After holding the box office record for highest grossing movie of all time with Titanic for over ten years, per Collider, director James Cameron smashed his own in record in 2009 with the release of his pièce de resistance: Avatar. The movie has since gone onto gross a staggering $2.924 billion worldwide, still holding the crown as the highest earner. That could all change, however, as, after 19 years of waiting, the highly anticipated sequel Avatar: The Way of Water is set for release later this year.
Avatar was an epic sci-fi fantasy film that follows a group of humans as they infiltrate the lush alien world of Pandora in order to mine it for resources. In the process, one of the lead men of the operation falls for one of the Pandora natives and begins to realize the damage he and his team could potentially cause to the indigenous environment and its wildlife inhabitants. The movie’s stunning cinematography and use of cutting-edge visual effects and CGI were unlike anything audiences had seen before, making for perhaps the most visually immersive movie experience of all time.
While you patiently wait for the release of Avatar 2, we have compiled a list below of films to watch in the meantime. The films will share a similar tone or plot beats to Avatar and / or its fantastic and impressive visual flair and sense of immersion.
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6 Blade Runner 2049
Warner Bros. Pictures
Back in 1982 director Ridley Scott changed the world of sci-fi forever with his epic dystopian masterpiece Blade Runner. Compared to science fiction of the past, Blade Runner has a slower pace and less action and more of a neo noire feel with more focus on world building and character development. At the time of its release, critics and audience’s opinions were divided, but it has since gone on to amass a large cult following and is widely considered one for the most influential films of its genre. Three decades later, Blade Runner 2049 hit the screen, once again dividing opinions. Fans of Avatar, however, will most certainly be impressed with the movie’s spectacular visual effects, detailed world building, social commentary, and exploration of similar moral themes. While it failed to ignite the box office in the way Cameron’s movie did, Blade Runner 2049’s 3D IMAX run was considered particularly successful.
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5 Elysium
Sony Pictures Releasing
Following the success of Neil Blomkamp’s independent political sci-fi thriller District 9, he soon found himself one of the industry’s most sought-after directors. For his next project, Elysium, starring Matt Damon, he was given a hefty budget of around $100 million to play with. The result was a visually stunning action-adventure sci fi-romp that, like Avatar, deals with a number of important political and sociological issues. And like Avatar and Blade Runner 2049, this beautiful movie is best experienced in a state-of-the-art IMAX theater. The film also juxtaposes a ravaged earth with a more idyllic existence; in this case, instead of Pandora, there is a luxurious artificial world called Elysium.
4 Titanic
Paramount Pictures
Unlike other titles included within this list, Titanic’s premise bears little resemblance to that of Avatar. However, having been directed by Cameron, Titanic perfectly demonstrates what it is that makes him so special. Not only does the film utilize the most cutting-edge technology and CGI available at the time, it also perfectly demonstrates Cameron’s ability to fully immerse the audience in the movie experience. Rarely does one leave a movie feeling as involved in the on-screen activity as they do with a James Cameron movie, and thanks to exquisite cinematography and sound design, Titanic exemplifies this perfectly. The movie broke countless records and remained the highest-grossing film of all time until it was overtaken by Avatar itself a full decade later.
3 Pocahontas
Disney
If it’s the storyline of Avatar you find most enjoyable, it might be worth trying out Walt Disney’s 1995 animated classic Pocahontas. In fact, the similarities between the two are so striking that some have gone as far as to call Cameron’s movie a rip-off (via Huffington Post). Despite different settings, both movies are about a group of foreign settlers arriving in a new land to mine it for resources whilst facing conflict with the natives. On top of that, both stories have a subplot that involves a settler and a native secretly falling for each other while the native is set to marry a native warrior whom she does not desire. The two films also share a number of fantastical elements, too, like a magical tree that provides guidance to the natives. Pocahontas, which itself is loosely based on real-life historical events, was a big hit for Disney at the time and was particularly praised for its animation and soundtrack so if you’re looking for a similar storyline, but delivered in a more Disney-esque manner, Pocahontas may be the movie for you.
2 Ready Player One
On the flipside of Pocahontas, if it was more the cutting-edge visual effects and audience immersion that impressed you most about Avatar, Ready Player One might be the movie for you. Based on Ernest Cline’s novel of the same name, this Steven Spielberg-directed movie set in 2045, follows a teenage orphan who, like most of the population uses virtual reality to escape everyday life, finds himself in a high-stakes virtual competition whose outcome could affect the entire world. The movie was praised for its cinematography and special effects, winning awards from the Visual Effects Society for Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature and Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project.
1 Ferngully: The Last Rainforest
20th Century Fox
Like Disney’s Pocahontas the 1992 animated feature Ferngully: The Last Rainforest shares numerous narrative aspects with Avatar, although it was not as widely successful. Ferngully tells the story of a forest logger who is magically shrunken down to size, and he discovers the devastating effect his logging efforts are having on the environment, wildlife, and a group of fairies that also inhabit the area. Like in Avatar, the outsider falls in love with a native and begins to see the error of his ways. Many similar themes are explored, especially regarding environmental issues and technology. Ferngully is somewhat of a hidden gem that was praised by critics for its humor and outstanding voice cast, which includes Tim Curry, Christian Slater, Robin Williams, and Cheech and Chong.
