James Cameron's Avatar

[Ben]

Awesome?

This doesn’t look like anything we haven’t seen in the original Avatar or any number of How To Train Your Dragon films and similar in the intervening years…!?

[EricJ]

And James Cameron's NEVER done an underwater picture before!

[ShyViolet]

I saw the original in the theater when it first came out…loved the first half an hour, and then got sooooo bored!!
.

The story had been done about a hundred times before (Dances with Wolves, etc…) and there was NOTHING interesting or unique about any of the “personalities” with the exception of Sigorney Weaver’s character.

A fascinating twist could be the conquering humans wanting to colonize/terraform the planet for the Navi’s “own good”, truly believing this action would help them when it really wouldn’t.

[Ben]

…with the exception of Sigorney Weaver’s character….

…Who got an awfully noticeable collective groan from the audience as soon as she mentioned the tree of life, or whatever it was called. Hmmm…THAT'S gonna come in handy, eh…?

[ShyViolet]

Hmm…true.


What I found ridiculous was dialogue like: “What have you people been smoking???? They’re just god**** TREES!!!”

[gaastra]

[Daniel]

Lots of Cameron staples: sinking ships, mechs, skull-crushing and of course water!

[Ben]

This so wanted to be able to call itself The Shape Of Water, right?

[Bill1978]

Is this getting a 3D release? Are those even a thing anymore? I always got the impression that the first movie was so successful because of the novelty of 3D? Everyone seemed to rave about the 3D experience and not so much the story. If there isn't a 3D release that means the story needs to be a lot more engaging that the first one that's for sure. Not that I will be checking out this movie after the first one bored me and underwhelmed me

[EricJ]

Is this getting a 3D release? Are those even a thing anymore? I always got the impression that the first movie was so successful because of the novelty of 3D? Everyone seemed to rave about the 3D experience and not so much the story.

And because everyone was throwing tantrums over bad Dreamworks movies, the ticket surcharge and "Glasses? Eww, ick! ", James Cameron went on his big idealistic "Directors are artists, and THEY can use 3-D too if they want to!" crusade, that Martin Scorsese and Ang Lee temporarily jumped on.
Even though Avatar's 3-D was pretty much all ooh'ing and ahh'ing over depth effects, and computers hadn't yet gotten the knack for how to make things pop out of the screen, like our 50's and 80's pop mythology wanted them to.

Supposedly (I never saw it in theaters), Jaws--yes, the 70's one, not the 80's 3D one--made a 3D conversion re-issue to theaters last summer, and even I'm not sure why, unless they're making a rally to fill those cineplex screens that have been emptied by lingering Covid fears and studios' current cheapskate mania for taking movies direct to streaming.
I was never crazy about the 10's craze for 3D conversion re-issues (although Monsters Inc. and Wizard of Oz were pretty good), but if it is a thing, sounds like a good one to me.
Except for Avatar, as the 3-D thing seems more like So-10's nostalgia for the first movie by now.

[Ben]

I don’t actually understand the excitement for this new one, third dimension or no, but obviously there’s an appetite for it, going by the "ohmigod the visuals are amazing" comments online, which I also don’t quite understand, as they look…"fine"…? Nothing truly next-level groundbreaking to me. I’ll probably catch this, ironically, on streaming when it hits D+ around next March…

[EricJ]

Also, it's not that I WANT the corny army back, but the plot reminds me of JRR Tolkien's old letter about why he could never write a sequel to LOTR:
With the big threat gone, it would just end up being about how Aragorn becomes king, and has to face war from an enemy country, and it would just turn into one big earthbound, non-magical episode of Game of Thrones. [Not an exact quote.]

Here, we get two hours of Pandorans being Pandorans, and some others that can't get along with them, and there are kids in the story now, and...they swim a lot.
Not what you'd call compelling, unless you want a bigscreen version of that scenic Disney Parks ride.

[Daniel]

Three hours plus!

[Randall]

I'm kinda looking forward to this, though I'm not really a huge fan of the first one. I want to see how it gets moved past being a Dances with Wolves/Pocahontas story into something hopefully fresh and interesting. And I'm sure it will be spectacular to look at.

[Ben]

Which reminds me of those critics' comments during the long run of 1960s epics, many of which ended up being bloated borefests, to which reviews would always praise the scenery…

I’m just wondering which 100 year old movie gets ripped off this time…