I'm getting old
enough and the list of movies I've seen is getting long enough that I'm writing Reactions for movies I've seen before a lot more regularly. A lot of this is
because I only really started thinking about movies maybe 7 years ago. These
posts and this blog started as an excuse for how much I time I spent watching TV and movies. Being able to
point to this thing I wrote, in my mind, justified the time spent. However, doing this
had the added benefit of making me actually think about things that I never
tried to verbalize before. I've noticed that this practice has completely
rewired my brain. It's made me insufferable when someone asks a simple question
like "Is this movie any good?", but I like it. It gives me something
to do. If nothing else, making these posts helps me remember what I thought
about movies I'd've otherwise forgotten.
That's where
Avatar comes in. That came out 9 years ago, which doesn't sound that long. I've
seen at least 1500 movies since then. Maybe 2000. That's a lot of movies, and
unless a movie is really good or really bad, it's hard to remember much about a
movie that happened that long ago. I don't remember much about Avatar.
As of writing this,
I'm about to go to Pandora in Disney's Animal Kingdom, so what better time to
remind myself of what makes Avatar so special?
...
...
I'm now more
confused than ever. Is this really the highest grossing movie of all time (by a
commanding amount)? How did that happen? Avatar isn't a bad movie by any
means. I enjoyed watching it. Watching it reminded me of how much fun some of
those aerial and battle scenes were on the big screen. As with any movie so
reliant on visual effects, they don't carry quite the punch that they did back
in the pre-iPad days*. I still don't get how it made so much money. $2.7
billion is a lot.
- The 3-D plays into it. That became a fad that even made hits out of Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans a few months later.
- Common wisdom used to be that a summer release was the way to make the most money. That first weekend in May made a lot of money for the studios. For the highest tier blockbusters though, showing up a week before Christmas (like what Avatar did) has the longest tail. The same strategy has helped a Star Wars movie top the yearly box office the last three years.
- Avatar is essentially Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai or Ferngully. The "stranger in a strange world" story only really works if the world seems strange to people. Since Pandora is a fictional world, I wonder if that helped the universal appeal of the movie. I've noticed a pattern for international grosses. The more a movie has to do with the USA, the lower the international percentage of the gross is, which makes sense.
- I do believe in the snowball effect of movies. Once they reach a certain point, people start seeing it just because it has made so much money already.
*The iPad has
nothing to with the the visual effects. I just want to remind you how much
things have changed in less than a decade.
I think what throws me off the most is that there isn't a character from this, a scene, or a quote that has really permeated pop culture. Titanic has the sinking of the boat and it made a star out of Leonardo DiCaprio. Jaws had the shark, the score, and "We're gonna need a bigger boat". Star Wars has a dozen memorable characters, the score, the Death Star, and some of the most quoted lines in film history. E.T. has one of the most iconic shots in film history and was popular enough to get seven year old Drew Barrymore a hosting gig on SNL. The Ten Commandments had peak Charleton Heston and the parting of the Red Sea. The Sound of Music had the songs and Julie Andrews. Gone with the Wind has Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable and the escape from the burning city.
There's nothing quite the equivalent of any of that in Avatar. If I even say Avatar, a lot of people think I'm talking about The Last Airbender. "I see you" is the closest thing to a famous quote from the movie. Zoe Saldana is as famous for Star Trek and Guadians of the Galaxy. Sam Worthington couldn't turn himself into a star. I always have to pause for a moment to even remember that he's the lead of the movie. There isn't an iconic Avatar shot or moment. The Na'vi look distinctive, but they're no "Jedi". Going down the list of highest grossing movies [adjusted for inflation], only Doctor Zhivago is higher than Avatar and as undistinctive.
You may be thinking "Is he ever going to get around to talking about the content of the movie?" Well, consider this rant a direct reflection of my thoughts about the actual movie. It's a really generic movie. I kept looking for an emotional hook. I wanted to find one. I love being able to champion a blockbuster movie. I don't have a stick up my ass about studios trying to create mass appeal entertainment. I love mass entertainment and I think it's really damn hard to do well. I just couldn't find a way in with Avatar. I want to echo what I said earlier about it: It's fine. A little long, but there's nothing to be angry about in the movie. I think the issue is that James Cameron has been so slow with the sequels. Virtually any other box office success near Avatar's level has numerous sequels and has been heavily franchised. Avatar is getting that treatment too, but on James Cameron's terms. That means another comically long development period. It'll be a decade before Avatar 2 is released. Supposedly, there were be several sequels in a row after that. At that point, perhaps Avatar won't look like such an odd duck in blockbuster lists.
Update: I went to Pandora at Animal Kingdom, and it was awesome. I still don't feel any stronger about the movie though.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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