Hello, it's me, the only person on the internet who unironically really enjoys Avatar (and I'm even non-white, so you can take the racial tokenism critique and shove it). I joke, but only partly....
Hello, it's me, the only person on the internet who unironically really enjoys Avatar (and I'm even non-white, so you can take the racial tokenism critique and shove it). I joke, but only partly.
I saw this trailer in front of Doctor Strange 2 and I feel that the genuine beauty on display here (as well as just a general reminder to the existence of the first Avatar) really made all of the poorly composited badly lit greenscreen medium shots of people standing around waving their hands in every Marvel movie look even more ugly than usual. It feels like there hasn't actually been a movie of this budget made to show the full potential of its effects and scale rather than using them as a crutch to hide negligence and incompetent production practices to make barely passable ugly messes since... well, the first Avatar really. Dune and Aquaman were valiant efforts though.
I don't recall underwater swimming sequences of humanoid CG characters ever looking this convincing or entrancing before, and that close-up at 0:12 is something magical, look at every pore and wrinkle. And the lips! CG characters always seem to fall apart at the lips, but the wrinkling and cracks here look astonishingly real.
Probably the right move to not show plot at all. Imo James Cameron's films' plots are pretty universally unremarkable and throwaway, and only really interesting insofar as being additional wrinkles to his overall body of work being one giant simultaneously love letter and fearful cowering before technological advancement.
I'm surprised. My strongest takeaway was that the faces are all uncanny valley and that this felt like a trailer for a 10 year old CGI movie. I know if I took this and put it side-by-side with the...
I'm surprised. My strongest takeaway was that the faces are all uncanny valley and that this felt like a trailer for a 10 year old CGI movie. I know if I took this and put it side-by-side with the original Avatar I would notice the improvements. But honestly it all just looks wrong to me.
To be fair you got to see it in uncompressed 4K at the theater and I'm trying to pixel peep a 1080p fuzzy mess on YouTube. But that can't explain the weirdness in the movements I'm picking up on.
To me the faces look like heavy prosthetics on real actors instead of CGI, which I suppose is a technical success as they don't look computer generated, but just like bad latex. However, it's the...
To me the faces look like heavy prosthetics on real actors instead of CGI, which I suppose is a technical success as they don't look computer generated, but just like bad latex. However, it's the near total lack of movement with these let's-exaggerate-human-features CGI prosthetics that make them look like latex.
Overall the trailer feels like, if you completely ignore the awful dialog, one of those non-narrative-nature-scenes-set-to-inspirational-music "documentaries" and would probably be more enjoyable if someone cut out all of the dialog in the movie and just showed the sweeping CGI scenes set to music as if it's a effects company's marketing film.
Will have to wait and see if Cameron lifted the entire script of Avatar 2 from Ferngully 2 as he did with the first films.
I agree, first thing I thought of was ATLA. They know that there was confusion originally over the name, there is no way they didn't at least know it was going to be confusing, if not deliberate.
I agree, first thing I thought of was ATLA. They know that there was confusion originally over the name, there is no way they didn't at least know it was going to be confusing, if not deliberate.
Or they simply do not care. I doubt many will actually see the marketing for this movie and think it has anything to do with the similarly named cartoon. The same potential for confusion existed...
Or they simply do not care. I doubt many will actually see the marketing for this movie and think it has anything to do with the similarly named cartoon. The same potential for confusion existed in 2009 with the first movie.
I'm pretty excited for this, simply because I think that the original film is pretty entertaining. It may be a rehash of a story that's been told countless times, but James Cameron knows how to...
I'm pretty excited for this, simply because I think that the original film is pretty entertaining. It may be a rehash of a story that's been told countless times, but James Cameron knows how to shoot an action scene like no one else.
I've seen a lot of the reactions to the trailer being mixed or negative, with a lot of people are taking the position that the first Avatar was nearly 15 years ago and didn't make enough of a lasting impression on the world culture to warrant a sequel (let alone 4 shot back to back).
All I can say is that people should have learned by now not to doubt James Cameron. He's directed nothing but hits since Terminator 2 in 1991. The only film he's made in the last 40 years that wasn't a massive box office success was The Abyss. Two of those films were the highest grossing films of all time for quite a while.
Also, don't forget that even if these sequels aren't massive hits, they'll basically serve as massive ads for Disney World. Disney will make it's money back and then some from merchandising and theme park ticket sales alone.
I’m still amazed at this. When it came out it was a phenomenon and people were freaking out about it. I think the failure to push forward on the franchise with merch, spin off novels or TV shows,...
I've seen a lot of the reactions to the trailer being mixed or negative, with a lot of people are taking the position that the first Avatar was nearly 15 years ago and didn't make enough of a lasting impression on the world culture to warrant a sequel (let alone 4 shot back to back).
I’m still amazed at this. When it came out it was a phenomenon and people were freaking out about it. I think the failure to push forward on the franchise with merch, spin off novels or TV shows, and sequels probably kept it from cementing into a cultural force the way I expected. Either that or the MCU just sucked all the oxygen out of the fandom world.
I wonder if people just lack the attention spans, or if there is simply too much media out there now, for a new property to become culturally salient without a massive, multimedia push like the Star Wars and Marvel properties get.
I don’t disagree there, but people were literally seeing psychiatrists about being depressed at Pandora not being real. Whatever we found boring about it, a lot of grown adults were really gripped...
I don’t disagree there, but people were literally seeing psychiatrists about being depressed at Pandora not being real. Whatever we found boring about it, a lot of grown adults were really gripped by it. Yet, today, My Little Pony has more cultural impact than Avatar does. M
The plot was average, but the film had exceptional worldbuilding. I came out of the theater feeling like Pandora was a real place and not just some dressed up soundstages in Burbank and CGI backdrops.
The plot was average, but the film had exceptional worldbuilding. I came out of the theater feeling like Pandora was a real place and not just some dressed up soundstages in Burbank and CGI backdrops.
I think it's just that James Cameron knew what he wanted to do with the sequels and spent a decade developing not just the story, but the technology needed to tell the story in the way he wanted.
I think it's just that James Cameron knew what he wanted to do with the sequels and spent a decade developing not just the story, but the technology needed to tell the story in the way he wanted.
The releases of Titanic and Avatar were both preceded by widespread predictions of box-office failure. Maybe the third time is the charm, or maybe people are just really bad about underestimating...
The releases of Titanic and Avatar were both preceded by widespread predictions of box-office failure. Maybe the third time is the charm, or maybe people are just really bad about underestimating James Cameron.
True. There were stories for a full year before Titanic came out talking about how it was over budget and a complete mess. There's a lot of things not to like about James Cameron, but his ability...
True. There were stories for a full year before Titanic came out talking about how it was over budget and a complete mess. There's a lot of things not to like about James Cameron, but his ability to pull together big spectacle set pieces into a compelling story is unparalleled.
Hello, it's me, the only person on the internet who unironically really enjoys Avatar (and I'm even non-white, so you can take the racial tokenism critique and shove it). I joke, but only partly.
I saw this trailer in front of Doctor Strange 2 and I feel that the genuine beauty on display here (as well as just a general reminder to the existence of the first Avatar) really made all of the poorly composited badly lit greenscreen medium shots of people standing around waving their hands in every Marvel movie look even more ugly than usual. It feels like there hasn't actually been a movie of this budget made to show the full potential of its effects and scale rather than using them as a crutch to hide negligence and incompetent production practices to make barely passable ugly messes since... well, the first Avatar really. Dune and Aquaman were valiant efforts though.
I don't recall underwater swimming sequences of humanoid CG characters ever looking this convincing or entrancing before, and that close-up at 0:12 is something magical, look at every pore and wrinkle. And the lips! CG characters always seem to fall apart at the lips, but the wrinkling and cracks here look astonishingly real.
Probably the right move to not show plot at all. Imo James Cameron's films' plots are pretty universally unremarkable and throwaway, and only really interesting insofar as being additional wrinkles to his overall body of work being one giant simultaneously love letter and fearful cowering before technological advancement.
I'm surprised. My strongest takeaway was that the faces are all uncanny valley and that this felt like a trailer for a 10 year old CGI movie. I know if I took this and put it side-by-side with the original Avatar I would notice the improvements. But honestly it all just looks wrong to me.
To be fair you got to see it in uncompressed 4K at the theater and I'm trying to pixel peep a 1080p fuzzy mess on YouTube. But that can't explain the weirdness in the movements I'm picking up on.
To me the faces look like heavy prosthetics on real actors instead of CGI, which I suppose is a technical success as they don't look computer generated, but just like bad latex. However, it's the near total lack of movement with these let's-exaggerate-human-features CGI prosthetics that make them look like latex.
Overall the trailer feels like, if you completely ignore the awful dialog, one of those non-narrative-nature-scenes-set-to-inspirational-music "documentaries" and would probably be more enjoyable if someone cut out all of the dialog in the movie and just showed the sweeping CGI scenes set to music as if it's a effects company's marketing film.
Will have to wait and see if Cameron lifted the entire script of Avatar 2 from Ferngully 2 as he did with the first films.
I swear they picked that title deliberately to confuse ATLA fans.
I agree, first thing I thought of was ATLA. They know that there was confusion originally over the name, there is no way they didn't at least know it was going to be confusing, if not deliberate.
Or they simply do not care. I doubt many will actually see the marketing for this movie and think it has anything to do with the similarly named cartoon. The same potential for confusion existed in 2009 with the first movie.
At least they got rid of Papyrus for the title card.
For the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ
I loved the SNL Papyrus skit though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ
I'm pretty excited for this, simply because I think that the original film is pretty entertaining. It may be a rehash of a story that's been told countless times, but James Cameron knows how to shoot an action scene like no one else.
I am sad that they aren't going to be shown in 120 frames per second. I saw all of the Hobbit movies, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man in high frame rate and it's an amazing experience.
I've seen a lot of the reactions to the trailer being mixed or negative, with a lot of people are taking the position that the first Avatar was nearly 15 years ago and didn't make enough of a lasting impression on the world culture to warrant a sequel (let alone 4 shot back to back).
All I can say is that people should have learned by now not to doubt James Cameron. He's directed nothing but hits since Terminator 2 in 1991. The only film he's made in the last 40 years that wasn't a massive box office success was The Abyss. Two of those films were the highest grossing films of all time for quite a while.
Also, don't forget that even if these sequels aren't massive hits, they'll basically serve as massive ads for Disney World. Disney will make it's money back and then some from merchandising and theme park ticket sales alone.
I’m still amazed at this. When it came out it was a phenomenon and people were freaking out about it. I think the failure to push forward on the franchise with merch, spin off novels or TV shows, and sequels probably kept it from cementing into a cultural force the way I expected. Either that or the MCU just sucked all the oxygen out of the fandom world.
I wonder if people just lack the attention spans, or if there is simply too much media out there now, for a new property to become culturally salient without a massive, multimedia push like the Star Wars and Marvel properties get.
I don’t disagree there, but people were literally seeing psychiatrists about being depressed at Pandora not being real. Whatever we found boring about it, a lot of grown adults were really gripped by it. Yet, today, My Little Pony has more cultural impact than Avatar does. M
The plot was average, but the film had exceptional worldbuilding. I came out of the theater feeling like Pandora was a real place and not just some dressed up soundstages in Burbank and CGI backdrops.
I think it's just that James Cameron knew what he wanted to do with the sequels and spent a decade developing not just the story, but the technology needed to tell the story in the way he wanted.
The releases of Titanic and Avatar were both preceded by widespread predictions of box-office failure. Maybe the third time is the charm, or maybe people are just really bad about underestimating James Cameron.
True. There were stories for a full year before Titanic came out talking about how it was over budget and a complete mess. There's a lot of things not to like about James Cameron, but his ability to pull together big spectacle set pieces into a compelling story is unparalleled.