_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

I hope the sequels are in 4D.

http://media.avclub.com/images/371/371134/16x9/627.jpg?6426

Haha, JiC wants the extra D.

You can never get enough D.

Avatar 4 in 4D sponsored by Sunny D.

(I still love this movie btw)

Is this a movie that anyone regular revisits? Came out in 2009, but feels like it came out 20 years ago. The first of the sequels pops up in 2017. If someone was, say, 10 when the first one came out, they'd be finishing up high school by then. Will they be excited to revisit such a huge part of their childhood? Will they be heading straight to the Avatar park going up at Disney? Will they be buying tickets to the sequel months in advance like some people our/my age do for Star Wars?

More to the point, has anyone, ever, seen someone in an Avatar costume for Halloween?

yearh this film seems to not have left the sort of mark on the culture that you might expect of the highest-grossing film of all time (of course, much of that is because of the 3-D upcharge). but i don't travel in circles with a lot of kids, so maybe i'm not perceiving it.

has anyone, ever, seen someone in an Avatar costume for Halloween?

None of the characters in Avatar are even slightly memorable. The lovingly crafted visual look of the planet and the 3D effects were the real stars of the show. Everything else in this movie was just a an inch or two above mediocrity.

On the other hand, it's prescient as a movie about drone warfare.

The whole enterprise is rife with ironies - the top grossing film of all time is more or less forgotten, but at the same time belatedly serving as anchor for two, maybe three more huge sequels that no one seemed to be asking for, plus a whole section of a Disney amusement park, but specifically the park (Animal Kingdom) dedicated to real things, not fanciful Yes covers come to life.

I dunno. Maybe the movies will pull a reverse Matrix and get better as they go along. I do find it hard to believe that spectacle alone will propel the sequels. Lack of compelling/memorable characters/story in the original makes for shakey tent-pole support.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/themeparks/la-trb-avatar-land-disney-animal-kingdom-20150707-story.html

James Cameron, who directed, wrote and produced the original science fiction epic, promises Avatar Land will let visitors "live, eat, breathe and smell Pandora."

Only two comments, telling:

Deborah Musselman
I loved Avatar. This new attraction just might get me to Florida.

4 months ago 

raidermatt
Couldn't be less interested. Avatar is a bad movie. Much of its popularity was due to special effects and it being the first modern movie to successfully implement 3D. Other than that, it's awful. Nobody cares about it anymore.

4 months ago

Avatar sucked. Have no desire to ever see it again. Will ignore the sequels.

"... will let visitors "live, eat, breathe and smell Pandora."

Cameron seems to understand where the attraction lies. The original movie was really a theme park ride in disguise.

The Jurassic Park world at Universal feels basically like a misused,unpopular afterthought and that movie is way more iconic than Avatar

highest-grossing film of all time (of course, much of that is because of the 3-D upcharge)

this guy estimates avatar to be ranked 24th in US ticket sales.

I can say with the utmost degree of certainty that the teal-and-purple film of this generation is Frozen, not Avatar.

I have never seen Avatar socks, Avatar backpacks, Avatar LEGO sets, Avatar leggings, Avatar hoodies, Avatar lunchboxes, or Avatar fold-up play castles, or even Avatar funko pop figures, and they make funko pops for fucking everything. I have, however, paid cash money for Frozen-themed all of the above.

We bought a toy of one of the dragon creatures (google tells me "Mountain Banshee" okaaay) that they fly on. We've got lots of different dragon toys but this is an odd duck that always gets chucked back in the toy box.

http://www.cooltoyreview.com/Mattel/Avatar/JakesBanshee/header.jpg

The only times I remember Avatar are when I see people with ponytails and think is like to pull on them and say "I see you"

Watched this last night with the kids -- their suggestion, they'd never seen it. I was surprised how well it held up, even on a 32-inch screen. The kids were enthralled from the jump and stayed with it straight thru all 160 minutes. All the things that were bad and dumb about it when it came out still are, but even without 3D it really is an immersive movie. It's just fun to watch, and if Cameron can't write to save his life, he's a genius at pacing. Pretty sure my kids will now want to see the sequels. And probably go to that Disney thing, too.

Substantively, the one thing I still give it credit for is being such a naked Iraq war parable. "This is how you do it -- when people are living on top of something you want, you turn them into the enemy and then you can destroy them."

And by naked, I mean naked and blue, with a tail.

Yeah, lotta hot blue ass for a kids' movie.

Kids: born naked, usually

counterpoint: if kids are either hot or blue, you're doing it wrong

what was up with all those blue guys

Asphxiation

http://49.media.tumblr.com/43398eb425c6e0e2b1aa2c911018933d/tumblr_ngpo0ughiU1u5f8joo1_500.gif

http://io9.gizmodo.com/james-cameron-just-announced-another-avatar-sequel-tha-1771026188

Well, now we have an idea why James Cameron has continued to delay his Avatar sequels. The director came to CinemaCon 2016 to announce that his vision for the world has expanded beyond the previously announced four films. Now there will be five.

Avatar 5 will be released Christmas 2023, following Avatar 2 at Christmas 2018, Avatar 3 at Christmas 2020, and Avatar 4 at Christmas 2022.

Each film will stand alone but also tell a complete story in this epic saga, Cameron said.

someone stop giving James Cameron mushrooms

coincidentally the villains in the next film are sentient mushrooms

Jesus, why bother? It's like he's designing the series specifically to shed light on each previous installment's inferior FX.

Fiiiinally saw this over the weekend. As a proof-of-concept for the ride I will riding at WDW next month, it was overlong but definitely got me jazzed to experience the excitement first-hand. As a movie, it wasn't quite as bad as I'd expected but if anything I'm even more incredulous about the notion of a sequel (let alone seventeen or however many Cameron has planned at this point). Like there were barely enough ideas to sustain a single feature. I scoffed at the idea of an Avatar Land in the Disney parks when it was first announced but that actually seems like where he should've put all his energy, a 360-degree sensurround spectacular that doesn't rely in the slightest upon a compelling narrative.

I like avatar. Do with that what you will.

avatar shows pretty clearly that cameron's 12 years (TWELVE YEARS ffs) away from directing features post-titanic did nothing to dull his ability to put together action sequences with a tremendous sense of space, but the script is... not good

it's incredible that sam worthington is gonna have a career on the big screen until at least 2025 thanks to his lumpen presence guaranteed in the sequels tho

still haven't seen this, but i'm figuring if it gets some kind of tenth-anniversary theatrical run this year, i'd give it a whirl

I figured that Cameron was actively making the sequels in an 'I'm an obscenely-wealthy man tinkering around with a massive project whose half-finished carcass my kids will have to figure out how to move out of the garage when I croak' sorta way but it looks like the next one is actually scheduled for release next year, huh. Hmm. Well.

and then one a year until 2025, it's gonna be lit

I hope the bad guy in the next one will wear a t-shirt that says 'VILLAIN' in a dripping blood font because I was very unclear who the antagonist was meant to be in the initial installment.

i somehow managed to miss that kate winslet is in the sequels until now

and david thewlis! who is almost certainly gonna be playing a villain because... thewlis

I wonder what it's like to be under contract with Cameron, to set out on a weekend excursion with your family only to get a call asking you to come strap in to your mocap duds asap because James needs some footage for the sequel to a film you forgot even making because the first go-round was two presidents ago.

Like every time Worthington had a shot at the superstardom we all know he deserves and were so sure he'd achieve, his pager started buzzing and he had to put the pen down before he could sign up to take on the James Bond reins or thrill us with the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jr. 'Sorry, guys, it's Jim. I gotta go.'

i'm pretty sure sam worthington just sits motionless staring at the wall at all times until he's required in front of the camera

then he kicks into high gear and stands motionless staring at the wall until the director says 'cut'

I enjoyed the arc of his character, from utterly charmless and charisma-free to ever-so-slightly less charmless and yet still a complete sucking void of charisma.

How best to employ an actor who is almost literally an inert side of beef, oh yes motion capture that's how.

that actually seems like where he should've put all his energy, a 360-degree sensurround spectacular that doesn't rely in the slightest upon a compelling narrative.

this is exactly how to enjoy the film btw, for some reason i didn't find it that hard to just write off the plot + script and dig the 'experience'. Surely anyone who has enjoyed, for example, any 19th century opera, can relate. The story is absurd but the music carries it.

in avatar's case "music" = the whole sensory schmear

While watching it on the couch, I was comparing it in my head with Gravity, which (unlike Avatar) I did see in its optimal big screen presentation and which I've always assumed would lose a lot of its oomph when scaled down to living room dimensions. Except then there's the thing where much of the experience of Gravity from several years back is still irrevocably burned into my memory because it was a good movie which also happened to be good spectacle, whereas I'm struggling to remember much more than the broadest swaths of the cotton candy Avatar which apparently dissolved the instant it hit my tongue.

The Disney ride really made me want to like this movie/universe, it's pretty much the best ride I've ever been on. But that movie doesn't hold up (enjoyed it as a really long tech demo at the time) and the fact that there are 4 upcoming movies makes me actively cringe. I should laugh but I actually feel preemptively bad for everyone involved in those movies. Somebody should have really told James Cameron that making 4 of these at once is probably a bad idea.

avatar shows pretty clearly that cameron's 12 years (TWELVE YEARS ffs) away from directing features post-titanic did nothing to dull his ability to put together action sequences with a tremendous sense of space, but the script is... not good

It’s a movie that evaporates as soon as you’re done with it, but the one take-away I had was that Cameron still can do action sequences better than most anyone. Almost want to revisit to see how it stacks up against the weightless Marvel cartoon slugfests.