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Avatar: four sequels announced
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Wow, this will be worse than the Indiana Jones sequel.
He announced he was going to do a number of sequels back in 2009 after the first one came out, and here we are 6.5 years later and he hasn't even started.I thought the first one was much better than people gave it credit for, and yes, the extended version explains a lot more. Lot of potential here, but it could go either way.
Why can't he just go back to the Dark Angel TV series.
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Silvana wrote: "Why can't he just go back to the Dark Angel TV series."
I recently re-watched that. Season 1 still holds up.
Season 2 though, gets really bad fast.
Yes season 2 was not as great... But I remember rushing back from school each week so I don't miss it. It was one of my first scifi experiences, aside from TNG reruns. And one of Cameron's best works for me aside from The Abyss.
Joe wrote: "He announced he was going to do a number of sequels back in 2009 after the first one came out, and here we are 6.5 years later and he hasn't even started."They've started. Cameron has enough money that he can spend years world-building. The news is that he's firmly decided on four sequels.
He first mentioned Avatar over 25 years ago. He waited until the technology was good enough to realize his vision. Maybe he's doing that now, but they have been actively working on it for four or five years now.
The side benefit is to Zoe Seldana, who will eventually be the only actress who has appeared in at least 3 installments of 3 trilogies: Star Trek, Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Currently the record-holder is Talia Shire, who appears in 3 installments of 2 series, Rocky and Godfather. Jennifer Lawrence will soon tie her for that, once the next X-Men movie comes out.
On the actor side, Sylvester Stallone is the only one to appear in 3 franchises: Rocky, Rambo and The Expendables.
Tassie Dave wrote: "I got excited until I saw it was the dumb movie and not the cartoon series. I want more Avatar:TLA and/or Korra..."Me, too! I was so excited for another amazing series, never cared for the movie.
Still waiting for my life-changing-field-trip with Zuko.
I'd like a movie about what Korra and Asami have been up to.
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I don't think they'd get that on Nickelodeon ;-)
They should make a movie from the stories from the comics that aren't in the TV series. Definitely we need more Aang, Korra and everything from THAT world, not the giant smurfs.
Sorry, always get emotional when talking about TLA. Didn't mean to hijack the thread. Carry on.
Cameron named (and announced) his movie years before the anime series was conceived, even though people think it's the other way around.
Trike wrote: "Four more Avatar sequels announced.http://variety.com/2016/film/news/jam...
Personally, I like the old school Planetary Romance aspect of the first one. I've watched th..."
Awesome. I was wondering if he was ever going to make a sequel.
I hope these are all canned and/or flop. James Cameron needs to know when to quit. Terminator2 and Alien2 were amazing. This.... :( Avatar was shit and the sequels will be too.
I just see it as an attempt to remain relevant. "Hey everyone, I'm still alive!"
I'm pretty neutral about that movie, but I have no love for the hero. There was no motivation for him not to side with the aliens. It was hardly a sacrifice or act of compassion when his life improved ten fold when in the avatar. Being a depressed cripple with no family isn't where you start a protagonist who is going to have to choose a side. It's hardly a choice in that situation.
Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation was a far better telling of the same story. Can they make that a movie?
really, this seems like over kill to me. but i like the Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation idea, it would be a better movie.
Dustin wrote: "I just see it as an attempt to remain relevant. "Hey everyone, I'm still alive!""
I don't get that sense from him. He's only made two films over the past 20 years, and they hold the top two spots in box office of all time. Cameron doesn't have anything to prove. Seems to me he's just doing what he wants to.
Dustin wrote: "I'm pretty neutral about that movie, but I have no love for the hero. There was no motivation for him not to side with the aliens. It was hardly a sacrifice or act of compassion when his life improved ten fold when in the avatar. Being a depressed cripple with no family isn't where you start a protagonist who is going to have to choose a side. It's hardly a choice in that situation."
That's the point of the story, though. Every time the humans make a decision, it's based on either making money or saving money, and those choices constantly blow up in their faces.
When they want to mine the unobtanium, they offer the Na'vi trinkets or medicine, which the natives have no use for and can't compare to what they already have. Instead of scrapping the avatar of Sully's brother and starting fresh with another candidate who is on board with the program, they enlist Jake just to save a few bucks. Considering how outrageously expensive it must be to travel all that way, replacing an avatar and driver should be trivial, but they're squeezing every penny without consideration of the potential downfall. Which is something corporations do all the time. (I'm actually watching this exact scenario play out in one of the major financial institutions on this planet, where they're making stupid decisions which look good for the bottom line but are damaging their core business and long-term options. All the people sounding the alarm are being fired, including the woman who is the analog to Sigourney Weaver's character.) The people with greed as their motivation never understand the mentality of those who don't place the same value on material possessions.
Le Guin's original story was better than Cameron's adaptation imo ;)
Trike wrote: "He's only made two films over the past 20 years, and they hold the top two spots in box office of all time."This is why I LOL at people who trash the movie. It's like leaving a 1-star review of Harry Potter. You may have legitimate gripes with it, but...
Trike wrote: "I don't get that sense from him. He's only made two films over the past 20 years, and they hold t..."Avatar is my Star Wars Prequel. Most of what I see is lost potential. So I tend to get spiteful. I also don't care for announcements that are purely for the sake of publicity and have no substance behind them. How often are those swept under the rug?
I understand all that. I wasn't complaining about the anti-capitalist themes (which are always ironic in Hollywood movies.) My problem was that Jake wasn't a hero or even someone I respected. He was just as much a mercenary as the antagonist, the Navi were just far more profitable investment for him. Hell, even the army nutcase was just doing his job...in a manner. Jake was the only one looking out for himself.
Brendan wrote: "Le Guin's original story was better than Cameron's adaptation imo ;)"I preferred her version of Mad Max, too.
Dustin wrote: "I also don't care for announcements that are purely for the sake of publicity and have no substance behind them. How often are those swept under the rug?"It's not one of those George Lucas-style pronouncements, though, where he kept claiming there would be X number of sequels to Star Wars and that number kept changing. Cameron was talking to exhibitors who love movies like Avatar because the longer a movie plays in a theatre the bigger cut of the box office they get.
Plus, he's had a group of people actively working on the sequels for years now. Even if the next one bombs, he can still afford to keep making them and the studio will likely back them. So this is less pie-in-the-sky than other things we've heard, such as Sony's aborted plans for a Spider-man franchise.
I thought there was a thread for these films. It finally got finished, and the sequel is… perfectly fine. For people who liked or loathed the first one, the second one is more of the same.However, I did see what is possibly the stupidest take on Avatar yet:
https://ibb.co/y6FWKpC
In case you can’t see the image, film critic Kathia Woods tweeted:
“At some point we gotta talk about the cultural appropriation of Avatar and white actors are cos playing as poc. It’s just a mess and so not necessary & no amount of visual effects/CGI is gonna erase that. Bad Lace fronts/Dry synthetic braids. Jesus fix it.”
I’m not even sure what she’s talking about. I find it hard to believe she actually thinks the Na’vi are real, but looking at other things she’s written, I can’t rule that out, either.
Maybe she means the ocean tribe which are specifically coded as Māori? The face tattoos and tongue-out pukana and haka war dance are Māori, but the guy playing the leader of the ocean tribe is Cliff Curtis, who is an actual Māori.
The young actors who play the kids are a diverse bunch - white, Filipino, black, Māori, Hispanic… and then there’s one of the main characters, Neyteri, played by Zoe Saldana, who is black and Hispanic. I mean, what’s the criticism here? So weird.
Odd comment from her. My thought is that she means that the first Avatar was basically a white savior story with a simplistic story wherein the (formerly) white guy is the hero. The 2009 movie was visually stunning 3D because Cameron did it right, vs tacking it on in post, but aside from the effects and the 3D, it's at best middling. The trailers make this look similar. I've little interest in Avatar 2 ironically because the trailers are so bad. The bits of dialog they use - 'save the people!', 'let's get it done' - sound like snippets from a bad video game.
Sooooo perhaps it's lame to ask people to explain a joke, especially six years later, but I am curious about this one. Just riffing, or any basis in reality? Earthsea maybe?By way of analogy, I didn't realize that The Dispossessed contained an apologia for the Soviet Georgian famine until I reread it a few years back, at which point I also realized there was a harsh commentary on the Gulag system in Left Hand of Darkness. And a look at the Chinese Communist culture. All from the viewpoint of a 1960ish Western intellectual.
Trike wrote: "Brendan wrote: "Le Guin's original story was better than Cameron's adaptation imo ;)"
I preferred her version of Mad Max, too."
John (Taloni) wrote: "Sooooo perhaps it's lame to ask people to explain a joke, especially six years later, but I am curious about this one. Just riffing, or any basis in reality? Earthsea maybe?By way of analogy, I d..."
Maybe it was callback to Harlan Ellison saying Cameron stole the story of Terminator from one of his stories.
Rick wrote: "I've little interest in Avatar 2 ironically because the trailers are so bad. The bits of dialog they use - 'save the people!', 'let's get it done' - sound like snippets from a bad video game."Ever since The Abyss, my opinion is that Cameron’s movies are better than his scripts. Which is clearly working for him, given the success of everything from Terminator 2 onward.
John (Taloni) wrote: "Sooooo perhaps it's lame to ask people to explain a joke, especially six years later, but I am curious about this one. Just riffing, or any basis in reality? Earthsea maybe?"He was talking about The Word for World Is Forest, which shares themes and plot points with movies like At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Ferngully, and Avatar.
My response was just cheekiness.
^ Cool, not sure I have read that one. The blurb reads a bit like Fuzzy Sapiens. I only read the John Scalzi version (I know, I'm bad bad SF fan.) Think I'd like it?
John (Taloni) wrote: "^ Cool, not sure I have read that one. The blurb reads a bit like Fuzzy Sapiens. I only read the John Scalzi version (I know, I'm bad bad SF fan.) Think I'd like it?"Probably, if you set your expectations to “1970s sci-fi”. It is *very* unsubtle about the anti-colonialism, anti-ecology message, in much the same way the Avatar movies are. In any case it’s pretty short, really more of a novella.
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/jam...
Personally, I like the old school Planetary Romance aspect of the first one. I've watched the extended edition a half-dozen times. It's better than the released version.