Avatar 2: The Way of Water

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

No problem at all; just not 20 times a year.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, JGP said:

Uh yeah. Definitely needs tuning.

You got something against revenge flicks with historical dressing?  

YOU LEAVE MAXIMUS ALONE! 

/cries in fake Britney meme tears.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

 

[polishgenius]

I was gonna see it this week while I'm at home because my sister wanted to, but life stuff came up (good life stuff but nonetheless inconducive to sitting in the cinema for three hours) so happily I haven't. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Again to reiterate, i guess id call tWotW, style over substance.

Theres no deepish theme its just kind of Sea People vs Sky people. But Im totally fine with that. The style and visual 3D or Imax experience makes it engrossing enough on its own for me.

Sometimes a movie is just pleasant viewing without too much additional consideration, this was that to me. Im grateful that i can enjoy just such an experience without it needing to measure up to Casablanca.

Style over substance, but it was enough for me. Imagine the alternative, sometimes a movie can be all substance and no style, may as well stick to being a documentary then. This is not that.

Eta: Im also unbothered by 3 hour movies, unfortunately the old 5-10 minute intermissions like youd get with say "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Dr. Zhivago" seems to be a thing of the past. I think thats short sighted.

Edited December 30, 2022 by DireWolfSpirit

[Corvinus85]

16 hours ago, sifth said:

Just got back from seeing it with some friends. I was fully expecting to hate this movie, but I have to admit.............it was good.................very good.

It was just nice and refreshing to see a positive family in a movie. If anything, the family in this movie kind of reminded me of the Stark family in a way.

Yep thought the same, the main differences being

Spoiler

the Bran/Arya gender swaps and Robb dying before Ned. 

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by Corvinus85

[Corvinus85]

On 12/29/2022 at 9:55 AM, DaveSumm said:

Yea it’s frustrating, I don’t think you’d need to tweak much to make this a more nuanced and interesting film. In the first film, the humans are literally 100% at fault. They’re flat out evil, they want to oust the Na’vi or kill them if they don’t move, and show no remorse at all. And all for greed, for a reportedly valuable (and ridiculously named) ‘unobtanium’. Cameron is a long way from subtle in any of his messaging.

Imagine the film starts, and they’ve already been mining the stuff for years or decades. Then the Na’vi return from some migration or something, and are immediately antagonistic toward them. But humans have put down roots, families have grown up here, there’s a whole operation that can’t be easily halted. The Na’vi start with some nasty raids which puts them squarely as the aggressors, and so they try the Jake Sully plan to see if they can compromise. Then the audience learns with Sully that actually, the Na’vi have good reason to defend this land, that they aren’t really the bad guys at all. You can still have your military douche who has a job to do, who leads the attack at the end. But just some grey area, some ‘fog of war’ in how we get there would’ve been very welcome.

But Cameron just went with ‘HuMaNs TrEaT pLaNeT bAd’ and that was that.

It appears Mr. Cameron has read your post.  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/james-cameron-avatar-3-plot-180000217.html

Quote

When asked about what fans can expect from the third Avatar film, Cameron gave the first details about the “Ash People” — a new Na’vi culture that is not necessarily as “good” as those we’ve seen thus far.

“To show cultures different from those I have already shown,” Cameron told French outlet 20 Minutes (thanks to John Francis Gillman for the tip and translation). “The fire will be represented by the ‘Ash People.’ I want to reveal the Na’vi from another angle because, for the moment, I have only shown their good sides. In the early films, there are very negative human examples and very positive Na’vi examples. In Avatar 3, we’ll have the opposite.”

 

[sifth]

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Yep thought the same, the main differences being

  Hide contents

the Bran/Arya gender swaps and Robb dying before Ned. 

 

Not sure if Spider is Theon or Jon, lol

He seems like a good person, so I'm leaning more towards Jon.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Yeah, the family dynamic was really compelling. 

Spoiler

Jake being "dad" to his daughters and being "marine-corps-dad" to his sons. Maybe provides some insight into Jake's upbringing or that he sees his younger-self in his sons. Like when Neytiri tells him he's "too hard on them", I'm sitting in the theater thinking, "Yeah, he is too hard on them!" But there's a kind of logic to it. 

We don't know the exact circumstances of his paralysis, except that the technology exists to repair his spine if he could afford it. He might have ended up in that chair just following orders to by being really foolhardy or stupid.

And Neytiri's reaction to Natayem's death? OMG. You didn't need to show Spider's reaction to her rampage. She was legit kind of terrifying.

Also, Quaritch's line, "If I'm out there you know I'm coming back to kill your family!" The first time I saw it I thought it hit like a sledgehammer. The second time, for some reason, I thought, "you would never, ever see that in an MCU movie." 'Don't know why.

I'll also say, Sam Worthington; great performance. 

[BigFatCoward]

Box office actually went up 7% from weekend 2 to weekend 3, it's going to have a long and deep run. 

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Box office actually went up 7% from weekend 2 to weekend 3, it's going to have a long and deep run. 

Really? 

Which news agency are you following to get these figures? My trivia-hosting brain really wants to know, as that's a cool bit of trivia!!

[BigFatCoward]

5 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Really? 

Which news agency are you following to get these figures? My trivia-hosting brain really wants to know, as that's a cool bit of trivia!!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.joblo.com/box-office-update-avatar-2-goes-up-7-its-third-weekend/amp/

Possibly because last weeks weather kept people away, but still 2nd joint highest 3rd weekend of all time (pretty much tied with the first film). But it's way ahead of the global box office for the first one currently, after the same time. 

[williamjm]

I watched the film yesterday. I thought it was visually spectacular, it joins the first film on the very short list of films where the 3D is actually adding something to the film. The world also looks amazing, particularly the underwater scenes. It's been a while since I saw the first one but I think the action scenes may be better here, particularly in the second half of the film.

What frustrates me about the film is that such a huge effort has been put into all the technical aspects but the script feels like a bit of an afterthought. It's not that it's necessarily bad, and it's definitely not any dumber than the average Hollywood blockbuster, but it all feels very unimaginative and it's rare that anything surprising happens. I think perhaps part of the problem is that I feel James Cameron is capable of better than this, I probably wouldn't bother commenting if this was a film by someone like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich but I have higher expectations of Cameron. Similarly, the characterisation is adequate but mostly a bit dull and the angry whale is probably the most compelling character in the story. One of the other bits of characterisation that I thought was interesting was Spider being caught between the two different worlds, hopefully this will be explored a bit more in the third film. I think part of the issue with that characters may be that while the motion capture is a huge technical achievement, it does still tend to leave the performances feeling a bit stilted.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the film and I didn't feel bored despite the length of it, but I think it is also a bit of a missed opportunity because with a more compelling script this could maybe have been a great film.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

12 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.joblo.com/box-office-update-avatar-2-goes-up-7-its-third-weekend/amp/

Possibly because last weeks weather kept people away, but still 2nd joint highest 3rd weekend of all time (pretty much tied with the first film). But it's way ahead of the global box office for the first one currently, after the same time. 

The 3rd and 4th weeks will tell. Top Gun 2, SW: Rogue One and Avatar 2's domestic box office are trending line-on-line at this point in their respective runs. The difference is Rogue One's curve has an obvious knee point in week 4 and TG2 just keeps going. If it trends like the former: $500-$600 mil domestic; more like the latter: $700-$800 mil domestic.

Apparently it isn't doing so well in Japan for some reason. Covid surge in China could dampen things there.

It's doing spectacularly well in Italy and France and the Indian B.O. is off the chart compared to the first film. 

Estimates have A2 topping Dr. Strange 2 domestically as of today. Also within spitting distance of topping Spider-Man: NWH international cume ($956,900,000 vs. $1,095,933,175). It'll surpass Maverick's W.W. total by the end of next week.

-

Are these Chinese movie posters? These are amazing.

 

[IlyaP]

15 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.joblo.com/box-office-update-avatar-2-goes-up-7-its-third-weekend/amp/

Possibly because last weeks weather kept people away, but still 2nd joint highest 3rd weekend of all time (pretty much tied with the first film). But it's way ahead of the global box office for the first one currently, after the same time. 

Thank you, @BigFatCoward <3 

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think perhaps part of the problem is that I feel James Cameron is capable of better than this, I probably wouldn't bother commenting if this was a film by someone like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich but I have higher expectations of Cameron. Similarly, the characterisation is adequate but mostly a bit dull and the angry whale is probably the most compelling character in the story.

I'm inclined to agree. 

Also, I struggled to keep track of names and characters. The Sully boys? I can't tell you their names, and at least in my mind, they weren't visually different enough to differentiate between them. (TBF, I also have a wretched attention span and awful ADOS*, which does me no favors.) The one design fail with the Omatikaya clan is that there's a lack of sufficient visual distinction between them, which, when suddenly there are *five* new characters in one three hour epic? Uh oh. (Can Na'vi have beards? Or shaved heads? Or more diverse styles of clothing? All questions I asked myself watching Avatar 2: The Way of OMG How Many Computers Died to Render This)

 

*Attention Defici--OH SHINY!

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I'm reminded of some people on these boards remarking on how disturbing the stag-killing scene was in HotD.

Regarding Avatar 2 itself, I think I pinned down the scene where I became a traitor to humanity:

Spoiler

The Tulkun hunting scene was disturbing enough, but there was something incredibly vile about the image of the confused Tulkun calf looking into the eyes of its dead/dying mother while the crab-mech is crawling over her corpse and driving lifting eyes into her skull.

The "scorched Pandora" sequence at the beginning of the film is also very powerful.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

“Disappeared”, they said. “No cultural footprint”, they said. 

Avatar 2’s domestic cume is now $90 million up on Avatar after 20 days in theaters. The think there’s a good chance it will top $800 million domestic. Maybe even get within spitting distance of The Force Awakens. The next few weeks will tell.

[DireWolfSpirit]

What to do with Spider?

I feel like they definitely will opt for the cheesy redemption.

Personally id find some painful torture much more fun.

[Veltigar]

I finally went to see it last night with three friends. Perhaps it was the lower expectations, but I thought it was much better than the first film. It is still far from earning a place into the all-time great film catalogue and I also cannot imagine rewatching it outside of a fully equipped 3-D theatre, but overall it was definitely an improvement.

Visually, it was even more stunning than the first film. The acting was better, since it had less Sam Worthington in it and I mostly thought the plot was handled well. It's still by-the-numbers and the dialogue is often cringeworthy, but still I would deem it a step up from the first film.

Part of me wonders whether the positive change in reception has more to do with my own growth since the last film rather than any "real" improvements (outside of less Samn Worthington) Cameron made to the franchise. The message is far from subtle, but I have myself become much more emotionally aware of the catastrophic loss in biodiversity and the negative impact we overall have on the environment (instead of merely being intellectually aware of it like 10 years ago). There were a lot of scenes with the Tulkun in particular that struck an emotional cord that I was not expecting an Avatar film to find.

Not sure whether anyone else felt that way?

I do wonder about the future of the franchise. Out of the three of us that went, one disliked it and has already indicated he won't see Avatar 3. The other person aside from me is still interested in the second sequel, but he want to see it without 3-D (which is weird imo). I am definitely keen for a third one however and I hope Cameron will finally go for some more inspired storytelling here.