Avatar: Nobody Cares About the Highest-Grossing Movie of All Time

In December of 2009, James Cameron's Avatar was released in theaters, quickly gaining critical acclaim and smashing records at the box office. The movie did so well, it still stands as the highest grossing film of all time, beating out the previous champion and other hit Cameron film Titanic. Sequels were quickly planned, and in 2017, a Pandora-themed area in Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom opened to the public. Suffice to say, Avatar has blown up into a massive franchise... or has it?

Despite Avatar maintaining its hold on the title of highest grossing film of all time and being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, there's not really all that much love for it. Rather, there was love for the first film, but within a year after its release, the hype had died down. Why is this, exactly? Well, a few things have contributed to the collective apathy towards the franchise, leading it to become the blue-skinned butt of film industry jokes.

BIG AMBITIONS

No one can say Avatar wasn't a success. It's a little cheesy, a little predictable, and a little too reliant on the latest special effects, but overall it's a typical well-crafted James Cameron movie that captured audiences with the same thrill as the premier of A New Hope. Perhaps the best way to describe Avatar is that it's a "movie movie," the type of film that isn't perfect, but expertly does it's job of taking you away to another world for a few hours.

Going back to the comparison to Star Wars, this actually helps us understand where Avatar went wrong. Avatar definitely hit audiences (and critics) with the same power as the first Star Wars film, and in many ways, that appeared to be the goal, to make a new Star Wars. In fact, before the film became a hit, Cameron stated he wanted to make sequels if Avatar was a success, making clear the director/creator's ambitions to reach the same heights as other franchise, perhaps to even become the next Star Wars.

This goal may have also been the beginning of the end for public interest in Avatar, as such lofty heights are as easy to obtain as, well, Unobtanium.

STRIKING WHILE THE IRON IS... COLD?

Continuing with the Star Wars comparison -- after the success of A New Hope, it was only three years before The Empire Strikes Back was released, an exceptionally fast sequel turnaround for the time period. Now, look at Avatar; the first film came out in 2009, and within a year, two sequels were planned, announced and greenlit, with two more sequels being confirmed in 2016.

However, despite it being clear that a franchise was going to be built upon Avatar, the first two sequels didn't start filming until 2017, a full eight years after the release of the first movie. Very early on it was revealed that the sequels were going to focus on underwater aliens of Pandora, with Cameron stating that the reason for their delay was due to the current (at the time) motion-capturing technology being inadequate for underwater filming.

Regardless of whether this was the only factor delaying production, the fact remains that Avatar 2 -- which is set to premier in 2020, a full eleven years after the original -- is coming far too late to ride on the massive success of the first film. If Cameron and 21st Century Fox wanted to strike while the Avatar iron was hot, they missed their opportunity by at least seven years.

NEXT PAGE: Pandora's Dilemma: Avatar Made a Fortune, But Nobody Wants Four Sequels

Another major problem with the Avatar franchise is that it, in many ways, acts as though it's already a multi-film franchise. Take a look at Pandora - The World of Avatar, a 12-acre Avatar-themed land in Disney World's Animal Kingdom. As beautiful and well-done as the area is (it's no doubt a major accomplishment in imagineering) it was a rather poor choice to adapt Avatar into a theme park land.

Talks of developing an Avatar-themed attraction began back in 2011, many years before the upcoming Disney/Fox merger was planned, and though this could have still been considered a prime period to cash in on the success of the film, Pandora didn't begin construction until 2014. Still, this isn't so long after Avatar's release that the land wouldn't be profitable, but it didn't open to the public until 2017, running into the same problem as the upcoming sequels: interest was lost, and there wasn't exactly a "fandom" surrounding the property.

And that right there is one of the biggest issues with the Avatar franchise, the lack of a fandom. Avatar has produced merchandise, books, comics, a Cirque Du Soleil show and a Disney World park before even releasing a second film, effectively putting the franchise cart before the fandom horse. In other words Avatar has attempted to form a fandom with the release of tie-in material without ever having earned that fandom by releasing more content to follow up the original film. The planning and opening of a Disney park area coming before a second movie had even begun filming is a prime example of this backwards approach.

DISNEY AND THE FUTURE OF AVATAR

One of the strangest parts of Animal Kingdom's Pandora is that the deal leading to its creation predates the plans for Disney's acquisition of Fox's entertainment properties... as least, as far as we know. This is to say that Disney trusted the sequels would take off before it had plans to buy it, though perhaps the franchise, along with the X-Men movie rights, were part of what motivated the bid for Fox's properties to begin with.

Regardless, as little as people might care about Avatar, Disney is likely to make it a hit. In fact, the studio more or less has to in order to make Pandora worth the investment. After all, if the deal with Fox goes through, Avatar 2 will release after the franchise becomes part of the Walt Disney Company. Suffice to say, despite Avatar hype quickly dying down within a year of the first film's release, there's no doubt Disney will do its best to take it to the heights it initially set out to reach.

James Cameron's Avatar franchise has been handled strangely, to say the least. The sequel to the highest grossing film of all time will be released 11 years after its predecessor, with three other films planned to release over the following four years. Will they capture the same magic as the first movie? Probably not; the power Avatar originally had is long gone. Will the sequel films be financial hits? Almost without a doubt, especially with the power of Disney behind them as the franchise moves forward.

Simply put, Avatar will do for Disney what its live-action adaptations of animated classics do: Cash in on a property, make lots of money for the company, and most likely get mixed to poor reviews that ultimately won't hinder the franchise's future. Then again, it's just as likely that Disney will do away with Avatar, since it already has Star Wars and Marvel and doesn't need to gamble on the future of Cameron's franchise. Only time will tell.