Disney+ has let down James Cameron's Avatar. The Disney+ streaming service is a corporate priority for the House of Mouse — its way of staying competitive at a time when the entertainment industry is being transformed. Indeed, that was one of the main reasons Disney purchased the bulk of Fox's film and TV empire: because it sought out as large a library as possible in order to be competitive.
James Cameron's Avatar franchise was described as the "crown jewels" of the Disney purchase. This record-breaking movie was the highest-grossing film of all time in the global box office, at least until Avengers: Endgame's re-release, even if its long-term cultural impact has been surprisingly muted. The sequels are sure to perform well, and Disney intends to time their release with the opening of new theme parks. The company believes Avatar parks can be its answer to the competing Wizarding World franchise at Universal.
That makes Avatar's release on Disney+ all the more surprising. Unlike the MCU movies, Avatar has next to no additional features on the streaming service; it simply has two different versions of the film. This is quite remarkable given how many different versions were released on DVD and Blu-Ray — and all of them had a remarkable number of special features. Fox released a wealth of deleted scenes, motion capture tests, documentaries, interviews, and effects reels. Every stage of production was documented, and yet none of this content is represented on Disney+. The absence of all these features is frankly inexplicable.
James Cameron's Avatar may have had a surprisingly minimal cultural impact, but it deserves better than this. It took a cinematic event like Avengers: Endgame to beat it in terms of box office takings, and even Marvel Studios only achieved that through a re-release. Avatar made history with its innovation of 3D technology, with James Cameron advancing the science of film-making by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, Avatar's environmentalist message is as timely today as it was in 2009, and that message was stressed in several of the features currently missing on Disney's streaming service. "A Message From Pandora," a special feature produced by Cameron about the battle to stop the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu river, is particularly important — and fits with the kinds of environmentalist content seen on Disney+ courtesy of its National Geographic shows.
Hopefully Disney will soon choose to add all this additional content to Disney+. The service could even turn this strange mistake into a marketing gimmick of some kind; it's safe to assume the House of Mouse will re-release Avatar in cinemas ahead of the sequel; well-timed high-profile additions to Disney+ could establish a synergy of a kind.
