A couple of weeks back, the first teaser for James Cameron s Avatar sequel, the way of water released
to a resounding meh . It s been viewed plenty of times, there s adverts for it everywhere,
it s generally being promoted with all the might of the movie industry, but I ve yet to hear anyone
say anything about it other than, Oh, there s a trailer for Avatar 2 . And of all the people I ve
asked about it nobody s really bothered about this film. To be clear, I m not saying that nobody in
the world is interested in this project that s obviously not true. But I am saying that from what
I ve seen - there s far, far less excitement and anticipation around this film and this
trailer than what you d expect for a long-delayed sequel to a film as successful as Avatar was.
You don t believe me? Fine here s me ambushing some friends on Discord with a question and
secretly recording them for evidence. Obviously that s a small sample size,
but everywhere I ve looked, I ve seen pretty much the same opinions.
But I think there s more to the mystery of this missing hype than just the.. very long wait
before instalments. So without further ado, let me explain why I think nobody cares about Avatar 2.
Let s go back to 2009. I was 10 when Avatar came out. Everyone was talking about Avatar. I even
remember my Year 5 teacher gushing about it. I was confused, at the time, because I thought she
was talking about then-upcoming movie Avatar: The Last Airbender, but over the next days and weeks
the rest of the school erupted in talk about the cool 3D movie with the blue people. I even
took a break from grinding at the rock crabs on RuneScape 2 to go and see the film with my family,
and we weren t necessarily the biggest cinephiles out there, so that s kinda significant. Avatar 1
was a huge cultural event. But why was it huge? What was all this hype about?
Well, anecdotally, the conversations I remember about Avatar back when it released
were all about the spectacle of it. I wasn t joking when I said people were talking
about the cool 3D movie with the blue people. And, sure, I was hanging out with schoolkids,
not film critics, but we d all seen Star Wars we knew how to spot epic stories or fearsome
villains. And I don t think anyone was talking about the plot of this film, or the characters
we were excited because it looked so real, it was like stepping into another world for 2 and
a half hours, a living, breathing world almost more lifelike than our own. But since my vague,
13-year old memories of this film s reception in a rural English schoolyard aren t the most
reliable pieces of evidence, I went back and looked at a few actual reviews from the time.
The LA Times review focused mainly on the film s definitive use of 3D visuals, but also highlights
the film s use of motion capture. I want to single out one sentence in particular, though.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Cameron s visual accomplishments
is that they are so powerful we re barely troubled by the same weakness for flat dialogue
and obvious characterization that put such a dent in Titanic.
That s my American movie critic voice, by the way This film came out so long ago that many other
reviews are no longer hosted on their original websites, and so without faffing around with
the wayback machine, the only way we can access them is through their summary quotes in Rotten
Tomatoes database. And it s the largely the same story here: the Illinois Times review
speaks of a wonder to behold, a story to forget , Seacoast Newspapers wrote that Avatar Breaks
technological ground with stunning visuals, but disappoints on story and characters . And
so on. Synthesising the sentiments of over 300 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes summarises thusly:
It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling,
but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking
In addition, audience polling done by CinemaScore at the time indicated that
the majority of the hype around the film was due to it s visual innovation and the 3D.
So what does all this tell us, other than that 10-year old me and my friends had pretty much the
same insight into this film as the professional critics? Well, it tells us that Avatar WAS
first and foremost a VISUAL spectacle. The film succeeded because of the visual, and people
were there to see it because of this visual success. The rest of the film was a mixed bag,
but the project reached the level of critical and commercial success it did primarily due to
the crisp and imaginative realisation of its world. It s as much a technological marvel as
it is an artistic one. People saw Avatar to SEE Avatar, to get wowed by the pictures on the screen
which, for the time, were utterly unmatched. But here s the thing. You don t form lasting
emotional attachments to visual spectacle. You re might have a great time seeing a film like this,
you might get blown away, but for most people, the pleasure here was primarily sensory.
We didn t care about Jake Sully, or really even the Na Vi. (No, not that Na Vi. Different Na Vi.
Blue Na Vi.) There s some interesting stuff here, like the film s pacifism and environmental angles,
but there s also some kinda sus elements, like the way this film plays the white saviour trope
completely straight. Moreover, the non-visual elements of the film are kinda all lifted from
other movies. Smash together Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves and you ve basically got
the Avatar screenplay. So I think the most basic reason there s not much excitement to
see these characters again is that we were never that invested in the characters to begin with,
even back in 2009 we tolerated them, in order to SEE them and believe them in this world.
And as the standard for mocap and CGI has increased in the last 13 years, as we ve all
gradually forgotten our excitement over Pandora s visuals back in 2009, the visuals, the strongest
parts of the Avatar experience have faded from our collective memories. Avatar impressed people,
it didn t get them attached to its characters and its world. The obvious contrast here is Star Wars
like Avatar, the franchise made a huge splash when it came out, not least for its revolutionary VFX.
But the reason the general public was still excited about the franchise decades later was
because there was just as much substance beneath the visual. Avatar doesn t really
compare on that front and I think that s the main reason for this lack of Avatar hype in 2022.
And here s the second part of the puzzle that first teaser they dropped the other week? The one
intended to kickstart the long-dormant excitement of everyone who watched that first film,
all those years ago? It s doubling down on the visual as the primary appeal of this franchise.
This teaser is just under 2 minutes of visual splendour, typically wide shots
of the environment or tracking shots of various, mostly blue, characters.
And it looks amazing. Visually, this already looks to be a masterpiece. But there s like, one
line of dialogue. There s no hints towards this film s narrative, or how it ties into film one,
how it advances these character s stories. And that s not a bad thing, but it is a thing, a
thing we shouldn t ignore. This trailer is clearly playing up the visual properties of this film. It
s saying look at Pandora, look at this world we ve created. Look at how beautiful this film will be,
and remember the spectacle of Avatar 1. And, yeah, it s a cool trailer, with a really
awesome score. It LOOKS great. But by using the beginning of the promo campaign to frame Avatar
2 and the franchise overall as primarily a visual spectacle, it s sort of admitting what we knew all
along that people don t love these characters, or this story. They just loved SEEING it all unfold.
And this feels like a double-edged sword to me. Sure, you get to remind everyone that this film
is actually coming out, and will probably be the best looking movie of the year but you re also
trying to jumpstart dormant audience investment in this world with a trailer forgoing character
or story beats entirely. It s been 13 years. For everyone but that first film s biggest fans, any
emotional connection has long atrophied. And there s nothing in this trailer that changes that.
Come December, depending on what else they show us of this film and how good it looks, plenty
of us might be excited to SEE Avatar 2, to SEE Pandora brought to life by the cutting-edge visual
effects of 2022. But very few people are going to be excited to meet these characters again,
to pick up where that last kind of barebones story left off. I ve no doubt Avatar 2 will innovate
technologically. I m not sure quite how maybe it ll pioneer 4D filmmaking, maybe they ll actually
flood the cinema when the smurfs go underwater, but this happen will happen somehow. However,
unless the next trailers and the rest of the promotional campaign are devoted entirely to
nostalgia-blasting audiences for the rest of the year, nothing s going to change. Nobody
s going to CARE about seeing this film. They re only going to care about SEEING this film.
And that s it for this video. I would be very interested in hearing from Avatar fans, if such a
thing exists, to hear how your perspective of the original film and this revival compares to mine.
And also I d love to hear from any of my viewers who are too young to have seen Avatar back then,
or to remember the cultural zeitgeist of 2009. How do you perceive this film? Are you bothered
about it? Please do comment below, I d love to hear. Thanks to all my Patrons onscreen now,
especially Kevin Douglas and Ian Fyfield, and I ll see you all soon.