The _Avatar_ sequel, presumably also directed by James Cameron

whoops "the last hour" snuck in there as non sequitur. was just going to say it's up there with mad max: fury road as pure cinema. the efficiency with which Cameron ensures that we are fully on board with every last random henchperson getting what they have coming is extraordinary.

yeah it's not a complex story, but it's exceedingly well-executed

the complexity comes through the visuals and the imagination of another world, its people, and culture. that's the part that doesn't always resonate with me (all the spiritual stuff about the living world is woo woo nonsense), but the story is structured well enough that i do care about the world and the characters, even if i don't always remember names

hmmm y'all want me to watch this, doncha

cameron's work has always bounced off me; am i right in assuming this is a refinement of his process and not an overhaul?

dontcha wish your Avatar was blue like me

it's the cinematic equivalent of Larry Bird telling his defender exactly what he's about to do and then doing it.

that would be exactly right, if the entire audience were all furiously hoping to stop James Cameron from doing it

he didn't start the fire

don't ask me why

Rewatched the first Avatar with the kids to prep for seeing the sequel in the theaters. We’ve been working our way through the Marvel movies and I was struck by how good JC is at overall pacing and how well directed the action sequences are. No matter how chaotic things are, you always know where to look and it’s always very clear what is happening.

Brad is probably the only person who could make me be interested in Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) but I don't think it's gonna work

my reaction to the trailer was basically shock that over a decade of work he hadn't come up with anything

like if you make an animated movie and your characters aren't conveying anything about themselves through costume, silhouette, or movement, and in fact are scarcely to be distinguished from each other except by whether or not they have mechs(?), why did you make an animated movie

Brad labeling everyone who doesn't agree with him about the movie as just 'nerds who are trying to look smart' is... an unfortunate approach. But we'll all get over it, I'm sure.

silbs this is a deeply expressive movie on every level

didn’t you love alita? the same earnestness bleeds from this, on top of which the climax is like five cameron movies in a head-on collision, haven’t felt that since the matrix reloaded

the highway sequence specifically which i think even matrix sequels haters will acknowledge as cool and also heavily indebted to cameron, it was that kind of constant raising of stakes and complexity even though you were witnessing everything with total clarity

also whales are cool and there are so many whales in this movie

Brad labeling everyone who doesn't agree with him about the movie as just 'nerds who are trying to look smart' is... an unfortunate approach. But we'll all get over it, I'm sure.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

Aimless, you've been on this board too goddamn long not to understand how internet hyperbole works.

exaggerating for effect bc i am sure there are ppl out there who have totally legit reasons to dislike avatar and how can i account for that, how can i dismiss that all as unfettered nerdedry???? obv it’s ridiculous. however you’ll notice only nerds raised their hackles

We're all nerds yo

nerd, c'est moi

i am the kind of nerd who loves looking at cool shit and well-plotted action and these movies offer me a phantasmagoric portal into realm that is nearly 100 percent that. they are effective on that level. if you are looking for something that they are not offering, i can't take the objection seriously

vc otm that the new group of kids offers interesting characterization on top of the visual splendor, especially spider and teen sigourney weaver (i also will never remember any of the sully family's names except jakesully)

also whales are cool and there are so many whales in this movie

― flamenco drop (BradNelson)

Ok this is a genuine selling point, I guess I might watch this at some point and put up with the parts with Avatar guys

Never did see the first one either but it’s hard to believe that’s essential in any way

long-form James Cameron (everything from Titanic on) doesn't really appeal to me, but I get what he's going for and can appreciate what he's doing. one of the few people working on insanely expensive movies who understands scale and spectacle

there were some amazing scenes in this one and I ended up caring for the characters more than I did with the original. I didn't love it, but I appreciated it

silby you can totally skip the first one. I had only a vague recollection of the plot and there's enough summary and description that it makes the broad strokes of the first movie clear

you have to hand it to Cameron, he doesn't really do vague callbacks or require you to remember details

I don't even remember the last time I saw a movie in 3d, but I do know this is only one of a couple times I have done so and felt like it was worth seeing in that format

(oh wait, the last one might have been Gaspar Noe's Love. that was uh, maybe worth seeing in 3d for completely different reasons)

agreed that anyone interested in seeing this can skip the first one, there's basically an extended "previously on avatar" sequence that begins the film and tells you everything you need to know

i usually don't love 3d movies but i think in this instance it worked really well in tandem with the high frame rate to make the action scenes pop.

like i have no need for little floaty bioluminescent flowers to be in 3d, but i dug it during the climax

i liked the near-constant presence of bugs in the first act

I loved Marines dying for the second time in two movies

I'd heard someone describe the new one as the first third catching you up, the second third advancing the characters and story, and the final third being ... well, yeah, a mash-up of five Cameron movies at once.

Speaking of whales, when I saw Black Panther 2, with its whales and blue people, I wondered if they were trolling Avatar.

My kids really liked the first Matrix, but they've never forgiven me for making them watch (part) of the second one, which they hated so much we never finished and I disliked enough on rewatching so much I never brought it up again.

and yeah i hate 3d and it was so worth seeing in 3d. i so associate 3d glasses with projecting a grey dimness onto a movies' images (maybe this was more pronounced in the 2010s than now) and the experience could not have been more vivid and colorful and dimensional whoa

xxp

Yeah it was very much worth the IMAX 3d

I almost put my hand up to shield my glasses from getting wet when it started raining in 3d on the screen

i liked the near-constant presence of bugs in the first act

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, December 21, 2022 7:16 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i thought the bugs flitting around the ears of the marines were a subtle sign that the hivemind was starting to realize they were hostile to the ecosystem, but that never really paid off

or maybe it will in one of the many sequels!

random observations:
- Jemaine Clement playing a character with a completely different accent threw me and at several points I was like, "hmm, that is him, isn't it?"
- Sigourney Weaver also playing the teenage daughter of her character was.... good? one of the few characters that had some extra depth
- the Spider kid kept making me think he was ripped from an episode of MTV's Wildboyz
- Edie Falco playing that particular type of role was o_O
- realized at least part of my lack of interest in the first movie was the entire focus on Jake Sully, "jarhead who discovers he has a heart" and his entire type of guy just doesn't hit for me

- Jemaine Clement playing a character with a completely different accent threw me and at several points I was like, "hmm, that is him, isn't it?"

i noticed the same thing. why hire jemaine clement and have him do an american accent?

my only explanation is that viewers might not be able to differentiate between his accent and an Australian one and the movie wanted to depict Australians as terrible assholes (see: the airship guy he was paired with)

where's the car???

Aimless, you've been on this board too goddamn long not to understand how internet hyperbole works.

Damn straight I do. But I wasn't pointing at Brad's post because it was hyperbolic. It wasn't particularly. My point was that defending your position by saying that people who disagree with you are (paraphrasing here) 'poopyheads' descends into pure stupidity. <nb: hyperbole

Edie Falco was my only gripe. Why cast someone that talented and waste them in a small faceless cameo.

Woulda been better if she was the outright baddy.

my ever so slight raising of hackles has nothing to do with avatar, which is gonna do what its gonna do and do it without me, and everything to do with the silly prima facie argument that personal opinion - whether Cameron or Kurosawa - is somehow proof of quality or anything really. it's okay to like the most popular movie in the world but it's absurd to demand that i like it.

unless you're on How To with John Wilson at which point whatever gets you through the night.

Always strange to me that nobody ever talks about how weird it is that in this franchise about the evils of colonialism the main character is a white guy who takes over a custom-bred body of a different color for his own use.

a brief google search for "avatar colonialism" suggests lots of people are talking about it and here's why

and yeah i hate 3d and it was so worth seeing in 3d

On top of not really caring about 3D, the first movie made me pretty motion sick during the 3D shaky-cam parts. But I gave this one a chance and very much enjoyed the 3D, with only a slightly sick feeling at times (not sure whether I changed or if there's a difference between the two films)

jim cameron you mad bastard you did it again

saw this in imax hfr 3d and thought it was an astonishing spectacle

the man spent a billion dollars to make a nature documentary about animals that don’t excise that is also a war movie about transhuman osama bin laden and i simply have to respect the hustle