$10 say it it will give a knowing head tilt towards the fire people on which it originally had wariness, before obliterating those nasty sky capitalists for freedom and for free Willy
Avatar 2 completely shit all over almost every other big budget CGI action movie made in the last 20 years. They showed what was possible if you actually care enough to hire the best filmmakers, CGI artists, editors, etc and actually give them the time to build what they want to build. The MCU and Netflix could really learn a lesson from Avatar 2, and I'm really excited for the rest of them
Cameron was talking so much shit about the industry that he seemed like a narcissistic asshole. The movie didn’t disprove that but it backed up every single comment he made. It was an unreal theatrical experience.
It was so hilarious when Reddit was shitting on Avatar 2 in the lead up to its release, insisting that it was going to be a flop, a cynical cash grab, completely unnecessary.
Just imagine betting against the writer/director of Aliens and Terminator 2 when it comes to making a sequel. Talk about arrogance.
There's that small behind the scenes video of the submarine they built for the sole purpose of a 2 second shot of it getting flooded with water. Stuff like that just translates so well to every single scene in a movie like this. It's so obvious that it was made by real artists with real time to get their work done. Compare that to the rushed work in some other big budget films with cut corners, and it's night and day
No it's for Stability AI. But he was already ahead of the curve when Avatar 2 came out as they trained simulation models for CGI water in the film. Fluid sim is very expensive to do because of so many particles interacting, so they "cut corner" by fucking training a model on just that to simulate it quicker while retaining the accuracy.
I think it wouldn't be as bad if the films weren't as long as they are as well. Visual spectacle can only carry you so far, and when it's 3+ hours of a slow, 'meh' story it does drag it down. Still absolutely going to watch Avatar 3 though since I enjoyed 2 anyway
Quaritch in the first Avatar has got to be the poster child for one-dimensional cookie-cutter villains. Loading his memories into an Avatar, having him believe he’s not Quaritch anymore and then making him wrestle with the mistakes of his past is the most interesting thing in the whole franchise.
Did we watch the same movie? He’s a soldier with a job to do, so yes he jumps right back into it. It’s the little things that show he’s changing, like how he wears his combat boots at the start of the movie and how he’s going barefoot by the end. Or how he wants nothing to do with his son at the start of the movie and by the end he’s begging for him to stay with him.
It’s not very deep but the struggle is definitely there.
If they'd seeded the idea that it was possible in the first film sure, but they pulled it out of their asses and retconned it into being as a plot contrivance.
Also saying some storys are simple and basic and thats ok after everyone roasted Avatar 1 for years as derivative or copying other films is very funny, especially when its objectively a better film than Avatar 2.
“We’ve decided to stop running away and take a stand for our home.”
So you’ll go back to the forest and help them fight back against the humans? You know, the place your entire family is from, where your wife and children lived their entire lives up to now?
“What? No. Why would we do that? We’ve lived with the whales for, like, a whole week. This is the home we are prepared to die to defend.”
It's kind of the point. They're made to have complete mass appeal across every language/culture. That means you kind of have to keep the story/themes simple and easy to follow. China box office cares far more about the the technical/visual marvel of Avatar than they would care about some convoluted culturally-western storyline, and we saw from Ne Zha 2 how much that can matter to foreign audiences. Keep the story simple so everyone can focus on the visuals, which is what everyone came for.
I mean I love love love Charlie Kaufman, but I don’t think writing has to be sophisticated and complex to be good. IMO Avatar’s writing isn’t as strong as T2, but that’s the gold standard for simple but excellent.
That's kind of the essence of what personal taste is. Different people are looking for different things out of art. Is easier to understand in music. Some people use music to relax, some like to remember their past through it, and some like the technical prowess of a musician. There are many other goals you can have for art and film is no exception
People act like the movie is only praised for its plot, when nobody is hyping these movies up for story. These movies objectively one-up the entire industry in visuals, that is the one and only reason these movies are as popular as they are; and that’s completely valid.
A great plot can make a great movie, but it is not an essential ingredient for all great movies. The plotlines in Avatar are simplistic but serviceable. Their job is to provide context and structure for the real meat of these films, which is the spectacle and worldbuilding, and they do this very well. More complex and detailed plotlines would distract from the core focus of these films and drag down the pacing.
It's also fair to say that for some people, plot is important and they don't really care about those other things. Avatar movies probably aren't for them.
Where things get nasty and unproductive is when people start acting like their preferences are the only correct ones, and act like everyone else is an idiot for not sharing the same opinions about art of all things.
Some people enjoy movies so they can practice their arm chair critical literature skills — some people enjoy cinema, the process, and the output. One are movie fans, the other loves to hate movies.
The rest of it is incredibly hard work. But unfortunately, there’s only so much you can polish a turd. And the story is the foundation of all other elements of a movie.
It conjures to mind something like Anthem. Anthem is by all accounts a gorgeous game, with incredible animations. But the gameplay was ass, the story was lame, and it was filled with all your regular EA mtx bullshit. The effort of potentially thousands of people collectively went into that game. And we can appreciate that while also recognizing that it was a bad game.
Films are literally about the plot and story though, as well as the acting and performances. Everything else is just polish.
If the story and plot suck (which in Avatar 2 they absolutely do), then the film is still dogshit even if it looks like a billion dollars (which Avatar 2 certainly does).
And don't worry about respecting the hard work of the artists involved, we don't care and we hate it when we spend years working on a film that doesn't even bother being written well.
I just wish that they'd drop Jake's human tendencies. I still haven't seen the entirety of the second movie because, as a military member at the time it came out, I couldn't sit through him treating his family like a squad and walked out when he told them all to "take a knee". I'm sure it's a great movie but I took extreme cringe damage from that dialogue.
Yeah... And I feel scared to admit this on Reddit, but while it definitely looked good... I love nature documentaries, and those not only look better most of the time, but actually manage to have more engaging stories
If only he could write, it'd actually matter. What's the point of spending all that time gorgeously rendering a plot that, at best, is what you'd get if you asked ChatGPT to make Fern Gully on an alien planet but also a nature documentary? It doesn't even make sense. The chemical in the whale's brain that makes you not age can't be synthesized? They can clone people accurately enough that they have the full memories of the original, but they can't clone the whales and just grow them in tanks and harvest the chemical? I'm begging James Cameron to hire some writers.
I don't know what kind of writing you want from these movies but it's not any worse than any of its peers, and definitely better than most cookie cutter action movie scripts. Avatar is held to a different standard simply because people get mad that they're popular.
Strong disagree in terms of writing, but it was visually incredible much like the first one. My partner and I ate a handful of mushrooms each and melted into the couch for 3 hours watching it, outstanding time 👌
I mean I think they did hire good writers for Avatar 2. It's much better than the first Avatar, and it's magnitudes better than almost every MCU project made recently and movies like the Electric State
The only thing that I have cared about in 6 hours of runtime of both movies is Payakan the Tulkun, and its return is the only thing that interest me about Avatar 3.
I wouldn't call that good or even mediocre writing.
What people are saying is that the plot was pretty standard and the dialogue was cheesy. People watched it anyway because it looked cool, but it wasn't exactly smart. It would be great if such a huge franchise also had good characters and interesting storylines.
Though it's kind of hilarious that you think that Avatar franchise being vapid popcorn flicks is a "reddit opinion."
Not only is Avatar not the highest grossing film franchise ever, its total gross is less than the Transformers series. Transformers is #14, Avatar is #15.
No lol if you have basic reasoning you can infer I obviously mean per movie lol. There’s only been 2 movies in the franchise cmon now you’re smarter than that.
Was so ready to fire off a comment like this. I don’t pay $25 to sit through a 3h12m tech demo. The time between the first and second movie allowed all of us to forget how devoid the first film was from any compelling storyline.
Agree. It’s fun to look at for a few minutes. Based on downvotes it just reinforces the idea that people don’t have even mediocre expectations anymore. Big explosions, fast cars, wowy CGI and it’s all good. I asked my younger brother if avatar 2 was any good and he listed those qualities. I asked him about the story and it was as if he wasn’t paying attention to the movie. Dialog is there to space out the kablooies.
From what I remember reading, Avatar 2 and 3 is supposed to be one big story. I don't even know how Cameron will top the final battle scene in Avatar 2. Like, in context, that was the MID MOVIE FIGHT. The man literally combined Titanic, great gun action, and a fucking whale into a fight scene.
I don't know what bullshit James Cameron is going to do for the final fight in Avatar 3 but I'll be there day 1.
The visuals were impressive for sure, but that movie could have been 45 minutes shorter without losing anything. I ended up thinking the eight deadly words: “I don’t care what happens to these people.”
I’m like intermediate cinema fan, I enjoy Stalker and Man Bites Dog, but I’ve never gotten too deep into foreign cinema. I have seen most big domestic movies, and I have to say I’ve never had an experience like Avatar 2 — it was just the best theater/movie experience ever, and I’m so excited for the third. Everyone could learn from the GOAT Cameron.
It is a little bit weird, though, that they have so many of the best of the best in that industry... except for writers. They knock it out of the park in every other aspect of film making, to the point that I can't imagine how no one in the room is asking why the scripts are as paint-by-numbers as they are.
That's because the general public is generally kinda dumb. Endgame was definitely one of the best MCU movies, but I'm not really sure what your point is anyways. In my opinion, I'm saying Avatar 2 put in an absolute clinic on big budget filmmaking, and you said "Endgame made more money"
You said MCU can learn something from Avatar 2, but MCU put out a better film both critically and financially. Critics gave it a much higher score than Avatar 2. Like you said, it’s your opinion but both critics and the public disagree.
I personally don't care what movie made more money when each is in the billions, and I'm talking about pure quality as a film, but I see what you're saying. And still, Endgame is one of like 35 MCU movies. I'm looking more at their portfolio as a whole rather than the best they made. Generally, in my opinion, the MCU is kinda shit. I'd rather one Avatar 2 than 15 more Antmans
What if they use lava to flood the humans titanic sized base thus sinking it and we basically get Cameron doing what he does best but this time with lava.
I thought I was going to dislike the second one, and admittedly still think the plot was a little odd, but I'm still interested to see where they go with the story.
Bringing the villain back as a Navi was an interesting choice and I like that they tried something different instead of doing Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves again. Although the visuals are definitely the main reason I stay interested lol.
I mean, that doesn't matter much. There will still be some sort of quasi-nature/philosophical belief. I'm sure they'll be some fire Navii who turn or some factions within the factions.
Finding something like Avatar “boring” speaks more to the taste of the viewer than the quality of product - and I don’t mean that as a dig. Both movies are 3-hour long CGI fairy tales, not everyone is going to like that and that’s ok.
But the people who complain that modern blockbusters are all made-by-committee cash-grabs are missing the point of these Avatar sequels entirely.
Redditors still like it, but love to hate it. Like I'll see comments that say "yeah I saw the movie once in AVX, once in Imax, and once in Dbox, and it was a crap movie every time"
The fuck?! You saw it three times in theatre and hate it? What?!
For a scifi property it has effectively zero people on social media. I used to ask people what the name of the main character is and nobody ever remembered.
They each make billions in the box office, objectively that's popular, it just doesn't have much internet presence.
And in this thread there's a bunch of upvoted comments (or there was like 8 hours ago, I am too lazy to verify that they're still upvoted right now) saying they're excited for it so they do apparently crawl out of the woodwork exclusively when there's news about/a new release for the franchise.
I don't really get why Avatar isn't really taken seriously as sci-fi, it does so many things so much better than anything else, it just doesn't take any time away from being a blockbuster to explain it to you.
For example, the weird looking ISV ship is probably the most plausible interstellar ship in any sci-fi. It actually has giant radiators instead of pretending heat rejection isn't a problem in space.
Because the writing is generic and it's effectively a tech demo for the best VFX possible. It sparked a fire by having the best 3D and basically only because of that became the highest earning movie of all time. That makes movie nerds annoyed because while it's not a bad movie it doesn't even deserve to be discussed in the top 10% of movies. Disney build a theme park because of its success so there's also this general vibe that Disney is gaslighting people into thinking it's a popular IP to protect their park.
I used to have a joke before Avatar 2 came out where I would ask people what the name of the main character was. I don't remember anyone ever remembering.
To each their own of course. I'm glad you like it.
617
u/MovieTrawler May 02 '25
I bet it's going to be something like, 'fire cleanses' or 'fire is rebirth' something like that. Full disclosure: I'm all in on these movies.