Alas, what started in their network soon became a social currency for adults online. Gen Xers and Millennials—the parents of today’s middle schoolers—couldn’t leave six-seven be; they’re accustomed to burning through such memes like their parents or grandparents did cigarettes, as if culture writ large can withstand habitual abuse. Social-media-influencer culture also latched on to the phrase for its own attentional ends, as did brands, the indefatigable scavengers. These forces stole six-seven from the kids who had nurtured it.
Yeah ok. It was a song lyric first and then became a TikTok basketball video meme. It was an adult meme that kids latched onto. How dare adults continue to use it and destroy childlore or whatever?
It actually makes sense if you think about it.
Titanic was Cameron’s previous record breaker, and still has more cultural impact than Avatar. Why? Because it’s also one of the best selling home media films of all time. People watched it in theaters, then took it home and watched it again. They watched it when it aired on tv.
Even before home media, movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were released in theaters multiple times, and then later were sold on home media and aired on tv. Home media films are the ones generations grow up with and continue to talk about.
Avatar movies are purely theatrical films. How many people are rewatching them dozens of times on streaming? Likely very few. So the buzz only shows up when one enters theaters, and once the theater run is done the buzz dies down.
And between films, people only really talk in meta-commentary: the box office, whether the films are overrated, whether they have cultural impact, etc. No one is comparing Jake Sully to Captain Kirk or Luke Skywalker, no one is shipping characters, no one’s commenting on the plot at all, they only talk about the films as films.