__________ is/are underrated.

[Rothman]

Anyone familiar with Hi-Chew candy?  I just heard of it for the first time this past Halloween, but they're really good.

Yep.  My daughter has loved them for years.

[Rothman]

I have only ever heard people give it glowing reviews.

Apparently, even those glowing reviews aren't high enough praise...

I mean, if you say "Avatar" without context, most people assume the movies with blue aliens.

Avatar sucks.

[Max Rockatansky]

I have only ever heard people give it glowing reviews.

Apparently, even those glowing reviews aren't high enough praise...

I mean, if you say "Avatar" without context, most people assume the movies with blue aliens.

Avatar sucks.

I really don't get how a series of average at best movies made so much money.

[Scott5114]

Hi-Chew

bless you

[Molandfreak]

I have only ever heard people give it glowing reviews.

Apparently, even those glowing reviews aren't high enough praise...

I mean, if you say "Avatar" without context, most people assume the movies with blue aliens.

Avatar sucks.

I really don't get how a series of average at best movies made so much money.

If the second had come out on schedule in 2014, I'd wager it wouldn't have made nearly $2 billion. It was the perfect storm of post-Covid box office returns, the Star Wars sequels wrapping up, and a logical conclusion to Marvel dominance with Endgame that made people go with this as yet another pointless popcorn franchise.

And the Avatar series has still made zero impact on popular culture. Nobody talks about them, but everyone sees them. I don't think I've been missing out by skipping the latest entries.

[Max Rockatansky]

I have only ever heard people give it glowing reviews.

Apparently, even those glowing reviews aren't high enough praise...

I mean, if you say "Avatar" without context, most people assume the movies with blue aliens.

Avatar sucks.

I really don't get how a series of average at best movies made so much money.

If the second had come out on schedule in 2014, I'd wager it wouldn't have made nearly $2 billion. It was the perfect storm of post-Covid box office returns, the Star Wars sequels wrapping up, and a logical conclusion to Marvel dominance with Endgame that made people go with this as yet another pointless popcorn franchise.

And the Avatar series has still made zero impact on popular culture. Nobody talks about them, but everyone sees them. I don't think I've been missing out by skipping the latest entries.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that a small part of the appeal of Avatar is that it somehow isn't one of those bigger movie franchises.  The Star Wars and Marvel fans are insufferable to listen to.  The majority of them will complain like it is the end of the world if they get an "okay" movie or TV show.

[kphoger]

Neither me or my wife are religious, so we don't say "bless you" to a sneeze. Most often we don't acknowledge it at all, other than perhaps an "are you all right?" on a multiple-sneeze occurrence.

We kind of searched around for a suitable secular substitute, and, finding none, just kind of stopped the practice.

Hi-Chew

bless you

What do you mean?

[Scott5114]

Neither me or my wife are religious, so we don't say "bless you" to a sneeze. Most often we don't acknowledge it at all, other than perhaps an "are you all right?" on a multiple-sneeze occurrence.

We kind of searched around for a suitable secular substitute, and, finding none, just kind of stopped the practice.

Hi-Chew

bless you

What do you mean?

Are you all right?

[Big John]

Neither me or my wife are religious, so we don't say "bless you" to a sneeze. Most often we don't acknowledge it at all, other than perhaps an "are you all right?" on a multiple-sneeze occurrence.

We kind of searched around for a suitable secular substitute, and, finding none, just kind of stopped the practice.

Hi-Chew

bless you

What do you mean?

Sounds like achoo.

[formulanone]

I have only ever heard people give it glowing reviews.

Apparently, even those glowing reviews aren't high enough praise...

I mean, if you say "Avatar" without context, most people assume the movies with blue aliens.

Which is mystifying to me, because if you ever trawl through the parts of the Internet where people talk about media there has always been way more people talking about ATLA than the blue-alien one, and it's not even close. This has maybe changed a little since the blue-alien sequels have come out, but I've seen it pointed out how remarkable it is that the first blue-alien movie made so much money and set so many records and so many people saw it, yet it apparently made near-zero impact on pop culture or fandom at all.

I think a big part of that was...

• Didn't seem to be based on something with a large  underground following

• No sequels for about 15 years; no cartoons, miniseries, etc to stoke fandom

• A limited amount of product tie-in.

It's kind of weird from today's angle, but that's how most movies were released 30-40 years ago. Sequels were generally cash-grabs of mediocre quality and predictable outcomes. (There are obvious exceptions.) You made an action movie and it stood on its own; but now you're competing with a dozens of action movies and other big releases that are pumped out all the time, so things can get kind of forgotten over the years. Doesn't matter if it cost a half-billion to make a blockbuster, to lot of people, it's entertainment for a few hours and then two days later, they want to be entertained by something else.

[kphoger]

to lot of people, it's entertainment for a few hours

I mean... it is.

[formulanone]

it is.

Yes, distilled

[kphoger]

It's kind of weird from today's angle, but that's how most movies were released 30-40 years ago. Sequels were generally cash-grabs of mediocre quality and predictable outcomes. (There are obvious exceptions.) You made an action movie and it stood on its own; but now you're competing with a dozens of action movies and other big releases that are pumped out all the time, so things can get kind of forgotten over the years. Doesn't matter if it cost a half-billion to make a blockbuster, to lot of people, it's entertainment for a few hours and then two days later, they want to be entertained by something else.

I mean... it is.

Yes, distilled

Let me clarify:

30 years ago, to me it was entertainment for a few hours and then two days later, I wanted to be entertained by something else.  I only ever re-watched a very small short list of movies.  It's just entertainment, and in my opinion it's in a different category than music albums (which I'll happily listen to over and over again) or novels (which are much slower-moving).

[vdeane]

I think a big part of that was...

• Didn't seem to be based on something with a large  underground following

• No sequels for about 15 years; no cartoons, miniseries, etc to stoke fandom

• A limited amount of product tie-in.

It's especially interesting because the media was touting it as if it was the next big franchise when it first came out.  They were also touting 3D movies as the wave of the future, and they were a hot commodity at the time, so Avatar being 3D probably helped push up its appeal back then.  Of course, the whole 3D thing turned out to be a fad.

[Max Rockatansky]

I think you folks are convincing me Avatar is underrated solely based on the fact that it isn't a mega franchise.  I can completely get behind killing three hours at an average movie and just moving on with life after.

[formulanone]

Let me clarify:

30 years ago, to me it was entertainment for a few hours and then two days later, I wanted to be entertained by something else.  I only ever re-watched a very small short list of movies.  It's just entertainment, and in my opinion it's in a different category than music albums (which I'll happily listen to over and over again) or novels (which are much slower-moving).

Oh, same here. We now have many movies on DVD that we've acquired over the years (my father-in-law constantly gave us a few hundred movies because he's all in on the streaming) but there's probably just a dozen or so that we re-watch all that often anymore, and quite a number we've never gotten around to watching. I probably watch 2-5 new releases a year, 1-2 in theaters and the rest depend on how many long flights I take.

I saw Avatar about 5-6 years ago and thought it was pretty good. I remember that 3D was polarizing at the time and didn't feel like paying extra for it back in the day and forgot all about it.

[Rothman]

I think you folks are convincing me Avatar is underrated solely based on the fact that it isn't a mega franchise.  I can completely get behind killing three hours at an average movie and just moving on with life after.

How isn't it a mega franchise?  It made a LOT of money.

[Max Rockatansky]

I think you folks are convincing me Avatar is underrated solely based on the fact that it isn't a mega franchise.  I can completely get behind killing three hours at an average movie and just moving on with life after.

How isn't it a mega franchise?  It made a LOT of money.

And nobody talks about it.  I heard more about an average Star Wars movie just this month than I have about all the Avatar movies combined this past decade. 

[Scott5114]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

[Molandfreak]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

For the regular film review crowd, James Cameron has kind of killed his good graces through numerous interviews implying that you need to do the amateur LARPing marine biology stuff he does in order to tell an interesting story involving water. Which is horseshit because I guarantee he has not run into any futuristic time traveling cyborgs in his life.

Sorry, but unless the Mariana Trench becomes much more accessible to the average person (or at least multi millionaires), he had no business becoming the third person ever to reach the bottom of it. He doesn't do any serious scientific research of deep sea organisms which make those trips worthwhile for human investment, so why is that worth the effort?

[TheCatalyst31]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

My impression of the first Avatar movie is that it had very impressive visuals and a relatively thin plot and characters. I haven't seen the sequels, but I've heard that they follow the same pattern. That's a great recipe for doing well at the box office, since people want to see the cool space scenes on the big screen, but not driving much in the way of conversation or fan works. (Plus the visuals don't look as cool when you watch it on a smaller screen at home, so it's not a movie that lends itself well to rewatches.)

[Max Rockatansky]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

I'm burnt out with people thinking big franchises like Star Wars or Marvel are forms of high art.  Out of all the Star Wars movies that were made only two were classic films (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back).  Star Wars had a fair number of good movies and a bunch that were just okay.  Marvel has a couple good movies, no classics and a bunch of mid-level stuff.  There is something honest feeling when it comes to Avatar cranking out three-hour movies that are watchable once and forgettable after that. 

[Scott5114]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

I'm burnt out with people thinking big franchises like Star Wars or Marvel are forms of high art.  Out of all the Star Wars movies that were made only two were classic films (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back).  Star Wars had a fair number of good movies and a bunch that were just okay.  Marvel has a couple good movies, no classics and a bunch of mid-level stuff.  There is something honest feeling when it comes to Avatar cranking out three-hour movies that are watchable once and forgettable after that.

Well, Star Wars and Marvel are also high-budget franchises which need to appeal to as many people as possible to make back their high budget and then turn a profit. As a result they cannot risk doing something that will be unappealing to a portion of the desired audience, which means they cannot take the risk of actually making something good. It's like McDonald's—the intent isn't to make something people will like, it's to make something consistent and edible enough to turn a profit.

As an example of what I was talking about in the second paragraph, I'm thinking of things like the video game Stardew Valley, which was written, programmed, and illustrated by some dude named Eric and sold for fifteen bucks a copy. Despite the fact that Eric's marketing budget is approximately zero and it was programmed on a computer which wasn't even held up by proper furniture, an impressive amount of digital ink has been spilled talking about its characters—searching a popular fan fiction site returns 16,249 works tagged for it.

[Molandfreak]

Thing is, these days people get three hours of entertainment out of a movie, then hop online and talk about what they thought about it. Then if they really like it there's lots of discussion analyzing the themes and the writing and all that kind of stuff you do in high school English class (turns out that's fun for some people if they actually enjoy the work!). Then there's fan art and fan fiction. So if a work really speaks to someone they can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of a work beyond the actual run time, even if they never actually rewatch it.

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of. It happens with things like indie works with publishers who can't afford to do such things. So the fact that none of this really happened with Avatar has always kind of implied there is something wrong with it.

I'm burnt out with people thinking big franchises like Star Wars or Marvel are forms of high art.  Out of all the Star Wars movies that were made only two were classic films (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back).  Star Wars had a fair number of good movies and a bunch that were just okay.  Marvel has a couple good movies, no classics and a bunch of mid-level stuff.  There is something honest feeling when it comes to Avatar cranking out three-hour movies that are watchable once and forgettable after that.

Well, Star Wars and Marvel are also high-budget franchises which need to appeal to as many people as possible to make back their high budget and then turn a profit. As a result they cannot risk doing something that will be unappealing to a portion of the desired audience, which means they cannot take the risk of actually making something good. It's like McDonald's—the intent isn't to make something people will like, it's to make something consistent and edible enough to turn a profit.

As an example of what I was talking about in the second paragraph, I'm thinking of things like the video game Stardew Valley, which was written, programmed, and illustrated by some dude named Eric and sold for fifteen bucks a copy. Despite the fact that Eric's marketing budget is approximately zero and it was programmed on a computer which wasn't even held up by proper furniture, an impressive amount of digital ink has been spilled talking about its characters—searching a popular fan fiction site returns 16,249 works tagged for it.

The Last Jedi was kind of a risk that didn't pay off in more than one way. Lifelong fans didn't like it, it wrote the future direction of the trilogy into uncomfortable territory for Abrams (or anyone else working on writing the trilogy), and by the end of the trilogy box office returns were so far below expectations that there wasn't a Star Wars film released in theaters for 7 years. Not exactly the return on investment Disney wanted.

[kphoger]

This can and does happen with things which aren't monetized to hell and back with sequels and product tie-ins and what have you. It happens with things which the corporate media has cancelled and washed its hands of.

Fight Club and The Princess Bride were both box office flops—especially the former, which cost more than $60 million to produce but only grossed $37 million at the box office in the USA and Canada.  Yet both have a continuing cult classic fan base.

I'm thinking of things like the video game Stardew Valley, which was written, programmed, and illustrated by some dude named Eric and sold for fifteen bucks a copy. Despite the fact that Eric's marketing budget is approximately zero and it was programmed on a computer which wasn't even held up by proper furniture, an impressive amount of digital ink has been spilled talking about its characters—searching a popular fan fiction site returns 16,249 works tagged for it.

My own wife and kids occasionally play it, too.