AVATAR - THE WAY OF WATER "Like Being Waterboarded With Turquoise Cement"

[John Johnson]

[AndyDursin]

Is Dr. Strange in this?

I can't think of a less hyped "huge franchise sequel" in movie history, and nothing about that trailer is going to make me spend a cent watching it either.

[mkaroly]

I watched it without sound...is Cameron doing yet ANOTHER marines vs alien thing? It looks like the tall blue guys are kind of military.

[AndyDursin]

I watched it without sound...

You didn't miss anything Michael. Something tells me this whole movie could be viewed that way!

Looks like a rerun, and you're right, he included humans again. Not sure what's up with the human "son" of the blue people taking up arms -- but the blue people with the pants and guns...I'm sorry it just looks utterly ridiculous. Maybe they're the new "avatars".

I admit it, I just don't find this universe interesting. I didn't care for the original, even after sitting through it twice in theaters. The design of the tall blue people looked goofy before, it looks goofy here. I also thought after all these years there'd have been "more" -- something really "mind blowing" in terms of animation and visuals for all the time he's worked on these -- but instead it just looks like more of the same.

Who knows maybe he'll mine box-office gold from the same people who flock to every dumb super-hero movie...he'll need to given how expensive this movie was.

[Monterey Jack]

People made Smurf and Pocahontas/Dances With Wolves jokes out the wazoo before the first was released, and it smashed records. People have been saying it's "too late for a sequel" since roughly 2015, and yet I think this is going to surprise a lot of people. I loved the first one for its immersive world-building and thrilling action, and while the characters were stock, one could easily say the same about the original Star Wars. No one spends THIS much time and money on a movie sequel without having something up their sleeve, and I for one will happily pay the 3D surcharge for this.

[AndyDursin]

A movie smashing records doesn't make it good, and you certainly have more faith in Cameron right now than I do. The whole way he's treated his past filmography is evidence of where is head is at. Plus there's a reason people kept citing Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves -- because his screenplay was creatively DOA and cribbed all kinds of plot elements from both of them. While it's not the worst movie ever made, to date AVATAR is one of the most singular disappointing movies I've ever watched given its director. And that extended all the way down to Horner's frankly mediocre score, to the outright unintentional comedy of Stephen Lang's terrible performance.

And this -- after nearly 13 years -- is another re-run of Evil Colonizing Humans Vs. Kindly Blue Aliens? Lang is even back in Avatar form as well! For me, Cameron didn't have something interesting to say the first time -- really doesn't look like he has anything to add here. Or a reason I need to pay to see it.

[mkaroly]

I never saw the first one and will not go to see this one. Zero interest.

[AndyDursin]

LOL this is going to end up being more Disney+ garbage

[AndyDursin]

3 hour plus run time!

And Jim seems to have come to a reckoning of sorts...

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/jam ... 19533.html

[AndyDursin]

Outside of the usual kool aid drinkers that support Marvel movies lavishing praise on the visuals ("this you GOTTA SEE in a theater man!"), there's this brilliantly written 1 star review from The Telegraph, which is all I need to read.

The Sam Worthington line is just fantastic. Wish I had written it!

Avatar 2 is finally here – and it’s like being waterboarded with turquoise cement

By Robbie Collin, FILM CRITIC
1/5 stars

James Cameron’s decade-in-the-making The Way of Water has no plot, no stakes and atrocious dialogue. What happened to this great director?

One of the chief criticisms of James Cameron’s Avatar was that its tale of a soldier going native had been told many times before: it was just Dances with Wolves in space, or Pocahontas with Cirque du Soleil-trained Smurfs. As complaints go, it was an odd one – plots attain classic status for a reason. But it certainly can’t be levelled at this decade-in-the-making sequel, which has almost no plot whatsoever to speak of, original or otherwise.

“The Way of Water has no beginning and no end,” two characters solemnly proclaim at separate points. They’re absolutely right, but then it doesn’t have much of a middle either – or at least the traditional sort, when danger rises and tension and excitement build. Instead, to borrow a favourite Gen-Z phrase, Cameron and Disney have spent a reported $350–$400 million on Hollywood’s first “no thoughts, just vibes” blockbuster; audiences must let the computer-generated Avatar universe wash over them, as our heroes paddle past coral, cavort with plesiosaurs, and gossip with six-flippered whales. The problem is that said universe is unvaryingly garish, which makes watching the film feel like being waterboarded with turquoise cement.

Is it impressive in purely technological terms? Yes. The new, improved 3D makes the characters feel vividly present, helped along by dynamic switches in frame rate (the number of images projected per second) that make the action scenes look as slippery as a 23rd-century video game. But who wants to spend three hours watching a video game? Despite much hand-waving in the script towards weighty themes such as anti-colonialism and environmentalism, it’s hard to recall a film that felt less tethered to the real world. Do you know what would be more evocative of the wonders of nature than a lot of $400 million computer-generated fish? Actual fish.

Without wishing to sound like an Avatar racist, it also doesn’t help that the Na’vi all look so similar, which means the cast’s distinctive screen personas become lost in the pixelly wash. No great loss when it comes to Sam Worthington, the hunt for whose screen persona is about to enter its 23rd year. But Stephen Lang – whose villainous Colonel Quaritch returns, having had his consciousness conveniently transplanted into a Na’vi body – loses all the facial furrows and cruelly gleaming muscles that made the Homo sapiens version of the character so much fun to watch. As for Kate Winslet, even after having seen the film I have no idea who she was playing – the credits said Ronal, but that wasn’t much help.

The story, cooked up by Cameron and a four-person writing team, is a classic piece of franchise-elongation, in which nothing meaningful happens or important changes, and all the pieces are returned to their original positions, ready for the next instalment. And with the first film’s juicier science-fiction conceits now redundant – no one’s hopping between bodies anymore – all that’s left is the ongoing humans-versus-Na’vi feud.

You might recall that at the end of the last film, the Earthlings were dramatically sent packing from Pandora. Well, it turns out they just came back a year later, led by a new general (Edie Falco) who hopefully gets to do more in films three and four than she does in this one. Since Quaritch and his goons are hunting Worthington's Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri again, our heroes abandon their tribe and flee to the coast, where they and their fantastically annoying children – one played by Sigourney Weaver, in an age-bending performance capture gambit that never really convinces – seek refuge with a seafaring tribe.

Viewers expecting a soft reintroduction to the world of Pandora will instead find themselves immediately pummelled with jargon and fiddly details, as well as some of the corniest dialogue of Cameron’s career. (If you haven’t heard the words “bro” and “cuz” since the early 1990s, brace yourself for 30 years’ worth of backlog.) But if the first hour is a mess, the second one is an unconscionable bore, as the film essentially reruns episodes from the original Avatar – encounters with psychic trees, bioluminescent safaris and so on – as group activities.

At last, the humans arrive to hunt a rare Pandoran sea mammal, and the extended final action sequence begins. Here are flickers of the image-making muscle of Cameron’s earlier films. But his impressive command of three-dimensional space is rather undermined by the one-dimensional characters and stakes, as well as the fact that its climactic escape from a sinking ship feels like a greatest-hits package of scenes from Titanic, Aliens and The Abyss.

Will it end up making $2 billion, as Cameron claims it must in order to inch into profit? With a Chinese release date secured, it may, though I suspect British audiences will find their patience tested. For all its world-building sprawl, The Way of Water is a horizon-narrowing experience – the sad sight of a great filmmaker reversing up a creative cul-de-sac.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/ava ... erboarded/

[AndyDursin]

Variety review along similar lines: another cartoon plot (blue people good! humans bad!), cliche ridden dialogue, no real involving story, just 3 hours of special effects with a TITANIC ripoff climax.

https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/a ... 235451995/

[AndyDursin]

$17 mil opener is no record breaker -- "in the vicinity of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2 and THE BATMAN", and "below JURASSIC WORLD".

So much for THIS MOVIE IS GOING TO SAVE THE CINEMAZ lol

https://deadline.com/2022/12/avatar-the ... 1235200714

[Monterey Jack]

Did the original Avatar have a record-breaking opening? Did Titanic?

[AndyDursin]

Were those sequels? Beyond the marketplace being totally changed now to degree a comparison like that isnt apropos, since this is a pre-established franchise now shouldn't it be a massive opening for what's supposedly the biggest movie of all time's sequel?

You know I am no fan of this series but the box office smoke and mirrors from the media cheerleading this film on is a bit ridiculous. For one thing there is not a single movie opening against this film and like nothing even coming out at all so it can sit at #1 for 2 months conceivably on 5000 screens inflated with 3d and Imax premiums and still not be profitable.

[AndyDursin]

Lol here they go. "Still has a shot at $150.million"? This opening is mediocre at best given the marketplace and they are spinning it any way they can hoping its going to become Titanic 2. Well it won't l will tell you that right now.

https://deadline.com/2022/12/avatar-the ... 235200714/

Like I've said this movie isn't going to touch the originals gross. Avatar was a total movie of the moment that everyone HAD to see, few people have been waiting years and years to watch another one. And this opening is far from spectacular given the hype and media attention.