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James Cameron's Avatar & The Way of Water (SPOILERS!)

Gaith

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Okay, now this is funny:

 

Gaith

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Avatar 2 has been pushed back another year, to December 2022. Given that Avatar 2 is the only(?) major film production shooting again, thanks to New Zealand and its relatively virus-free status, there seemed a decent chance it could still make its December 2021 date. Alas...

This means, that, at 13 years, the wait for Avatar 2 will exceed the mere 12-year gap between Terminator 2 and 3! :p
 

TV's Frink

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Someone's still waiting?
 

hothstation

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TVs Frink said:
Someone's still waiting?

Ha! I just saw this movie for the first time a week ago and thought the lack of interest in its sequels speaks volumes.
 

TV's Frink

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hothstation said:
TVs Frink said:
Someone's still waiting?

Ha! I just saw this movie for the first time a week ago and thought the lack of interest in its sequels speaks volumes.

I will still defend this movie despite its many flaws.  It's more a commentary on how long the sequels have been a thing without ever being a thing.
 

hothstation

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TVs Frink said:
hothstation said:
TVs Frink said:
Someone's still waiting?

Ha! I just saw this movie for the first time a week ago and thought the lack of interest in its sequels speaks volumes.

I will still defend this movie despite its many flaws.  It's more a commentary on how long the sequels have been a thing without ever being a thing.

I actually enjoyed it very much... The visuals were stunning, even for an "older" film. It is just odd that there seems to be no real anticipation for more Avatar at this juncture.
 

iridium_ionizer

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hothstation said:
TVs Frink said:
I will still defend this movie despite its many flaws.  It's more a commentary on how long the sequels have been a thing without ever being a thing.

I actually enjoyed it very much... The visuals were stunning, even for an "older" film. It is just odd that there seems to be no real anticipation for more Avatar at this juncture.

I met a young person last year that said she really loved Avatar, but that's just one person. And I assume there were a lot of people that went to the World of Avatar attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom Park (the accountants must have looked at some numbers before building and opening it in 2017). I just don't think that fan base is anywhere near the size of those for Star Wars, Star Trek, or even Doctor Who. 

Yes, there is definitely a dearth of interest by film aficionados and general movie-goers that like the sci-fi and action genres (at least as gauged by people I know and YouTube). I feel that some of this disinterest is due to how the film has been thoroughly deconstructed on the internet. 

I don't feel that its flaws were grave ones. In the 1990's they would have surely been excused or ignored. I didn't notice them in the theater - except for the overly simplified good vs. evil conflict of the humans exploiting Pandora's resources at the expense of the Na'vi. But yeah, there's a whole lot of baggage that the movie brings once you go home and think about it - especially when aided by the detail-oriented internet critics. In a lot of ways the whole outsider becoming the insider (and parallels to Dances with Wolves and Fern Gully) would have been more palatable in the long-term if it was less by the numbers and had more nuance to it. 

Add to that the fact that the 3D trend in theaters and in home TVs has largely dried up and is largely seen in retrospect as a corporate cash grab - although most would agree that James Cameron would be its sincerest proponent. Most were amazed by the advanced 3D images of Avatar in 2009, but tired of the poor post-conversions afterwards that demanded the same inflated ticket. Furthermore, there is a significant (though small) proportion of the population that due to eye-strain or nausea, do not enjoy the experience of even the best produced 3D films - my wife included. 

Personally, I would give Avatar 2 50-50 odds of being a dud vs. rekindling interest. I think James Cameron will try to do something different and compelling - and not just more realistic underwater scenes that utilize a new break-through technology. Anyway even though Avatar 2 just got pushed back due to covid-19 delays, there are some behind the scenes "promotional" news reports that are popping up and we would suspect that Disney will use its full marketing muscle as the release date approaches (December 2022?). We will see.
 

Moe_Syzlak

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I remember the interest in Avatar being more about the experience. It seemed everyone wanted to experience the so-called leap forward in immersive movie theater experience rather than people falling in love with the story or the world of the movie. I just don’t think people are clamoring to see more of the story told. But if Cameron creates something truly new in the theater experience, it could be a similar hit. I’m just not sure what that would be at this point.
 

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iridium_ionizer said:
hothstation said:
TVs Frink said:
I will still defend this movie despite its many flaws.  It's more a commentary on how long the sequels have been a thing without ever being a thing.

I actually enjoyed it very much... The visuals were stunning, even for an "older" film. It is just odd that there seems to be no real anticipation for more Avatar at this juncture.

I met a young person last year that said she really loved Avatar, but that's just one person. And I assume there were a lot of people that went to the World of Avatar attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom Park (the accountants must have looked at some numbers before building and opening it in 2017). I just don't think that fan base is anywhere near the size of those for Star Wars, Star Trek, or even Doctor Who. 

Yes, there is definitely a dearth of interest by film aficionados and general movie-goers that like the sci-fi and action genres (at least as gauged by people I know and YouTube). I feel that some of this disinterest is due to how the film has been thoroughly deconstructed on the internet. 

I don't feel that its flaws were grave ones. In the 1990's they would have surely been excused or ignored. I didn't notice them in the theater - except for the overly simplified good vs. evil conflict of the humans exploiting Pandora's resources at the expense of the Na'vi. But yeah, there's a whole lot of baggage that the movie brings once you go home and think about it - especially when aided by the detail-oriented internet critics. In a lot of ways the whole outsider becoming the insider (and parallels to Dances with Wolves and Fern Gully) would have been more palatable in the long-term if it was less by the numbers and had more nuance to it. 

Add to that the fact that the 3D trend in theaters and in home TVs has largely dried up and is largely seen in retrospect as a corporate cash grab - although most would agree that James Cameron would be its sincerest proponent. Most were amazed by the advanced 3D images of Avatar in 2009, but tired of the poor post-conversions afterwards that demanded the same inflated ticket. Furthermore, there is a significant (though small) proportion of the population that due to eye-strain or nausea, do not enjoy the experience of even the best produced 3D films - my wife included. 

Personally, I would give Avatar 2 50-50 odds of being a dud vs. rekindling interest. I think James Cameron will try to do something different and compelling - and not just more realistic underwater scenes that utilize a new break-through technology. Anyway even though Avatar 2 just got pushed back due to covid-19 delays, there are some behind the scenes "promotional" news reports that are popping up and we would suspect that Disney will use its full marketing muscle as the release date approaches (December 2022?). We will see.

I would concur with your 50/50 prediction on its success; I just do not see the level of engagement for it to be a major blockbuster at this time. That stated, timing is everything and it could have a significant impact if the storyline is compelling.
 

hothstation

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Moe_Syzlak said:
I remember the interest in Avatar being more about the experience. It seemed everyone wanted to experience the so-called leap forward in immersive movie theater experience rather than people falling in love with the story or the world of the movie. I just don’t think people are clamoring to see more of the story told. But if Cameron creates something truly new in the theater experience, it could be a similar hit. I’m just not sure what that would be at this point.

I agree, Moe. I remember the film being a major holiday event and not really challenged by anything at the box office during its window [at least that is from what I can recall 11 years ago]. I am not sure if a new technology will emerge to entice people more to visit a theater, since more people are now acclimated to watching films at home than ever before.
 

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Avatar (2009)
I must have seen this three or four times at the cinema in 3D and on the biggest screens I could find. Then watched it a few more times on blu-ray, to the point where I maybe wore it out because I don't think I've re-watched 'Avatar' in the last 10-years. Since then it seems to have had a few critical maulings and had the "Dances with Smurfs" p*ss takes, so I wasn't sure what to expect on seeing it again. I opted to revisit the nearly 3-hour "Collector's Extended Cut" because if I'm going back to Pandora, I want to see it all!

Well, I loved it all over again. The motion-capture performances still hold up, mostly to the point where your brain just excepts them as flesh and blood 10-ft blue aliens. The wondrous phosphorescent Pandora landscapes and creatures are still magical. All the human battle tech is so cool, including the robot suits, those awesome double-rotor gunships and that colossal helicopter-war-cruiser thing looks truly formidable. The shots of the Na'vi swooping around on the Ikran dragon/butterfly creatures are exhilarating. The imagined world is so vast and rich. One shot really stood out for it's scale, where the Na'vi Ikran riders are looking down from floating mountains, on to the humans in their aircraft miles below, as they in turn look down on the jungle floor miles below them. The mechanics of how the Avatar system works is fascinating, it's advantages, it's drawbacks. I love the scene where the giant Neytiri is cradling the tiny dying human body of Jake, it's a powerful image. When he comes back round they look into each others real eyes for the first time and instead of Neytiri being distracted by seeing his true form, she instantly recognises the same person she loves inside.

Some of the dialogue can be a bit clunky at times, of the "I got this" variety. James Horner's score has some nice moments, the sad brass theme, the dramatic music during the ending battle but it lacks a really memorable main theme to tie everything together. I was imagining how much stronger some of the scenes revealing the wonder of Pandora would work with something on the level of John Williams' 'Jurassic Park', or Horner's own 'Titanic' playing instead. Stephen Lang's merciless Colonel Quaritch has been criticised for being one-dimensional but I think it's because we are setup to expect him and Grace to be the devil and angel on Jake's shoulders. He's initially friendly with Jake, while Jake has an antagonistic relationship with Grace, which is reversed early on. As soon as Jake has his first experience among the Na'vi, there is never any question where his sympathies lie. Almost all the characters except Quaritch change and grow, from a point of distrust and open dislike (the evolving relationship between Jake and Grace is particularly well handled) but he is an unmoveable rock. He's almost a fearless anti-hero, like in the scene where Trudy steals a helicopter and he instantly acts, sucks in a big lung full of air and strides out into the poisonous Pandora atmosphere and tries to shoot her down, before anybody else's brains have even switched on. Or when he's calmly suiting up in the robot armour, while his arm is on fire and the ship he is on is going down, then jumps out and nonchalantly walks out of the fireball. He's one-dimensional but God is he a compelling antagonist.

Now I'm super excited to see James Cameron's forthcoming sequels (pencilled in for December 2022), I want to see more of this amazing world he created.


I'm not sure if this has been upscaled to 4K, or if 'Avatar' has a 4K release somewhere but this scene look stunning. The lighting on Neytiri's face looks so real:


Capturing Avatar (2010)
This feature-length documentary from the 'Avatar' blu-ray is a nice companion piece. It's clear from their enthusiastic faces how passionate Director James Cameron and Producer Jon Landau were about the project. Most of the focus is on the years of preparation and experimentation which was done to take performance capture to the level Cameron needed to translate the full range of his actor's emotions but I'd have liked more about other aspects of the production. For example, it shows very cool behind the scenes footage of them "landing" the full size helicopter props via cranes, with huge wind machines simulating the downwash, in a way that feels very real, even when you can see it's on a green-screen stage but there is nothing on how the team at Weta crafted all these props.

 
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Racerx1969

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Now I'm going to have to pull up my copy of Avatar and re-watch it. I might even charge up the TV's 3D glasses and see if they still work.
 

mnkykungfu

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Avatar (2009)
I opted to revisit the nearly 3-hour "Collector's Extended Cut" because if I'm going back to Pandora, I want to see it all!
I just watched this the one time in the theater... any feelings about how the extra bits improve the film (or don't)?

your brain just excepts them as flesh and blood 10-ft blue aliens.
That's odd to hear.... Avatar has always seemed to me like a poster child for film buffs who complain about CGI ruining live action. CGI Spider-Man, for example, looks real and impressive on the theater screen, but once you watch at home, I can see the criticisms that it looks like a really good video game. For me, Avatar is the same...looked fantastic, but you had to see it in IMAX. I watch those clips you posted and totally get the video game look complaints (even though I personally enjoy it and don't care.)

Stephen Lang's merciless Colonel Quaritch has been criticised for being one-dimensional
The "villain complaint" bandwagon that everyone is on these days is exasperating. I envy these people who have never actually met real-life people who are genuinely pretty one-dimensional and unreasonable and intractable. I grew up in Florida. They exist. I've met tons of guys like the Colonel.
 

TM2YC

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I just watched this the one time in the theater... any feelings about how the extra bits improve the film (or don't)?

There is an extended cut and an extended-extended cut, I watched that latter. There are lots of little additions that just add a bit of extra texture and depth that are highly recommended. The one exception is an extra prologue sequence set on Earth showing Jake's depressed life before he goes into hyper sleep. I don't think that is necessary, if I did an edit that would go, keep the rest.

Avatar has always seemed to me like a poster child for film buffs who complain about CGI ruining live action. CGI Spider-Man, for example...

^ That's the definition of the problem for me. CG Spider-Man (or any superhero, or whatever) is being used when a real actor cannot perform that action due to physics (or just good old laziness on the part of the film-maker), that is why it will always look weird on some level by definition, no matter how much technology you put into it. On Avatar Cameron went to extraordinary lengths to motion capture real human movement for everything he could, to absurd lengths. So he was motion capturing huge crowds, not simply using computer generated crowds, bringing horses into the mo-cap stage, building controlled gimbles for the actors to ride so they'd have to react to change their balance for the dragon flying shots etc. I think he used a phrase like "digital makeup" for the process he wanted, just a layer over a real performance, not "computer generated imagery".

Everyone's perception on this stuff is going to be slightly different but for me bad CGI is usually about physics, believability and movement, rather than texture detail and lighting etc. There is also about 40-minutes of extra deleted scenes on the Avatar blu-ray where it's barely rendered temp shots but they still look compelling and feel real-ish to me because the badly rendered temp models are still moving and acting just like humans.

There is no amount of fiddling with details that is going to sell a shot like this one from Terminator:Genysis:

dcad60ccd27e07952afa0d5414c0676e46147316123d284457d27b2c921e5c86[1].jpg


Compare that to Nolan flipping a truck for real, then using CG to paint out the air rams and stuff.

 
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mnkykungfu

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^Hmmm...sounds like it's almost a mental barrier as much as from eyesight. Like "I know this was not really done, therefore I cannot accept what I'm seeing." CGI actually doesn't bother me much at all, generally speaking, perhaps from years of immersing myself in video games growing up. I have no problem buying into CG characters or a world, same as any other animation. If the physics are well done, so much the better (Spider-Man has used better and better "rag doll" physics ever since the first film, for example) but I don't come to a fantasy movie to see physics perfectly modeled. It just needs to be close enough to suspend my disbelief. I suppose that threshold is different for everyone. Story is what breaks it for me, more than visuals. (So an exaggerated school bus flip is the least of Genisys' problems as far as I was concerned!)
 

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^Hmmm...sounds like it's almost a mental barrier as much as from eyesight. Like "I know this was not really done, therefore I cannot accept what I'm seeing."

No it's not that. I was just illustrating that flipping a truck sized vehicle can be done convincingly in a movie but the physics need to feel right. Other movies have done it and done it in CG I'm sure. I can really spot CG body doubles (and CGI general), it's one of the things I like the least in FX, so my mind is always going "that's real. that's not real. that's real etc" down to the frame when it switches from a double to a real person. So maybe with Avatar where a lot of it is full CG characters, interacting in full CG environments, my eyes aren't being forced to compare reality and unreality.
 
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TM2YC

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Avatar (2009)
I went to the cinema last month to see 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', where the people in the row behind me were chattering excitedly beforehand about seeing it again but when a trailer for 'Avatar: The Way of Water' played they switched to all agreeing with loud sighs how underwhelmed they were with the prospect and how the first 'Avatar' wasn't that good and had only been a hit because of the new 3D fad. Having re-watched 'Avatar' on blu-ray last year, I'd fallen in love with it again, it really holds up, but I worry some people are going to pass on the sequel due to similar cynicism because they are going to approach it with their memory of people's collective memory of the first one, instead of actually reacquainting themselves with it. Then again, it's James Cameron and when are his movies not ginormous box-office hits.

A chance to see 'Avatar' again on the big screen, for a 2-week re-release ahead of the sequel could not be missed by me, but there weren't many others there to see it. According to Wikipedia it's been "remastered in 4K", which I'd hoped meant completely re-rendered from the ground up but no, I think it's just been upscaled, it looks fine though. Last time I watched the extra-extra long cut but this was the shorter (still 2.5-hour) theatrical cut (although it's been pointed out that Cameron has added at least one new line/scene, so this is the 4th cut of the film). It really clips along, the visuals still dazzle and the characters are heroic. A thing that really sets this apart from the movies that have increasingly been made in the last 13-years, is the refreshing total absence of irritating, wise-cracking, Marvel-style humour, peppering the dialogue like buckshot (which I do enjoy in moderation to be fair). The writing is deadly serious, in a good way, it's intelligent blockbuster Sci-Fi with something to actually say to it's audience. The ecological themes have only grown stronger in the last decade. One of the final lines of the voice-over "The aliens went back to their dying world" hits so hard (meaning us the humans). It's a $250m auteur message from one guy, director, producer and co-writer, not a corporate product from a team in a writer's room, trying to please 30 executive producers and the shareholders. Maybe I was in a funny mood but 'Avatar' had me nearly crying at least three times. I don't think I'd noticed before how much the story echoes 'Dune'. James Horner's score isn't up there with his greatest ever achievements but it's still gorgeous. I'm bumping this up from a 4.5, to a full 5-stars. Praise Eywa!


FYI: It's not been advertised as much as you'd think it would be (Googling brings up nothing) but the screenings include a special mid-credits (before the crawl) preview of a full scene from 'Avatar: The Way of Water'. Everybody else in the cinema had walked out 30-seconds before it played, I'd only stayed because I'd read about it beforehand. It looks amazing! and thankfully doesn't give away any plot, maybe a hint as to the nature of one new character. The underwater Navi are going to use sign language and subtitles, cool. I'm fully hyped now.

The IMAX channel has the trailer in 4K:

 
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Moe_Syzlak

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Watched Avatar for the first time in over a decade with the kids. The effects hold up pretty well vs. modern effects. Though I’d say that’s just how little effects have improved. For me the composits and green screen elements very much stand out. Human characters react to things in a way that seems unnatural when in obviously CGI environments. The pure CGI parts, as I said, hold up pretty well. But they still feel not quite right. I suppose that’s why they made Pandora have a little less gravity than Earth. Might be the smartest writing of the movie. Still it’s so much better than the Prequels and at least on par with modern Marvel-esque CGi. I’m hoping the new one resets the bar.

The writing is still pretty bad to me. Scientists don’t behave like scientists and the military and corporates are one dimensional mustache twirlers. I’m not really led to care about Jake at all. He has his Dances with Wolves transformation but, on a personal level, I still don’t really know him or care about him. And whatshisname has never worked for me as a leading man; he just doesn’t have the charisma. And his Captain Willard VO simply doesn’t work and worse seems like lazy writing. The Na’vi are so reductionist Native American stereotypes that it’s cringeworthy. I’m a bleeding heart liberal environmentalist and that’s how I feel. I can’t imagine how anyone outside the choir would feel.

I’m reminded of a songwriting maxim I’ve heard that if you stripped away all the flash and had just a chord progression and a melody would it still hold up. I don’t think this would hold up without the flash. I’m seriously hopeful that more thought went into the writing of the sequels.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the attack on the tree, when the tree comes down all the Na’vi continue to run in a straight line in the direction the tree is coming down instead of, you know, moving sideways out of its path. That was rightfully skewered in Prometheus but I’ve never heard anyone critique it here.
 
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DonkeyKonga

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Watched Avatar for the first time in over a decade with the kids. The effects hold up pretty well vs. modern effects. Though I’d say that’s just how little effects have improved. For me the composits and green screen elements very much stand out. Human characters react to things in a way that seems unnatural when in obviously CGI environments. The pure CGI parts, as I said, hold up pretty well. But they still feel not quite right. I suppose that’s why they made Pandora have a little less gravity than Earth. Might be the smartest writing of the movie. Still it’s so much better than the Prequels and at least on par with modern Marvel-esque CGi. I’m hoping the new one resets the bar.

The writing is still pretty bad to me. Scientists don’t behave like scientists and the military and corporates are one dimensional mustache twirlers. I’m not really led to care about Jake at all. He has his Dances with Wolves transformation but, on a personal level, I still don’t really know him or care about him. And whatshisname has never worked for me as a leading man; he just doesn’t have the charisma. And his Captain Willard VO simply doesn’t work and worse seems like lazy writing. The Na’vi are so reductionist Native American stereotypes that it’s cringeworthy. I’m a bleeding heart liberal environmentalist and that’s how I feel. I can’t imagine how anyone outside the choir would feel.

I’m reminded of a songwriting maxim I’ve heard that if you stripped away all the flash and had just a chord progression and a melody would it still hold up. I don’t think this would hold up without the flash. I’m seriously hopeful that more thought went into the writing of the sequels.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the attack on the tree, when the tree comes down all the Na’vi continue to run in a straight line in the direction the tree is coming down instead of, you know, moving sideways out of its path. That was rightfully skewered in Prometheus but I’ve never heard anyone critique it here.
Yeah my problem with avatar two is that I'm not invested in the story at all. It's just not well written enough. Was it spectacular? Sure.

Will part two be as spectacular as for example.. infinity war? Not by a long shot tbh. I expect it not to so nearly as well as part one.
 
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