When Did Hollywood Get So Earnest?

(Bloomberg) -- Since its debut in 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar franchise has occupied a strange place in the cultural conversation. These are some of the biggest movies ever made. The original is the highest-grossing film of all time, making more than $2.9 billion dollars worldwide. Its 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is the third highest. 

They are also persistently a punchline. 

Why? They’re so gosh-darn earnest. There is not a trace of irony in Cameron’s critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated saga, set on an alien world, Pandora, inhabited by the Na’vi, blue-skinned creatures with cat noses. These are stories about family, environmental preservation and good triumphing over evil. The common refrain is that they leave no cultural footprint, meaning those billions don’t translate into lasting fandom like quoting lines or even remembering character names, even though  so many people talk about their not having a cultural footprint.But maybe 2025 is the perfect time for the latest Avatar to hit theaters. 

Avatar: Fire & Ash, out on Dec. 19, emerges in a moviegoing landscape where earnestness has prevailed over cynicism. This has been a year when audiences, critics and filmmakers are embracing hope over doom and sincerity over smarm. 

At Cannes in May, the Norwegian director Joachim Trier argued that “tenderness is the new punk” when discussing his film Sentimental Value, which went on to win the prestigious festival’s Grand Prix, essentially the second-place prize. Trier was speaking about his personal motivations when making the film, which is about a fractured show-business family in Oslo, but he could be speaking for a lot of the filmmakers working across genres this year. 

“Polarization, anger and machismo aren’t the way forward,” he said. That much is evident in Trier’s film about a once-famous director (Stellan Skarsgård) trying to reconnect with his actress daughter (Renate Reinsve), but it’s also the case in a movie as different from that intimate foreign drama as Superman, the summer blockbuster about the comic book character.

James Gunn’s tentpole, which grossed more than $616 million worldwide, uses the same language of tenderness being “punk” to characterize his version of Kal-El (David Corenswet), the alien from Krypton who goes by Clark Kent when he’s working at the Daily Planet and Superman when he’s saving the world. In a key scene, Superman has a conversation with his girlfriend, the hardboiled reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan). Lois tells Clark he’s not “punk rock.”

“My point is I question everything and everyone,” she says. “You trust everyone and think everyone you’ve ever met is, like, beautiful.” Superman responds, “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.” Superman chooses to portray its title character as someone who values heart over brawn, even though he has superstrength. The film was a hit with critics as well as audiences, earning an 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and widely considered a more winning take on the character than the last iteration, portrayed by Henry Cavill. (Man of Steel from 2012 has a 57% fresh score.)

The summer’s other big superhero offering, Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, also offered up a wholesome (if somewhat boring) narrative about the value of working together as a family in the face of insurmountable odds. It’s a movie where Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) gives birth in space and is ultimately saved by her superpowered newborn, whom she vows to protect at all costs. It made $521 million worldwide. 

Even November’s Predator: Badlands eschewed some of the brutality associated with its bloodthirsty franchise for something sweeter. In Dan Trachtenberg’s film, an outcast Yautja (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) teams with a perky synthetic (Elle Fanning) and learns the value of pursuing teamwork over going it alone. It quickly became the highest grossing Predator film of all time, proving that audiences want their vicious hunters with a little sweetness.  

For years, blockbusters trended toward the gritty or self-important, with the previous iteration of the DC universe falling into the former category and Marvel exemplifying the latter. Now filmmakers are rewriting these stories for an era that has been defined by overwhelmingly grim news. It’s working. 

“I think there is a bolstering of the film and an excitement for the film because of how badly people feel about the world,” Superman’s Gunn told the New York Times. Introducing a softness into long-running franchises is helping studios revitalize their brands. 

Jeff Bock, a senior media analyst at Exhibitor Relations, told Bloomberg in an email that earnestness isn’t entirely a recipe for bankability, but that it’s paid off commercially in some key cases, including Predator: Badlands. “Success seems more likely when earnestness is balanced with crowd-pleasing elements (action, recognizable brand, franchise history) rather than replacing them entirely,” Bock wrote.

The year of earnestness may have found its clearest expression in one of the biggest, wholly original cultural phenomena: KPop Demon Hunters. Netflix’s animated film grew into a massive sensation thanks to its incredibly catchy songs and inspirational message about being true to yourself. The movie was so infectious it became the streaming service’s most watched of all time, and if you know the parent of a young child who demands to keep it on repeat you understand why. 

KPDH also received the rare theatrical release for the company, seemingly seemingly winning a slow weekend at the box office even without the support of a theatrical chain like AMC.

Another massive hit in the children’s entertainment sphere is Zootopia 2, the sequel to the 2016 Disney movie, which grossed over $600 million worldwide in its first two weeks of release. A zany adventure with anthropomorphic animals, it also includes a not-so-thinly veiled message about putting aside prejudice and learning to live with different people in harmony.

Even more serious, adult fare is also operating from a place of optimism. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, about the disillusionment of radical activists, ends with its heroine Willa (Chase Infiniti) choosing to fight for what she believes in, heading off to a protest in the rain. Anderson’s movie is satirical—there’s a white supremacist cult called the Christmas Adventurers—but it’s also, at its core, about a father (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to protect his daughter (Infiniti) and that young woman carrying on her parents’ legacy of trying to make the world a better place. It’s the forerunner for Best Picture at the Oscars. 

Not all these movies are particularly escapist—even Superman, which is blatantly anti-Trump, has real-world themes. And yet they all choose to lead with a tone that some might call heartwarming and others might even call a tad corny. They offer a form of measured escapism, not necessarily a true break from the horrors of our current climate but a reminder that there’s goodness in the universe, at least when it’s fictional. 

And that’s why Avatar is perhaps perfect for this moment. In the latest installment, Cameron introduces a group of vicious Na’vi known as the “ash people.” They’re led by the vengeful Varang (Oona Chaplin), a chieftess who wants to, quite literally, burn Pandora to the ground just for fun. But Fire & Ash rejects this nihilism and returns to the themes Cameron loves: Environmentalism and anti-colonialism. 

He imbues this entry with all of the somewhat goofy traits of the previous ones. There are space whales called Tulkun whose language is subtitled in Papyrus font. There’s a human teen named Spider (Jack Champion) who talks in 1990s slang. And there’s a lot of stuff going on with the magic tendrils that come out of the Na’vi’s braids.

Cameron spins moments of genuinely awe, even if he frustratingly repeats familiar beats of The Way of Water. Still, there’s also something comforting about returning to this land where, inevitably, that blue-tinted spirituality wins over the human military industrial complex.

But maybe we can finally accept that Avatar resonates so globally not just because of its spectacular visuals, but also thanks to its general wholesomeness. The rest of the movies are just catching up to its spirit.  

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