After more than a decade, Avatar is finally back with its long-gestating sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. However, Avatar's return was met with more snark than excitement. This isn't because Avatar was a terrible movie. Instead, Avatar became a go-to punchline because of how badly it supposedly aged.
For years, Avatar was ridiculed, even though it was one of the most successful and groundbreaking sci-fi films in history. Avatar was far from perfect, and it didn't leave much of an impression on the popular zeitgeist. That being said, Avatar was much better than critics gave it credit for. Avatar even held up better than anyone wants to admit.
10 Avatar Is The Highest-Grossing Blockbuster For A Reason
Today, Avatar is the highest-grossing blockbuster. From its original 2009 release to now, Avatar pulled in more than $2.7 billion. Avatar was temporarily beaten by Avengers: Endgame before its rerelease helped it reclaim the top spot. Box office grosses alone don't make a good movie, but Avatar's records prove its lasting quality.
Avatar really broke new ground in 2009, which is why audiences watched it multiple times during its initial run. Between late 2009 and early 2010, Avatar dominated the box office charts for almost 11 weeks. Avatar's equally-successful rereleases in 2021 further solidified just how timeless its entertainment value was.
9 Avatar Is The Only Modern Blockbuster That Truly Understood 3D
It may be hard to remember now, but there was a time when 3D movies seemed fresh and exciting. Avatar started this cinematic trend by being one of the first epic-scaled blockbusters to maximize 3D and IMAX techniques. To this day, Avatar remains the only blockbuster that was actually made with 3D in mind.
Avatar used 3D to immerse audiences in Pandora's world. Conversely, blockbusters that saw Avatar's 3D as a fad to copy were only converted into 3D after the fact. No 3D movie since Avatar came close to recapturing its revolutionary visuals. The Way of Water is Avatar's only worthwhile 3D competition.
8 Avatar's Visual Effects Are Still Awe-Inspiring
James Cameron is a notorious perfectionist. True to his reputation, it took him more than a decade to actually start working on Avatar because he waited for visual effects technology to catch up with what he had in mind. The long wait was worth it. Avatar was a visually stunning movie in 2009, and it continues to be one today.
Even if Avatar's motion-capture effects were improved by other movies and even video games, it still stands as a visual spectacle. These already impressive effects were improved by a 3D viewing, since they were literally made for the third dimension. Unlike most modern blockbusters, Avatar's effects didn't age badly.
7 Avatar Is One Of The Best Examples Of How To Maximize Formula
A lot has already been said about how Avatar adhered to all known action and sci-fi conventions. Avatar was also compared to Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas because of how similar they all were. However, it could also be said that Avatar was such a success because of this supposed unoriginality.
Part of Avatar's success came from its accessibility and simplicity as a sci-fi epic. Despite some high concepts, Avatar easily communicated its biggest ideas and messages by using the action genre's most reliable templates and visual languages. Clichés and formulas exist and persist for a reason, and Avatar put them all to good use.
6 James Cameron's Action Scenes Are Still Some Of The Best Ever Filmed
Avatar may not be the audience's favorite James Cameron movie, but it's still a Cameron movie. This means that Avatar utilized state-of-the-art effects to create some of the best and biggest action scenes ever seen on the big screen. Even though Avatar may be Cameron's weakest blockbuster, it's still leagues beyond every other action movie.
At the time, Avatar's final battle was Cameron's biggest action setpiece, and he exceeded all expectations. Even after digital effects surpassed those used in Avatar, few blockbuster wars matched the visual clarity and epic scale of Cameron's direction. Fittingly, only The Way of Water could top Avatar's grand finale.
5 Avatar's Sci-Fi Worldbuilding Is More Creative Than People Realize
Because of how broad its story can be, many people underestimate just how complex Avatar's world really is. As James Cameron put it, Avatar was influenced by every sci-fi book he read. He also clearly took notes from anime and other action movies. Together, these created one of the most unique sci-fi settings seen in film.
Avatar's mix of futuristic armies with giant mecha, transhumanist technologies and spiritualism, high fantasy, and more was so confident that these seemingly disparate elements worked perfectly together. The fact that The Way of Water organically expanded into water tribes and wildlife is a testament to Avatar's great world-building.
4 Pandora Was One Of The Most Unique Worlds Created For Movies
Bringing an entirely fictional world to life is a challenging task for any filmmaker, let alone an entire ecosystem. Meanwhile, Avatar did both. Pandora was a movie planet like no other. What's more, Pandora literally felt alive thanks to a combination of immersive 3D visuals and a fully-developed and realized ecosystem.
Every little detail in Pandora was created with care, whether it was the wildlife or the fauna. What's more, Pandora itself could count as a character of its own thanks to its godlike natural spirit, Eywa. There are many amazing and beautiful fictional worlds in sci-fi movies, but few were as intricately detailed and lifelike as Pandora.
3 The Na'vi Were One Of The Most Well-Developed Races Seen In Movies
Usually, alien societies in sci-fi movies are an afterthought. Understandably, most filmmakers prefer to focus on their human characters. Conversely, Cameron and his team went out of their way to develop the Na'vi's culture and history. This made the Na'vi one of the most fleshed-out races ever seen in the sci-fi genre.
The Na'vi were so well-developed that Avatar would've been fine even if Jake Sully was a Na'vi from the start. Avatar gave audiences the right amount of Na'vi exposition, as it left them wanting more. The Way of Water made a good thing even better by expanding the Na'vi's reach and revealing other tribes and cultures.
2 Avatar's Anti-Colonial Stances Remains A Powerful Statement
Avatar's detractors always singled out its lack of subtlety as a bad thing. However, when Avatar's villains were colonialists and when the movie was a feature-length rebuke of colonialism, nuance was unnecessary. Even if colonialism is universally agreed to be evil, it's shocking how Avatar is one of only a handful of blockbusters to say so.
Most movies about colonialism either took themselves too seriously or gave the colonizers too much benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, Avatar simply declared war on colonialism and was better for it. It wouldn't be until Black Panther and its sequel that a massively successful blockbuster confronted colonialism again.
1 Avatar's Environmentalist Themes Only Became More Relevant With Time
Avatar's achingly sincere environmentalist themes made it the subject of ridicule for years. Avatar was informed by the environmental situation of its time, and it was mocked for this. Even so, Avatar resonated with viewers because of how little the real world's environmental situation changed. In fact, things got worse.
In the years after Avatar's release, the Earth was pushed even closer to the point of no return. Capitalism's need for perpetual growth and industrialization were at fault, but few movies said this with Avatar's bluntness. Avatar is an environmentalist power fantasy like no other, and The Way of Water doesn't tone down anything.