If you were late teens / early 20's or older when it first came out, I don't think it that weird.

It was bloody amazing. And then we've just all been waiting for it until the sequels, which are just now starting to roll in. The second one was a bit of a disappointment (bro) in my opinion, but I'm hoping the third one will be a positive surprise.

Basically I went to watch it for nostalgia, as I think a lot did.

AAA-game? Aren't there like lots of Avatar games?

Yeah, 2009 there was one, online shut down for it in 2014.

Guess you're talking about "the frontiers of Pandora" from 2023?

There's also "Pandora rising" from 2020.

The sequels were always in the works. The first movie was an experience and now people are just chasing that high again.

Hell, there's still tons of people waiting on the continuation on what happens to Jon Snow in the books after he's stabbed. That's still in the works with George, hopefully. Since like 2011.

It’s all a lot less fantastical when you compare it to Pocahontas:

Pretty sure it now has a theme park or something, doesn't it?

It's bizarre how much "stuff" there is for the blue people Avatar franchise, considering what a tiny lasting cultural impact the original movie had.

The original movie was an incredible tech demo. It was an utterly forgettable movie. I had no desire to bother watching the sequel.

"Showed up out of nowhere", ie. in development since the mid 90's; "made the most bank", ie. made the 2nd most bank; "disappeared", ie. Cameron said that there would be 4 sequels and that they're being worked on; "came back out of nowhere", ie. the first sequel came out more or less when it was supposed to, and Cameron said in 2020 that filming on Avatar 3 was nearly finished.

I want to hear the original version of the soundtrack. I do not care about the actual film at all, but supposedly Cameron hired a bunch of leading ethnomusicologists to attempt to create something unlike any music on Earth, only to then ditch the majority of what they made because it sounded too weird

Are we not going to talk about the fact that the logo uses something that is almost identical to the Papyrus font?

Avatar didn’t come out of nowhere at all. It is made by one of the most beloved and successful film makers in history. The hype leading up to that movie was off the charts.

I saw the first movie, forgot almost completely what it was about. But I have to admit I thought it would be about the the Airbender. Half of the movie I felt stupid and cheated at the same time... Probably why I don't remember what it was about.

I think it made so much money at the box office because it was so visually stunning (for the time) and no one had made a movie like that at that point. It was very much a movie everyone said to go watch on the big screen in 3D, ideally IMAX 3D. I never did and only watched it on a DVD borrowed from my wife’s friend 6 or 7 years ago, and came away less impressed. Like, it’s fine, but the movie itself isn’t exactly the greatest story ever told, and the visuals, while groundbreaking at the time, are now pretty standard.