Avatar and the Avatar Cadence (James Cameron, 2009-2031)

[DarkImbecile]

Cameron continues his decent into madness, giving all of the sequels exact release dates - sounds like the cadence is expected to cascade through 2025

The first sequel appears to have been pushed back another full year to December 2021

[tenia]

Unfortunately very predictable.

[flyonthewall2983]

2 is finished, 3 is "95% finished" according to Cameron.

Just in time!

[cantinflas]

December 16, 2022

[Kracker]

and thus we say goodbye, au revivor, and auf wiedersehen to le ol' papyrus font

[DarkImbecile]

First trailer

[domino harvey]

Someone posted a fake version a few weeks ago made out of video game footage, and it didn’t look much worse than this. But this thread shows what the fuck I know, because I’m sure this Lisa Frank Holographic Trapper Keeper will break every box office record for some reason

[Finch]

Yeah it's pretty depressing.

[swo17]

I'm mostly curious if these will make 3D popular enough again for 4K TVs to start supporting that technology

[Mr Sausage]

In fairness, the first Avatar didn't look that great unless you saw it in 3D, either. I'm not a fan of 3D, but I remember the experience of seeing Avatar theatrically in 3D being novel even if the movie itself was lame.

[RIP Film]

Maybe I’m misremembering but I thought the novelty of the 3D was basically why Avatar was such a success. In which case these sequels are doomed, cause it certainly wasn’t because the first was a good movie.

[hearthesilence]

I couldn't have cared less about it, but I remember a lot of people were seriously over the moon about the movie itself. And it's not like the studios are going to go soft on shoving this down people's throats, especially with the money they've sunk into it. They're going to sell a ton of tickets, but whether they break records is another thing.

[domino harvey]

There were whole swaths of audience members who went back daily because they wished they lived in the world of the film. People are weird.

[swo17]

If it weren't for Avatar, would Adieu au Langage exist?

[Mr Sausage]

Were people over the moon about the movie? My impression was that people were mainly impressed by the new techniques of modern 3D, and there was a subsection of fans who had become obsessed with the world of the film, helped along or created entirely by the immersive feeling of the 3D, but that by and large people were not enthusiastic about the story or characters. Hence Avatar stopped being part of the cultural conversation as soon as 3D became widely adopted in blockbuster filmmaking. People seem to love the Marvel movies as movies far more than they ever did Avatar. But I could be way off base there. It's only my impression.

[hearthesilence]

If it weren't for Avatar, would Adieu au Langage exist?

Probably not. There are probably a lot of great works with limited commercial appeal that were primarily made in response to the way a broadly popular work shaped the culture. If said blockbuster did not exist, a vital reason for making those smaller films wouldn't exist either.

[swo17]

Were people over the moon about the movie?

Read the YouTube comments. It's like the one place on the internet where everyone agrees about something (i.e. that Avatar is literal heaven)

[hearthesilence]

Were people over the moon about the movie?

Yes.

I only report what I see, and believe me, I didn't want to believe it when I asked such-and-such person and they would go on and on about how much they loved the "world" or the action or whatever. I guess you can find that for a lot of films - I knew one older gentlemen who saw Ever After with Drew Barrymore a dozen times in the theaters, and a relative saw Titantic in the theater twenty, TWENTY times - but there were definitely a lot of people I knew who were really into Avatar. FWIW, they were generally high school or college age, and they already loved sci-fi and comic books so it was right up their alley.

[Mr Sausage]

Were people over the moon about the movie?

Read the YouTube comments. It's like the one place on the internet where everyone agrees about something (i.e. that Avatar is literal heaven)

This might be my confirmation bias, but even the comments give the impression of people being in love with experiencing that world more than caring about the movie as a movie.

--EDIT: Ok, apparently people are caught up by my opening sentence and ignoring the qualifiers in my post itself. I didn't mean that people weren't deeply into Avatar. My impression was that they loved it as an immersive experience, but that the plot, characters, and all the rest that make it a movie (as opposed to an audio-visual experience) weren't where the passion lay.

[therewillbeblus]

Were people over the moon about the movie? My impression was that people were mainly impressed by the new techniques of modern 3D, and there was a subsection of fans who had become obsessed with the world of the film, helped along or created entirely by the immersive feeling of the 3D, but that by and large people were not enthusiastic about the story or characters. Hence Avatar stopped being part of the cultural conversation almost immediately after 3D became more widely adopted in blockbuster filmmaking. People seem to love the Marvel movies as movies far more than they ever did Avatar. But I could be way off base there. It's only my impression.

I think that's mostly true, but in college I knew many, many people who would not step foot inside a theatre but went to see this film five-ten times in the cinema. I definitely believe it was the immersive experience that kept them coming back, but when I'd make snide remarks about the story/villain (ugh, that final battle), they would defend all elements with conviction. Years later, I still knew people talking about it, but yes, Marvel hijacked that crowd's attention by deviating it into multiple films per year, praying on a near-obsessive-compulsive investment. I don't often hear people talk about Avatar anymore, though that seems relevant to the context of Marvel et al

[Mr Sausage]

Were people over the moon about the movie? My impression was that people were mainly impressed by the new techniques of modern 3D, and there was a subsection of fans who had become obsessed with the world of the film, helped along or created entirely by the immersive feeling of the 3D, but that by and large people were not enthusiastic about the story or characters. Hence Avatar stopped being part of the cultural conversation almost immediately after 3D became more widely adopted in blockbuster filmmaking. People seem to love the Marvel movies as movies far more than they ever did Avatar. But I could be way off base there. It's only my impression.

I think that's mostly true, but in college I knew many, many people who would not step foot inside a theatre but went to see this film five-ten times in the cinema. I definitely believe it was the immersive experience that kept them coming back, but when I'd make snide remarks about the story/villain (ugh, that final battle), they would defend all elements with conviction. Years later, I still knew people talking about it, but yes, Marvel hijacked that crowd's attention by deviating it into multiple films per year, praying on a near-obsessive-compulsive investment. I don't often hear people talk about Avatar anymore, though that seems relevant to the context of Marvel et al

That's not so different from when people vociferously defend a friend or relative from criticism even if they themselves have complained about the very same things. It's likely that those same people who backed Avatar unconditionally to your face had voiced similar complaints to themselves privately. Defensiveness goes hand-in-hand with strong emotional attachments.

Speaking of which, looks who's defending his own forum comments like they weren't off-hand observations backed by no real information.

[hearthesilence]

My impression was that they loved it as an immersive experience, but that the plot, characters, and all the rest that make it a movie (as opposed to an audio-visual experience) weren't where the passion lay.

I'm sure they like the characters and the plot, but I don't think they're looking to extract anything that great from them. They're probably part of the immersive experience or at least components of it. My Star Wars loving relatives love the characters - they dress up as them, and I know at least one (only six at the time) who was genuinely upset when Han Solo got killed. But they don't talk about Star Wars the way any of us talk about films or literature - they don't dissect how well they're developed or written, or the ideas behind anything or how any of it reflects or responds to the world at large. It's just entertaining escapism. And that lines up with my memories of loving Star Wars or comic book heroes and anything else like that as a kid.

[therewillbeblus]

Were people over the moon about the movie? My impression was that people were mainly impressed by the new techniques of modern 3D, and there was a subsection of fans who had become obsessed with the world of the film, helped along or created entirely by the immersive feeling of the 3D, but that by and large people were not enthusiastic about the story or characters. Hence Avatar stopped being part of the cultural conversation almost immediately after 3D became more widely adopted in blockbuster filmmaking. People seem to love the Marvel movies as movies far more than they ever did Avatar. But I could be way off base there. It's only my impression.

I think that's mostly true, but in college I knew many, many people who would not step foot inside a theatre but went to see this film five-ten times in the cinema. I definitely believe it was the immersive experience that kept them coming back, but when I'd make snide remarks about the story/villain (ugh, that final battle), they would defend all elements with conviction. Years later, I still knew people talking about it, but yes, Marvel hijacked that crowd's attention by deviating it into multiple films per year, praying on a near-obsessive-compulsive investment. I don't often hear people talk about Avatar anymore, though that seems relevant to the context of Marvel et al

That's not so different from when people vociferously defend a friend or relative from criticism even if they themselves have complained about the very same things. It's likely that those same people who backed Avatar unconditionally to your face had voiced similar complaints to themselves privately. Defensiveness goes hand-in-hand with strong emotional attachments.

That may be true, but how can one parse out an (inauthentic?) strong emotional attachment vs being authentically 'over the moon' about a film? We have all kinds of unconscious/subconscious/conscious reasons for being attached to a film. I also might comprehend similar complaints about the story or characters in some films I love, but still be earnestly excited by it and them, despite those understandable issues. For example, I'll defend Assassination Nation and all aspects of it down to the bone, because there are ways to analyze even its faults in a manner that service the reflexive themes, but on my fourth watch the other week I could finally see where some easy criticisms could be lobbed and perhaps fairly so. And now I've just voiced my private rumination publicly, but I still authentically love the story and characters and everything about the film unconditionally.

[Mr Sausage]

Hmm. I seem to be giving the impression that I think people secretly hate Avatar or something or that their feelings about it are inauthentic. But it's slightly more nuanced than that. It's not that they dislike the story or dislike the characters or can't stand the drama and find the action ludicrous. I think they're fine with those things at least. But I think what drives the passion for a significant amount of fans is less those elements than the experience of being immersed in that bright and vibrant 3D world. Now the degree to which I'm right about this is slim because I can't actually show any evidence for it. But just so there's no mistake about what I was saying: I was not making a binary claim about what people like vs what they dislike. I was making a claim about where the fandom's passion lies and, when people remember Avatar fondly and feel enthusiastic about the sequels, where that fondness and enthusiasm is coming from. Again, I'm likely factually wrong, but I don't think there's anything conceptually wrong with what I'm saying, that Avatar is first and foremost in people's minds an intense audio-visual experience and only secondarily a story about characters and events, for fans and critics alike.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, I was definitely confused by what you were trying to say but that helps, and we're saying the same thing. I do think it's funny that the sequels are still being planned and coming out so far from the first film's release, because it's like an outdated ride and anyone pining for another film is basically looking forward to another ride that will become outdated. I don't play video games -except NES, PS1, and N64, on occasion- so clearly I can't imagine caring about graphics to discard a game entirely, but I imagine some video games lose appeal if they are played for purely audio-visual phantasmagoric engagement (if gamers actually do this, I know narrative is something oft-cared about within that club). Avatar reminded me of watching my friends play video games in college while I sat there on the couch stuck in a bored inebriated paralysis, but maybe that's because I was doing too much of that around the time it came out.