” There’s skepticism in the industry as to whether it ever had any real cultural impact or whether people can remember the names of the characters. When you have extraordinary success, you come back three years later and build on that cultural impact over time. Marvel needed maybe movies to build a universe. So it’s an irrelevant plot. We’ll see what happens after this movie.” With these statements to THR, James Cameron revolts against one of the most repeated accusations against ‘Avatar’ in recent years: that although it continues to lead the list of the 100 highest-grossing films in history, it has not caught on too much with the public. .
Just raising this scenario is contradictory: how is it possible that the film that flooded the theaters of spectators had no transcendence? But the truth is that, in a way, it is. Have you ever talked about ‘Avatar’ in the last five years, aside from the release of ‘Avatar 2‘ or the future with ‘Avatar 3’ and other sequels? Has anyone ever named it to you as their favorite movie? Have you done any quiz on the internet about the universe of the movie, like which Hogwarts house do you belong to? Do you vaguely remember the story and characters from the first movie or do you know someone who can? I have tested the latter with friends. We all saw it, hardly anyone remembers many details, beyond a world of colorinchisvery cool What we did see was a lot of people painted blue at costume parties in those years. There was a very good meme (sorry, it’s old and I can’t find it) that said that if ‘Avatar’ hadn’t had a cultural impact, then how could this be explained, attaching a photo of cosplayed ‘Women and men and vice versa’ participants .
A stunning visual experience
And that’s the crux of the matter of ‘Avatar’: it was never a great movie, understood as a good story, but a great movie understood as an overwhelming visual experience.. That was his phenomenon, only, but it is not little. The first reactions of ‘Avatar 2’ call it “a visual masterpiece” better than the original and that’s where “visual” is important. “Show” or “the most beautiful movie ever made” are other qualifications that have been heard. A vibrant or surprising story? Nobody said it. Guillermo del Toro has described it as a “FILM, FILM (like that, in capital letters)”, which I find hilarious, because at a time when creatives are trying to sell us the superiority of some series as “a ten-hour film”, here the movies are promoted to the category of “MOVIE, MOVIE”. A movie of a lifetime, wow. But why merits?
I am one of those who think that the script for ‘Avatar’ was basically ‘Pocahontas‘ with blue people . The premise was the same, the development similar and the end of ‘Avatar’ with the most shameless deus ex machina in history did not help to lift the tape in narrative terms. But, meanwhile, we were amazed by the jellyfish and plants that surrounded the protagonists and the specks of dust that looked like they were going to get into our eyes. If the protagonists had been reciting the shopping list, it would have worked the same. ‘Avatar’ was enjoyed not because of its script, but in spite of its script . No one could leave the theater thinking that this visual experience fell short or that they had seen it before. Simply, nothing before was like this.
Thus, I also include myself among a group of people (I suppose we will not be few) who, although they have cursed ‘Avatar’ because of how weak its plot was, we will go headlong to movie theaters to see its second part , which we can affectionately calling “Avatar 2: now with more water!” . Why? Well, because there are visual experiences that deserve to be seen on the big screen, like ‘Coco’ was, for example. I haven’t seen ‘Avatar’ at home again, nor would I if I was paid for it (well, this is negotiable) because doing it without the 3D experience seems absurd to me. And, in the same way, I want to live the new one in all its splendor. Call it FOMO, call it X, but we’ll be there to get the waves splashing in our faces and feel the Pandora breeze.. Curiosity drives us, the same curiosity with which you entered the IMAX theaters years ago or the one that leads you to get on a funicular or a tram when you go sightseeing, even though the metro in your city seems like a hassle.
If ‘Avatar 2: The Sense of Water’ is a good movie, we’ll see it then, but it doesn’t need to be to take us to theaters. It is indifferent. Because ‘Avatar 2’ is, of course, an event.
