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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."
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.
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.
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.
The complete list is actually really short.
It's Pocahontas but with BLUE people.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
Exactly! Hollywood loves Hate Whitey plots. Avatar is a White People Suck plot applied to the whole human species:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
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)
Avatar 2- unobtanium bugaloo!
It's not a "Hate Whitey" plot so much as a "White Guy Comes In And Saves The Natives" plot, which IMHO is the more insulting of the two. They can't save themselves, but G.I. Joe here can come in, learn how they live, and then do "native stuff" better than them and save their whole tribe in the process, being received as their great savior and leader.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
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.
Huh?
Did you miss the whole fundamental plot point that the reason that he was spying for the military was so that the military would pay for precisely that?
Were you sleeping through the movie or something?
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
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)
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...
Yeah. If you completely ignore Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Ben Bova, Robert A. Heinlein, William F. Jenkins (Murray Leinster), Larry Niven, E. E. Smith, Harry Stubbs (Hal Clement), A. E. van Vogt - i.e., the (all American) masters of mostly hard SF.
Don't get me wrong. It's entirely forgivable to feel that way if you are looking only at the last 50 years, mostly the last 30 years, and you haven't been exposed to the greats.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Sativa works better than Indica for movies...
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
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)
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.)
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)
How were they going to save themselves? Clearly the humans had superior fire power the Na'vi were not prepared to deal with. The Tree was destroyed, and Na'vi morale at that point was crushed. The thing that gave Tully his edge (knock off the racist crap already) is that he was an inside man and knew the Human's vulnerabilities. He too would have died in the movie - twice- if not for Neytiri.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
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.