What’s the false premise? I never claimed that forgettable movies can’t be enjoyable. And those movies you listed weren’t nearly as commercially successful as Avatar. I absolutely stand by the claim that the Avatar characters never entered the cultural zeitgeist in the same way as characters from other comparable blockbusters like Terminator, Alien, Titanic, Etc.
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There are definitely movie quotes from the movies you mentioned that stuck with me, I don’t think any stuck with me from Avatar. ETA: my biggest impression from it at the time is that it was not that impressive, it didn’t give me a buzz that lasted long enough to get out of the theatre.
That skit, though, I can probably quote from memory. I hope the skit’s sequel is half as good as the first.
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I haven’t seen “Avatar”, yet I think this sums it up.
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Yeah, I was never a fan of the movie, but it always annoyed me when people made fun of the name “unobtanium” in it, It seemed clear that wasn’t the real name of the mineral but rather a jokey nickname for it due to how rare it was, related to the real life use of the term.
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I believe we are at cross purposes. 
The original statement was that the movie was ‘Forgotten’
You replied that Avatar is nowhere near as well known as Marvel of Star Wars. With that YouTube vox pop as evidence. I fully accept this, and apologize for not acknowledging this fact adequately.
The proposition that I deemed false was admittedly an implied one (again, my apologies) - That the fact people cannot name a character from the movie supports that it is ‘forgotten’.
Would you say that calling the movie ‘Forgotten’ is hyperbole? Not intended to be taken literally as I did?
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I wonder what (if any) effect this has on Disney’s Avatar land in Orlando’s Animal Kingdom park. Are they planning on re-theming it to something else?
I doubt they’ll make major changes any time soon. The Flight of Passage ride (which opened in 2017) has always maintained its popularity independent of how much attention people are paying to the movie franchise. Right now the wait time to board the ride is about 80 minutes.
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I remember seeing it once, on a New Years Eve morning as I waited for the rest of the house to finish their drinking and me and the other designated drivers get tagged to drive people home. It was ok as a movie, but other than the graphics (for the time being amazing), it really wasn’t a stand out. It could easily lose the entire first hour without being worse for wear.
I probably own a copy of it digitally, as I’ve worked hard to build a crazy selection of movies for any need, but I’ve never even considered watching it again. And I’ve watched the A-Team movie easily a dozen times. Has a more original plotline.
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It’s streamable for $4 from numerous services, but unavailable from my local library, which is surprising and weird.
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clive owen,
george clooney played the dead sidekick to… sandra bullock?
that guy from the lord of the rings?
I think this eventually happens with nearly ALL visual FX in movies. I suspect it has something to do with our brains being trained over time and becoming more discriminating regarding imagery that has no referents when new. I remember when Jurassic Park first came out, and my brain interpreted the CG dinosaurs as absolutely photo real, as if someone had built a time machine and brought the animals forward to 1993. I watch it now, and while it’s still artistically impressive, the CG of course is obvious in a way it wasn’t when I was first exposed to it. The same thing has happened with Avatar, with the in-camera real-time “volumes” of e.g. The Mandalorian, and with each movie that moves the bar technically - images that I accepted as real at the time now strike me as phony. We may reach a point in FX where there will never be a way to tell what’s real and what isn’t, but until then I expect this process of accommodation over time to continue for each FX milestone.
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Yeah, that bugged the hell out of me, too. Cameron (an engineer at heart) was using an existing term of art to make an engineering joke, and it went over the heads of nearly everyone.
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Doesn’t everyone remember The Mighty Ikran?
“Dances with Smurfs”
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It didn’t “go over my head” so much as strike me as a distractingly cringey gag for a movie that was supposed to be a serious drama. It was like asking the audience to get emotionally invested in a movie called Indiana Jones and the McGuffin of Intrigue.
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Our library has it on DVD and Blu Ray (which is the extended edition), but it seems to be unavailable through Hoopla or our other online services.
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And let’s face it, we’re likely to officially name something “Unobtainium” eventually. Or more likely it’ll be called “UnobtainyMcBoatFace”
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There are plenty of reasons to dislike Avatar.
Mine is how unlikeable Sam Worthington made the main character. He’s a slow, plodding jock, with a Boston accent— an odd choice, because Sam Worthington is a smart, Australian actor. Well, as well as how bad and feline-like the animation was of Sigourney Weaver. Well, and Stephen Lang is so over-the-top. Well, and the plot is so predictable. Well, and…
EDIT: Bonus unlikeableness: the “ableist” arc wherein Sully is a paralyzed, “incomplete” person in real world, but when he is on Avatar transferred to a new full-functioning body, he has more worth. Cameron was scraping the bottom of the shitty trope barrel.
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I’ve never seen the original, so maybe I’m speaking out of my ass, but nothing about it ever made want to watch it. If I ever do decide to, fortunately there are plenty of places to pirate it since my Disney+ subscription decided to banish it for marketing purposes.
