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Originally Posted by Rhettzky
I found it interesting. Not being able to remember the main characters name seems kind of weird for the top grossing film of all time that was only released in 2009. True lies and the abyss are from the early 90's and aren't sitting in the top 2 or even 300 on that list. Looking at the list the only films that might be comparable (not including Marvel & Star Wars because that would skew) would be Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, LOTR, Minions, Skyfall, Pirates of the Caribbean, and some Batman Films. Which are a mostly a bunch of sequel or franchise films so it's hard to count them.
Titanic would be a decent example even though it was 10 years earlier and if he made the same joke about that film it wouldn't have landed because most people could remember the two leads. Frozen would be another one from around 4 years later but gets a sequel asterisk.
Inception would maybe be the best comparison; an original movie, released a year later and 86th on the list. I remember Leo's characters name but maybe only because I've seen it a bunch of times. The rest of the cast I draw a blank on.
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Yeah I have issue with trying to compare avatar to a bunch of movies based on pre existing characters and properties like comic books. Or even like Star Wars that have been around for 40 years, have 9 movies and are basically fully part of pop culture with dozens of other types of media.
As for why Avatar didn’t catch on like that, I think it’s pretty simple. It just wasn’t a super kid friendly movie in terms of characters. Nor was the world building strong enough to warrant a bunch of other media to expand on the mythology. I get that riles some people up but I honestly don’t care. Not every movie property needs to be all encompassing in our consciousness where a bunch of people become obsessed with it and base their entire personalities around a film franchise. It’s ok for a movie to just be a movie.
That being said, I don’t think the amount of money it made is in any way relevant to the names of the characters being memorable. What difference does it make if you or I can’t remember the names of the 50th highest grossing movie of the first? We still saw it. Does the number of other people who saw it besides you affect your ability to remember the names? And why does the release date matter? But even if you wanted to use movies from the same era, the point still stands. No one remembers names from most movies, except the ones that turn into pop culture crossovers.
People seem to have this expectation that the highest grossing movie of all time also needs to be the best and most memorable. It’s actually kind of a bizarre assertion and connection. It’s just not how movies work.
I also remember how reviled titanic was when it came out and got the exact same backlash from angry internet males. It makes me wonder if part of the reason these movies are so hated is that they aren’t typical male oriented superhero or sci-fi fare. Most of the rest of the list skew heavily towards young men and nerdy franchises. Titanic was often viewed as the ultimate chick flick and was widely mocked as being a terrible movie by the internet crowd. Avatar may be sci-fi but it definitely didn’t entice young men the way the superhero and Star Wars movies did. And for whatever reason, they’re mad at avatar for that.