That there ARE Avatar fans out there, and that James Cameron is the GOAT.
I don't know for the masses. But I get the feeling people perceive James Cameron movies as must see in the best theater possible.
Personally, I'm certainly no Cameron nor Avatar fan, but I think his films advance the medium in regards to R&D so I think they should be supported with money from the public. Structurally (if you take the special effects away) they're nothing to write home about, but that's only half the history here.
I can see the best movie ever at home and not feel like I'm missing anything, some films are even better that way. But that description doesn't fit a James Cameron movie. My living room TV set is a VT60, direct successor to the Panasonic "VT20-based" tech
used to master and showcase the original Avatar movie, and even then, with a TV objectively better with what was on the cinema in 2009, I can't fathom seeing the original Avatar at home, in a 65" calibrated display, and think I'm having the same experience I did in the cinema.
With stuff like The Hobbit I honestly felt my TV set at home was better than the cinema one. There's just so much ambition that it just transpires that you're looking at it on a small TV, it's not enough.
No offense to Spielberg and Kubrick but they didnt get butt in the seats like Cameron has movie after movie.
Different kind of directors/people. Spielberg and Kubrick are all time greats with a infinite better body of work than Cameron does. Both pushed the medium at times, anytime they needed it, but were otherwise content providing they have the tools they needed. Issue being when they didn't. Kubrick was basically OCD, either with tech or with spending an even bigger shitload of hours cutting video than any other director. Spielberg is not OCD nor as ambitious as James Cameron, but he has great intuition.
Spielberg and Kubrick are also able to look back with fondness of old tech, I don't think Cameron is able to do that for more than anecdotes. I don't think he'd ever shoot analogue again as even going back to the avatar 1 shooting experience would be a massive downgrade for him, dude lives in the future, and he might change the course of the present to get there. Everything up till now was a stepping stone for him. What an animal.