Avatar: Way of Water - teaser trailer

Brian G Turner said:
I have to admit I'm surprised by all the hate Avatar gets, but I guess it's a victim of its own success and hype. :)
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The evil mining company from Earth is searching for a substance they call Unobtainium which can only be found beneath a sacred tree . Yeah , not very good writing.:)
 
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BAYLOR said:
The evil mining company from Earth is searching for a substance they call Unobtainium which can only be found beneath a sacred tree . Yeah , not very good writing.:)
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Mining companies destroying sacred grounds has been going on for at least a couple of centuries - and is still happening, even today. And scientists (and SF writers!) often given novel substances strange or silly names. What's worse is when they use actual scientific terms in a random and completely meaningless way, like the Star Trek franchise.

But as a film, Avatar was visually unique, and there are very, very few SF films that can claim that accolade. Only Star Wars and The Matrix come to mind. And by the looks of it, the sequel is aiming to do the same again.
 
It sometimes seems to me that people activate their critical faculties far more in regard to Avatar than most other films. The Marvel films seem like a non-stop list of ridiculous nonsense to me, some of it enjoyable, but hardly anyone seems to care. Yes, Avatar is full of silly names, stock characters, crude exposition and all the rest of it, but are do many other films. I suspect that Avatar's real mistake is that it does all this stuff straight-faced, instead of winking to the camera or including a jester-type character (like the Joker) to make fun of it.
 
Brian G Turner said:
Mining companies destroying sacred grounds has been going on for at least a couple of centuries - and is still happening, even today. And scientists (and SF writers!) often given novel substances strange or silly names. What's worse is when they use actual scientific terms in a random and completely meaningless way, like the Star Trek franchise.

But as a film, Avatar was visually unique, and there are very, very few SF films that can claim that accolade. Only Star Wars and The Matrix come to mind. And by the looks of it, the sequel is aiming to do the same again.
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If Avatar's film story had been as impressive as the visuals, this would be great film and a classic. Sadly , it's neither of those things and never will be .

I see nothing in the trailer of this new film that makes me want go out and see it.
 
Toby Frost said:
It sometimes seems to me that people activate their critical faculties far more in regard to Avatar than most other films. The Marvel films seem like a non-stop list of ridiculous nonsense to me, some of it enjoyable, but hardly anyone seems to care. Yes, Avatar is full of silly names, stock characters, crude exposition and all the rest of it, but are do many other films. I suspect that Avatar's real mistake is that it does all this stuff straight-faced, instead of winking to the camera or including a jester-type character (like the Joker) to make fun of it.
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The last marvel film I saw was The Winter Soldier. I haven't gone to see a marvel film at the cinemas since.
 
Not seen it [I can't do the 3D glasses thing] but I did read that James Cameron says it needs to make $2B+ just to break even...
 
Avatar did manage to do something close to what Star Wars did-create a convincing sense of an alien world-no small achievement-BUT Star Wars did that on a smaller budget and had a more compelling story and cast. It had more legs than Avatar.
Avatar is not aimed at the same audience that Star Wars was either. Star Wars was aimed mainly at North America and maybe western Europe (thus they always had to throw a bone to the Uk and give them some employment--that's why you see so many of them in Hollywood blockbusters--Robert Shaw in Jaws, Guinness and Cushing in Star Wars, Pleasence in Halloween..).
Now their audience is the globe. India, China, Sandwich Islands...

There is the old notion that you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time.
This is the philosophy in practice now--not trying to please specific audiences, but give a little message for everyone. If it is even that coherent and I have my doubts because I have not seen 8-foot blue alien cat people standing in line at the theater for this.
 
Harpo said:
Only five films have ever made that much, what did he do that costs so much?
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There were no details but I'm guessing that the looong production time, filming 2 and 3 back to back and the general state of Hollywood accounting. This all means that if it is NOT a Block-Buster of a hit the studio will find a a way to make it a failure for Tax purposes [a Studio did can Batgirl after spending $90m on it because they didn't think it would make enough money back and they could write off the film as a tax-loss.].
Maybe it the $2N+ is a break point for the Studios. If Avatar 2 & 3 make $2B+ they'll agree to Avatar 4 & 5 getting the go ahead.
But I'm guessing.
Anyway A:2 is at $1.4B after about 3 weeks on release so it should hit the $2B mark.
 
Well, I finally watched this. While it had stunning visuals, as expected, I can't say I really enjoyed it.

A big problem is that they focused so much on the visuals they kind of forgot to make the story so strong, so there are some pretty bad plot holes and inconsistencies shoe-horned in there to justify stuff. Even still, for the first half of this 3 hour film it was reasonably enjoyable.

But the second half focuses on whale hunting by proxy with a graphic and upsetting chase and kill sequence of one of Pandora's whale-like creatures, only to be followed by the wholesale slaughter of every human involved in that chase. sure, mark out the bad guys and get rid, but I felt like I was supposed to enjoy a revenge porn massacre - I didn't.

The film also doesn't really end with a sense of completion, but instead as just an "end of part 1".

I'm still interested in watching the third film in this series, but I'm not sure I'd want to re-watch the second, certainly not all the way through.
 
Brian G Turner said:
Well, I finally watched this. While it had stunning visuals, as expected, I can't say I really enjoyed it.

A big problem is that they focused so much on the visuals they kind of forgot to make the story so strong, so there are some pretty bad plot holes and inconsistencies shoe-horned in there to justify stuff. Even still, for the first half of this 3 hour film it was reasonably enjoyable.

But the second half focuses on whale hunting by proxy with a graphic and upsetting chase and kill sequence of one of Pandora's whale-like creatures, only to be followed by the wholesale slaughter of every human involved in that chase. sure, mark out the bad guys and get rid, but I felt like I was supposed to enjoy a revenge porn massacre - I didn't.

The film also doesn't really end with a sense of completion, but instead as just an "end of part 1".

I'm still interested in watching the third film in this series, but I'm not sure I'd want to re-watch the second, certainly not all the way through.
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Avatar is all about the visuals.
 
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