Avatar: The Way of Water | 16 DEC 2022 | Don't worry guys, critics like it

[dashrendar44]

The problem with AVATAR detractors is that they sill insist on confusing internet fandom with GA. They see a lot of trendy AVATAR hatred online, and they simply assume that “nobody cared for AVATAR and its characters.” They parrot the same ole line of «OMG, those characters had no emotion at all” (again, from the vocal internet minority) and they convince themselves that the GA feels like that. And yet, I know plenty of people, actual moviegoers who don't fanxy themselves critics that tell me that the film to them was not only an amazingly emotional journe but an almost religious experience that moved them profoundly. Yea, but that must've been the pretty colors and shiny surfaces, right?

 

Since the day a grandma told me she loved Avatar after she went seeing it with her great-daughter while we both watched a blu-ray presentation* in a mall, I never paid attention to those delusional people that live in their own fantasy bubble. A woman, grandma (!) that actually went to see a scifi epic starring giant blue people (?!) with her great-daughter (That generation span!) at the theater, that means a whole lot more to me than any fanboy rant trying to convince us that Avatar was a fluke and is actually long forgotten to the point of being reviled.

 

*Nowadays, there is a UltraHD presentation, guess which movie is used as a benchmark to sell those brand new TV's?

 

They say Transformers franchise is unfairly criticized but Avatar which is better than any Transformers as a model of entertaining blockbuster Cameron has been heralding since T2, imo, gets the "Shitty blockbuster that I don't like therefore nobody likes" treatment harsher online.

Edited July 17, 2014 by dashrendar44

[vc2002]

I have no horse in this race, but I would say as someone who greatly admires Cameron that I think it's a shame he decided to do another God knows how many sequels to Avatar than move onto something totally new. Avatar was a fine enough experience in the cinema but my interest in returning to that world and those characters is practically non-existent. I wonder how long it'll be before we get another non-Avatar Cameron film....

 

It's not like anticipation ever meant anything for Cameron.

[Hatebox]

It's not like anticipation ever meant anything for Cameron.

 

Usually because he did non-sequels, in fairness.

[vc2002]

Usually because he did non-sequels, in fairness.

 

But only a handful of people in the cinema history were capable of making a non-sequel the highest grossing film of all time, and no one except him has ever done it twice back to back. That's the point.

 

And if you consider that's 12 years apart which means he had to face two different generations of movie-goers, that makes his ability of knowing the audience and how to connect with them even more astonishing.

Edited July 17, 2014 by vc2002

[Hatebox]

I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't know what it has to do with my anticipation of more Avatar movies..?

[The Futurist]

Avatar detractors are so cute.They live in their owN delusionnal bubble where a film makes the second week end it made just because of 3d and shiny colors.I even recall an ew article trying to create a bad buzz saying the opening of the film was a bad sign for cameron and fox. This article was written before the second week end.

Edited July 17, 2014 by The Futurist

[vc2002]

I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't know what it has to do with my anticipation of more Avatar movies..?

 

Well, I'm sure you are staying objective enough to not mistake your own feeling with how the GA look at it, but some posters in this thread do.

 

Anyway, I'm calling this thread is "having a period". Every now and then in this thread the same thing gets repeatedly talked about, again and again.

Edited July 17, 2014 by vc2002

[Hatebox]

Well, I'm sure you are staying objective enough to not mistake your own feeling with how the GA look at it, but some posters in this thread do.

 

No, certainly not. It'd be ludicrous to suggest the film didn't strike a massive chord with the GA, and the sequel will perform accordingly. I do hope Cameron doesn't take too long a break after he's done with Pandora, though.

[Elessar]

I have no horse in this race, but I would say as someone who greatly admires Cameron that I think it's a shame he decided to do another God knows how many sequels to Avatar than move onto something totally new. Avatar was a fine enough experience in the cinema but my interest in returning to that world and those characters is practically non-existent. I wonder how long it'll be before we get another non-Avatar Cameron film....

 

As an ardent defender of Avatar i do have to kinda agree with this sentiment. I love Avatar but if i had to chose between sequels and for instance Battle Angel i would have chosen the latter. I dunno what he can bring to the table to make it fresh and interesting from a story perspective, it doesn't seem like there are a lot of options, so humans come back and instigate another war? Troubles in Jake and Neytiri's marriage? Avatar could have stayed a standalone movie without me feeling that i'm missing something. Then again, i'm sure it's gonna be an epic event i wouldn't wanna miss. It's James frigging Cameron we are talking about here.

[dashrendar44]

As an ardent defender of Avatar i do have to kinda agree with this sentiment. I love Avatar but if i had to chose between sequels and for instance Battle Angel i would have chosen the latter.

 

And suffer endless fanboy rants at the first pic released online till long after the release about how "Cameron dumbed down Gunnm for the masses"/"ruined their childhood"/"rip off their favourite geek property/mum/dog" nitpicking the hell out of it for years...Well, no thanks.

[Elessar]

Well, it comes with the territory of doing adaptations.

[The Panda]

Another funny thing: Cameron detractors, who,probably hated Titanic and were vocal bashers of it, are now using it as proof of AVATAR's supposed failure at ingraining itself into pop culture. They say that TITANIC is really a classic and iconic, in order to somehow diminish AVATAR. Quite amusing, if you ask me...

 

I still think Titanic is vastly overrated, however I do think it's a better movie than Avatar, and I was comparing what made Titanic a financial phenomenon to what made Avatar a phenomenon.

 

The problem with AVATAR detractors is that they sill insist on confusing internet fandom with GA. They see a lot of trendy AVATAR hatred online, and they simply assume that “nobody cared for AVATAR and its characters.” They parrot the same ole line of «OMG, those characters had no emotion at all” (again, from the vocal internet minority) and they convince themselves that the GA feels like that. And yet, I know plenty of people, actual moviegoers who don't fancy themselves critics that tell me that the film to them was not only an amazingly emotional journey, but an almost religious experience that moved them profoundly. Yeah, but that must've been the pretty colors and shiny surfaces, right?

 

I was using the gifs as an example, I wasn't correlating them with WoM (obviously it had good WoM, look at its legs), but people posting gifs from a movie is a movie ingraining itself in at least internet culture.  There are many other examples I could make, such as go to any store and look at the merchandising.  Things such as Harry Potter, or even as 'old' as Lord of the Rings still have a stronger hold on peoples minds than Avatar, for a movie that made 700m at the box office it's failed to create the type of fanbase other films did during their time. 

 

The biggest comparison is Star Wars, which is a true example of a box office phenomenon ingraining itself into popular culture. Star Wars undeniably was huge, and became big outside of the cinema world.  Where exactly is Avatar's influence now?  It's minuscule compared to the size Star Wars was when it came out, yet given how big its box office was and the genre it should be fairly comparable.  

 

I never said Avatar's story was disliked by the public, I know it had to be enjoyable to have the WoM, however the story and plot were not the main attraction, it was the eye-popping 3D that had never truly been used in that way before.

 

Ah you mean the influential Tumblr don't like Avatar. That influential zeitgeist tool that should have propelled Thor 2 into the 1B WW realm if you judge by the amount of stupid gifs/fangirls shipping/Idiotic Loki drawings about him getting pregnant with Thor's baby flooding all around...

 

You definetely don't live in the real world if you think a movie's WOM and real world impact is judged on the amount of gifs posted on the Internet...

 

Again, I was just providing gifs as an example (albeit it was probably a poorer one) but it is an example of modern pop culture.

 

Avatar detractors are so cute.They live in their owN delusionnal bubble where a film makes the second week end it made just because of 3d and shiny colors.I even recall an ew article trying to create a bad buzz saying the opening of the film was a bad sign for cameron and fox. This article was written before the second week end.

 

The immersion and effects were primary factors in what made Avatar so popular, it was something completely new and a cinematic experience that hadn't happened on that scale before.  That doesn't mean it had a good script nor that the audience would have cared if the script was good or not.

[Kalel009Shel]

Ah you mean the influential Tumblr don't like Avatar. That influential zeitgeist tool that should have propelled Thor 2 into the 1B WW realm if you judge by the amount of stupid gifs/fangirls shipping/Idiotic Loki drawings about him getting pregnant with Thor's baby flooding all around...

 

You definetely don't live in the real world if you think a movie's WOM and real world impact is judged on the amounOwn of gifs posted on the Internet...

Own them our Warrior Dash and Chocofles..... Lol these guys arent playing with  a real deck of cards.. How do they explain Avengers a bigger marketing campaign 40+ yrs of pent up lust for this to happen and the film could barely beat HP7 part 2 and got beat by nearly a 2 billion by film in less theaters lol.

 

 

Or Avatar even in a storm impacts people so much on NE side of the USA that they still rush to it and help the film to a 9.8X multiplier off an almost 80M OW lol

 

Sure the story wasnt good alright I dont care if you spend a billon bucks in SFX, your movie doesnt get Titanic and Avatar level support unless you have an incredible story and connect to the people emotionally through storytelling, music , wonderful time beats and breaking it together with one incredible wrapup.

 

'" MY JAKE Has been one of the best endings in decades!"

[dashrendar44]

I still think Titanic is vastly overrated, however I do think it's a better movie than Avatar, and I was comparing what made Titanic a financial phenomenon to what made Avatar a phenomenon.

 

 

I was using the gifs as an example, I wasn't correlating them with WoM (obviously it had good WoM, look at its legs), but people posting gifs from a movie is a movie ingraining itself in at least internet culture.  There are many other examples I could make, such as go to any store and look at the merchandising.  Things such as Harry Potter, or even as 'old' as Lord of the Rings still have a stronger hold on peoples minds than Avatar, for a movie that made 700m at the box office it's failed to create the type of fanbase other films did during their time. 

 

HP and LOTR existed before the movies, their respective fanbases were huge before any movie adaptation. Then Avatar which had none of those properties hype beforehand and no prior fanbase as such before release blew them out of the water at the first entry. So something stroke the right chord and people did connect to the story beyond the superficial level.

 

 

Cameron's tour de force right above. (Woman embraces her lover, Virtuality embraces Reality, Alien embraces Human, Madone embraces son, CG Pixel embraces Flesh,  Nature embraces Modernity...It works on so many levels, it's mind-boggling all the topics it can incarnate, it is what makes picture/shot memorable and stand out)

 

And for the SW comparison, people said the exact same thing about the story just being pretext and people just went multiple times for the showy effects and the flashbang new visuals. Nothing new.

 

What I think is that online people just think through their western-centric POV lens so they say "Nobody cares about Avatar anymore" inflating their opinion as the undisputable truth, in the cynical and jaded US maybe (I doubt it since it's mostly male online and geeks that complain about Avatar's so called non impact) but worldwide? Overseas there are plenty of emerging countries/markets that are ready to get on the Avatar train again, just China alone could bring massive chunks of doughs due to its constant developing market. So if Cameron's team engineers some kind of cutting edge presentation to match the UltraHD era and develops the adequate story to go along with it, how do you know it won't catch fire just like the first one did?

Edited July 17, 2014 by dashrendar44

[Wormhole]

Since the day a grandma told me she loved Avatar after she went seeing it with her great-daughter while we both watched a blu-ray presentation* in a mall, I never paid attention to those delusional people that live in their own fantasy bubble. A woman, grandma (!) that actually went to see a scifi epic starring giant blue people (?!) with her great-daughter (That generation span!) at the theater, that means a whole lot more to me than any fanboy rant trying to convince us that Avatar was a fluke and is actually long forgotten to the point of being reviled.

 

*Nowadays, there is a UltraHD presentation, guess which movie is used as a benchmark to sell those brand new TV's?

 

They say Transformers franchise is unfairly criticized but Avatar which is better than any Transformers as a model of entertaining blockbuster Cameron has been heralding since T2, imo, gets the "Shitty blockbuster that I don't like therefore nobody likes" treatment harsher online.

 

I can use anecdotal evidence too!

 

My mother and sister hated it. Father and brother liked it, but didn't have any desire to watch it again.

 

I definitely side with the "for the amount of money it made, it's surprising that it didn't make a larger impact on our culture" argument. If Avatar 2 is going to come anywhere close to the first's gross, Cameron is going to have to deliver a equally unique experience that becomes a WOM phenomenon like the first. And I think there's a good chance he does, because he's Cameron. But I don't think the sequel is guaranteed to be huge just because the first one was. 

[dashrendar44]

I can use anecdotal evidence too!

 

My mother and sister hated it. Father and brother liked it, but didn't have any desire to watch it again.

 

 

 

 

You didn't get my point.

 

The point is not my dad/my mum/my cat/my gerbil likes it or not. It's that a grandma I'm not linked to whatsoever, a total stranger confesses to one another total stranger that she went to see Avatar in theaters with her greatdaughter and that she loved it enough to reassert her love while watching a Blu-ray presentation months after release. It goes to show the demographics Avatar has reached, well beyond what is common for a scifi/fantasy movie (I doubt you saw grandmas gladly attending SW or LOTR showings with their greatdaughters) and that the appreciation didn't vanish magically once it hit home cinema market so for someone to say that nobody liked it past release using male demographics online he belongs to as the reference point to argue that Avatar's impact is non-existent and don't bode well for a sequel is totally ludicrous.

Edited July 17, 2014 by dashrendar44

[Kalel009Shel]

You didn't get my point.

 

The point is not my dad/my mum/my cat/my gerbil likes it or not. It's that a grandma I'm not linked to whatsoever, a total stranger confesses to one another total stranger that she went to see Avatar in theaters with her greatdaughter and that she loved it enough to reassert her love while watching a Blu-ray presentation months after release. It goes to show the demographics Avatar has reached, well beyond what is common for a scifi/fantasy movie (I doubt you saw grandmas gladly attending SW or LOTR showings with their greatdaughters) and that the appreciation didn't disappear once it hit home cinema market so for someone to say that nobody liked it past release using male demographics online he belongs to as the reference point to sustain that Avatar's impact is non-existent and don't bode well for a sequel is totally ludicrous.

Lol and yep and he never will see grandmas and grandpas going to see SWs or Avengers and all that along with the crowds from 5-40 is what seperates the men from the boys..

 

And lets face it SWS, LOTR, AVengers are great films supported by the masses.. Titanic And Avatar sequels need a whole new level of rank on the vast demographics that come out to support them.

 

And thats because of the brand that is James cameron and history of work and never failing to amaze(especially when its annouced hes doing a major epic) and just his ability to see things visually and storywise and bring the right people on to show hiss vision and tell a story that not even Speilberg can imitate.

 

I doubt SWs or Avengers will ever get my friends grandma and  grandpa to the ttheaters or anyone 60-75 up, but Avatar and Titanic sure did and so will the Avatar sequels as long as James focuses on what we loved in Top 2 back to back unbreakable Phenoms.

[Kalel009Shel]

HP and LOTR existed before the movies, their respective fanbases were huge before any movie adaptation. Then Avatar which had none of those properties hype beforehand and no prior fanbase as such before release blew them out of the water at the first entry. So something stroke the right chord and people did connect to the story beyond the superficial level.

 

 

Cameron's tour de force right above. (Woman embraces her lover, Virtuality embraces Reality, Alien embraces Human, Madone embraces son, CG Pixel embraces Flesh,  Nature embraces Modernity...It works on so many levels, it's mind-boggling all the topics it can incarnate, it is what makes picture/shot memorable and stand out)

 

And for the SW comparison, people said the exact same thing about the story just being pretext and people just went multiple times for the showy effects and the flashbang new visuals. Nothing new.

 

What I think is that online people just think through their western-centric POV lens so they say "Nobody cares about Avatar anymore" inflating their opinion as the undisputable truth, in the cynical and jaded US maybe (I doubt it since it's mostly male online and geeks that complain about Avatar's so called non impact) but worldwide? Overseas there are plenty of emerging countries/markets that are ready to get on the Avatar train again, just China alone could bring massive chunks of doughs due to its constant developing market. So if Cameron's team engineers some kind of cutting edge presentation to match the UltraHD era and develops the adequate story to go along with it, how do you know it won't catch fire just like the first one did?

This one picture is so talked about in American and too many countries to mention... And I dont see Avenger communities made up on the web and in the real world to emulate life of the Navi.. I posted a few on  links on here on how Avatar has affected the real world.

 

 

Hmmm seems everyone is trying to use Camerons 3D camera, trying to incooperate better music and stories thanks to Avatar.

Improvement of 3D and all the increases of 3D cinemas thanks to Avatar.

 

 

Giant Artbooks on the movies have been the rage and all sort of holographic advertising gimics on food products.

All started thanks to James Cameron Avatars..

 

No Impact on the world you say Wormhole? Guess again!!

[dashrendar44]

Lol and yep and he never will see grandmas and grandpas going to see SWs or Avengers and all that along with the crowds from 5-40 is what seperates the men from the boys..

 

And lets face it SWS, LOTR, AVengers are great films supported by the masses.. Titanic And Avatar sequels need a whole new level of rank on the vast demographics that come out to support them.

 

And thats because of the brand that is James cameron and history of work and never failing to amaze(especially when its annouced hes doing a major epic) and just his ability to see things visually and storywise and bring the right people on to show hiss vision and tell a story that not even Speilberg can imitate.

 

I doubt SWs or Avengers will ever get my friends grandma and  grandpa to the ttheaters or anyone 60-75 up, but Avatar and Titanic sure did and so will the Avatar sequels as long as James focuses on what we loved in Top 2 back to back unbreakable Phenoms.

 

Avengers 1 and 2, now those are movies nobody cares about in my family. Do I use that anecdotal evidence to draw conclusion about their prospects? Hell, no. But I doubt grandmas rushed to watch Avengers with their daughters in theaters then lurked at the Blu-Ray confessing how beautiful the movie was. That's a whole lot of a potential demographics those CBM won't tap into as much as Cameron managed to do two times in a row, that's his little secret and that's what male fanboys online still don't grasp or hate about him, that universal appeal marrying epic action, romance and adventure breaking through all quadrants effortlessly especially women, young and mature.

Edited July 17, 2014 by dashrendar44

[Ethan Hunt]

This film is going to gross more than 100M more than Star Wars 7

SW7: 435M

Avatar2: 560M