Well it had James Cameron as a director which automatically meant was going to make money. Also it was technically very impressive for the time which was kind of the point. Cameron made a huge deal of how this was a story that he'd wanted to tell for ages but hadn't been able to until the technology got to the point where he could use it.

After the movie came out there wasn't really any obvious path forward. It wasn't supposed to be a franchise it was just a movie that stood on its own. So nothing happened for years.

Then things like the volume came along and it started getting used even in TV productions, and suddenly a whole new level of capability arose and so they decided that they would make another movie only this time why stop at just one?

It’s all a lot less fantastical when you compare it to Pocahontas:

it is unapologetically in favor of preserving nature, anticapitalist, and anti military. the boys from chapo trap house like it and point out that its one of the few movies with a mainstream theatrical release in which the audience is made to cheer on the blue furry hippie throwing a bunch of US marines out of a helicopter to their death.

Pretty sure it now has a theme park or something, doesn't it?

It's bizarre how much "stuff" there is for the blue people Avatar franchise, considering what a tiny lasting cultural impact the original movie had.

The original movie was an incredible tech demo. It was an utterly forgettable movie. I had no desire to bother watching the sequel.

"Showed up out of nowhere", ie. in development since the mid 90's; "made the most bank", ie. made the 2nd most bank; "disappeared", ie. Cameron said that there would be 4 sequels and that they're being worked on; "came back out of nowhere", ie. the first sequel came out more or less when it was supposed to, and Cameron said in 2020 that filming on Avatar 3 was nearly finished.

Its a franchise built solely on spectacle, by a man who knows spectacle.

Semi related: i once lost an internet friend because he mentioned avatar and my dumb arse thought he was talking about the movies when he was talking about the anime

I want to hear the original version of the soundtrack. I do not care about the actual film at all, but supposedly Cameron hired a bunch of leading ethnomusicologists to attempt to create something unlike any music on Earth, only to then ditch the majority of what they made because it sounded too weird

And a huge park section at Disneyworld

Man, it's just so friggin boring. I gave up on the second movie halfway through and I struggled through the first one. I don't understand why it became a global blockbuster.

In “How To With John Wilson” he finds an actual Avatar fan group who like to dress up as blue aliens, but it still felt super niche for a multi billion dollar film series. It’s like everyone simply forgets about it when there’s not one on in cinemas.

Are we not going to talk about the fact that the logo uses something that is almost identical to the Papyrus font?

Avatar didn’t come out of nowhere at all. It is made by one of the most beloved and successful film makers in history. The hype leading up to that movie was off the charts.

I saw the first movie, forgot almost completely what it was about. But I have to admit I thought it would be about the the Airbender. Half of the movie I felt stupid and cheated at the same time... Probably why I don't remember what it was about.

People think it's so cool to shit on this series and have nothing to say about the Marvel dogshit lol

I think it made so much money at the box office because it was so visually stunning (for the time) and no one had made a movie like that at that point. It was very much a movie everyone said to go watch on the big screen in 3D, ideally IMAX 3D. I never did and only watched it on a DVD borrowed from my wife’s friend 6 or 7 years ago, and came away less impressed. Like, it’s fine, but the movie itself isn’t exactly the greatest story ever told, and the visuals, while groundbreaking at the time, are now pretty standard.