James Cameron's Avatar is still the highest-grossing movie of all time, but that's not stopping detractors from underestimating Avatar: The Way of Water's ability to follow in its footsteps. The industry has changed significantly since the release of the first Avatar in 2009 with the rise of the MCU, the return of Star Wars, and an onslaught of major IP movies into the top 10 grossing movies of all time, but a closer examination of Avatar's (and James Cameron's Titanic's) box office behavior, it becomes clear just how backward these comparisons are.
Cameron first arrived on the top 10 box office list after the release of 1997's Titanic, setting a record so high no other movies even came within a billion dollars of until Cameron's next movie, Avatar, over a decade later. Avatar surpassed Titanic's box office by over half a billion dollars, once again setting a record no other movies could touch, while Titanic maintained a secure grip on the second place rank until Avengers: Endgame in 2019. While Endgame initially crept past Avatar's box office total, a 2021 re-release pushed Avatar back into the top spot once more (with another major re-release coming before the release of Avatar 2 to shore up that lead).
The continued dominance of Cameron's box office behemoths is undeniable, but they're both products of a pre-MCU era, and now almost half of the top 10 grossing movies of all time are a part of the MCU, with other franchise sequels and reboots making up the rest of the list. This surge of franchise IP to the top of the box office is hard to beat, especially when Avatar, despite its financial success, just doesn't have the kind of branding value as Star Wars or the MCU; however, assuming Avatar's ability to compete as a modern franchise totally misunderstands the reason James Cameron's movies (two of them) achieved that kind of dominance.
Don't Dismiss the James Cameron Effect
The most important thing to keep in mind on this topic is James Cameron shouldn't be underestimated. From creating the Terminator franchise to reinventing the Alien franchise, Cameron has a flawless record with critics (outside of his directorial debut, Piranha II: The Spawning), with all his movies hitting it big at the box office other than The Abyss. The biggest thing of note with Cameron's filmography is the fact that his success doesn't come from his expertise at making a particular kind of movie. Very few of his movies are directly comparable to one another, with even Terminator 2 mostly abandoning the winning formula from The Terminator in favor of something new. Simply looking at Avatar and Titanic together at the top of the all-time box office shows Cameron's versatility.
Cameron has had skeptics for the majority of his career, especially given his penchant for landing outrageous budgets and having some highly publicized difficult productions. It's not exactly clear how Cameron consistently pulls it off, but really, the only person who needs to know how he does it is James Cameron himself. For everyone else, it's simply important to understand that he does pull it off. Even if the trend doesn't make traditional sense, it's a trend just the same.
Since Titanic and Avatar are major outliers in the top 10 box office list, they're often disregarded as flukes for not following the more recent conventions of all the other top earners, making it difficult to evaluate Avatar: The Way of Water's potential to reach the list since it has almost nothing in common with the franchise IP movies dominating the box office. Conventional wisdom would say it has a shot at doing well, but that it has no shot at giving James Cameron a third top 10 movie, but conventional wisdom also failed to predict the success of Titanic, or Cameron's ability to break his own unbeatable record. Sure, nobody is clamoring for an Avatar sequel, but that's also the case for Titanic and especially for the first Avatar. His track record may not make sense, but it's real and consistent.
James Cameron's movies are also the only movies in the top 10 to win an Academy Award or even be nominated for Best Director or Best Picture, with Titanic earning 14 nominations, winning 11 categories including Best Picture and Best Director. Avatar received nine nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director), winning three categories, including Cinematography, Art Direction, and VFX. Top blockbuster movies are notorious for their under-representation at the Academy Awards, so the fact that his movies got so much more awards attention and success only adds to their status as an anomaly among the other top earners further shows how they stand apart from the more modern blockbusters on the list, and the only common denominator between the romantic historical disaster epic other than their critical and financial success is the man in the director's chair.
Avatar Is Still Secretly Popular in 2022
Avatar was a pop culture phenomenon for a year or two, but with franchise explosions of the 2010s it was quickly swallowed up by Star Wars, Marvel, DC, and more, leading many people to assume nobody cares about Avatar, Pandora, or the Na'vi, but surprisingly, they've persisted. Avatar held a spot in the top 100 movies in home media sales through 2014, Disney World opened its Pandora park in 2017 and theme park analysis in AECOM's Global Attractions Attendance Report from 2018 credits Pandora as a "strong attendance driver" for both 2017 and 2018. Additionally, Avatar's box office saw a big boost from a few re-releases over the years, particularly in 2021 when a Chinese re-release grossed $57 million. It may not have the constant chatter of a popular shared universe franchise, but Avatar has maintained a strong level of popularity for over a decade without the release of any sequels, spin-offs, or tie-ins.
One of the most unpredictable factors with any James Cameron movie is what new technology he'll introduce or what boundary he'll push to new places. With Avatar, the use of motion capture and 3D were major drivers to premium and IMAX screens, which had a big impact on Avatar's overall box office earnings, and with Avatar: The Way of Water, he's pushing that technology forward even more as well as using new technology to do motion capture and other camera work underwater. It's not clear if that's enough to re-trigger that itch to get audiences swarming to theaters again, but it's a major X-factor that'll be hard to evaluate until Avatar: The Way of Water actually arrives in theaters.
James Cameron's Avatar and Titanic Defy The Rules of Other Top 10 Box Office Movies
Compared to the other movies in the top 10 all-time box office, comprised of Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Titanic, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jurassic World, The Lion King, The Avengers, and Furious 7, a few things stand out. Cameron is the only person with multiple movies in the top 10 other than the Russo brothers, whose top-grossing movies are Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which is a two-part conclusion to the MCU's Infinity Saga. Avatar and Titanic are also the only movies in the top 10 that aren't sequels or reboots of existing franchise-IP. They're also the oldest movies in the top 10, with every other movie releasing in 2015 or later other than The Avengers in 2013. Titanic stands out even more than Avatar as it's not only more than a decade older, but it's also the only movie in the top 10 that isn't labeled as a sci-fi adventure or action-adventure of some kind.
Most importantly, the box office behavior of both Titanic and Avatar is the total opposite of every single other top 10 movie. Avengers: Endgame's domestic opening weekend box office was $257 million is the biggest all-time opening weekend, five other top 10 movies opened over $200 million, and the average non-Cameron opening weekend is $234 million. Meanwhile, Avatar opened to just $77 million and Titanic opened to $28 million. The fact that this massive disparity on the front-end of their box office run wasn't enough to prevent both Cameron movies from rising to the top proves just how impressive their legs were compared to every other movie. Massive opening weekends at the box office are usually attributed to marketing hype, while a movie's legs are seen as a sign of its word of mouth. For non-Cameron movies in the top 10, the opening domestic weekend box office accounts for just under 20 percent of their total box office haul, while Avatar's opening only accounts for 10 percent and Titanic's opening accounts for less than 2 percent of its total run.
So, to rephrase, James Cameron's movies are the only movies in the top 10 whose place on the list can be attributed to the reception of the film itself, while the rest of the movies, while they were well received, depend on huge pre-release marketing hype. The average second-weekend drop for the non-Cameron movies in the top 10 is 55 percent, while Avatar dropped less than 2 percent and Titanic actually saw its box office grow by 23 percent in its second weekend (the only movie in the top 10 to do so). The trend continues after the second week, with the non-Cameron movies seeing subsequent drops in the same 55% ballpark, while Titanic dropped by six percent in week three, and maintained single-digit and low double-digit drops for several weeks, including additional increases of four percent, two percent, and 22 percent in week eight. Avatar also maintained low drops throughout its run, only surpassing the 55 percent mark one single time late in its run.
Either of these movies is enough to prove Cameron's filmmaking prowess, but the existence of both, the consistencies between them, and the way they stand apart from the rest of the top 10 list proves huge franchise IP movies with huge pre-release hype aren't the only way to set box office records. In fact, the failure of Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers Endgame, and the rest of the top 10 earners to firmly unseat both Cameron movies over the decades reveals the limitations of the modern blockbuster approach. Of course, this all ignores inflation and changes in ticket prices over the years, meaning if we measure raw ticket sales instead of box office revenue, Titanic and Avatar would likely have an even firmer lead. Of course, none of this guarantees anything about Avatar: The Way of Water's box office potential, but it does prove pre-release hype and anticipation aren't essential for a movie to become the highest-grossing movie of all time, and that James Cameron deserves the benefit of the doubt, even if we don't yet know why he spent a decade of his life making more Avatar movies.