POP CULTURE

from Breeze #170 - The Teamwork Issue

RANTS & RAVES

billion dollars! Can you imagine how many generations of your family that can feed? Well, that’s how much money that was approximately made from two blockbuster movies in this century. If you’re still not following, I’m talking about the Avatar movie franchise. The blue aliens that is, not the bald kid saving the world.

Avatar’s plot centres around a “colonisation” plot, where humans intend to colonise an alien planet for its resources. The protagonist, Jake, through some future technology, was ordered to trick and befriend the Na’vi, 10-foot tall intelligent lifeforms that inhabit the planet. Upon learning the Na’vi culture and being accepted as part of the community, Jake backtracks on his orders and helps the Na’vi defend their home. At least that’s the gist of it. The sequel continues with this plotline, having 16 years pass and the audience introduced to a new community of Na’vi that live near the coast.

So, what’s so special about this movie series? Well, the first one that premiered in 2009 actually broke the record for highest grossing movie of all time, twice, with 2.789 billion dollars in 2010 and in 2019 when it was re-released to reclaim its title from Avengers: Endgame, grossing over 2.9 billion dollars. It’s also the highest grossing 3D film, fastest to gross 1 billion dollars, and the first to ever to gross 2 billion dollars. Its sequel didn’t do too bad either, also crossing the 2 billion dollar threshold.

These movies spawned and popularised the use of high quality CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). It’s not to say that movies prior to Avatar didn’t utilise the technology, but not many directors and audience members were convinced that CGI was the way to go. Either being too expensive and too complicated of a process, or not being high quality enough to pass as “real life”, that’s why many passed on making and watching CGI movies. Some were even mocked for the poor use of CGI, think The Mummy Returns’ rendition of Dwayne Johnson’s Scorpion King. Well, after seeing the potential and even success of Avatar, people were finally convinced. These days, it’s harder to find blockbuster hits that haven’t implemented any sort of CGI.

You see, Avatar wasn’t only a popular movie that sold a lot, it also influenced the film making culture as well. While many still see it as just another movie, we can’t deny that Avatar has certainly helped change the landscape of movies as a whole.

by Noel Jinguli Image | Various Sources

Our Profile

Loleypop was born and raised in Kota Marudu, early 2021. We got our small business name by combining my name ‘Loley’ and my partner’s name ‘Pop’ together. With ample free time and lots of inspiration from TikTok cra videos, the idea of Loleypop came to us during the pandemic. During pandemic, we kept running into the same problem which we couldn’t nd our face mask so we made mask chains from beads. As it turned out, we weren’t the only one who was hopelessly losing our mask. People kept asking me if they could purchase these chains from us once we started posting them. We created an account on social media so that more people can reach us and sell them for real. Later, we added another product which is resin art and gemstone bracelets. We take custom orders of resin coasters, resin oral pendants,resin keychains and our customers can choose their own blend of crystal healing gemstones.

Seeing strangers buy our designs and post pictures smiling brought me great joy. Selling our rst piece was exhilarating. It proved to me that there were people out there who appreciated labor, cra , and the love that goes into these products. While we plan to keep cra ing for the rest of our life, we consider it a side hustle. Having something that we could make and feel satisfaction with was wonderful and a rming. It’s become a really therapeutic outlet that’s also creatively ful lling for us during pandemic until today.