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The environment is the key thing, here. Holding your breath and swimming underwater in the open ocean is a VERY different thing from doing so in a sinking ship. Wreck diving is as or more dangerous than cave diving for a number of reasons, especially that you have absolutely no guarantee of finding a safe way out before you run out of air. Especially when you have multiple panicking kids, an unfamiliar environment that's actively falling apart around you, and armed soldiers trying to kill you all in the equation. And I think they wanted to make a point of not just doing the first movie over again- Jake's already been through all this, and he's a little cocky because he pulled off some silly poo poo linking with Pandora's most dangerous predators before, the narrative writes itself. Not to mention he and Ney'tiri are grown adults and all, it's probably easier and less interesting than the kids' own learning experiences.
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Jan 1, 2023 04:54
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Yeah, Jake literally makes the bond with the apex predator of the Pandoran skies in the first movie, lol, of course he would be like "nah, screw that ilu bullshit, give me the badass warrior mount" lmao. The scene with the skimwing accomplishes a quick little character arc for Jake, and a nice comedic beat for the story.
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Jan 1, 2023 04:59
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The worst part of Dune was how mysterious the Worms were, I'm glad a smart person saw that as well and made them talk and poo poo.
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Jan 1, 2023 05:10
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Yeah Jim is sometimes cuts out too much. I think one of the saddest things missing from Avatar 1 was the scene with the remaining science avatars pulling a mutiny and loving busting down the top floor of Hell's Gate command center with mining machinery, forcing a surrender. It would add a bit more context to the final scene of the RDA being expelled to Earth, and why many of the old science crew like Patel were allowed to stay on Pandora.
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Jan 1, 2023 05:11
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:Yeah Jim is sometimes cuts out too much. I think one of the saddest things missing from Avatar 1 was the scene with the remaining science avatars pulling a mutiny and loving busting down the top floor of Hell's Gate command center with mining machinery, forcing a surrender. It would add a bit more context to the final scene of the RDA being expelled to Earth, and why many of the old science crew like Patel were allowed to stay on Pandora. I feel that's the kinda thing that happens when a movie spends too long in editing and the director/crew have taken plot beats for granted they forget the audience doesn't. It's an amateur mistake but a real common one, so much media from the last decade leaves key plot points on the cutting room floor. (see TRoS)
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Jan 1, 2023 05:15
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:Yeah Jim is sometimes cuts out too much. I think one of the saddest things missing from Avatar 1 was the scene with the remaining science avatars pulling a mutiny and loving busting down the top floor of Hell's Gate command center with mining machinery, forcing a surrender. It would add a bit more context to the final scene of the RDA being expelled to Earth, and why many of the old science crew like Patel were allowed to stay on Pandora. Avatar 2 doesn't agree with the cut content from 1, because Nate's avatar dies in a deleted scene and is still around in Avatar 2.
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Jan 1, 2023 05:55
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I'm seeing all these numbers about millions made opening night, but how many people have killed themselves to go to Pandora because of Avatar 2?
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Jan 1, 2023 06:03
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There was a decent amount of rewriting during the prepro of Avatar 2. Like I think the original plan was for Quaritch's AMP suit to be able to walk back to a human base for his corpse to be recovered, the tech guide for Avatar 1 had that capability in the AMP suit. But then they made Quaritch fall where he died, so he could do a Yorick scene. And letting Norm's avatar body survive the fight would have let him keep doing cool poo poo in the sequels. On the other hand, having the human avatars break the human resistance ahead of the main advance of the Na'vi forces was just Cool As gently caress and it is a god drat shame it got cut. And there would have been no conflict with the sequels.
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Jan 1, 2023 06:26
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Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:I'm seeing all these numbers about millions made opening night, but how many people have killed themselves to go to Pandora because of Avatar 2? No one, Society has Matured in the years since, we understand we reach Pandora not by killing ourselves, but by killing Peter Thiel before he can drink the Tulkun adrenochrome.
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Jan 1, 2023 06:27
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Given the final battle was on floating islands the AMP suit might not have been able to find a path, ha.
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Jan 1, 2023 07:46
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So much of this movie is like a Roger Dean album cover come to life. Not saying that's a bad thing either.
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Jan 1, 2023 21:59
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Fsmhunk posted:The worst part of Dune was how mysterious the Worms were, I'm glad a smart person saw that as well and made them talk and poo poo. oh man you're gonna love God-Emperor of Dune
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Jan 1, 2023 22:46
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:No one, Society has Matured in the years since, we understand we reach Pandora not by killing ourselves, but by killing Peter Thiel before he can drink the Tulkun adrenochrome. How did I miss the allusion the adrenochrome drinking billionaires?!
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Jan 1, 2023 23:35
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Megasabin posted:Avatar was a one and done movie for me-- top of the line visual 3D experience in theater with a throw away story/characters. Get your eyes checked for real
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Jan 2, 2023 00:52
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The movie looks perfectly fine. The issue is that it's a little too "fine", with no particularly interesting shots and basic-rear end continuity editing at best. (At worst, the movie has fairly major structural problems spackled over with crap expository dialogue. Like, for example: the unending narrated prologue that offers little or no useful information besides that kids were born. That's Cameron wasting our time.) What a crazy issue to have and yet people are STILL going back to see it in the theater. Y’all are loving insane. https://twitter.com/discussingfilm/status/1609598140495134721?s=46&t=mnfsIskWZoY4w2aeMv6iww
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Jan 2, 2023 00:55
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The REAL Goobusters posted:What a crazy issue to have and yet people are STILL going back to see it in the theater. Y’all are loving insane. Gone w/ the Wind. Jurassic World. Ghost Leviathan posted:I feel that's the kinda thing that happens when a movie spends too long in editing and the director/crew have taken plot beats for granted they forget the audience doesn't. It's an amateur mistake but a real common one, so much media from the last decade leaves key plot points on the cutting room floor. (see TRoS) Plot holes aren’t a major problem; the plot of J. Cameron’s Aliens makes no sense whatsoever, but audiences can make sense of the story because “aliens mean, Ripley righteous, Burke sleazey”. With Avatar 2, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of Q2 - and nothing wrong with Lang’s performance. However, the story sucks because the character is introduced as “a guy watching a youtube video.” The whole narrative depends on this guy being more terrifying than a thousand helicopter gunships.
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Jan 2, 2023 01:30
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Countering artistic critiques with "but it made lots of money!" will never fail to make me laugh. Avatar 2 is pretty eye-catching due to its art direction and virtual locations, but SMG was making a point about the artfulness of its shot compositions. Cameron tends to compose shots like an engineer to give the clearest depiction of space and movement, it's part of why his action sequences read so well. But there's a case to made that his dramatic coverage can be a bit uninspired. Bugblatter fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 01:36
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:With Avatar 2, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of Q2 - and nothing wrong with Lang’s performance. However, the story sucks because the character is introduced as “a guy watching a youtube video.” The whole narrative depends on this guy being more terrifying than a thousand helicopter gunships. Quaritch 2's introduction is a clear inversion of Jake Sully's first time link to his avatar; reducing it to "a guy watching a YT video" ignores deliberate parallels and is a pretty weak take... I expected better from you, SMG. The movie also explains a swarm of banshees will gently caress up any helicopter gunships that go anywhere near where the Omaticaya are camped out. Come on man, that's a big part of the reason the RDA deploys the recom unit to better infiltrate the Pandoran wilderness.
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Jan 2, 2023 01:41
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Bugblatter posted:Countering artistic critiques with "but it made lots of money!" will never fail to make me laugh. Why? quote:Avatar 2 is pretty eye-catching due to its art direction and virtual locations, but SMG was making a point about the artfulness of its shot compositions. Art is subjective. SMG isn't presenting facts, they're expressing an opinion. teagone fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 01:43
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BiggerBoat posted:So much of this movie is like a Roger Dean album cover come to life. That's like, the entire appeal of the franchise.
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Jan 2, 2023 02:55
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teagone posted:Why? Because capitalism is a terrible metric to judge a subjective medium by. Is Justin Bieber one of the greatest geniuses in music? Does your favorite indie band suck because they don't sell well? Box office earnings indicate broad appeal and marketing reach, not artistic merit. If someone countered criticism of Joss Whedon's writing or visual direction with the global gross of The Avengers, would you think "oh yes, a fair counterpoint?" quote:Art is subjective. SMG isn't presenting facts, they're expressing an opinion. Where did I say otherwise? Bugblatter fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 03:11
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Bugblatter posted:Box office earnings indicate broad appeal and marketing reach, not artistic merit. This is not always the case though. See: both Avatar films. Bugblatter posted:If someone countered criticism of Joss Whedon's writing or visual direction with the global gross of The Avengers, would you think "oh yes, a fair counterpoint?" Joss Whedon is not James Cameron. The Avengers success (and any other Marvel film) is hinged on the strength of its franchise IP. The difference with the Avatar films when compared to most other broad-reaching movies is that they're director driven and not produced by committee. Bugblatter posted:Where did I say otherwise? Just making a point. teagone fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 03:33
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teagone posted:This is not always the case though. See: both Avatar films. Is art subjective, or does it have an objective quality that can be determined by financial success (But only under stringent qualifications)?
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Jan 2, 2023 04:18
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Artistic merit isn't directly correlated to commercial success. In fact, commercial success isn't even directly correlated with what mass audiences like, since plenty of movies which audiences hated still made a profit. Cameron has now said to some Chinese media source what we suspected - that the actual break-even point for Avatar: TWoW is lower than 2 billion dollars - more like the 10th highest grossing movie. He was talking about impressing Disney. https://twitter.com/skateparken/status/1609694534744838144 Variety's source says that the break-even point is indeed at 1.4 billion dollars: Box Office: ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Rules Over New Year’s, Global Gross Hits $1.38 Billion quote:Sources put “Avatar: The Way of Water’s” break-even point at roughly $1.4 billion, a figure it is on the precipice of passing. e: Grammar Vir fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 04:26
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teagone posted:Quaritch 2's introduction is a clear inversion of Jake Sully's first time link to his avatar; reducing it to "a guy watching a YT video" ignores deliberate parallels and is a pretty weak take... I expected better from you, SMG. The movie also explains a swarm of banshees will gently caress up any helicopter gunships that go anywhere near where the Omaticaya are camped out. Come on man, that's a big part of the reason the RDA deploys the recom unit to better infiltrate the Pandoran wilderness. This isn't a 'take'. It's a formal analysis of the movie. Now, you're saying that it's an inversion of Jake Sully - but that was in another film. If you're mushing the two films together like that, then you aren't actually talking about Avatar 2 but about the broader franchise or whatever. (And, even in that view, why should I care that he's an "inverted" Jake?) In this film, a new character is introduced waking up (with amnesia(?)). He's shown a video explaining that he should hate Jakesully, from the prologue. A couple brief scenes later, several of his incredibly expensive recom badasses are absolutely brutalized in a firefight that they instigated. The film establishes, right off the bat, that Q2 doesn't have a compelling motivation and doesn't present an obstacle for the protagonists.
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Jan 2, 2023 04:27
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Bugblatter posted:Is art subjective, or does it have an objective quality that can be determined by financial success (But only under stringent qualifications)? James Cameron is objectively a better artist/director/writer than Joss Whedon, yes. Maybe there's some correlation between the difference in box revenue of the films they've both directed 
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Jan 2, 2023 04:30
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:If you're mushing the two films together like that, then you aren't actually talking about Avatar 2 but about the broader franchise or whatever. The motivation is pretty compelling - for all intents and purposes this is the same guy. Discovering his son in the mix confuses those motivations though. From that point on, him and the team are working with a handicap. Vir fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 04:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The movie looks perfectly fine. The issue is that it's a little too "fine", with no particularly interesting shots and basic-rear end continuity editing at best. (At worst, the movie has fairly major structural problems spackled over with crap expository dialogue. Like, for example: the unending narrated prologue that offers little or no useful information besides that kids were born. That's Cameron wasting our time.) yeah it was pretty tough to puzzle out that they were running out of breath. "man i wonder why they're panicking and saying their final words to each other. just hold your breath, idiots!" Maybe holding your breath in a coral reef vs after being in a massive fight, trapped & lost in the guts of a sinking ship are different. It's truly a headscratcher.
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Jan 2, 2023 04:56
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Lol imagine what the blockbuster movie market is like if you have to break into the top 15 grossing films of all time to be considered a success
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Jan 2, 2023 05:07
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This isn't a 'take'. It's a formal analysis of the movie. Now, you're saying that it's an inversion of Jake Sully - but that was in another film. If you're mushing the two films together like that, then you aren't actually talking about Avatar 2 but about the broader franchise or whatever. (And, even in that view, why should I care that he's an "inverted" Jake?) I'm treating Avatar as the prologue to Avatar TWOW, because that's basically what it is. Quaritch 2's character beats being an inversion of Jake's run in the first film gives a unique perspective/fresh take on what we remember from the first movie. Quaritch as the antgonist of the first film was presented as a giant xenophobic racist militaristic imperialist type and now in TWOW, he is reincarnated into the form of the aliens he so vehemently hated. That element alone is pretty compelling way to progress the villain, imo. Throw in that he has a son who has been adopted by his sworn enemy? Adds more drama, especially when that father/son dynamic both reflects Jake's own relationship with his son, and also potentially opens up the door to a redemption arc. The message here becomes one of empathy; putting yourself in someone elses shoes (almost quite literally) and getting to understand how they feel -- Quaritch 2 experiencing what Jake was put through, but in his own way (e.g., Q2 literally cold-cocks the banshee whereas Jake tried to be more gentle), and coming out the other end with conflicted emotions? That's why you should care, imo. Jake embraced the Na'vi, but will Quaritch 2 do the same despite his villanous origins? It makes Quaritch 2, whose human origin was fairly one-dimensional in Avatar, a bit more complex of an antagonist. quote:In this film, a new character is introduced waking up (with amnesia(?)). He's shown a video explaining that he should hate Jakesully, from the prologue. A couple brief scenes later, several of his incredibly expensive recom badasses are absolutely brutalized in a firefight that they instigated. The film establishes, right off the bat, that Q2 doesn't have a compelling motivation and doesn't present an obstacle for the protagonists. What Vir said teagone fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 05:07
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Get your eyes checked for real I saw it with 3 other people. Everyone noticed the framerate drops. Everyone agreed it happened the most in the convoy scene. Like I said in the post, maybe it was the theater and not the movie, but it really made some of the action scenes look like bad video game cut scenes. When this wasn’t happening, like in all the underwater scenes, the movie looked great, but in my theater experience it happened way too often.
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Jan 2, 2023 05:22
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teagone posted:James Cameron is objectively a better artist/director/writer than Joss Whedon, yes. Well, no one is going to contest that. I chose Joss Whedon because he sucks. It doesn't make it less asinine to dismiss someone's artistic analysis by citing financials. "You think Dan Brown writes bad prose? Lol, look at how many books he sold."
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Jan 2, 2023 05:24
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Arglebargle III posted:Lol imagine what the blockbuster movie market is like if you have to break into the top 15 grossing films of all time to be considered a success All this talk made me look up the highest grossing film list, and it seems insane that after Avatar 1 and Titanic, the only other movie in the top 50 that isn't part of some existing franchise or remake is zootopia. Literally every other film is some existing thing.
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Jan 2, 2023 05:54
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Vir posted:This is a sequel. Even though it gives audiences unfamiliar with the setting a very quick introduction, the previous movie needs to be referenced when engaging with this movie. If a movie's narrative requires supplementary materials such as comicbooks or entire other films to function, then it's a failure as a standalone film. In Star Wars 2: The Empire Strikes Back, all the important characters are (re)introduced during the ice planet sequence at the start of the film. The ice planet stuff is a full-fledged narrative unto itself - a microcosmic drama that summarizes the themes of the previous film while introducing some new wrinkles (Vader leads the Imperial forces, the Rebellion is failing, Luke is increasingly disillusioned...). Viewers jumping in at this point will have absolutely no difficulty understanding what's going on. Avatar 2 doesn't have an 'ice planet sequence'. The closest equivalent would be the attack on the train - but Q2 isn't even involved in that. The lengthy, clumsy narrated montage is a very poor substitute for actual drama. A simple rewrite: we open with a flashback to the events of Avatar 1, from a different perspective. Quarritch is preparing for his final battle against Jake Sully. He lays out the plan, prepares his gear, and finally uploads a backup copy of his memories. Smash-cut to 15 Years Later. Now we can follow Quarritch 2 as he learns what the gently caress he's missed: the status of the colonial project, what Jake's activities have been, etc. With this all firmly established, we can then smoothly transition to the Sullys' perspective: a reveal, to new audiences, that public enemy #1 - the terrifying insurgent Jakesully - is just a dopey family guy.
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Jan 2, 2023 06:20
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Arglebargle III posted:Lol imagine what the blockbuster movie market is like if you have to break into the top 15 grossing films of all time to be considered a success well, we have The Avengers to thank for that. However I think that is more regarding expensive blockbuster movies, no one is talking this way about Everything, Everywhere All At Once (I don't think? People shift goalposts all the drat time now) it only ever seems to matter for "blockbuster" movies and cape films. Recall that when Batman v Superman failed to break $1b it was deemed "a failure" and, well, WB has just been loving up constantly ever since. Late stage capitalism is a hell of a drug, if you're a movie exec
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Jan 2, 2023 06:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:If a movie's narrative requires supplementary materials such as comicbooks or entire other films to function, then it's a failure as a standalone film. The thing is Quaritch 2 being speed run through Na'vi culture with the help of Spider in TWOW does function on its own; it helps prop up the father/son family dynamics that are introduced in the film. Observing that Quaritch 2's Na'vi journey is presented as an inversion of Jake's experiences from the prologue isn't required to get invested in that family dynamic part of TWOW's story. Though it does reward viewers who have seen the prologue with embellishing callbacks.
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Jan 2, 2023 06:54
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Arglebargle III posted:Lol imagine what the blockbuster movie market is like if you have to break into the top 15 grossing films of all time to be considered a success You only have to do that if you make one of the most expensive film projects of all time.
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Jan 2, 2023 06:59
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How do you nerds still not get smg's trolling shtick? It's been loving decades.
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Jan 2, 2023 07:02
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Ratios and Tendency posted:How do you nerds still not get smg's trolling shtick? It's been loving decades. I'm just giving the SMG chatbot AI a better sense of how I post, personally. It needs a recalibration every now and then, for everyone imo.
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Jan 2, 2023 07:05
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Ratios and Tendency posted:How do you nerds still not get smg's trolling shtick? It's been loving decades. Your first mistake was to consider SMG's posting "trolling"
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Jan 2, 2023 07:12
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