Avatar is a James Cameron masterpiece that follows disabled marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthing) as he travels to the alien planet of Pandora to aid in the efforts of a team of military scientists hired to extract the valuable “unobtainiam,” which rests under the homeland of the Na’vi tribe, the Omaticaya. It’s Jake’s job, along with Norm (Joel David Moore) and Grace (Sigourney Weaver), to make peace with the Omaticaya using their Avatar bodies to convince the indigenous beings to leave their homeland so that the humans can begin excavation.
However, Jake begins to fall in love with both the Na'vi culture and the chief's daughter Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and soon begins a revolution to fight back against the human invaders. Some have compared Avatar to Disney’s Pocahontas or Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves, but the relations between the humans and the Na’vi are far more complicated, and the political message more radical.
Updated September 9, 2022: This article has been updated to reflect the re-release of Avatar and plot details revealed about Avatar: The Way of Water.
Development of Avatar began in 1994, and between the development of the language and technology, it took 15 years to complete that film. The film destroyed its competitors at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing Cameron’s predecessor Titanic and maintaining its status until the release of Avengers: Endgame; however, a theatrical re-release brough Avatar back to first place, grossing $2.84 billion total. Avatar was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and took home Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. While the film may be over a decade old, its impact has not faded. With another theatrical rerelease and a sequel set for 2022 here's the answer to why Avatar was so successful when it came out in 2009.
Why Was Avatar So Groundbreaking?
While filmmakers like Peter Jackson and Robert Zemeckis had been pushing the boundaries of motion capture technology, Avatar took the technology to the next level by making extensive use of motion capture. Cameron and his crew created a new form of motion capture technology that portrays the features and motions of the subject on set and transfers that movement to animation, all of which is completely computer-generated.
Motion-capture, or "mo-cap" as it is often referred to, has become the standard for modern video games. Thanks to the making of a feature-length film with plenty of mo-cap to go around, Avatar showed creators the amazing potential of the technology, leading to its widespread use over the last decade and helped lay the groundwork for the motion capture technology of the Hulk in the MCU and the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy.
Avatar also brought back 3D film into the mainstream. While 3D had been around for decades, and films like Spy Kids 3D and animated films from DreamWorks and Pixar had been offering 3D, it was Avatar that raised the popularity of the 3D and IMAX experiences. Following Avatar 3D became the hot new fad, and the next 3D film released Alice in Wonderland benefited from the newfound popularity. While the fade did die out quickly after a series of rushed 3D conversations like Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender in 2010, Avatar created a gold standard for 3D. The film wasn’t only high-grossing in 3D, but broke a staggering number of box office records, being the fastest movie to gross $1 billion and becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, unless you count for inflation (in which case, Avatar is second behind Gone with the Wind).
Why Was Avatar Such a Big Deal?
Avatar may have been a commercial success, but it was not expected to be. Before its official release, many film critics predicted that the film would be a disappointment at the box office for its use of CGI, when in fact, the opposite was true. Not only was Avatar technologically advanced, but the content of the film also covered a variety of relevant topics. From race relations and a call for revolution to the destruction of natural habitats for the sake of greed, Avatar brings forward the true nature of how humans have chosen to treat the land. Avatar is also openly critical of how colonialism has affected everyone and everything, destroying a way of life that should have been preserved.
Despite a common criticism of Avatar being that nobody knows the names of the characters, audiences clearly identified with them along with their story and the world of Pandora. Taking advantage of the holiday season and a lack of strong offerings for January and February, Avatar became the must-see movie event for almost three months straight.
Is Avatar the Most Successful Movie Ever?
With all of its successes, it raises whether Avatar is the most successful film of all time. As mentioned previously, Avatar is the second-highest-grossing film of all time behind Gone with the Wind and would be considered the highest, were inflation not taken into account. On top of its box office success and records set, Avatar won a total of 73 accolades, including three Academy Awards. With a combination of both commercial and critical success, Avatar’s success is nothing to be sneezed at and many would consider it one of the most successful films of all time. The film’s popularity even garnered it its own area of the Disney Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Florida referred to as Pandora, The World of Avatar in which James Cameron’s on-screen masterpiece comes to life.
Disney is re-releasing Avatar in theaters on September 23, 2022, as a way to begin the promotional build-up for Avatar: The Way of Water. With the film returning to both IMAX and 3D, audiences can experience Avatar in a format they haven't been able to in over a decade. Combine that with the number of young moviegoers who were too young to see Avatar in theaters or children born after the movie came out, and parents and families can now take their kids to experience the movie on the big screen which will only increase its already impressive box office.
What to Expect from the Avatar Sequels?
Shortly after the successful release of Avatar, Cameron signed on with 20th Century Fox to produce a total of four sequels. Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 have completed filming and are expected to be released in December 2022 and December 2024, respectively. The story of the continued Avatar franchise will focus on Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their family a decade after the first film. It will explore new parts of Pandora, particularly the planet's oceans while facing off with the return of the humans and new threats.
Both Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver are returning for Avatar: The Way of Water but as new characters. Lang will play a reborn Colonel Quaritch who has been restored to life by becoming a Recombinant, a Na'vi Avatar embedded with the memories of a soldier. Weaver will be playing Kiri, the adoptive teenage daughter of Jake and Neytiri. Jake's family will also include an adopted human child, and three biological children.
With Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 shot back to back and released so close together, one can likely expect a more interconnected story and for the sequel to end on a possible cliffhanger. Expect to see a visual triumph as in the first film along with new and interesting characters. Cameron has a history of making successful sequels (Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and defying the odds when people expect his films to bomb (Titanic and the first Avatar) but now with the surprise hit of Top Gun: Maverick climbing up the box office charts, the competition from Disney's own Black Panther: Wakanda Forever that holiday season, and the expectations of the first Avatar film it will be interesting to see how big Avatar: The Way of Water can get.