able to be made until it's over. I will say that I think the reason a lot of people liked to talk about cultural impact was that they thought it was over - that there never would be a sequel - or were trying to wish that into being the case.

There's also a complicated cultural issue going on with these movies which could take paragraphs or even pages to discuss, but which essentially boils down to:

1) A lot of educated and influential people are extremely uncomfortable with Americas-style colonialism being critiqued. These same people may be fine with critiques of colonialism and imperialism as it manifested in say, the British Raj, or Colonial Africa, but they're uncomfortable with critiques of Americas/Oceania-style stuff.

Keeping this short, I think this is very evident in a lot of the negativity shown toward the movies by certain people, and similar negativity they show towards any movie that attempts to critique colonialism/imperialism in the US - you saw this with Dances With Wolves, for example - hugely popular, hugely successful, critically fairly well-received, but a lot of people at the time and later tried to find ways to say it should be ignored or dismissed - and it's curious how that happens to literally any movie which attempts to critique that particular type of colonialism.

This is really a super-complicated issue that I think people could write entire papers on, but I think it's a real one.

1a) Worse than that, I think there's a weird line of vague but intense racism present again across the political spectrum which essentially works out as "tribal-style indigenous cultures aren't real cultures, only ones which had highly developed and obvious civilizations are". No-one will ever say this, but it's curious how many well-educated people will happily rant about how awful the British Empire was in India (and it was!), yet basically shrug at the utter horrors inflicted on the Native Americans, or even essentially suggest "they had it coming".

2) Awful nerds can't stand it when the guys with the cool tech and macho lines aren't the good guys.

This is just a hard fact. Some nerds are awful and lot of them get intensely uncomfortable if they guys with the coolest tech aren't also the good guys. This even hits Star Wars, creating the weird people who clearly love everything about the Empire despite knowing they're the baddies. And the baddies in Avatar do have all the cool tech. I do think Cameron missed a trick a bit by not giving the animals more personality/intelligence - minor spoilers for Avatar 2 - the one who he does, the extremely agile whale-thing, is one of the most memorable characters in the movie.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Even when some reports about the historica past are just and necessary in the entertaiment industry aren't wellcome by people who don't want spend their money after a hard week working to be told they should feel guilty because century ago horrible things happened.

The last Disney movies haven't worked too well in the box-office. Somebody says the starts of MCU have started to turn off time ago.

When there is too much supply you become more demanding and expectations are higher.

And even if Disney has got a lot of money the prestige of the brand and the company is seriusly damage because they weren't enoughly ideologically neutral, creating a lot of enemies, and boycotted by lots of families.

My opinion is before this year we are going to see some surprise about mergers or acquisitions.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, that's down to a marketing approach, rather than anything else.

By your logic here, films like all the terrible "Trolls" animated movies have huge cultural impact, because their marketing is entirely directed towards kids and branding for kids. Indeed, all sorts of terrible and immediately-forgotten movies are kind of a big hit with kids, or if not a hit with them, then marketed to them so aggressively that you see them eating their [terrible movie] Happy Meals and so on.

Avatar has done a lot of marketing, but none of it has been child-focused - the focus instead seems to be to market it as a spectacle and a family film.

It feels like the logic here is "Unless it plays out exactly like Star Wars, it has zero cultural impact", which is a pretty weird take, albeit a common one.

I think the other issue that people aren't really processing is that Avatar 1 was a single movie 14 years ago. So expecting it to have a big impact is pretty bizarre. If The Matrix had ended at The Matrix, I think it'd be almost entirely forgotten, for example (as Sky-Captain is, for example, only the nerdiest nerds remember that). There's also a weird double-standard that's applied here, where no-one questions, say, the Bay-era Transformers movies having left essentially no trace on pop-culture apart from Youtube videos about how demented they are. It's like, what exactly are people expecting from a single film? I guess Terminator-style kiss-off lines is the answer, but the original very much wasn't that kind of movie.

The second one, which is a less trope-y and predictable movie still eschews kiss-off lines and the like, but it does have rather more engaging plot, even if it has some overlong sections in the middle. The action finale is on-par with anything Cameron has done. I think the real assessment as to how much impact the series has had won't be able to be made until it's over. I will say that I think the reason a lot of people liked to talk about cultural impact was that they thought it was over - that there never would be a sequel - or were trying to wish that into being the case.

There's also a complicated cultural issue going on with these movies which could take paragraphs or even pages to discuss, but which essentially boils down to:

1) A lot of educated and influential people are extremely uncomfortable with Americas-style colonialism being critiqued. These same people may be fine with critiques of colonialism and imperialism as it manifested in say, the British Raj, or Colonial Africa, but they're uncomfortable with critiques of Americas/Oceania-style stuff.

Keeping this short, I think this is very evident in a lot of the negativity shown toward the movies by certain people, and similar negativity they show towards any movie that attempts to critique colonialism/imperialism in the US - you saw this with Dances With Wolves, for example - hugely popular, hugely successful, critically fairly well-received, but a lot of people at the time and later tried to find ways to say it should be ignored or dismissed - and it's curious how that happens to literally any movie which attempts to critique that particular type of colonialism.

This is really a super-complicated issue that I think people could write entire papers on, but I think it's a real one.

1a) Worse than that, I think there's a weird line of vague but intense racism present again across the political spectrum which essentially works out as "tribal-style indigenous cultures aren't real cultures, only ones which had highly developed and obvious civilizations are". No-one will ever say this, but it's curious how many well-educated people will happily rant about how awful the British Empire was in India (and it was!), yet basically shrug at the utter horrors inflicted on the Native Americans, or even essentially suggest "they had it coming".

2) Awful nerds can't stand it when the guys with the cool tech and macho lines aren't the good guys.

This is just a hard fact. Some nerds are awful and lot of them get intensely uncomfortable if they guys with the coolest tech aren't also the good guys. This even hits Star Wars, creating the weird people who clearly love everything about the Empire despite knowing they're the baddies. And the baddies in Avatar do have all the cool tech. I do think Cameron missed a trick a bit by not giving the animals more personality/intelligence - minor spoilers for Avatar 2 - the one who he does, the extremely agile whale-thing, is one of the most memorable characters in the movie.

Honestly, it's a bit more simple than all that for me personally: the first movie was boring and super generic (if expensive), and I forgot everything about it after like a week?