Avatar 2: The Way of Water

[Heartofice]

Newt and Hicks dying in Alien 3 was a soul crushing experience for me when that movie came out. I’d been looking forward to it for years and then to find out they weren’t really going to bother continuing that story at all was just so sad. 
 

The movie isn’t that bad if you separate it out from what came before, but the expectations I had going in were very high and it really was a let down

[sifth]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Newt and Hicks dying in Alien 3 was a soul crushing experience for me when that movie came out. I’d been looking forward to it for years and then to find out they weren’t really going to bother continuing that story at all was just so sad. 
 

The movie isn’t that bad if you separate it out from what came before, but the expectations I had going in were very high and it really was a let down

It broke my heart as well. All that effort to save Newt in the second film and they throw it away within seconds of the third film. I have no idea what they were thinking.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

6 hours ago, RumHam said:

I mean do you think he would have been ok with killing Newt on screen? Cause I'll take the off-screen death thanks.

I was referring to a classmate and I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. 

6 hours ago, RumHam said:

If you want the characters to have a happy ending, you shouldn't make another horror sequel about them!

Who says they wanted the characters to have a happy ending?

[sifth]

33 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I was referring to a classmate and I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. 

Who says they wanted the characters to have a happy ending?

I mean on another front the production troubles Alien 3 had, I'm sure contributed to the film turning out the way it did. The whole film was suppose to take place on a monastery and not a prison at first.  Which explains why the prisoners in the film act the way they do.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

I mean on another front the production troubles Alien 3 had, I'm sure contributed to the film turning out the way it did. The whole film was suppose to take place on a monastery and not a prison at first.  Which explains why the prisoners in the film act the way they do.

This was Fincher's first feature film and I'm sure it took years off his life. He has since disowned it, refusing to have anything to do with the extended cut or even talking about it in interviews. I'm pretty sure he never worked with those producers again and only rarely worked with 20th Century Fox.

It was actually supposed to be an orbiting monistary made of wood! which would have been cool but I liked the prison setting. It was an interesting bit of world building to fill out this universe that's controlled by "The Company". But yeah the shooting script was definitely choppy. 

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I was referring to a classmate and I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. 

Who says they wanted the characters to have a happy ending?

I know, I'm just being a wise ass. Who wouldn't want them to have a happy ending? At least Jonsey the cat got to stay on earth.

10 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

It was actually supposed to be an orbiting monistary made of wood! which would have been cool but I liked the prison setting. It was an interesting bit of world building to fill out this universe that's controlled by "The Company". But yeah the shooting script was definitely choppy. 

Personally I hate the prison setting, and the color palette of the movie.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 5/9/2022 at 1:11 PM, Werthead said:

By every metric this film should not do as well as the first, but the Cameron factor is so huge you can't write it off.

Y'know, I've been thinking about this and I'm not so sure. The reason: China. And to a lesser extent, India.

When Avatar came out, the market for American films in China was still developing. It did $200 million there on its initial release. That was pretty impressive at the time but barely keeps it in the top 10 today. The current leader in terms of foreign films in China is Avengers endgame with $629 million. If Avatar 2 can approach that, and not lose too much domestically, I think it could exceed the first film. That's not even considering ticket price inflation since 2009.

It's also worth noting that Avatar was re-released in China in 2021, during the Pandemic, and it did $58 million. I don't know how broad the release was or how much it was promoted. 

I'm calling it now: Avatar 2 will cross $3.0 billion at the box office. 

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

Personally I hate the prison setting, and the color palette of the movie.

Alien Resurrection was worse. Way too much slime on the aliens and everything was brown. The eggs looked like giant turds. The previous aliens also had cool hands. The hands in Resurrection were crap.  

[Heartofice]

11 hours ago, sifth said:

It broke my heart as well. All that effort to save Newt in the second film and they throw it away within seconds of the third film. I have no idea what they were thinking.

I think me and my mate at school had spent many days talking about all the cool things that could happen in an Alien 3 movie. How Ripley, Hicks and Newt get back to earth but there is an invasion of Xenomorphs.. point being that you expand the scale even more than Aliens. That was the dream for a 15 year old me. I think the Aliens vs Predator movies has made me realise it probably wasn't a great idea. But who knows.

But seeing the end product of Aliens 3 was so shocking, it really opened my eyes to the facts that the movie making industry quite often gets it completely wrong, and you don't always get what you want. I became very cynical about movies after that.
 

7 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I'm calling it now: Avatar 2 will cross $3.0 billion at the box office. 

Possibly. But I think it really depends on the 3D angle. The movie is pointless without 3D, so will all theatres be able to show the movie in 3D? Will any new technology be needed? Is the old stuff and crappy glasses (which are a real downside for people watching 3D) be enough?

[Werthead]

On 5/14/2022 at 9:20 PM, DMC said:

I don't think it's that upsetting and I'm a huge T2 fan...

  Reveal hidden contents

Sarah Connor Chronicles - easily the best Terminator-related thing to come out since T2 - would have explored a future without John Connor if it had gotten a third season.

ETA:  Ultimately anything that comes out after T2 timeline-wise would "cheapen" it because Sarah's entire purpose in Act 3 was to stop Skynet for good.

This is a key point, that Terminator has a very limited premise, and Cameron did superbly to get two great movies out of it. Pushing it further is simply pointless because the good stories have been told.

The only further story you could really tell is what John Connor does in the future to save humanity, which they nodded at with Salvation but then didn't really do anything interesting with it.

There are some franchises which you can mine for hundreds of good stories. I don't think Terminator is one.

On 5/15/2022 at 6:45 AM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

ETA: if the Terminator was successful in killing Sarah Connor, would Skynet be erasing itself from the future? Wrap you brain around that. 

I have seen some people suggesting that the overwhelming superiority of the Terminators makes anyone beating them highly implausible, therefore it's fate itself allowing Sarah to win because, if it doesn't, the timeline basically unravels.

Or we could just conclude that they're movies and need some kind of positive outcome, I dunno.

12 hours ago, sifth said:

It broke my heart as well. All that effort to save Newt in the second film and they throw it away within seconds of the third film. I have no idea what they were thinking.

I suspect they were thinking they didn't want to recast Newt and the actress was now six years older than she was in Aliens, so they couldn't use her.

Of course, they could overcome that by just starting the film a few years later, or not using Newt at all and saying she's off happy somewhere with relatives. The comics and novels even had Newt coming back as a twenty-something and getting involved (with Hicks) in the events of the xenos being unleashed on Earth, and she uses her skills learned from Ripley to survive (and Ripley herself shows up later on).

Alien 3 boxed itself in by deciding to go smaller than Aliens and doing another horror story rather than a war story, but they ended up being too close to the original Alien, which we'd already seen.

Aliens isn't necessarily as limited a premise as Terminator, but again it feels like there are limits to what you can do with the story. That's the complaint Ridley Scott made when he made Prometheus, that the xeno had become too familiar and "worn out" as a threat, which is why he threw all the rules in the air and created new creatures. I get the impression the studio forced him to tie in Covenant much more to the traditional xenos and Scott was irritated by that.

[Veltigar]

On 5/14/2022 at 2:54 PM, Werthead said:

  Reveal hidden contents

They kill off John Connor in the opening minutes of the film.

 

Thanks for the info. I'm one of the few people who didn't really like T2 all that much, but even to my black heart this plot twist does not appeal  

Edited May 16, 2022 by Veltigar

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

This is a key point, that Terminator has a very limited premise, and Cameron did superbly to get two great movies out of it. Pushing it further is simply pointless because the good stories have been told.

The only further story you could really tell is what John Connor does in the future to save humanity, which they nodded at with Salvation but then didn't really do anything interesting with it.

There are some franchises which you can mine for hundreds of good stories. I don't think Terminator is one.

I think you can push the boundary of what makes a Terminator movie. One of the reasons I was initially kind of disappointed when Terminator 2 came out (and I still argue that it's worse than 1) is that it's rehashing the concept of the first movie (terminator comes back in time to kill a Connor) rather than expanding on the universe that was set up in the first movie. I always wanted to see the future world that was teased in 1, with skull crushing terminators and massive gunships. It's just unfortunate that when I did get that, it was Terminator Salvation and it was shit.

Either way, the real limiting factor for the terminator franchise is that its been terrified to move away from centring the whole story on Sarah and John Connor. It misses the point of what is interesting about the universe and the story. There is a lot of potential in the universe that will never be realised because producers assume we all just want to see the same chase sequence over and over again.

 

[Myrddin]

So, two favorite Cameron movies were followed up with subpar sequels that immediately killed off main character(s) from previous...

Bye Sully!

 

_{(Joking. Yes, I realize Cameron didn't direct the sequels.)} 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think you can push the boundary of what makes a Terminator movie. One of the reasons I was initially kind of disappointed when Terminator 2 came out (and I still argue that it's worse than 1) is that it's rehashing the concept of the first movie (terminator comes back in time to kill a Connor) rather than expanding on the universe that was set up in the first movie. I always wanted to see the future world that was teased in 1, with skull crushing terminators and massive gunships. It's just unfortunate that when I did get that, it was Terminator Salvation and it was shit.

Either way, the real limiting factor for the terminator franchise is that its been terrified to move away from centring the whole story on Sarah and John Connor. It misses the point of what is interesting about the universe and the story. There is a lot of potential in the universe that will never be realised because producers assume we all just want to see the same chase sequence over and over again.

 

There was an interesting Terminator comic that was set in Russia and had the Russian version of Skynet… working against Skynet (while working to kill off humans too) and with Russian Spetsnaz as the main protagonists.  It really wasn’t bad.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Calibandar]

Gotta say I really like the music in the teaser. If the film is full of that stuff...yummm

 

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is a key point, that Terminator has a very limited premise, and Cameron did superbly to get two great movies out of it. Pushing it further is simply pointless because the good stories have been told.

The only further story you could really tell is what John Connor does in the future to save humanity, which they nodded at with Salvation but then didn't really do anything interesting with it.

 

I'm not sure I would say it has a very limited premise but I definitely agree that the story everybody wants to see is the story they for whatever reason arent really showing, and thats John Connor in the future. At least in the movie universe. Honestly the stuff set there in Terminator: Salvation was excellent but there wasnt much of it, and Bale was perfect casting for an adult John Connor. That movie wasnt quite what I and I guess many expected overall, but still so much better than Genesys and Dark Fate.

Its clear that what the audience wants to see is more John Connor and more Terminators of varying types, definitely including the T800. The war in the future. You would think everybody with an ounce of sense could see that the target demographic of Terminator movies are peoplw who are not really looking forward to what we saw in Dark Fate.

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

Aliens isn't necessarily as limited a premise as Terminator, but again it feels like there are limits to what you can do with the story. That's the complaint Ridley Scott made when he made Prometheus, that the xeno had become too familiar and "worn out" as a threat, which is why he threw all the rules in the air and created new creatures. I get the impression the studio forced him to tie in Covenant much more to the traditional xenos and Scott was irritated by that.

I do think they struggled to see where to go with more Alien films but overall Scott did a decent job in both of them. Not great films indeed, but quite passable. It did at least generate what I consider to be a real standout scene where the alien takes on the Engineer, very memorable. Prometheus was the better of the 2 films.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Calibandar said:

I'm not sure I would say it has a very limited premise but I definitely agree that the story everybody wants to see is the story they for whatever reason arent really showing, and thats John Connor in the future. At least in the movie universe. Honestly the stuff set there in Terminator: Salvation was excellent but there wasnt much of it, and Bale was perfect casting for an adult John Connor. That movie wasnt quite what I and I guess many expected overall, but still so much better than Genesys and Dark Fate.

Its clear that what the audience wants to see is more John Connor and more Terminators of varying types, definitely including the T800. The war in the future. You would think everybody with an ounce of sense could see that the target demographic of Terminator movies are peoplw who are not really looking forward to what we saw in Dark Fate

I thought it was just me, but yeah, that is exactly the movie I was hoping for. I do think that Hollywood tends to be very risk averse and so is not interested in telling a long form story, but in recreating what worked before. What worked before was 2 movies about a robot going back in time to kill someone, and having people run away from that robot. Why break that formula? 

[sifth]

I honestly think Terminator had the perfect set up for a sequel and that was showing us the war in the future and ending the movie with John Connor sending his father to the past. It would have basically been showing the other half of the circle.

On a different note, I heard somewhere that a lot of the ideas James Cameron used in T2, were things he wanted to put in the original film, but couldn't because of budgetary reasons and time. One example was bring down the company that makes Skynet, I recall. 

[Calibandar]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Either way, the real limiting factor for the terminator franchise is that its been terrified to move away from centring the whole story on Sarah and John Connor. It misses the point of what is interesting about the universe and the story. There is a lot of potential in the universe that will never be realised because producers assume we all just want to see the same chase sequence over and over again.

 

I guess the thing, you can make a really good movie with Sarah and John together when John was young, and that was made, and its T2. 

So IMO you are left with showing us the future war, which they know is what the fans want to see, which is why we see some of it in Salvation and Genesys. 

Its a shame nothing seems to be in development now for this franchise.

[DMC]

I think TSCC did a very good job of wordbuilding/potentially expanding the universe -- that's exactly why I liked it so much. 

For instance, one episode revolves around Cameron (the good cyborg sent back to protect John) spending her nights at the library and eventually tracking down and killing a terminator sent back to assassinate a certain politician.  Other episodes show the gang protecting a nuclear power plant that will be vital in the future war, preventing the machines from stealing and storing a bunch of coltan which the machines will use to build the terminators (and then sinking it), and protecting a pregnant mother whose baby ends up providing an immunity to a virus skynet spreads in the future.

What I found most appealing about the show is the introduction of the idea that there are machines that want to resist Skynet and cooperate with humans (this is also what I find most interesting about the Matrix universe).  This is explored in the second season with a cyborg from the future (played by Shirley Manson) coming back to build an AI to counter Skynet and asking John "will you join us?"

I think this issue with further content in the Terminator universe ultimately comes down to what kind of time travel rules are we applying?  Is it that there is only one future/timeline - so Kyle always comes back to father John and Robert Patrick is always sent back to kill a 12 year old John?  Because if that's the case then, yeah, there's not much to explore.  Hell, that even makes Sarah's efforts in the last half of T2 inevitably futile because stopping Judgment Day is impossible (which is basically what T3 said).

Or, is it that there are alternate timelines/futures, which indeed means "there's no fate but what we make?"  Because if that's the case then I don't think killing John or Sarah or anybody is off the table at the conceptual level/as a premise to explore.  And again, TSCC explicitly employs this in interesting ways - e.g. Derek Reese (Kyle's brother) and his girlfriend Jesse coming back from different futures.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

15 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is a key point, that Terminator has a very limited premise, and Cameron did superbly to get two great movies out of it. Pushing it further is simply pointless because the good stories have been told.

The only further story you could really tell is what John Connor does in the future to save humanity, which they nodded at with Salvation but then didn't really do anything interesting with it...

...Aliens isn't necessarily as limited a premise as Terminator, but again it feels like there are limits to what you can do with the story. That's the complaint Ridley Scott made when he made Prometheus, that the xeno had become too familiar and "worn out" as a threat, which is why he threw all the rules in the air and created new creatures. I get the impression the studio forced him to tie in Covenant much more to the traditional xenos and Scott was irritated by that.

Not gonna lie; I actually liked Salvation. It wasn't great but it wasn't nearly as terrible as some of the reactions would have you think. I think after the Bale freakout leaked it kind of set the thing up to fail. There are movies that come along that critics seem to treat with kid gloves *cough* WW84 *cough* and others that they seem to chomp at the bit to tear down. Terminator Salvation was the latter I think.

And as much as I hate to say it, I think the Alien franchise is creatively tapped out as well. "The Passion of Elen Ripley" trilogy is great, albeit with a flawed 3rd film. Everything that's come afterward hasn't come close. We'll see how the new series does.  

8 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Prometheus was the better of the 2 films.

That's not saying much. Talk about a film being treated with kid gloves...

I counted the days from the moment that film was announced until the premiere. I saw it opening weekend. I was so disappointed I couldn't even process how disappointed I was. The film didn't exactly suck, it just didn't come close to my expectations for it. And it isn't even on the same planet as the first two films.

Demystifying the engineers was a bad idea IMO. The characterizations were terrible (something Scott nailed in Alien).