Slashdot Mirror
James Cameron Announces Four Sequels to 'Avatar' (egyptindependent.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a surprise appearance at CinemaCon, James Cameron announced plans for "a truly massive cinematic process" -- four new sequels to his 2009 blockbuster Avatar, plus a Disney theme park. "It's going to be a true epic saga," Cameron told the audience, promising that Avatar 2 would be released in Christmas of 2018, followed by three additional sequels, for a total of five Avatar-themed movies. Cameron's original sci-fi blockbuster earned $2.8 billion, though at least one Slashdot user argued that its overall message was that technology is bad, "strange because the movie is among most technically sophisticated ever."
I hope the sequels have some level of originality.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5460954/the-complete-list-of-sources-avatars-accused-of-ripping-off
I mean the Movie was a little bit stupid and only focused on effects, but one could bear to watch it. The important question is if the next 4 have an actual story..... (i guess not...)
So does he have another gimmick effect to carry the movies like the first turd?
And then all of Slashdot argued against him ... Seriously, what authority does one slashdotter have?
https://entertainment.slashdot...
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
"Avatar" basically tells the story of the invasion of America by western europeans. By painting it in modern, but crude and realistic colors, it shows how bad it was. By inventing an unrealistic happy ending, it attempts to reverse the course of the history - in memories. Maybe it makes it a good cure. Anyway, in this perspective what can be the follow-up ? Rewritings of other bad memories of occidentals, such as the the Vietnam war, the colonisation of Palestine, or of the opium wars.
There are announcements about sequels (better batteries) but we are never seeing anything in the cinemas (quadcopter stores). I will believe it when I see it, although I am looking forward to both.
For real; what kind of fool is against deforestation, anyway??
James Cameron is one of my favorite directors.
The sequal to The Terminator and Alien are the best sequels out there IMHO.
He managed to create really good sequels in a time where sequels where only made to sell lunchboxes and stuff.
Followed by Avatar: the desolation of Smaug; Avatar: the worst airbender; and Avatar: the history of the world part II.
His ears are blocked by BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Well he engages in a kind-of noble savage fallacy + the obviously retarded "greed (business) is evil". Of course it's OK for James Cameron to hold these views since he has a private jet, 4 houses, a couple of yachts and his own helicopter. The rest of us, no, we're not allowed to cut down trees. My own personal opinion on this is we shouldn't, but that's not the point here. Anyway it's OK if James Cameron wants to build a 5th holiday home. It's just the usual tedious hypocrisy we get from people in the movies.
Never bet against Cameron on a 2nd film:
* Aliens
* Terminator 2
He's one of the few directors that has managed to follow up initial successes with gigantic second films that expand the universe & storyline and don't just milk the first film for extra dollars.
Avatar was a proof of concept.
I'm frankly excited to see what he does when he slows it down and goes deep for another three films.
This could indeed be epic.
James Cameron will never do another Terminator movie
His exact words to "the soup’s kind of been pissed in a little bit by other filmmakers"
Saying this before the fact of it reminds me of the hype machine from the Star Wars prequels. The coincident announcement of a Disney theme park doesn't help.
Battle Angel Alita
I was looking forward to that one. Hell, I'm still waiting for a live-action Lupin III... Stevo from Jackass (no, I don't watch that shit) has the perfect looks for the role (I have no idea how much acting talent the guy possesses).
It's just the usual tedious hypocrisy we get from people in the movies.
The messenger being a hypocritical in no way invalidates the message.
being a hypocritical
Thank you, autocorrect...
Now that Pocahontas has been done to death, I fully expect the sequels to be: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella... but with blue people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
On the other hand I haven't heard James Cameron applying for the role of Michael Moore. Maybe he just thought it'd be a good story, the way most movies are just entertainment? It's not hypocracy to make James Bond and still think sending out people with "license to kill" is a bad idea in the real world...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Avatar has been rather unfairly maligned, IMHO. Yes, they did some copouts - most notably:
* Making the na'vi more humanlike than the earlier concepts so that audiences would emphasize with them more
* The "white man comes in and saves the natives" plot aspect
But the depth that Cameron went into for the backstory - most of which never showed up in the movie - was impressive. Including something that viewers made fun of about the movie - the term "unobtanium". In the Avatar universe, science had continually been frustrated by all of the potential technologies that could be achieved with a good room-temperature superconductor; long before it was discovered on Pandora, they had jokingly taken to calling the concept unobtanium. When it was actually discovered, the name stuck, reinforced by the difficulty of actually getting it back.
For the biology, Cameron brought a botanist who developed evolutionary trees, developed the mechanism for plant communication, and advised the crew on how botanists would go about studying the environment. For the Na'vi language they brought in a linguist from USC. The Venture Star was based on the Valkyrie interstellar spacecraft concept. And on and on. The level of detail that they went into was impressive, such as how being on a moon orbiting a gas giant would cause unusual color changes over the course of a day, and the effects that this would have on the indigenous populations' culture.
In the backstory to the Avatar universe, the moon quickly gathered scientists' attention because of its abnormally intense magnetic field. Unobtanium is a room-temperature superconductor. Superconductors become flux-pinned in magnetic fields, so floating islands are actually a natural repercussion of such an environment. With plants growing in an environment where they can readily incorporate a superconductor into their biology, extensive usage of electrical messaging between cells would be a very natural evolutionary adaptation. Here on Earth, plants communicate between each other with far lower bandwidth messaging mechanisms available to them, such as pheromones (for example, acacia trees signal to others when they're being eaten so that they can produce more bitter/toxic compounds). The concept that an emergent inter-plant neural network could occur would be not at all unrealistic in such an environment. And if plants have evolved such a network, then it would be to animals' advantages to evolve to tap into it as well - to manipulate it, to gather information, to call for mates over long distances, etc.
I think they did some excellent worldbuilding, but it was poorly served by a lot of poor decisions in the scriptwriting. Even the general plot could have been fine if they had handled it better. Examples:
* Why should a bond between animals be one-way, with the animal becoming basically just a servant of the Na'vi? It would have been interesting if the na'vi riding it became more like the animal as well, taking on the animal's interests as well. If the bonds tend to be characterized by one dominating the other, then why should the Na'vi inherently be at the top of the chain? Surely there would be manipulative parasites, for example. Perhaps the toruk is so dangerous to bond with because it convinces its rider to give up and be eaten.
* They could have had Sully at least *try* to use the Na'vi language more. Maybe this "slow student" won't be giving speeches, but after all this time, he hardly seems to put forth the effort, just an occasional word here and there - yet that doesn't seem to bother anyone much. I know, I get it, it's easier for the audience to hear English than read subtitles....
* Part of the problem with the "white man saves the day" plot is that it's insulting to indiginous peoples, that they can't save themselves and need some white savior who simultaneously assauges "white guilt". But they didn't have to go this way. They could have merely taken an easy copout and not cast
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Say it ain't so!
The one visual slasher effect movie ws QUITE enough!
The Republicans in my town want to tear down an out of date power plant and build 50 acres of condos. Fortunately the people voted that down.
Why is that fortunate? People need someplace to live, and high density condos are better than the alternative of suburban sprawl.
Ironically, the most emotional moment in the movie was apparently accidental - the destruction of Home Tree. Lots of reviews mentioned how much it reminded them of the collapse of the Twin Towers, and how that brought back memories for them. But apparently (or at least ostensibly) that wasn't the intent - it was just an emergent consequence of how large structures burn, how smoke rises off them, how they collapse, what they kick into the air, what they leave behind, etc.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
He will have to change the plot. The original Avatar was banned from China. At the time, China was having some serious unrest and violence over rural land rights, and the Avatar plot was just too close to reality. But the Chinese market is much bigger today, and may have already surpassed America as the world's biggest movie market. So the story line will likely have to be adjusted to accommodate the Chinese government.
Well he engages in a kind-of noble savage fallacy
A more nuanced primitive society with some nasty bits would be a more interesting movie, though that lack of subtlety is probably part of why it made so much money (while being completely unmemorable). People disparage blockbusters for a reason.
+ the obviously retarded "greed (business) is evil". Of course it's OK for James Cameron to hold these views since he has a private jet, 4 houses, a couple of yachts and his own helicopter. The rest of us, no, we're not allowed to cut down trees. My own personal opinion on this is we shouldn't, but that's not the point here. Anyway it's OK if James Cameron wants to build a 5th holiday home. It's just the usual tedious hypocrisy we get from people in the movies.
It's only hypocritical if Cameron made his money strip mining a jungle.
He wasn't arguing for socialism. He was arguing against exploitation, environmental devastation, and destructive corporate greed.
There's nothing in the movie to argue against rich people in general.
I stole this Sig
except when you use it to make a movie.... about how technology is bad.
J
It's no surprise that Avatar's overall message is that "technology is bad" because American Science Fiction's overall message is exactly that.
American SF almost always (that is, with very few exceptions) has an underlying message that technology or science is bad and/or leads to disastrous consequences, or that "man should not meddle with things he is not meant to understand", or that the "power of love" or human emotion in general is vastly superior and/or preferable to technology.
And it's never acknowledged that human emotions are essentially just chemicals operating within and on the brain. In fact, it's always the reverse message, either explicitly or implicitly, that emotions are some mystical non-matieral thing completely disconnected from (and superior to) physical reality.
In short: insipid anti-science, pro-ignorance religious/mystical propaganda, usually with either heavy-handedly overt biblical themes or bland new-age mysticism.
American authors/tv-writers/movie-makers etc also have an extremely hard time distinguising between SF and Fantasy, with "psychic powers" being magic dressed up in pseudo-science to sound all sciency.
It would be more accurate to call it Anti-Science Fiction.
I look forward to Avatar 2, where the natives discover they can sell Unobtanium for huge prices, and strip mine the planet themselves as they grow more and more addicted to the income.
Then in Avatar 3 they discover the internet, and being literally naturally designed to jack into things every one of them is an epic hacker fighting for control over a wire transfer a reseller is withholding.
Avatar 4 is not quite as good, being a police procedural set under the now armored and smoke-filled limbs of the World Tree with lots of nods to replicants in Blade Runner, but Avatar 5 looks to be awesome - the long awaited Alien Vs. Predator Vs. Avatar.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Avatar was enjoyable enough as optical stimuli but its simplistic moral landscape limited it to not much more than that.
I would have been more compelling if there had been more moral complexity than white Earth men come and abuse gentle and innocent indigenous people in order to extract their minerals.
It reduced both sides to a ridiculous caricature of good versus evil and drained it of any interest.
More compelling would have been some kind of desperate reason for Earth men to be there (some kind of end-of-civilization crisis on Earth) and if the indigenous people had been more complex than they are.
I'm not sure any population ever has been all good, shiny and happy like those blue people. How about internal factions with their own vicious conflict?
I wonder if they'll fast-forward 80 years and have the sequel begin with the Na'vi opening up casinos on their reservations...
"I think they did some excellent worldbuilding"
I bet you haven't read 1058 James Blish's "A Case of Conscience". I wouldn't say it's plagiarism but it certainly explores a very similar universe with basically all the same clues you find in Avatar.
"The noble savage isn't a fallacy, it's a romantic ideal."
Only it is not an ideal the type of "that's what we should aspire to" but in "that's the way things used to be and we should learn from" and, since things didn't use to be that way, the noble savage *is* a fallacy -or a myth, if so you prefer.
Yes, Avatar was a big hit, a technical breakthrough, but IMO the time window as passed.
9 years for a sequel to Avatar is a bit too much, I doubt it that Avatar 2 will be anywhere close to Avatar in terms of success. Maybe one sequel would be interesting and work out somehow, but 4? Yeah that's some cow-milking right there, except the cow already went home.
The reason why big franchises like Star Wars, the MCU or even Fast and the Furious keeps drawing people in is because we are invested in the characters, in the stories, in those universes. That could have happened to Avatar, the potential was there, but the time passed, people moved on, there was nothing there for 9 years to sustain the "love". Cameron trying to jump-start a "true epic saga" with 4 sequels to a movie 7 years old is more or less the same as DC trying to catch-up with 8 years of MCU movies with just one single film. You can't compensate for a gap of 8 years and at least 12 movies with 1 single movie, and you can't create an "true epic saga" by creating 4 sequels to a movie who's flame has notoriously faded away.
So Avatar will have 4 sequels? Who really cares these days?
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
for taking gfx to the next level.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
As someone else pointed out the msg of Avatar isn't anti technology but more opposed to the kind of neofeudal corporatism that we're all headed into, where the nation state operates at the behest and at the interests of the major multi-nationals. It's interesting seeing a similar msg coming through in such as Mr. Robot and Continuum.
Oh but it does.
It is the same stick conservatives are beaten with (and rightfully so) when they pander family values while being on their 5th marriage. Physician heal thy self.
I have a disdain for media that are that obvious in their message. The other aspect of technology is making things more efficient so there is less environmental impact.
But a nuanced story of societies making tough choices navigating immature tech with unknown long-term consequences is maybe a bit dry for a summer blockbuster.
Disney isn't turning Animal Kingdom into Avatar Land, it's just an addition Animal Kingdom is getting - so it will simply be a land alongside the Himalaya and Africa areas.
In the same spirit Disney Studios park is getting the addition of a Star Wars land (just started building so perhaps 2018 before we'll see that).
I agree with your assessment of Avatar though and I find the value of a whole land around that universe dubious... we'll see how the four movies go though. Perhaps they'll have a Buzz Lightyear style ride in which you are flying a fighter shooting down Navi?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, just... no. The only sensible interpretation of the USB tails is that the Na'vi were a previously advanced race who genied themselves and their environment back to the stone age while giving themselves admin access to the high level flora and fauna. Seeing as Sully's Na'vi clone has the same ability even though his human brain wouldn't be able to translate the tail communications. Then there's the fact that it made ZERO sense for the humans to go after the largest deposit initially given the giant floating chunks lying around. A much more sensible plan for the corporation would have been to mine the floating islands, then with the market well and truly cornered gotten an actual military expedition sent out to wipe out the natives. Not to mention the weapon design was completely fucking awful.
Perhaps they'll have a Buzz Lightyear style ride in which you are flying a fighter shooting down Navi?
Nah - it will be a ride where you search out and fire Disney IT workers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Part of the problem with the "white man saves the day" plot is that it's insulting to indiginous peoples, that they can't save themselves and need some white savior who simultaneously assauges "white guilt". But they didn't have to go this way. They could have merely taken an easy copout and not cast some G.I. Joe clone for the lead role, maybe someone asian or hispanic. Or they could just have fixed the plot and made it realistic: that it's not due to Sully's great skill and bravery that he becomes Toruk Makto and "saves the day" (the natives are surely far better at doing "native stuff" than him); that it's the will of Eywa.
I think you're not giving the white guy enough credit. Any time you're fighting an enemy, especially if that enemy is very different from you, any intelligence (inside information) you can get on that enemy is extremely valuable. The Na'vi aren't stupid, but they're also not a technological species (and arguably because they didn't need to be; they have a great lifestyle as they are as they haven't overpopulated and outgrown their food supply as we humans did before we invented agriculture; basically they live in paradise). They don't have the kind of experience with warfare and combat that we do, and they sure as hell don't have the weaponry we do. But they do have real skills and talents, and then got themselves the most valuable asset of all: a defector from their enemy. There's a big reason the US encouraged defection from the USSR during the cold war: there's no better source of information. And not only did the white guy defect and join their cause, he became like them so he could understand them and communicate with them, so he knew about both sides and was able to use that to the Na'vi's advantage.
The same applies to where the natives seem to care most about what happens to all of the white people rather than their own. Such as after the battle when large numbers are dead or wounded and clustered around the Tree of Souls, but the whole tribe stops everything to hold a big ceremony to try to save Dr. Augustine.
Here again, it's a pretty powerful thing when someone from your enemy's side crosses over to your side, and then sacrifices their life for your cause in battling their own people. Any intelligent tribal species would understand just how significant this is, and accord such a person great respect.
Avatar was only slightly better than Waterworld (but probably still in the same league as Ishtar)
Add that to one of the movies to watch after I'm dead
Most successful movie of all time at the time was a "flop"? I think you don't need to look far to find an ignorant shit.
Learn to love Alaska
And release the blu ray versions of True Lies and The Abyss.
Sending out people with a license to kill and the wits to understand when someone needs to be killed (or not) is way better than invasive surveillance, extraordinary renditions and drone strikes, which incidentally is the whole point of "Spectre".
Umm... Greed is bad...Oh wait, no, "greed is good." Sorry forgot about that one.
The executive did mention that the company has PR to think about. Wiping out the natives looks awful back home - the public does not approve of genocide. They could do it if there was no other way, but it's a last-resort option. So last resort they set up the very expensive avatar program in the hope of negotiating a trade deal. An idea which failed because the native culture was sufficiently far from humans that there was nothing humans could offer that they valued.
It better be, because the first one wasn't. Some of the visuals were impressive, but the story was pretty much... how to say it... like written by a 1st year student. "Here's the standard book on Hollywood stories, add some aliens and VR because that's a hype right now. Also, you have one week."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Named as such because it's hard to obtainium
That was one joke driven in with a sledgehammer. However, much of the humor in the movie is more subtle, especially when you consider some of the casts earlier roles. Sigourney Weaver as the chain-smoking, alien-loving xenoanthropologist who ends up having an alien tree grow into her head (which in most other movies is usually the "oh noes, teh evil aliens are invading our bodies and brains!!!"-scene, while it has a completely different connotation in Avatar).
that it's not due to Sully's great skill and bravery that he becomes Toruk Makto and "saves the day"
It wasn't his skill an bravery ... it was the planets ecosystem taking an interest in him (possibly because he's less ... scienc-ey than the other participants of the Avater project?) and allowing him to become Toruk Makto. Maybe the ecosystem even planted the idea in his head to do so (you mentioned the possibility of two-way communication earlier - mabye this is it. It's very subtle, and yet powerful ...).
Titanic wasnt the only boat that sank. He could do the Lusitania and the Britannic just for starters.
Oh I don't know. I think it would make an excellent theme for a movie or four.
Here I was hoping that the UK government had come up with a new angle on the EU referendum.
Did Pocahontas have a bunch of sequels to be ripped off and set in space?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I think you're not giving the white guy enough credit. Any time you're fighting an enemy, especially if that enemy is very different from you, any intelligence (inside information) you can get on that enemy is extremely valuable. The Na'vi aren't stupid, but they're also not a technological species (and arguably because they didn't need to be; they have a great lifestyle as they are as they haven't overpopulated and outgrown their food supply as we humans did before we invented agriculture; basically they live in paradise). They don't have the kind of experience with warfare and combat that we do, and they sure as hell don't have the weaponry we do. But they do have real skills and talents, and then got themselves the most valuable asset of all: a defector from their enemy. There's a big reason the US encouraged defection from the USSR during the cold war: there's no better source of information.
And even if it's not a "defector" per se, history is chock full of examples of outside talent "helping the natives" be much more effective than they could be on their own. Due to skill, contacts, knowledge, experience, and yes, intelligence in both the broad and narrow sense.
It's no accident that Scottish mercenaries show up time and time again leading the locals to yet another victory. Or on the subject of "defectors" why not Arminius himself, that through having grown up in Rome as a hostage, gained intimate knowledge of how the romans thought and fought, and being a "king" at home could unite the local quarrelling tribes long enough to isolate and defeat in detail three whole roman legions. Or why not Lawrence of Arabia, as a more modern, and romantic example. (In fact, being an outsider is actually a great help when it comes to aligning internal factions, as you are not one of the factions to begin with, you can appear neutral in the local conflicts.)
So, no, that a professional solider, who know the enemy intimately (because he is one of them) can increase the effectiveness of the locals manyfold, locals who are emphatically not professional soldiers, is not surprising at all.
If that wasn't true, the US wouldn't have a whole arm dedicated to the task of training and leading the locals. It is the US Army special forces main task to this day.
Stefan Axelsson
"I think they did some excellent worldbuilding"
I bet you haven't read 1058 James Blish's "A Case of Conscience". I wouldn't say it's plagiarism but it certainly explores a very similar universe with basically all the same clues you find in Avatar.
Or seen Pocahontas, it's basically the same thing.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Nos II, II and IV. Personally, I can wait, there are so many 'better' SF films. It's paradoxical (and should be a named law) that a big budget tends to make a bad film. Actually it's probably something to do with the fallacy of composition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On y va, qui mal y pense!
There's a saying that I will translate from French, to wit: 'Eat shit, 10000000 flies cannot be wrong'. In the same vein, your Mr. Trump is good because he has a lot of cash?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
I think the Titanic could pop up again (re-floated by an undersea cataclysm, of course) and anyone left aboard are now flesh-eating zombies. That would work?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
He's one of the few directors that has managed to follow up initial successes with gigantic second films that expand the universe & storyline and don't just milk the first film for extra dollars.
He's also one of those directors who doesn't know when less is more, or when a when some well turned words are worth a thousand special effects. The effects and spectacle should follow the story and not the other way around.
The translation is done by a hair-lined nerve cluster on the back of the head; it's not a conscious effort. Yes, they need to be integrated with it as much as they need to be integrated with the rest of their body.
You're of the view that it would have been easier to mine while flying?
What weapon are you referring to, out of curiosity?
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
It's like Berkeley Systems announcing the future releases of "After Dark II, III, IV and V", due to the success of their first two-hour long screensaver.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
The Cycle of Fire trilogy by Janny Wurts is great for this. A mystical island is creating Wizards to fight the "demons". Turns out its advanced tech left on a planet with Alien POWs and Humans trying to create a human with superpowers to fight an interstellar war.
Is awesome.
I'll just leave this here ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Noooooooooooooo!!!
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Tech ain't bad, Cameron is.
No he's not.
He does mass-compatible popcorn movies. They may be not your exact taste (mine neither) but they're not bad.
Point in case: Compare Avatar to the latest Batman vs. Superman. Later is bad movie. Former is not.
Avatar may be a rehash of a generic story with predicable plot - but it is well executed. The SFX in Avatar are top-of-the-line as is the art direction. The acting is mostly ok, with Saldana, Weaver and Ribisi actually being quite good. And while Stephen Lang does play a relatively generic badass bad-guy, I would say he nailed it pretty good - well supported by Camerons narative and shooting. It's definitely fun to watch him - mostly because he's so over-the-top.
It's a balls of fun popcorn movie that won't hurt or overload your brain with big questions about life and existance. No big deal. In terms of mass-compatible pop-corn movies, it's exactly what Cameron was aiming for. Which makes him a fine director, if you ask me. Not the best, not top ten im my book, but good.
My 0.02 Euros.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Part of the problem with the "white man saves the day" plot is that it's insulting to indiginous peoples, that they can't save themselves and need some white savior who simultaneously assauges "white guilt".
Hollywood has a problem where it can't cast non-white people in leading roles for a lot of films. Black actors have made some progress, but even that is limited. Take the up-coming Ghost in the Shell movie. A story set in Japan about Japanese people and Japanese culture, but having a Japanese person in any of the major roles is too much.
Until Hollywood gets past that we are going to keep having films like this where white people are portrayed as the bad guys, except for this one who is the saviour of the natives, because just having a strong native character who saves themselves is for some reason unacceptable. It's almost like they feel that a white person needs to do it to give it legitimacy, otherwise it's just native troublemakers, rebels and terrorists.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
first learn the difference between greed and wealth.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
sorry to have to point this out to you, but there is no such thing as "reverse racism" either one is racist or not, their own race makes no difference
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Apparently the announcement only sounds like a good idea if you wear 3D glasses while reading it.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Crap! I just cut down a tree in my yard this weekend.
Am I in trouble, or will the fact that it was a non-native invasive species* save me?
*buckthorn
I must have missed the part about room-temperature superconductors in Pocahontas. I think I was also in the bathroom for the interstellar travel bit.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
You are right. And here you are!!!.
Having stolen the concept (projecting a human mind into an alien body on on alien world) from a 1960's SF short story and picked another remake of a standard plot, the only thing Avatar had going for it was the hot sh*t CGI (oh, and a lot of marketing hype).
Seriously. Completely immersive movie with beautiful detail, then there's a geek joke that takes you right out of it.
I must have missed the part about room-temperature superconductors in Pocahontas. I think I was also in the bathroom for the interstellar travel bit.
No you didn't, the room-temperature superconductors were coloured gold and they did the interstellar travel on a boat.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Avatar IV: Rocky Home Alone Freeing Willy
It's not about "the white man saves the day", it's about "the invader switches sides and uses inside knowledge against his former team". In this case, "going native" isn't just about falling for a native and liking their food and lifestyle, it's about switching race entirely. OTOH Sully has an additional stake in switching BODIES (not so much RACE) since his body is damaged, so it's in his own self-interest to switch sides. It's not all altruism; it's not simplistic sex and/or insubordination; it's just business (in the "Godfather" sense). (And without the high-tech to create that new body and use it as a remote in the first place, the low-tech "natural" transfer wouldn't have worked at all, so it's certainly not anti-tech.)
That tree was fleeing oppression and persecution. And if it turned up in your garden just because the soil is better, well wouldn't you do the same in its place?
# dum diddle um dum diddle um deeeee ...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As far as mining the flying rocks, the backstory talks about attempts to do this. They unbalanced one and dumped several million dollars worth of equipment to the ground, killing several workers. After that, they left the flying islands alone and just mined the superconductor.
Hence you're complaining about plotting, not worldbuilding.
In case you didn't notice, I was praising the worldbuilding, not the plot aspects. I find a number of aspects of the plot worthy of criticism. Its unoriginality, but in particular its unoriginality in regards to a rather insulting trope, is most definitely one of them.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
'got the DVD--with a whole batch of scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.'
Well congrats, then, you probably already own the second movie!
White guilt!? Have you been that fu^^king brainwashed?
You're reading in race where it needn't be. This isn't a William Burroughs' Tarzan story.
Sully has an advantage because he know the enemy. Knows how to fight them, The Na'vi obviously don't. Without Sully they would have been massacred. It has nothing to do with their courage. Their tactics and personal tendencies (charge) are from a pre-industrial (pre-rapid-fire) age. Sully knew what was going to be done and how to stop it. The Na'vi had no clue about missiles or bombs. Again, they were still in the wrestle, spear and bow and arrow age. (That's not insulting. That's the story line.) How would they be able to conceive what a nuclear bomb is? Or in their case a daisycutter.
Re Toruk Makto - sometimes people get stuck on can't. The Na'vi clan which Sully joined was demoralized and did not realize how much time was against them - and how this was an extinction level event. (As opposed to localized tragedy). You see it all the time in businesses which is why outside consultants are sometimes brought it. If you live in NYC (or other urban metropolis where neighborhoods gentrify) think of all the times people who've lived there did not see how the neighborhood was changing right in front of their blind eyes. And afterwards they say - I would be a millionaire if I bought back then. Sully needed a way to be paid attention to. What plot device would you have used?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I've found that a lot more story development can be accomplished (in the right hands) of a series. In a series you have a longer time to develop characters. 10 episodes @ 45 min each = 450 minutes, which would be a 7.5 hour movie. I don't know if it would apply to this type of movie, that seems to take so much time/resources/money/planning/post-production but I think it would be pretty cool.
I always felt like there was so much more to the Avatar story than what was in the movie. Movies have to be condensed to fit into a ~2.5 hr timeframe, unless you are planning out a sequel. But then it is released years apart.
With the "Netflix model" of a series like an Orange is the New Black, or Daredevil, or any of the others out there where the entire series is released at once it seems like a new style of movie can be released. One where you can take time to develop one or more characters and not have to take shortcuts and cram it in or leave parts on the cutting room floor. While this can happen with regular TV series, I've started to realize that I want the option to watch two or three in a row, or when I want. Waiting to watch Breaking Bad in this manner took a lot of the pressure off. I personally don't like being tied to a schedule to watch TV, and never cared enough to get a DVR.
(I was going to mention the Trailer Park Boys above... but that kind of killed my "character development" argument)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I dunno, Cameron didn't do Alien, the film of which Aliens was a sequel. And he isn't the same person he was when he did Terminator 2. His current oral hijinks reminds me more of Lucas about the time he forgot how to make decent movies.
The thing I don't understand is that Cameron's "four sequels to Avatar" is old news -- why are we even talking about it now? I strongly suspect (as I did when this was first announced years ago) that he'll make one sequel, it'll do ...ok... and if he manages to make a second sequel it'll be "meh" and that'll be the end of the franchise, except for the inevitable direct-to-video releases by unknown directors.
And finally, do we all understand that Avatar was made in 2009? Seven years ago?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm hoping the next movie is going to have representatives from Earth apologizing for the attack by the first gang of idiots, and trying to work with the Na'vi, probably through Sully. Things won't go smoothly of course; you need some conflict to make a movie.
I was full of it after 20 minutes. Why would someone want more of it?
2011. The year Gnome decided Linux will never be on the desktop.
You need to figure out what "flop" means.
Learn to love Alaska
Go fuck yourself, troll.
It's not at all about "looks". Please go back and read my original post.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Someone who points out you are an illiterate idiot must like Avatar? Your logic skills are weak. Try thinking before speaking. Scratch that. Try thinking. At least once. You've obviously not tried it yet. It's useful.
Learn to love Alaska
Never bet against Cameron on a 2nd film:
* Aliens * Terminator 2
Alien and Terminator were great films to begin with. Avatar was a turd.
Hollywood has a problem where it can't cast non-white people in leading roles for a lot of films.
There's an easy fox for that, stop watching Hollywood junk. There's plenty of great movies out there not from the Hollywood.
You can be racist, not racist, both, or neither. Those are the options. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Only took four posts or so to realise what a spacker you are. Point A, you don't know what a 'flop' is.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
My ideal sequel would subvert the mystic crap of the first one. The humans return, and this time they aren't going to dismiss all the talk of goddess and connectedness as hippie nonsense. The planet is connected, they have the data now, and if they can understand it then it ceases to be divine and becomes just a really big neural network. If you can hook a human brain up to a remote body, how hard can it be to enslave a planet?
Um...
1. Ghost in the Shell does not ever say where it takes place, the show/movie was modeled after Hong Kong, not Tokyo.
2. Have you EVER actually seen Ghost in the Shell? The major is a fucking white woman, they cast this properly.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Jesus was very likely Arabic in coloration, very like modern Egyptians. He was not white.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Except he did boast about being the greenest director of all time and about Avatar sending an environmental message. So no, not Michael Moore (though both make fiction), just James Cameron.
It depends on why you cut down the tree.
Oh, hang on, the Vietnamese won.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No, seriously: Why?
I know I'm about to butthurt a whole asston of James Cameron and Avatar fanbois. However the that and 25 still doesn't equal me giving a fuck.So, here it is:
IN MY OPINION the movie was more hype than anything else. Yes it had stunning visuals and was ground breaking on the technology side.
However, strip all that away and you are left with a mediocre performance, blatant rip off story line, and LOLable, implausible outcome.
I could go into detail (like how I could pick scenes that were blatantly obvious it came from another movie verbatim), however I will say this: Now that the shock and awe of the first movie is over, I highly doubt he can pull that kind of success again, let alone do it 4 times.