Why Did Avatar Make So Much Money?
It’s a bad movie and no one ever talks about it. Sequels are in the works. Ten years removed, should anyone care?
Jamie Mah @grahammah
First, I’d like to pose a question: When was the last time you thought about Avatar? Or for that matter, when was the last time you saw it?
If you’re like me and many of my friends, it’s probably been ten years since this film entered your psyche. I’d like you to think about that for a second. Avatar, the highest grossing movie of all time (well up until this summer when it was passed by Avengers: Endgame) has barely registered a peep since its theatrical release. What gives?
And why are we supposedly getting four sequels? Who’s clamouring for this outside of James Cameron’s ego?
Of the films which are now on the all time top 20 rankings, most still resonate in some way. All the Marvel movies will be seen repeatedly by their adoring fans. I am definitely not one of them, but I get it. Titanic is must see TV for most looking to see a young Leo mesmerize. It’s a staple on cable and on Netflix. Jurassic Park much the same. Even the Fast series warrants some revisits. Outside of these, we have Harry Potter, Star Wars, and a few other Disney classics. Each makes sense and will remain in the pop culture psyche for a long time.
But what about Avatar?
Does anyone care, or better yet, should they?
In his bestselling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, psychologist Robert Cialdini writes, “Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining the answer.”
The actions of those around us is a key referencing point I’d like you to hold on to as it details just how strong social actions can have on our ability to follow those around us. It’s why if you walk down a street and see two restaurants, one with a waiting line and another which is empty, most will join the line for fear of not knowing what the other offers. The line in this reference gives us social confirmation that “waiting” is worth our effort and time even if we’re wrong to suppose such a claim.
The energy and sheer will of James Cameron’s Avatar and what he wanted to showcase (3D technology) brought with it a collective impetus for us to all clamour and marvel at his creation. Seriously, this is what critic A. O. Scott of At the Movies had to say upon seeing Avatar for the first time.
“I had the feeling coming out of this movie that I haven’t felt since maybe I was eleven years old in 1977 and I saw Star Wars for the first time.”
Think about that sentence?
He compared his experience of seeing Avatar to that of seeing Star Wars. Freaking Star Wars! One of the most beloved and re-watched movies of all time. Was he wrong to have this feeling? No. Did he get caught up in the hoopla of Avatar mania? Possibly. Regardless of how ludicrous his review might seem now, it doesn’t matter. What hits me is that a movie with such a high turnout, one with mass critic (82% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience appeal, one some put on a level of seeing Star Wars for the first time, is one we seldom rewatch or talk about?
How could we have been so wrong?
The cannon of resonance most things have on us starts and ends with a connection. Avatar made a massive connection ten years ago. Then it didn’t. It’s one of the most puzzling theatrical events ever. It leads me to wonder that maybe in the end, what we crave as a society is genuine theatre, the kind that you find in the classics, such as Good Will Hunting or The Shawshank Redemption — two staples you see regularly on Cable or Netflix. Avatar for all that it showcased (again advanced 3D technology) got us to the door and we said hello, but it lacked the kind of emotional gravitas we so often long for with films that stand the test of time.
Director Martin Scorsese recently came under much scrutiny for his open remarks about Marvel movies (I’d lump Avatar in this bunch) saying: “I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.”
He’s correct to have this opinion as what Avatar and its subsequent lack of staying power suggests is that we may be charmed by the size, beauty and power of films such as these, but that they’re real value isn’t one that we’ll look to again and again.
Scorsese goes on further in an op-ed piece he recently wrote in the New York Times:
“Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.
For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.
It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.
And that was the key for us: it was an art form. There was some debate about that at the time, so we stood up for cinema as an equal to literature or music or dance. And we came to understand that the art could be foundin many different places and in just as many forms — in “The Steel Helmet” by Sam Fuller and “Persona”byIngmar Bergman, in “It’s Always Fair Weather” by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen and “Scorpio Rising” by Kenneth Anger, in “Vivre Sa Vie” by Jean-Luc Godard and “The Killers” by Don Siegel.
Or in the films of Alfred Hitchcock — I suppose you could say that Hitchcock was his own franchise. Or that he was our franchise. Every new Hitchcock picture was an event. To be in a packed house in one of the old theaters watching “Rear Window” was an extraordinary experience: It was an event created by the chemistry between the audience and the picture itself, and it was electrifying.
And in a way, certain Hitchcock films were also like theme parks. I’m thinking of “Strangers on a Train,” in which the climax takes place on a merry-go-round at a real amusement park, and “Psycho,” which I saw at a midnight show on its opening day, an experience I will never forget. People went to be surprised and thrilled, and they weren’t disappointed.
Sixty or 70 years later, we’re still watching those pictures and marveling at them. But is it the thrills and the shocks that we keep going back to? I don’t think so. The set pieces in “North by Northwest” are stunning, but they would be nothing more than a succession of dynamic and elegant compositions and cuts without the painful emotions at the center of the story or the absolute lostness of Cary Grant’s character.”
His last paragraph here is what resonates most with me. Avatar was a thrill. Nothing more. It’s why we haven’t kept on coming back to it. Scorsese is correct to worry about the state of film as if more and more movies such as these are made, the less we’ll have to come home to for revisits. For myself, this is a sad fate. For others, those who love these types of films, the thrills and shocks might be worth it and I suppose that’s all right too. I guess we’ll see.
Avatar is a cautionary tale of what a film can be and what it ends up being. 2.7 Billion says a lot to a studio. It’s why we have four sequels in the works. Whether they do just as well as their predecessor is yet to be seen. However, a more pressing question must be asked: Do we even care that they’re on the way?
I doubt you do and that to me says everything.
Avatar, the biggest movie no one remembers.
Now that’s a legacy.