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"Avatar 2 is coming out this year so I decided to rewatch the first one and see how it holds up. I remember really loving it in the theaters, but I felt very outnumbered by the lackluster response. It seemed to me, from what I heard from friends and the internet in general, is that most people didn’t like it very much. Why have I heard nothing but negative stuff about this film? If its so bad, why is it getting a sequel? People say it's 'overrated', so let's investigate."
Yeah, regardless of anything else, James's opinion of the word "overrated" is fairly close to my own (and that of TotalBiscuit). Was Avatar "overhyped," as James puts forward as a hypothesis? Maybe. Maybe it was. Was Avatar too "derivative," as James explores? Perhaps, perhaps not, but, like James, I don't think it was. I just think too many people ignorantly and belligerently misuse the phrase "rip-off" in the same way they do "overrated." (Besides, all that shit is just fanfiction of the Epic of Gilgamesh, after all. *eye roll*)
Was Avatar "overrated," though? No. No, it was not, at least not by the actual meaning of the word, as opposed to the generalized "thing I don't like" definition that most people seem to use. Even in the video, James expressed surprise that it got 82% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes sense given his premise. It's just that, same as what TotalBiscuit said, too many people look at that and say "I didn't like Avatar, so that means that the 82% of the population of people who leave ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are wrong, therefore the movie is 'overrated.'" Which, of course, is nothing but bullshit.
As I said previously, "overrated" is overrated.
