Time has proven to change the way we look back on past events. It has affected how we remember movies, sometimes to the extent of our opinions changing from positive to negative or negative to positive after revisiting them. Yes, personal tastes do often change over time, but our memories have also never been as consistent as we would like to believe. With the recent release of Avatar: The Way of Water, now is the perfect time to look back on James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful movie that somehow managed to escape people’s minds.
Back in 2009, Avatar drew wide attention for its worldbuilding, impressive effects, and the film’s use of 3D technology. Coming off of 1997’s Titanic, there was immense hype for a new James Cameron film, helping Avatar break box-office records and become the highest-grossing film of all time. But after more than a decade, has the viewing experience of Avatar changed? Here’s a look at how the 2009 sci-fi epic film holds up today.
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Avatar’s Story
20th Century Studios
Despite being set on an alien world more than a hundred years into the future, Avatar featured a relevant and very human story. With Earth’s resources rapidly depleting, the Resources Development Administration (RDA) took to Pandora to mine the valuable mineral known as unobtanium. There was one major problem: mining unobtanium threatened the indigenous Na’vi and their home. Using genetically engineered “avatars,” Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) and Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) attempted to prevent a war between the humans and the Na’vi. Their attempts were unsuccessful as the RDA was never going to willingly leave without the unobtanium.
The RDA was very clearly a representation of human greed and aggressive expansionism. In the sci-fi genre, humans have typically been depicted as the “regular people” and aliens as the hostile intruders. Avatar turned the tables by finally portraying humans as the “aliens,” arriving on Pandora uninvited and with malicious intent. Not surprisingly, the dynamic between the Na’vi and the humans has often been compared to the Powhatan tribe and English settlers in Pocahontas. Both the RDA and the English settlers were the antagonists in their films, believing that they could take whatever they wanted. This kind of story has always been timeless, and Avatar retold it while offering epic thrills and portraying the dark side of humanity.
James Horner’s Soundtrack
The music for Avatar was done by James Horner, who also scored Titanic, Braveheart, The Mask of Zorro, and The Amazing Spider-Man. A fantastic composer, some of his standout pieces from the Avatar score were “‘Becoming One of ‘The People’, Becoming One with Neytiri,” “The Bioluminescence of the Night,” and “Jake’s First Flight.” Horner’s music made Pandora feel alive and not just a fictional location in yet another sci-fi film. Jake went on an incredible adventure, starting off as a man betraying people’s trust and ending up a hero protecting those in need. The score did an excellent job of documenting Sully’s journey, and sounds just as good right now as it did back in 2009. Due to Horner’s death in 2015, he was sadly unable to return for Avatar: The Way of Water.
Visual Effects
Development on Avatar began as early as 1994, but the technology was not there yet to realize Cameron’s vision. The visual effects needed to be top-notch for the film to work as Avatar is set entirely on an alien world. Cameron wanted to immerse the audience, something that would not have been possible with 90s or early 2000s CGI. Fortunately, Avatar was released in 2009, the same year that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and 2012 were released. Visual effects had significantly improved, and were continuing to improve, and Avatar showcased some of the best work in the business. It came at no surprise when Avatar won the 82nd Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Weta Digital created incredibly detailed environments and characters for the film. They additionally used facial motion capture to translate the actors’ expressions into their Na’vi characters. A great example of the technology in use was when Neytiri learned the truth about why Jake was spending time with the Na’vi. Neytiri was a blue computer-animated alien and yet, they were able to capture all the power of Zoe Saldaña’s performance. The Na’vi might not look completely real in the present day, but they still look great and most importantly, allow viewers to suspend their disbelief while watching the film. It paved the way for Avatar: The Way of Water, which had more screentime featuring the Na’vi and benefited from over a decade of technological advancements as well as a higher production budget.
Did Avatar Really Need a Sequel?
At the end of Avatar, the humans were sent back to Earth and Jake’s consciousness was permanently transferred into his avatar. Yes, the film had a beginning, middle, and an end. But it also left plot threads dangling in the air and never fully resolved its overarching conflict. The RDA was never actually defeated, meaning they were always going to eventually return to Pandora. Their technological and military superiority brought them close to victory, which would almost certainly encourage them to come back better prepared and in larger numbers. There is no end to human greed, and the RDA were denied something that was of high interest to them. Tell someone they can’t have something and they’ll want it even more.
Cameron obviously had ideas for Avatar that were too big to be contained within a single film. Pandora was a large exomoon, but the film only featured a glimpse of its surface, wildlife, and Na’vi cultures (note: there were more than 15 different clans). The golden rule has always been that if there is no more story to tell, then there probably shouldn’t be a sequel. But if a film becomes the highest-grossing movie in the world, is positively received, leaves too much unexplored, and its director wants to do another one, then a sequel might even be necessary. Jake was referred to as a hero in the first Avatar, but his actions proved that he still had a lot of growing up to do. And where there’s room for character growth, there’s room for a sequel.
