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Avatar: The Way of Water | 16 DEC 2022 | Don't worry guys, critics like it

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13 minutes ago, Deuce66 said:

Link to Entertainment Weekly article.

 

https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-teases-avatar-sequel/?utm_campaign=entertainmentweekly_entertainmentweekly&utm_content=new&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=61b8b2a04bd3090001f0d9f7

 

But setting a story below sea level presents more than a few challenges. The innovative performance-capture process designed for the first Avatar wasn't intended to work underwater, so Cameron and his team had to engineer a way to accurately record the actors' tiniest movements and expressions while submerged. That footage was then animated by artists at the multi-Oscar-winning visual-effects company Weta Digital. Much of the performance-capture filming took place in a 900,000-gallon tank (built specifically for the sequels), which could mimic the ocean's swirling currents and crashing waves. "My colleagues within the production really lobbied heavily for us to do it 'dry for wet,' hanging people on wires," Cameron notes. "I said, 'It's not going to work. It's not going to look real.' I even let them run a test, where we captured dry for wet, and then we captured in water, a crude level of our in-water capture. And it wasn't even close."

 

Avatar_2.jpg

Edie Falco joins the cast as General Ardmore, a high-ranking member of the human military organization RDA (which clashed with the native Na'vi in the first movie). "It looks like we're in a sub, but it's really the flight deck of a dragon gunship, which is an aircraft we saw in the first movie," Cameron says.
| CREDIT: MARK FELLMAN/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS
 
Avatar_2_4.jpg
 
For the complicated performance-capture scenes, James Cameron hired experts in underwater dance and gymnastics. "Scuba bubbles would create too much noise in our performance-capture system," the director says. "So no matter how long the scene took, if it took two, three, four [minutes] to shoot, everybody was holding their breath."
| CREDIT: MARK FELLMAN/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS
 
Avatar_2_2.jpg
James Cameron (right) chats with young actor Jack Champion (center), who plays Spider, a human teenager born on Pandora. "Here you've got a 14-year-old kid that we taught not only to scuba dive but to dive in a full-face breathing mask — and to act in it," Cameron says. "He did a spectacular job."
| CREDIT: MARK FELLMAN/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS
 

Classic James Cameron!

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13 hours ago, Deuce66 said:

My colleagues within the production really lobbied heavily for us to do it 'dry for wet,' hanging people on wires," Cameron notes. "I said, 'It's not going to work. It's not going to look real.' I even let them run a test, where we captured dry for wet, and then we captured in water, a crude level of our in-water capture. And it wasn't even close."

The KING knows what's best for the audience plus he knows science behind all his movies.

Nothing beats him

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Variety presents a conversation between James Cameron and Denis Villeneuve, very interesting as they compare notes between the worlds of Dune and Avatar.

 

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/denis-villeneuve-james-cameron-avatar-dune-1235132632/

 

Villeneuve: When I decided to cut the movie into two parts, I proposed the studio, let’s shoot both parts. They said, let’s shoot the first part, see how it goes, because it was a bit expensive for them. I agreed. Today, I’m grateful it happened this way, because frankly, I don’t know I would have had the necessary stamina to be able to sustain a double shoot. After shooting part one, I was exhausted.

You are planning four movies in the same time. It blows my mind how someone can have the energy to commit for some, I don’t know, 10 years. How can you find the energy?

 

Cameron: Well, it was a challenging decision because I either wanted to do it right, or just not even do it. I just made this — I guess, strange — decision that everything that I needed to say artistically about the things that were important to me, I could say within the framework of the universe that I knew it could be. Just like “Dune” takes place across worlds, the later “Avatar”s take place across…certainly across two worlds, because some of it takes place on Earth as the story evolves, and different biomes within. Arrakis is the desert planet, right?

 

Villeneuve: Yes! Getting out of it alive!

 

Cameron: I might have underestimated that. I haven’t gotten out of it alive yet. “2” is fully in the can. We have a working cut that we’re filling in the visual effects within. I feel pretty confident with that film. “3” is still a bit shadowy. It’s way too long. I haven’t really turned my energy into a disciplined cutting process on that yet. But I know I’ve got the performances. That’s the important thing. I’ve done all the capture. I’ve done most of the live action shooting. I still owe a little bit on some of the adult characters. We were more concerned with the kids aging out. You got to get busy before Timothée…

 

Villeneuve: Grows a beard! (Laughter) That’s fascinating. Did you shoot everything in the same time or are you are pacing yourself through the years?

 

Cameron: We mixed the schedules for “2” and “3” together, based on the types of scenes and the environments. I said, let’s just treat it like it’s a six-hour miniseries and we’re only going to go to Frankfurt once. We’re going to shoot all the scenes from “2” and “3” at the same time. That was more or less the motif. Actor availability was an issue as well. Anything that had to be done with a specific actor, we did all the scenes for “2” and “3” together — and a little bit of “4.” Because once again, I had to shoot the kids out. They’re allowed to age six years in the middle of the story on page 25 of movie “4.” So I needed everything before then, and then everything after, we’ll do later.

 

James-Cameron-Talks-to-Denis-Villeneuve-

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I have criticized the production and delays for this movie a lot over the last decade or so but now that it’s almost here, I can’t lie and say that I’m not excited to see what Jim Cameron has been cooking. Nobody does sequels like him.

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So far the news about Avatar have been about its underwater mocap, which tbh isn't really easy selling point for general audience, I hope I can see more exciting news surrounding its 3D effect or at least some production achievement since 3D hype is gone and maybe it is about time to re-hype it and bring back some novelty to the format.   

 

Also, is it only me thinking Avatar 2 has more practical effect than A1?? I don't remember the live action shooting take this long for A1.

  

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Sure Avatar 2 will be a worldwide phenomenon,but some perdiction in this thread is way too high,$3-3.2B for total gross is already super impressive and success , I will be happy to see that.

 

China will give Avatar 2 over $1B,because I have experienced the popularity of James Cameron film here

Edited by Bruce
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The old posters of BOT (most who now hide in a telegram group and don't actually post here), others who have merely vanished with time used to sneer and roll their eyes at the thought of A2 doing over 2 billion dollars.

 

Their weak grip on reality will be shown when it does 4 billion.

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3 hours ago, JamesCameronScholar said:

The old posters of BOT (most who now hide in a telegram group and don't actually post here), others who have merely vanished with time used to sneer and roll their eyes at the thought of A2 doing over 2 billion dollars.

 

Their weak grip on reality will be shown when it does 4 billion.

 

Weren't you the one who was banned for making a second sock puppet account here so you could talk about how awesome Avatar is with yourself all day long and bait those people? 

 

There are a lot of reasons why many of the old regulars no longer post here.  Some decided to leave after COVID-19 permanently damaged the business, others left because they found the new forums rules here to be too strict/petty(likely the ones you're talking about who enjoyed the forums jousting), others because they just simply moved on to other things.  I myself stopped posting here for about a year and a half in March 2020 when COVID began and only started reading again a few months ago and I'm not even sure if its worth sticking around yet because the only thing that does half decent numbers anymore is IP(mainly CBMs) and even those days are numbered as streaming is so clearly the future, especially in a post-COVID world.  I'm also increasingly less interested in the boxoffice side of the business and find myself more interested in just the art itself and there are better places for that.

 

Will Avatar 2 make 2 billion?  Maybe, I'm sure James Cameron will deliver another pretty CG spectacle and maybe even ignite another temporary 3D zeitgeist, but will there be an equal amount of effort into characterization and plot this time or is it gonna be another stripped down bare bones narrative that ages like a bag of milk in the sun?  Time will tell, but I didn't like Alita or Terminator: Dark Fate at all either and he wrote both of those.  Come to think of it, I haven't really loved a movie of his since 94.

 

a7oPjrX.jpg

 

One thing for sure though, this picture reinforced how much I really don't like the Navi design, and now there's gonna be like 5 little kid Navis running around this time!?  I don't even like 10-12 year old humans in my movies most of the time!

 

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, JamesCameronScholar said:

The old posters of BOT (most who now hide in a telegram group and don't actually post here), others who have merely vanished with time used to sneer and roll their eyes at the thought of A2 doing over 2 billion dollars.

 

Their weak grip on reality will be shown when it does 4 billion.

1.5bn is still a great number. Not everyone that watched Avatar loved it, and many that went overboard with rewatching the first one like myself won't do that for a sequel. 

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7 hours ago, Ozymandias said:

Weren't you the one who was banned for making a second sock puppet account here so you could talk about how awesome Avatar is with yourself all day long and bait those people? 

That was never proved. I got banned on the exact day Avengers overtook Avatar... it doesn't take a detective to realise that the entire thing was most likely due to someone high up in the janitor ranks who was seething mad trying to get some revenge.

 

7 hours ago, Ozymandias said:

I'm also increasingly less interested in the boxoffice side of the business and find myself more interested in just the art itself and there are better places for that.

This just sounds like cope.

 

7 hours ago, Ozymandias said:

Come to think of it, I haven't really loved a movie of his since 94.

That puts you in a tiny minority then. Which only cements the notion that the people who doubt him have a tenuous grip on what resonates with a global audience to begin with.

 

2 hours ago, SchumacherFTW said:

the first one like myself won't do that for a sequel. 

How can you say that when it's not even out yet. By Cameron's own track record, Aliens/T2 and Titanic all had fantastic rewatch value. You're making assumptions based on what evidence? We all know that Jim makes fantastic rides at the movies, and those rides are ones people want to go on again and again.

 

One thing I also laugh at still is people talking about the no cultural impact meme. You're still talking about it over 10 years later and you have the audacity to say no one talks about it any more. The cognitive dissonance of that kind of statement is just so far beyond my understanding. How do those people survive?

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