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James Cameron’sAvatarwas a game - change hit , but Hollywood studios took the amiss lessons from its success with their early 2010s movies . Twelve years after his epic historical romanceTitanicbecame the first movie to make over $ 1 billion at the worldwide box business office ( winning eleven Oscars for its efforts , including Best Picture ) , Cameron give in 2009 withAvatar , an original sci - fi megahit he ’d been working on since , at least , the mid-1990s . It was an expensive gamble for manufacturer / distributor Fox , costing $ 237 million to make before factorisation in marketing ( and that ’s potential an under - estimation ) and relying on 3-D at a time when the filmmaking furor had n’t been in expressive style since the ' 80s .
Once again , though , Cameron got the last laugh;AvatarobliteratedTitanic ’s box office recordon its manner to making $ 2.79 billion and won three Oscars , with critics and cosmopolitan audiences alike praising the film ’s revolutionary consumption of photorealistic CGI and apparent movement - gaining control ( copulate with its immersive and non - gimmicky 3D motion-picture photography ) to bring the Na’vi and various other extra - terrestrial residents of Pandora to tangible life on the big screen . Suffice it to say , the rest of the moving picture industriousness took bill and shinny to replicate Cameron ’s success in the years that followed .
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As Hollywood is ( unfortunately ) wo nt to do , it took the incorrect lessons from the whole experience and mostly misunderstood whyAvatarresonated with moviegoer the way it did . This is n’t something that ’s only became patent with the benefit of hindsight , either . Just a few months afterAvataropened in December 2009 , it was already obvious studios did n’t get what worked about the photographic film .
Avatar Inspired A (Bad) New Wave of 3D Movies
Thanks toAvatar,3D was not only back in way , it was everywhere in 2010 . Problem was , the majority of 3D films released that year had n’t been filmed with 3D cameras the wayAvatarwas and needed to be exchange to the data format in Emily Post - production . Infamously , skip to beg into this unanticipated demand for 3D spectacle , Warner Bros. rush the conversion job on itsClash of the Titansremake and the result were widely derided for being marshy when the film premiered just four months afterAvatar . after movies ( likeHow to educate Your Dragon ) receive high Saint Mark for their 3D , but even there it did n’t really serve a storytelling purpose the way it had onAvatar , nor was the 3D tech being move forward in a meaningful elbow room . Save for exceptions likeTRON : Legacy(where sequences set in The Grid were filmed in 3D , as pit to the material - world scenes , which were inject in 2D ) andSaw : The net Chapter(which used the 3D kill - out event as a fun gimmick ) , 3D typically officiate as an exculpation for theaters to charge a eminent tag price that twelvemonth .
Things began to interchange a little after that ; Disney ’s 2011 tentpolePirates of the Caribbean : On Stranger Tidesdidn’t exactly do anything innovative with 3D ( and was n’t always the right way lit for the format ) , but it was actually shot using 3-D television camera , as were other blockbusters expel that twelvemonth . Then , in 2012 and 2013 , Ang Lee , Baz Luhrmann , and Alfonso Cuarón follow in Cameron ’s footsteps and used 3D to bring everything from the ocean to KO’d space and 1920s America to visually dynamic and redolent life on the liberal screen with their hitsLife of Pi , The Great Gatsby , andGravity . Once again , though , these are the exception and not the rule , and virtually every other 3D release in those years was a post - conversion problem that shinny to do anything noteworthy with the technical school . It ’s no wonder motion-picture fan started actively disliking three-D , to the point where the trend had all but choke out at the boxful office less than a decade afterAvatarcame out .
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Movies Tried (& Failed) To Replicate Avatar’s CGI World
For such a technologically revolutionary flick , Avataris pretty bland account - sassy and has long been - fairly - dismissed as a sci - fi variance on Hollywood ’s white savior westerly narration custom ( Dances with Wolvesbeing the most famous exercise of this from recent decades ) . But in a sentience , that benefitted the film when it defer in field of operations , allowing its surprisingly elaborated CGI creatures and options to find the majority of tending from world-wide audiences , rather than its plot or characters . job is , much like they did with 3-D , Hollywood for the most part missed that it was the direction Cameron and his crew created Pandora digitally that was exceptional , not the fact it was computer - generated . Because of this , bringing fantastical and/or other - worldly preferences to life digitally became the default mode for blockbuster film making afterAvatar , resulting in a whole mint of 2010s tentpoles that seemed to forgetCGI can be good or bad , depending on how you use it . And unlikeAvatar , a fortune of them did n’t use it well ( see at you , The Hobbittrilogy , Gods of Egypt , and so forth ) .
Avatar Helped Change How Movies Approach The Chinese Box Office
Nowadays , it ’s more common knowledge thatChina is the big market for pic outside of the U.S. , and a growing number of big - budget oblation would ’ve flunk if it had n’t been for the Middle Kingdom . ( Warcraft , for example , made over half its $ 439 million universal gross in China alone . ) No surprise , Avatarwas a large hit there and help oneself to show in a trend of Hollywood movies not only release wide in China , but even being tailored to perform well in the country . Famously , Iron Man 3released in China with exclusive footage meant for the country ’s moviegoer in 2013 , and afterward tentpoles likeThe Great WallandThe Megwere full - blown American - Chinese co - productions likewise plan to invoke to Chinese audience as much as those in the U.S. The sequelPacific Rim Uprisingeven went from being indefinitely delayed to green - lit after Legendary was sold to Chinese Wanda Group in 2016 , thanks to the firstPacific Rimhaving been a hit in China .
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In some cases , this has lead toHollywood motion-picture show pandering to Chinese audiencesin ways that are perhaps more uncanny than anything else . However , it ’s also resulted in censorship , with a identification number of film having had to abridge potentially controversial material so as to be approved for departure in the state . Certain Chinese - American production have even been pick apart for functioning as propaganda for the Formosan government activity and the values it favors ( see also : The Great Walland its rejection of laissez faire in favor of collectivism).Avatardidn’t shift the way Hollywood draw exit the Chinese box authority by itself , but it still play an of the essence role in those practices , especially afterit was pulled from Taiwanese dramaturgy in January 2010 in a move that , at the time , was speculated to have been motivated by the Chinese politics ’s concerns about its pro - environmental message . Today , one imagines such concerns would ’ve been address well in front of meter , or else .
What Lessons Movies Should’ve Taken From Avatar
As has often been luff out over the long time , the originalAvatarleft a oddly small pop acculturation footprint for such a massively popular blockbuster . Arguably , that ’s partly to pick on its regressive story and deficiency of truly iconic character , but it also seems to be a side force of Hollywood endeavor to repeat its winner by copying what it did on the surface - level only , andnot recognizing the way Cameron push technologieslike photorealistic CGI and motion - capture forward were the actual key to its popularity . To be fair , there were filmmaker that took the correct moral from the whole and built on whatAvatardid by using these tool ( combined with 3D ) to open up the storytelling possibilities of cinema . Overall , though , the flick manufacture did n’t do that and instead roil out a whole wad of picture that aspired to cash - in on the 3D CGI hysteria , but are largely forgettable beyond that . It ’s something for Hollywood in worldwide to think about guide into the Modern decennary , as Cameron train to in conclusion unleashhis four ( yes , four)Avatarsequelsupon the world .
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