That’s right, another article speculating whether or not these Avatar sequels are going to be worth the wait. And considering the second film is less than a week from when this post is being published, it should be obvious I’m trying to get attention. Better writer probably have better strategies than this but I don’t get paid to write these posts. I’m just a regular guy giving my thoughts on the first film as well as where my thoughts are leaning for these upcoming follow ups. With all of that being said, let’s look back to 2009 when this movie first came out.
Avatar is considered a theatrical experience. Utilizing 3D technology to fully immerse the viewers, James Cameron waited years to make sure the technology was good enough to help bring his vision to life. And to his credit, the visuals and the technology used to bring create them is truly impressive. Even if you are to look at it on a smaller TV screen, the environment & aliens are fully realized. It is remarkable how hard the VFX artists worked to make the CGI look that real and blend it with the practical. If there is one positive legacy that can be attributed to this movie, it’s that people always see it as a film pushing what technology can do. When we think of more recent blockbuster movies that used CGI to create whole new worlds and characters, we do have this movie to thank for that.
But this does bring us to the first flaw of the movie. For years, people have praised this movie’s world building. However, when you stop to think about what it takes to create a fully fleshed out world, this movie doesn’t really do that much. World building in any medium of entertainment has a story create a setting and/or characters that bring new ideas and/or characters that fully engage the audience. There are movies that have very familiar settings but the characters are so unique and entertaining that it sparks thoughts in your head about how they might interact with certain people or in other locations. In that case, it’s the characters that bring something new to a familiar landscape. Even if you have standard characters, the environment around them can be totally unimaginable. We will then be willing to follow the characters just so we can explore how different this place is to our own. When it comes to Avatar, there are only two unique things about the world. How the Na’vi physically connect to their world and animals through their braids and the floating rocks. Aside from that , it’s really just alien equivalent of things we already have on Earth. Even the culture of the Na’vi we meet is just their equivalent of practically any Native American tribe. So the world isn’t that fleshed out but the images do fool the audience into thinking it’s doing more than what it is.
Even if that doesn’t persuade you, I have one word that might help. Unobtainium. The name of the resource that The Company is trying to mine but is unable to get. If you don’t understand why that is a ridiculously lazy name for that substance, then I’m not sure what else I can tell you. Maybe the fact that the organization that Jake Sully works for is simply referred to as The Company in the movie. Or at least, that’s the only way he refers to them. The actual name might have been said and I’ve simply forgot, but I do remember Sully only ever referring to them as The Company. But what do you expect from a main character that’s about as bland as stock as they come. Jake Sully doesn’t display any real personality or thoughts that doesn’t directly correlate to the main story. And it should be worth pointing out that this movie leans hard on the “white savior” trope. The trope where a Caucasian man becomes part of an indigenous peoples’ culture and ends up being the person that saves them from an external threat.
Sad to say, the other characters aren’t that memorable. That’s not to say anyone gives a bad performance. But the writing doesn’t let them stand out. Zoe Saldana does fine in her role, but she is forced to ultimately play the role of being the main character’s romantic partner. The only character that stands out due to their performance is Scott Lang as the in the field antagonist. He stands out because his character’s motivations and actions are so laughably villainous – he is having a ball playing the villain with no remorse or regret.
Having said all of that, the movie overall is good. If it had made just enough to be considered a profit, it wouldn’t have remembered that well in the collective consciousness past a few years. It’s mainly because it became the highest grossing movie that we talk about it. But in the context of people wondering how a movie with a story of this quality earned so much money. Aside from that, there isn’t enough there worth talking about so many years later. James Cameron did once say that Avatar can easily be as popular as any Star Wars or Marvel film. If you are to look back on the first movie for each franchise, it’s actually easy to see how they became a franchise but Avatar so far hasn’t. The first Star Wars film had a brand new galaxy full of new characters and ideas to introduce to people. And a conflict that felt epic and grand. It was only a matter of time before a sequel came out. As for Marvel, if we were to look at Iron Man and compare it to past comic book movies, the movie actually does new stuff that proved it was worth revisiting. Mainly how it approach it’s title character, his character journey, and how he impacted the world around him. The same can’t necessarily be said for Avatar which came out a year after that film.
Now that we have gotten through all of that – this doesn’t mean there is absolutely no way Avatar can’t be a franchise. James Cameron does have a reputation of creating sequel films that are better than their predecessor. And the fact that we have waited this long for these sequels to come out might be good news for the writing quality. Perhaps they did recognize that story and character flaws of the original and worked to rectify it. So to answer my own question…it’s still very possible. It might require James Cameron to work harder than he ever has before, but we won’t know for sure until we see them.
