When we talk about “reach,” we usually collapse different things into one word. Henry Jenkins would say that’s the mistake. Reach isn’t just how many people paid or how big the opening weekend was — it’s about circulation and reuse.
Avatar has enormous broadcast reach and experiential impact: millions of people saw it, felt it, and moved on. But it has very little participatory reach. It doesn’t generate language, gestures, memes, or practices people can easily pick up and use. It’s sticky, not spreadable.
Cult films like Paris Is Burning are the opposite. Almost no economic reach, but massive semiotic reach. People quote it, perform it, borrow its language, build identities with it. It survives because audiences keep doing things with it.
So the issue isn’t that Avatar has “no cultural impact.” It’s that we’ve been trained to equate impact with constant participation. Avatar is a mass ritual you experience and leave. Paris Is Burning is a toolkit you carry forward. Different kinds of reach, different afterlives.
I remember being surprised when I first found out that Avatar was the highest grossing movie of all time, given how little anyone ever talked about it, but after the Way of Water came out and I went to watch it in theaters, the reason was pretty obvious, and it's exactly what you say here. Of course a movie whose primary appeal is how amazing the visuals are is going to do well in theaters, where you get the visuals in their full glory, but then have a significantly reduced cultural impact afterwards, since no one can see it in theaters anymore.
I have one criticism of your statistical analysis, though: Google searches for "Avatar" are a bad way to gauge the lingering cultural impact of the movie, since the search can refer to a bunch of other things, including a totally separate popular franchise. Such is the nature of movies with a one-word title.
I acquiesced to the hype and saw the first Avatar movie in the theater. Aside from admiring the cool visuals I cringed through the whole movie. The derivative story, the lame dialog, the predictable character arcs ... I hated all of it. HATED it. There is nothing about this franchise that deserves a cultural nod. I am not a movie snob. I just want a good script and story. Is that really too much to ask???
It seems odd to ignore the existence of a hugely popular television program with the same title that debuted around the same time as the first film in the part concerning internet searches. https://sprunki-game.io
In the section about internet searches, it seems strange to not point out that there was a massively popular TV show that aired around the same time as the first movie, that had the same title.
In fact, when I type "Avatar the" into Google, "Avatar the last airbender" is recommended above "Avatar the way of water"
Anecdotally, I know multiple people who watched Avatar the last Airbender in the past decade, but no one who watched James Cameron's Avatar in that time period.
In my opinion, this is currently the only adequate resource for those in the UK who are genuinely interested in N2-level hockey, not just the elite.https://eiha.co.uk/get-involved/ always promptly posts schedule changes, which is critical for our league. It's convenient that you can immediately see the statistics and who is playing whom in the next round without having to visit a bunch of websites. Respect for such data organization.
Avatar (the original, haven't seen either sequel) has been criticized for lots of different things, but I think the most important one is that it simply isn't that good of a story. When I first saw it all my friends and I did was compare it to Ferngully, a good movie with the same overarching plot, but more... heart? We weren't alone, as the similarities were obvious. Pocahontas is another that it often drew comparisons to, for also very obvious reasons.
So what we have is a movie that despite the budget, effects, 3D, and even James Cameron, simply wasn't well-written, in terms of originality or ability to captivate. And this tends to be the case with most movies, that something well-written can make up for almost any other flaw, but no amount of production can fix bad, or in this case, simply mediocre, writing.
I can tell you from bitter professional experience that the relative lack of Avatar merch isn't for lack of trying! Avatar merch bombs.
We thought Fox did an ass job first time round, and the mighty Mouse merch machine would just print cash from "Way of Water". We struck out with no more sales and bucket loads of residual. But it set box office records, what gives?
In post-eval, "Avatar lacks cultural footprint" came up, but it also lacks a couple practical attributes you need for toy/collectible sales. There's tech and weaponry in it, but it's all wielded by bad guys no one wants to cosplay. They're not cool bad guys, they're murdering baby whales....
As to figurines, Avatar lacks the cool costumes of the MCU or the armour and droids of Star Wars. You have the Na'avi who, once rendered in mass-produced plastic, look much the same as one another. Not great for play patterns or collectability.
Lack of merch is a consequence of, but also a contributor to, lack of cultural footprint. Merch gives Marvel and Star Wars a life off the screen. Avatar is "only" a movie.
The first film was great but I really disliked the over bloated sequel. Now I have no desire to see the latest of this franchise. People DON'T talk about it. I think Cameron waited too long after the original to keep people interested.
No one wants to live on a sinking ship, crushed mining colony at the bottom of the ocean, or a planet with ugly looking aliens. Nice for some mindless entertainment, but if you don't want to live there, or can't imagine yourself being there, then of course it is forgotten. Always LOVE Your analysis though!
The stories are often the same, perhaps rebranded... I think they do that to give people what they want, make more money, generate unnecessary traffic to whatever the actors do to sell more tickets... Leaving what really matters ...
When we talk about “reach,” we usually collapse different things into one word. Henry Jenkins would say that’s the mistake. Reach isn’t just how many people paid or how big the opening weekend was — it’s about circulation and reuse.
Avatar has enormous broadcast reach and experiential impact: millions of people saw it, felt it, and moved on. But it has very little participatory reach. It doesn’t generate language, gestures, memes, or practices people can easily pick up and use. It’s sticky, not spreadable.
Cult films like Paris Is Burning are the opposite. Almost no economic reach, but massive semiotic reach. People quote it, perform it, borrow its language, build identities with it. It survives because audiences keep doing things with it.
So the issue isn’t that Avatar has “no cultural impact.” It’s that we’ve been trained to equate impact with constant participation. Avatar is a mass ritual you experience and leave. Paris Is Burning is a toolkit you carry forward. Different kinds of reach, different afterlives.
I remember being surprised when I first found out that Avatar was the highest grossing movie of all time, given how little anyone ever talked about it, but after the Way of Water came out and I went to watch it in theaters, the reason was pretty obvious, and it's exactly what you say here. Of course a movie whose primary appeal is how amazing the visuals are is going to do well in theaters, where you get the visuals in their full glory, but then have a significantly reduced cultural impact afterwards, since no one can see it in theaters anymore.
I have one criticism of your statistical analysis, though: Google searches for "Avatar" are a bad way to gauge the lingering cultural impact of the movie, since the search can refer to a bunch of other things, including a totally separate popular franchise. Such is the nature of movies with a one-word title.
I acquiesced to the hype and saw the first Avatar movie in the theater. Aside from admiring the cool visuals I cringed through the whole movie. The derivative story, the lame dialog, the predictable character arcs ... I hated all of it. HATED it. There is nothing about this franchise that deserves a cultural nod. I am not a movie snob. I just want a good script and story. Is that really too much to ask???
It seems odd to ignore the existence of a hugely popular television program with the same title that debuted around the same time as the first film in the part concerning internet searches. https://sprunki-game.io
In the section about internet searches, it seems strange to not point out that there was a massively popular TV show that aired around the same time as the first movie, that had the same title.
In fact, when I type "Avatar the" into Google, "Avatar the last airbender" is recommended above "Avatar the way of water"
Anecdotally, I know multiple people who watched Avatar the last Airbender in the past decade, but no one who watched James Cameron's Avatar in that time period.
In my opinion, this is currently the only adequate resource for those in the UK who are genuinely interested in N2-level hockey, not just the elite.https://eiha.co.uk/get-involved/ always promptly posts schedule changes, which is critical for our league. It's convenient that you can immediately see the statistics and who is playing whom in the next round without having to visit a bunch of websites. Respect for such data organization.
Avatar (the original, haven't seen either sequel) has been criticized for lots of different things, but I think the most important one is that it simply isn't that good of a story. When I first saw it all my friends and I did was compare it to Ferngully, a good movie with the same overarching plot, but more... heart? We weren't alone, as the similarities were obvious. Pocahontas is another that it often drew comparisons to, for also very obvious reasons.
So what we have is a movie that despite the budget, effects, 3D, and even James Cameron, simply wasn't well-written, in terms of originality or ability to captivate. And this tends to be the case with most movies, that something well-written can make up for almost any other flaw, but no amount of production can fix bad, or in this case, simply mediocre, writing.
I can tell you from bitter professional experience that the relative lack of Avatar merch isn't for lack of trying! Avatar merch bombs.
We thought Fox did an ass job first time round, and the mighty Mouse merch machine would just print cash from "Way of Water". We struck out with no more sales and bucket loads of residual. But it set box office records, what gives?
In post-eval, "Avatar lacks cultural footprint" came up, but it also lacks a couple practical attributes you need for toy/collectible sales. There's tech and weaponry in it, but it's all wielded by bad guys no one wants to cosplay. They're not cool bad guys, they're murdering baby whales....
As to figurines, Avatar lacks the cool costumes of the MCU or the armour and droids of Star Wars. You have the Na'avi who, once rendered in mass-produced plastic, look much the same as one another. Not great for play patterns or collectability.
Lack of merch is a consequence of, but also a contributor to, lack of cultural footprint. Merch gives Marvel and Star Wars a life off the screen. Avatar is "only" a movie.
The first film was great but I really disliked the over bloated sequel. Now I have no desire to see the latest of this franchise. People DON'T talk about it. I think Cameron waited too long after the original to keep people interested.
No one wants to live on a sinking ship, crushed mining colony at the bottom of the ocean, or a planet with ugly looking aliens. Nice for some mindless entertainment, but if you don't want to live there, or can't imagine yourself being there, then of course it is forgotten. Always LOVE Your analysis though!
The stories are often the same, perhaps rebranded... I think they do that to give people what they want, make more money, generate unnecessary traffic to whatever the actors do to sell more tickets... Leaving what really matters ...
And enough with unnecessary live adaptation!