I don't know about that. It did have influence on other blockbusters since then, it can be easily seen in films like Doctor Strange or Days of Future Past, not to mention the word "inception" (or "somethingception") itself seems to have entered everyday language. It's a much, much better and more original movie than any of the others you mentioned, and I don't think it's going to be forgotten as easily, at least among the scifi crowd.

Tell that to Disney, who just spent a boatload of money to add a whole Avatar section to Animal Kingdom.

Avatar land is opening in Disney, so I'm sure we'll see a sequel or ten.

It's not the trope, it's the actual actor. She's insanely popular. Check out her Twitter. Etc.

I think I am understanding better what you are getting at, though. But I would approach it from a different angle.

Several years ago, I was at a talk, and the speaker used a scene from The Godfather as an enlightening example. As soon as he finished his thought, he paused, and looked around the room at the ~300 audience members. He asked, "Show of hands - who here has not seen The Godfather?" More than 50% of the audience raised their hands.

From the beginning of recorded media through sometime in the mid-80s (maybe a little later than that), the cultural experience in America was pretty monolithic. Everybody saw The Godfather. And there weren't so many films out at the theater to crowd it out. E.T. was number one at the box office for more weeks than any blockbuster is now -- including Avatar. Because there were less movies, less releases. Everybody saw E.T.

Now - and mainly due to the internet, there is so much entertainment being produced, no one could possibly consume all of it - or even all of the most popular stuff.

There is no more monolithic experience of culture. (I think culture is too big a term to use just for the arts, but that's another discussion.) So, as mind-bogglingly popular as NCIS is, it is remarkably easy to live your life without ever bumping into it. Same with Avatar - which I never saw.

It is also much easier to get immersed into online bubbles that exist around your paricular tastes. In 1972, you saw The Godfather, because there wasn't much else to do. Over the six months it was at the theater, you were probably going to end up going to see it at least once. Now, I go to my computer daily to immerse myself in the arts I am interested in - RPGs, hurdy gurdy music, fairy tales, etc. And, to my amazement, find I have missed out on more than 10 Marvel comic movies. I mean, I saw the first X-Men movie and then nothing. I take a flight on a plane that is showing the latest X-Men movie, and I realize I have missed nearly a dozen relevant movies in between! Astounding!

So, I agree with you that it is quite amazing that something like Avatar can be so popular and then so quickly become irrelevant. But perhaps we disagree on why that might seem to be true.

Cheers!

Interesting topic, one doesnt think much of cultural impact of recent trends but now that you said it, for ex. Avatar, cant recall how many times I see it listed on Netfix or shown on TV, I always pass on it even though I enjoyed the movie when it came out. Havent watch GoT, missed that whole phenomena and will prob catch up one year. You always have to keep in mind what is part of ones cultural impact may have nothing to do with anothers. Take game history, without a doubt not one of my family or friends has any clue about some of my most important gaming cultural heritage lol or for me the whole Harry Potter thing passed me by, though I enjoyed the books. same with Star Wars



on a side note, never got into the NCIS, as one involved in many types of scientific testing and lab procedures I always thought it was a bit shite and very hollywood.

there seems to be a direct correlation between modern cultural icons and marketing rights/strategies.

A Polish philosopher once said that "culture can be >popular<, art- never" (or something to that effect).

But more on topic- I think you're making a very good point. I mean, of course it wasn't entirely monolithic, there were always some things not everybody saw, but there was enought time for them be processed and sort of assimilated into popular consciousness by something I like to call "cultural osmosis", so you could expect almost everybody to get a refrence to let's say Star Trek even if they are not fans. That osmosis still happens, in a way it's greatly helped by the internet, but on the other hand like you said there are so many new things, and most of them only last for a relatively short while, that they don't get so strongly integrated into that popular consciousness.

Another point to consider is that not only there are more movies, games etc. then ever being released, but also that every generation is born with a larger "backlog" than the last. To all the new stuff coming out you have to add what came before. Not all of it are classics that must be known, but there's still a lot. And even the things that don't enjoy the status of a classic one "must" know are often well worth watching/reading/playing so the overall amount of titles to familiarise oneself with is staggering.

There's a sizable audience in the U.S. for British TV. My mom's second favorite show is Doc Martin (her favorite is NCIS :p ).
The expansion of cable and satellite TV, also, I think. I remember growing up (1980s), you still saw movies as old as 1930s classics playing in regular rotation on the few TV networks we had. Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Universal and Hammer horror, etc. Also a lot of old TV shows in reruns - Star Trek, Mary Tyler Moore, I Love Lucy, etc. So everyone had the same cultural touchstones - we'd all seen pretty much the same stuff, or at least some of it. I remember around the late 80s and definitely in the 90s, virtually all of that was completely swept away in favor of NEWNEWNEW. If the old stuff persisted at all, it was kept in "ghettos" like specific cable channels devoted only to classic content. It became much easier to bypass and so the younger generations coming up basically just never saw any of that stuff unless they deliberately sought it out, which pretty much meant it never got seen :) And of course, as you say, now there's so much stuff that everyone has just sort of spun off into their own particular worlds and they need not ever come back out.

And here I thought you were an expat typing in Cockney the entire time.

A little OT here, sorry, but whenever someone describes London I direct them to this song which was written about landing there and is pretty much a word for word description of what the songwriter was looking at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoSwOrytf_M

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Wow, that's a terrible opinion.. comparing the Nth average "police" procedural to one of the best fantasy series created so far..

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Hehe, innocent foxes shoudn't watch scary thangs :P

Huh. Who knew Doc Martin was such a big hit internationally...

With the American's penchant for remaking English programs in American settings I always assume people just don't get / watch British stuff much (other than the biggies like Doctor Who or Sherlock)

Doc Martin is particularly hilarious though.


Edit: And on Game of Thrones... I can't stand the books or what little I've seen of the show. Most over hype load of trash ever written.