‘Avatar’s’ Successful Re-Release Reignites A Familiar Debate

Every time it is brought up, James Cameron’s Avatar seems to ignite the same debate – how did the highest-grossing film of all time fail to leave a cultural impact?

It’s an interesting question, and a telling assumption; it’s true that Avatar didn’t leave the same imprint on pop culture as, say, Star Wars, or Jurassic Park, if we’re comparing it to those two titans. There’s no singular moment that has been endlessly picked apart, like Inception’s spinning top, or Titanic’s door that was wide enough to fit Jack on it (but not strong enough to hold two doomed lovers).

The only Avatar parody I’ve seen was SNL’s “Papyrus,” which was poking fun at the font – the film itself isn’t really relevant to the sketch. I’ve never seen an Avatar Halloween costume, or even an Avatar meme – at least, none that I can remember.

It’s often repeated that no one can remember the characters names, which is kind of a silly criticism that applies to many memorable films.

Avatar didn’t inspire much in the way of fan fiction, which is interesting; you’d think the notoriously kinky fan-fic community would see a lot of potential in those ponytail “plugs” that canonically function as Na’vi genitalia (which makes one view those “dragon riding” scenes in an entirely different light).

Cosplaying as a 9-foot-tall Na’vi comes with its own challenges – paint job aside, their hair and clothes echo that of real Amazonian and Sub-Saharan African tribal cultures, making any cosplay a potential breach in taste.

But I think it’s a mistake to assume that Avatar left no cultural footprint. The fact that this argument is so consistently brought up, and passionately debated, undermines its own thesis; if the film truly left no cultural impact, no one would care to argue about it.

Avatar’s initial impact was explosive – it was all anyone was talking about after the film’s release, even inspiring articles claiming that some fans were left with post-Avatar blues after leaving the theatre, depressed by the wretched state of their own planet, compared to the boundless Eden of Pandora.

These stories were, most likely, greatly exaggerated, but they captured the sentiment of the film, and the wistful ecological nostalgia many felt after watching the movie. Cameron’s fondness for the natural world is infectious, and undeniably sincere (the man spent years exploring the ocean, and has visited the deepest point in the Mariana Trench); Avatar is, if nothing else, a heartfelt love letter to the wonders of the natural world.

Cameron’s film also made a pointed political point, that seemed blandly obvious on release, in the wake of the Iraq war, which was often satirized by the films and television of that decade. In hindsight, compared to the damp centrism or proud jingoism of many of today’s blockbusters, Avatar’s disgust for the military industrial complex now seems like a bold statement.

As is made obvious by its successful re-release, Avatar is a film that was made to be seen on the biggest screen possible in the cinema, still one of the only films that managed to skillfully integrate 3D.

The film’s impact on the cultural landscape was maybe dampened in the years after, when viewers watched it on smaller screens and found it comparatively underwhelming, and as the promise of sequels faded into memory (to his credit, Cameron certainly hasn’t rushed out a sequel to capitalize on the box office gold rush – he took his time, throwing away a full screenplay for Avatar 2 that failed to meet his standards).

The original Avatar is also criticized for being derivative. And yeah, it’s soldier-turned-native narrative is very familiar, and maybe kind of clunky. But the simplicity of the story doesn’t make the weird world Cameron created any less compelling; Pandora is a living planet, whose inhabitants can literally plug into its magical network of roots to talk to their ancestor spirits, a world saved by a disabled veteran who swaps his broken human body for that of a lab-grown Na’vi.

It’s fun, thought-provoking stuff, and its accessible story doesn’t diminish its impact; the success of the upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water is surely going to end the argument, once and for all.