Disney+ has let down James Cameron’s Avatar, a part of its streaming content slate.
The streaming service from the House of Mouse, that launched in November 2019 in the US, acquired the bulk of Fox’s film and TV empire assets to carve out a large library in order to up their game in the competitive VOD space.
Cameron’s Avatar franchise was described as the “crown jewels” of the Disney purchase. This record-breaking movie was the highest-grossing film of all time in the global box office, until Avengers: Endgame dethroned it after a re-release. The sequels are expected to perform well, and Disney intends to time their release with the opening of new theme parks, as the company believes Avatar parks can be its answer to the competing Wizarding World franchise at Universal.
Unlike the MCU movies, Avatar has next to no additional features on the streaming service; it simply has two different versions of the film unlike the many different versions that were released on DVD and Blu-Ray — and all of them had a remarkable number of special features.
Fox released a wealth of deleted scenes, motion capture tests, documentaries, interviews, and effects reels. Every stage of production was documented, and yet none of this content is represented on Disney+.
Avatar made history with its innovation of 3D technology, with James Cameron advancing the science of film-making by leaps and bounds, and thus it deserves more. Furthermore, Avatar‘s environmentalist message is all the more relevant today, and that message was stressed in several of the features currently missing on Disney’s streaming service.
A Message From Pandora, a special feature produced by Cameron about the battle to stop the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu river, is particularly important — and fits with the kinds of environmentalist content seen on Disney+’s National Geographic shows.
Hopefully Disney will soon choose to add all this additional content related to Avatar on Disney+.
