James Cameron is one of the most respected and successful filmmakers in modern cinematic history. Movies like The Terminator, T2: Judgement Day, Aliens, and The Abyss cemented his place in film history. But his two most popular films are arguably Titanic and Avatar.
Despite the money they made and the accolades they received, there are a lot of people who considered both movies to be overrated. Each film has achieved this dubious honor in its own unique ways.
10 AVATAR: It’s Basically FernGully
In 1992, an animated feature called FernGully: The Last Rainforest was released. The essential premise involved a young logger being shrunk down to the size of a fairy. He met the fairies and other beings of the forest, came around to their way of thinking, and fought with them to protect the environment.
When Avatar came out, there were immediate parallels drawn between the plots of both films. There are some obvious differences in the setting and the characters, but it’s hard to ignore that the essential beats are roughly the same. There are even fans who argue that FernGully did it better.
9 TITANIC: The Whole Thing With The Door
Pretty much everyone going to see Titanic knew how it was going to end. The ship was going to sink and take the vast majority of people on board with it. But what they didn’t know was how attached they were going to get to the main characters, Jack and Rose.
That attachment spawned an ongoing argument about whether Jack could have survived with Rose on the door she was floating on or not. That argument has actually detracted from the power of the moment over the years and made the film more unwatchable. Every viewing now ends with that argument.
8 AVATAR: The Acting Isn’t Great
There are certain aspects of Avatar that were truly solid at the time, mostly the technological ones. It’s hard to argue against the idea that this was a visually stunning movie that remains a treat for science fiction fans.
That being said, it wasn’t exactly well-acted, though this isn’t the fault of the actors in the least. They did a relatively good job with what they were given to work with, but that doesn’t change the fact that the dialogue was awkward and heavy-handed as well as painfully expository at times.
7 TITANIC: Historically Inaccurate In Some Odd Ways
When it comes to fictitious movies based on real events, there’s a fine balance to be met. Filmmakers want to represent the events as accurately as possible, but at the same time want to tell engaging stories viewers will enjoy. This is no easy task.
James Cameron did a great job for the most part, but there were definitely some odd discrepancies. Most of them were small details, like people using flashlights on the ship, as this was a piece of technology that didn’t exist at the time. The same was true of the Freud theory Rose talked about.
6 AVATAR: The Characters Are Flat
The characters in this movie generally fall into two categories. They’re either the marauding humans who are looking to take the planet’s resources for themselves, or they’re the individuals who are there to protect the world.
Everything and everyone in Avatar is pretty black or white; there’s not a lot of grey area in the film. That lack of nuance can be seen particularly in the space marines who are very much the villains of the picture.
5 TITANIC: Way Too Long
Clocking in at 195 minutes, Titanic is a ridiculously long movie, much longer than it needs to be. A film rarely needs three hours and 15 minutes to tell a good story, and this is not one of those exceptions.
The worst part is that viewers know where the story is going. The boat is going to sink and they’re just waiting for it to get there while the drama builds up. Naturally, the film wants the viewer to feel connected to Jack and Rose so the ending has more punch to it, but the massive run time feels like overkill and runs the risk of boring the watcher.
4 AVATAR: It Was In 3D
3D was a movie craze that just never caught on in North America. This was largely because very few films were actually shot in 3D. Most were shot in 2D and had the effect haphazardly added after the fact, which did nothing for the story. Avatar was one of the few films that used the process correctly.
While that was cool at the time, the impact of that momentary technological advancement has diminished rapidly. Virtually no one has a 3D TV and cannot watch the movie the way it was shot. Something is lost from this specific movie without it.
3 TITANIC: It’s Actually Pretty Sad
It’s hard to escape the fact that Titanic is not a happy movie. This is a film about one of the most famous tragedies in history which had very few survivors. Plus, it spends more than three hours making you care about two main characters, one of whom dies in the end.
More than anything else, the viewer ends up mourning the loss of what could have been between Jack and Rose. No one truly knows what would have happened between them, so both the viewer and Rose are left with nothing but what-ifs. This makes for a pretty bleak conclusion after that long of a journey.
2 AVATAR: It Aged Incredibly Poorly
At the time of its release, Avatar was an incredibly popular movie. It was a huge box office draw that has continued to do well in other formats for more than a decade. That being said, time has not been kind to this film.
Once fans got over the impressive technical aspects of the film, many people started realizing that there wasn’t that much to the story. While the film certainly has its fans, it doesn’t have the timeless quality that many other science fiction movies boast.
1 TITANIC: That Overplayed Celine Dion Song
Titanic remains one of the biggest movies ever made and the Celine Dion song associated with it was equally huge. For what felt like forever, “My Heart Will Go On” was on Top 40 radio stations multiple times per day.
It’s worth noting that the song is not actually bad and that Celine Dion is one of the most talented vocalists of all time. But this song was overplayed so much that it’s hard to imagine hearing it again without cringing.
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