James Cameron has done it again with Avatar. Everybody and their grandmother has been shilling out the dollars, pesos, and rubles to see adventure and romance on the planet of Pandora. Avatar has made over $1 billion to this date, and has a realistic chance to become the highest earning movie of all time. How does a movie about furry blue cat people get to be so popular? Find out in the Top 5 Reasons Everyone Loves Avatar.
5. Avatar is Predictable
Now don’t get me wrong when I say Avatar is formulaic, I am not knocking it in any way. Formulaic and predictable is what people want right now after a rough time of economic and civil uncertainty. James Cameron simply took the generic Dances With Wolves type story and made it about aliens and people are comfortable with that. We fear the unknown right now and James Cameron is here to lovingly guide us into better times and erase our fears of various wars and a collapsing economy. At least that’s what my therapist told me.
4. Environmental Message
Going green is all the rage these days, and James Cameron is a staunch environmental supporter. As a result, Avatar has a heavy pro-environment message. It’s not really hidden. At all. The people trying to save the giant trees are the good guys, the people lighting them on fire are the bad guys, and nature itself is called upon to give a swift kick to the bad guys’ nether regions. Score one for tree hugging hippies everywhere!
3. Underdog/Redemption Story
Do any of you remember a story about some soldiers stealing land from native inhabitants? Well here comes my therapist again telling me that as a whole there is something known as “white guilt” for the whole stealing Native American’s land and slavery things. That would only explain Americans loving Avatar though, and those Germans love it also. What it comes down to is everyone wants to cheer for the underdog. That’s why everybody wants those noble savages to show the more highly advanced soldiers what’s what in the end.
2. Revolutionary Visual Effects
This was quite possibly the most hyped aspect of Avatar leading up to the release. $300 million spent meant Avatar actually created a new way to shoot 3-D movies and pioneered a new virtual camera system that essentially allowed James Cameron to get footage of anything he could imagine from any angle. This is some extremely high tech stuff, hence the $300 million price tag, but the results were outstanding. While the Na’vi (blue cat people) don’t look as sharp as they could, Pandora itself feels like an actual planet. This sort of work brought in all the tech geeks and the 3-D version brings in everyone who wants to feel like they’re getting shot at without the fear and pain of getting shot at.
1. James Cameron
This is the man who brought us Aliens and The Terminator. Oh yeah, and some movie with Leonardo DiCaprio about a boat or something. Everyone knows who James Cameron is, whether it’s the old school science fiction fans or their girlfriends. That’s right, science fiction fans can have girlfriends. Basically James Cameron has proved that he has something for everybody in his movies, from large explosions for the fellows to a romantic subplot for the lady types. That adds up to over $1 billion in earnings and one happy James Cameron.
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