The whole Avatar thing is the biggest boondoggle in the history of cinema. Who cares?
— A S Hamrah (@hamrahrama) September 24, 2022
A lot of Avatar 2 tweets from 2022 are looking not so fresh these days.
People were piling on director James Cameron. Reviewers called the film a major disappointment and dead in the water. The Spectator summed up the objections:
Nobody remembered the first film, they said. It wasn’t meme-able, they warned. Sam Worthington, its supposed star, was a nobody. There were too many blue people in it. The first film had had the novelty of 3D, but that was now a completely defunct format, popular only in China. People had moved on. The now 68-year-old Cameron had failed to understand what audiences want.
Even after the film came out, movie sites like Giant Freakin Robot published stories with titles like “Avatar 2 Already on Track to Flop.” Variety reported (quoting Cameron himself) that Avatar would have to be ‘the fourth or fifth highest-grossing film in history’ just to break even.
Well, $2.128 billion at the box office later, here we are. Those global numbers have indeed made Avatar: The Way of Water the #4 grossing movie of all time, behind Avatar (director: James Cameron), Avengers: Endgame, and Titanic (director: James Cameron).
The message, as always: Don’t bet against James Cameron. He may or may not be your cup of saltwater tea, he may or may not make “important” movies, but he makes movies that people want to see. That is all. Salute!