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Thread: Avatar 2, 3, 4 & now 5 (films)

  1. #16
    pissing in your Kool-Aid DjfunkmasterG's Avatar
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    I knew when I saw it I had to post it.
    ALWAYS BET ON DEAD!
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  2. #17
    Dead wayzim's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    Have to disagree there... I love them!
    Quite agree ... Jackson came out of quirky indie films and made a trilogy which simply got better with each new film. Gollum wasn't just another CGI character, he was the high bar which is yet to be surpassed ( yes, I'm including Avatar )

    Wayne Z

    Gollum: Frankly, nothing can compensate for the long hours and low pay
    and miserable experience we've had making this f***ing movie...And if you
    think this *beep* tub of gold popcorn is going to remotely make up for
    everything we've suffered, you're Sadly! F***ing! Mistaken! YOU'RE ALL BASTARDS! MTV
    SUCKS! We hate you all!

  3. #18
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Avatar 2, 3 and 4 it is then by the sounds of it...

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23546537

    Fox Studios have announced there will be three sequels to Avatar, after director James Cameron found two films "would not be enough".

    The three sequels will be filmed simultaneously beginning in 2014, and will be released respectively in December 2016, 2017 and 2018.
    Four script writers are to help him...
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  4. #19
    through another dimension bassman's Avatar
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    Fingers crossed for something good, but I can't help but feel like the truly GREAT James Cameron is gone at this point.

    I would much rather see some more of his documentaries than another THREE Avatar films.

  5. #20
    Zombie Flesh Eater EvilNed's Avatar
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    I can't believe how hyped people got over Avatar. Even at the time I was flabbergasted how people could not see it for the crap it was.

    But I've started to realize I've simply tired of big movie blockbusters. can't think of a single one in recent years that's been any good.

  6. #21
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by EvilNed View Post
    for the crap it was.
    *sigh*
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  7. #22
    Team Rick MinionZombie's Avatar
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    I liked Avatar, and I still like it. Is it the most original plot in the world? Nope. Is it very broad brush storytelling? Yep - but Cameron's been using broad brush storytelling for ages ... just, perhaps, not quite this broad brush.

    I didn't get the over-reaction to it from some folks who 'didn't want to live in the real world after seeing Avatar' because they were so devoted to Pandora ... yeah ... weird.

    The movie was quite successful in other areas, and is brilliantly designed. Cameron's films are always technical challenges and impressive spectacles ... although as a result he does tend to skimp a bit on storytelling subtlety. Hopefully the screenwriters helping him will be able to inject some heart and some light touches to the characterisation and storytelling that make it feel a bit more smooth, rather than the very bold and straight-forward approach in the first film.

    But yeah, I enjoyed Avatar. Not his best, not his worst either. It stumbles in some regards, but is successful in others.

  8. #23
    through another dimension bassman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MinionZombie View Post

    But yeah, I enjoyed Avatar. Not his best, not his worst either. It stumbles in some regards, but is successful in others.
    What would you consider his worst? I'm hoping you don't say True Lies......

    Titanic always gets hate too, but I've always stood my ground and said it's a great flick. Most people can't get past the fact that he had to inject fictional characters into the plot, but I argue that there wouldn't be a movie without it.

  9. #24
    Zombie Flesh Eater EvilNed's Avatar
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    I've always been surprised by people who say the design is brilliant.

    Really? Is it? To me, everything seemed really bland. I'm talking mostly about creature design here, but most of the animals on pandora look just like animals on earth. There's your Space-Horses, your space-Jaguars and your space-Rhinos. Where's the brilliant design? The jungle? It's an OK jungle, but brilliant? That's higher praise than anything in this film deserves.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by EvilNed View Post
    I've always been surprised by people who say the design is brilliant.

    Really? Is it? To me, everything seemed really bland. I'm talking mostly about creature design here, but most of the animals on pandora look just like animals on earth. There's your Space-Horses, your space-Jaguars and your space-Rhinos. Where's the brilliant design? The jungle? It's an OK jungle, but brilliant? That's higher praise than anything in this film deserves.
    You're coming across like one of these folks who didn't enjoy a successful film, so feel they somehow need to balance the scales by coming down rediculously hard on the negative side. I mean your previous point described the film as "crap," which clearly it isn't to any fair minded individual.

    While I certainly would not say Avatar was a masterpiece, IMHO it was a pretty solidly made scifi story with ground breaking visuals and production. And that's not saying the visuals and production were the best ever, but they were exploring and utilising new technology, and make a pretty stab at using them fairly well. As for the story, it was simple but well told IMHO. It was no where near as deep/gritty as I would have liked, but I'm hoping the next one(s) can fix that.

    As for the design being brilliant... I'd certainly say it was good. We had typical Cameron tech for the human vehicles etc, and Pandora looked rich, believable, imaginative, and at times utterly gorgeous!
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  11. #26
    Zombie Flesh Eater EvilNed's Avatar
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    Who are you to say what I can and cannot think of a film? There's no consensus I have to adhere to. There's no general law that says I have to admit to it being a "fair" film.

    It's predicteable. It's dumb. It's generic. The design is bland, at best. The film is overloaded with CGI, which makes it look like a cartoon.

    The highest praise anyone could ever give this film is that it's average. Because admit it, this film isn't above average in ANY aspect. Except for the cgi, but good cgi still looks fake. So there you go.

  12. #27
    Team Rick MinionZombie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bassman View Post
    What would you consider his worst? I'm hoping you don't say True Lies......

    Titanic always gets hate too, but I've always stood my ground and said it's a great flick. Most people can't get past the fact that he had to inject fictional characters into the plot, but I argue that there wouldn't be a movie without it.
    Cameron's worst is Piranha II: The Spawning ... but you can see little glimmers of him in the film ... but yeah, that's his worst (an easy statement alright, haha). I actually really enjoy True Lies - does that one get a lot of stick? I've always enjoyed it. It's not his best work, but it's also jolly good fun and does everything you want an action comedy to do.

    Titanic - first time I saw it I was more interested in the boat sinking stuff. All the big technical action set pieces ... then I hated it, but that was more a case of me being an arrogant teenager - and all teenagers think they know everything - and looking to fit-in with 'popular opinion' on the film. However, my mood softened on it, and then a couple of years ago I got the 4-disc DVD and dived into that. Again, Titanic isn't JC's best work, but it's an immense undertaking nonetheless. Again, it's JC's 'broad brush' storytelling, and I think it's more appropriate to have fictional characters in there - you need a couple of follow throughout, and it'd be wrong to take real people and just make stuff up about a fictional romance between real people. Now, real people were represented - you can't ignore them as it's a historical movie - but with the central thrust being Kate & Leo, it was the right choice to make them fictional.

    Design wise Titanic was brilliant - the sheer attention to detail, the research, the recreation of the ship, using original blue prints etc to get everything just-so (down to the correct cutlery and plates!). Does it play to the audience? Oh God yes - but it's supposed to, and really, most movies play to their audience. There's different ways of playing to your audience, but if you don't play to your audience, your audience won't give a shit about your movie ... different ways of doing it - very different ways - but they all, in their own ways, play to their audience.

    Broad brush, grand, sweeping ... again, I've never been a part of 'the Titanic craze' surrounding that movie, but recently I've been able to appreciate it for what it is and enjoy it.

    Quote Originally Posted by EvilNed View Post
    I've always been surprised by people who say the design is brilliant.

    Really? Is it? To me, everything seemed really bland. I'm talking mostly about creature design here, but most of the animals on pandora look just like animals on earth. There's your Space-Horses, your space-Jaguars and your space-Rhinos. Where's the brilliant design? The jungle? It's an OK jungle, but brilliant? That's higher praise than anything in this film deserves.
    Perhaps "brilliant" isn't quite the correct word for my context, but what I mean is that the design on the film is extremely detailed and well thought-out. Having explored the extra features on the special edition, there's a lot of info that goes into the designing of the machines, the creatures, the plant life, and the general world of Pandora. Of course they used 'earth bound nature' as an inspiration - if you don't base it on things that are somewhat familiar to we humans, then you could just design any damn nonsense, but it'd just be gibberish to us. We wouldn't understand it - so to use, for example, deep sea creatures as inspiration for certain life forms on Pandora is a good idea ... particularly as the deep sea has only been scratched at thus far, it's essentially an alien world on our own planet.

    Now, I'd say that the design on Prometheus was better than Avatar (again, the massive making-of goes into great detail about the design process), but why I said the design was brilliant was because they realised an entire world. Lazier designers would just say "that's good enough", but there'd be various gaps in the world around them. Great design - like on Avatar or Prometheus - goes right down to each individual warning sticker somewhere in the background. You might never see it, but it's there in the background, adding to the fully realised nature of the world being presented on screen.

    Likewise with Pandora, it had a fully realised feel - what's more, it felt like there was much more out there to explore. Just because you don't like the film itself, it doesn't mean that an extraordinary amount of time, effort, skill, and passion went into designing Pandora.

  13. #28
    Zombie Flesh Eater EvilNed's Avatar
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    Now, that's where I disagree. Sci-fi is all about exploring unknown worlds. Pandora didn't feel that alien to me. It felt very terrestial. Very earth based. Things like Prometheus or Alien are much more alien and interesting to explore.

    As for them creating "whole worlds", that's kinda common practice these days. From Star Wars, Star Trek, Riddick, John Carter, it's just not that big of a deal as far as I'm concerned. Heck, Frank Herbert did it with Dune back in the 50's.

  14. #29
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Arnold Schwarzenegger reuniting with Cameron for Avatar 2? - http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Arnol...r-2-39451.html

    Cameron is planning to take his old buddy Schwarzenegger with him on his next journey to Pandora, casting the Governator as one of the bad guy humans who return to the alien planet in their never-ending quest for that sweet, sweet unobtanium.
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  15. #30
    through another dimension bassman's Avatar
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    I'm still wanting True Lies 2, dangit....

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