Avatar 2: The Way of Water

[Heartofice]

Just had a realisation that I will NEVER get to see this movie. 
 

As a parent it’s pretty much an impossibility for me to justify taking that amount of time to go out and see this in the cinema. I haven’t been to the cinema since Tenet! (Which probably explains a lot)

Which means if I ever want to see this it would be at home in 2D and if this is anything like the first movie, and everyone says it is, then there is zero value in watching it that way. 
 

I guess I will just have to live my life never knowing what this movie is like. Oh well. 

[Ran]

58 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I guess I will just have to live my life never knowing what this movie is like. Oh well. 

Watch it in 10 years when it's given a limited IMAX re-release ahead of Avatar 3.

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

Watch it in 10 years when it's given a limited IMAX re-release ahead of Avatar 3.

I think you mean two years?

Avatar 3 is in the can so that release date, at least, seems fairly locked.

[Corvinus85]

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Just had a realisation that I will NEVER get to see this movie. 
 

As a parent it’s pretty much an impossibility for me to justify taking that amount of time to go out and see this in the cinema. I haven’t been to the cinema since Tenet! (Which probably explains a lot)

Which means if I ever want to see this it would be at home in 2D and if this is anything like the first movie, and everyone says it is, then there is zero value in watching it that way. 
 

I guess I will just have to live my life never knowing what this movie is like. Oh well. 

So when your kids are adults you still won't be able take 3 hours out of your time? Do you expect your kids to exhaust you to death? 

Though of course the short term solution is buying your own IMAX screen projector. 

[Heartofice]

34 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Do you expect your kids to exhaust you to death? 

Anyone who has kids would know the answer to that question 

[Arakasi]

My wife and I manage to go to 2 or 3 movies a year when parents are in town to do babysitting. Doesn’t leave for a lot of movie time but we saw Dr Strange, Spider-Man and Black Panther this year.

[IlyaP]

A: TWoW just joined the billion dollar club after two weeks: https://gizmodo.com/avatar-the-way-of-water-makes-one-billion-at-box-office-1849935515

[TheLastWolf]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

TWoW

gulp

Why do I see Winds everywhere, or is it just me?

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, TheLastWolf said:

gulp

Why do I see Winds everywhere, or is it just me?

Hm. 

What about: AWoW?  

[TheLastWolf]

10 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Hm. 

What about: AWoW?  

Better

*mops forehead*

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

A: TWoW just joined the billion dollar club after two weeks: https://gizmodo.com/avatar-the-way-of-water-makes-one-billion-at-box-office-1849935515

Quote

I wish I wasn’t so swamped with work, I could put together a long-ass video of io9 commentators over the last few years who swore up and down this wouldn’t even crack $200 million domestic because Zero Cultural Footprint (TM) and nobody cosplays as them or some other goalpost-moving. 

Yeah, "no memes" too. The "zero cultural footprint" critique comes from a lot of self important so-and-so's who couldn't find their ass with both hands. 

Regarding the domestic box office, It looks like it'll overtake a bunch of films in the $350-$400 million range in the next week. It'll probably knock Dr. Strange 2 out 3rd place by Sunday night.

It's too soon to tell what kind of legs this movie has, but after 12 days in theaters, its domestic box office is tracking somewhat higher than the first film. However, if you compare the inflation adjusted box office, they're almost line-on-line. 

Three.

Point.

One.

Billion.

$.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Yeah, "no memes" too. The "zero cultural footprint" critique comes from a lot of self important so-and-so's who couldn't find their ass with both hands. 

Polygon published an article on exaclty this topic earlier this month.

[DireWolfSpirit]

23 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Doing this in 3D tommorow afternoon.

It was pretty close to what i expected and for pure visual eye candy it was pretty gorgeous. 

I mean its just fun to behold this other world and its splendid nature. To see some villians get introduced and then see a bunch explosions.

What was the plot/storyline, couldnt care less, not remotely interested in anything deeper than the goodtime romp through Pandoras jungle and seas.

And thats exactly what they delivered. Happy ticket buyer here. If i wanted to ponder some deepish philosophy or meaning of life i wouldve went to Borders and bought a book. (Completely missing opportunity to spending the 3 hrs of smiles with family)

[TheLastWolf]

But the writing didnt have to be excellent, for such a budget it warrants atleast a decent one. Non native English speaker me __self was cringing at times at the sub par dialogues here and there.

[Myrddin]

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Hm. 

What about: AWoW?  

This but in Owen Wilson's voice.

 

I saw it in 3D IMAX a few days ago. Stunning experience. Cameron does know how to put on a good show. But if you didn't enjoy the first one, this won't change your mind. It's an immersive visit to Pandora with action and some fun characters along the way.

This is one of the few movies I'll see in 3D and the comparisons between the movies shown in the previews (that were obviously conversions) and Avatar is night and day. Especially the Little Mermaid. You could count the visual layers in each shot. Foreground, main actor, mid depth and far depth. All flat. Avatar (with a few exceptions where branches or seaweed in the foreground) had a much more natural depth of field. As someone who loves scuba diving, the movie was a treat.

For me, this was worth the $20 ticket.

[DaveSumm]

32 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

But the writing didnt have to be excellent, for such a budget it warrants atleast a decent one. Non native English speaker me __self was cringing at times at the sub par dialogues here and there.

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.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

18 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Polygon published an article on exaclty this topic earlier this month.

Doing a bit or research on this, it appears the "no cultural impact" discourse was started a while back by non other than Scott Mendelson at Forbes. Ugh. 

More recently there was this article , which I think has been sited in a few places. I won't go through the whole thing but I have some comments:

A lack of memes? Give me a break. And all the "meme-able" quotes he sites are literally 40 years old. 

Avatar was released into a context where SW already exists. Where a lot of sci-fi & fantasy storytelling exists. In fact, there probably wouldn't be an Avatar without Star Wars. OTOH, there was no SW before SW. There was really nothing competing with it either. Not really a fair comparison.

Star Wars is probably the most culturally significant nugget of pop culture to come out of the last 50 years. Stacking anything against it is unfair I think.  Comparing Avatar to Star Wars, even on the incredibly narrow set of parameters this guy lays out, doesn't mean Avatar had little or no cultural impact; only that it didn't have as much as Star Wars. Well, Duh. 

And that probably wasn't always the case. In the early-mid '90's, before the OT re-release and prequels were announced, SW probably wasn't on anyones mind aside from some hardcore nerds.  

It also occurs to me that this type of commentary, primarily from American authors, tends to focus narrowly on America. for example, none of the SW films ever topped Avatar's box office in China and Avatar 2 looks likely to do better still. China is over 1 billion people. This is not trivial. In fact, In countries where the OT never played back in the 70's and 80's, and where you didn't have a generation of people getting SW toys for Christmas, interest in SW is somewhat weaker. There's a lot of nostalgia at play. 

In Canada we have a network called APTN, which is features programming geared toward First Nations audiences. For example, you can watch talk shows or news broadcasts or Hockey Night in Canada in Cree.  My awareness of it is thin, because I gave up terrestrial cable years ago, but I learned recently that they play Avatar almost as often as Bravo plays Gladiator (seriously Bravo, get help). Clearly there's an impact that isn't as obvious as, "how much merch is on the shelves?" 

[sifth]

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.

Edited December 30, 2022 by sifth

[mcbigski]

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

In Canada we have a network called APTN, which is features programming geared toward First Nations audiences. For example, you can watch talk shows or news broadcasts or Hockey Night in Canada in Cree.  My awareness of it is thin, because I gave up terrestrial cable years ago, but I learned recently that they play Avatar almost as often as Bravo plays Gladiator 

The whole point of Gladiator is that white hereditary monarchies are bad.  Or does my wokemeter need more tuning?

[JGP]

Uh yeah. Definitely needs tuning.

You got something against revenge flicks with historical dressing?  

Edited December 30, 2022 by JGP