Avatar: The Way of Water |OT| Respect Indigenous
- Thread starter ContractHolder
- Start date
- OT
Final day in the thread before I bounce to avoid spoilers (and general warning for others).
Comes out Friday here so I'll be back that night and ready to soak in the afterglow with everyone. Hope everyone has the best time between now and then, enjoy being back on Pandora ✨
🐟🌊🐬💙🐋🌊🐠
Comes out Friday here so I'll be back that night and ready to soak in the afterglow with everyone. Hope everyone has the best time between now and then, enjoy being back on Pandora ✨
🐟🌊🐬💙🐋🌊🐠
yeah i'm going mid 80's RT... which i think will be excellent because there are some long in the tooth naysayers out there who just won't be convinced no matter what
what you do notice from the early reactions though is even those who have genuine issues, still praise the film...
all hyperbole aside, it sounds like avatar 2 is in fact worthy of its existence, and cameron was justified in going again... even after all this time
personally i can't wait
what you do notice from the early reactions though is even those who have genuine issues, still praise the film...
all hyperbole aside, it sounds like avatar 2 is in fact worthy of its existence, and cameron was justified in going again... even after all this time
personally i can't wait
There is some degree of satisfaction when for 13 years, people wouldn't miss out on any opportunity to shit on the first movie, and whenever you mentioned that you liked Avatar, people would say how it's just "Pocahontas dances with the smurfs in space" or whatever (which by now is even more derivative than Avatar 1's plot). Soo yeah, let them eat a bit crow lol
Of course it's fine to not like it. I'm not taking issues with people that don't like it. I'm taking issue with the folks that have spent 13 years LOUDLY holding a grudge against it for reasons unknown and exclaiming at any opportunity that not a soul alive cared or remembers the movie, and such the sequel was doomed to bomb. Those completely out of touch with reality people will be getting a well deserved dunking on in the coming months.
But yes, it's 100% fine to have not liked Avatar as it will be 100% fine to not like Avatar 2.
I have to wait until the the 19th to have seats together with my small group because I didn't expect them to basically sell out all showings two weeks in advance.
I don't have a lot of hype, but I expect to be blown away by the spectacle and maybe moved by the story - I'm one of the weirdos who enjoyes the overall emotional ride and pro-environment message of the first.
I don't have a lot of hype, but I expect to be blown away by the spectacle and maybe moved by the story - I'm one of the weirdos who enjoyes the overall emotional ride and pro-environment message of the first.
I'm predicting similar reviews as the first around 85%, 7.5/10 average score. RT is way more generous than it was back in 2009 due to all the youtubers on the site now + people seem way higher on Avatar these days so a little higher makes sense, with criticisms for runtime/storytelling issues.
I don't understand why people can't just enjoy a movie and not use it as some weird proxy for arguments they had with internet randos back in 2012, but okay. It was never in doubt by anyone serious Avatar 2 would be a big hit. The whole casting of Avatar and its fans as some sort of underdog is super weird.
Dusted of the glasses of my 3D TV (yeah, I was a believer) yesterday and rewatched the original for the first time in years.
That movie just slaps. It was way better than I remembered. Maybe because I'm accustomed to the current blockbuster landscape of legacy sequels which take cheap nostalgia for true emotions and cinematic universes where the release slate dictated the need for a movie in stead of the story, but it felt good to see a blockbuster that felt genuine in its storytelling and themes, and has a director behind the camera that knows how to squeeze everything out of the medium.
Not perfect in any way (cardboard villains, the voice over was pretty grating to me, even if it was diegetic in a way; and the script takes some easy shortcuts regarding character motivations), but I was engrossed.
Got my seat booked for tomorrow 9.15 am, first showing of the release day, and I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to it.
That movie just slaps. It was way better than I remembered. Maybe because I'm accustomed to the current blockbuster landscape of legacy sequels which take cheap nostalgia for true emotions and cinematic universes where the release slate dictated the need for a movie in stead of the story, but it felt good to see a blockbuster that felt genuine in its storytelling and themes, and has a director behind the camera that knows how to squeeze everything out of the medium.
Not perfect in any way (cardboard villains, the voice over was pretty grating to me, even if it was diegetic in a way; and the script takes some easy shortcuts regarding character motivations), but I was engrossed.
Got my seat booked for tomorrow 9.15 am, first showing of the release day, and I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to it.
Damn, you just made me realize that although I'll be seeing it in IMAX with High Framerate, the projector appears to max out at 2K. Ignorance is bliss…
It's really not that deep, but because of Avatar's immense success along with its very basic, but serviceable plot line, it almost became a public sport to shit on Avatar whenever it's mentioned, go to any comment section on Avatar related news and see people going on about how terrible of a movie it was, and it largely still is like that, it's not a 2012 thing. People are really salty about avatar not satisfying their taste for sophisticated movie plots.
If people actually wanted complex plots in their blockbusters then Tenet would have done a lot better.
I honestly don't think most people are properly articulating what they don't like about Avatar. I think people are put off by the film's sincerity. It doesn't have the ironic detatchment that most blockbusters have today.
The only thing that is super weird are the nerds that shat on the movie ad nauseam acting like it's one of the worst things ever made.
People don't want nonsense either
Cameron claims to have purposefully made a simple plot in the first one to introduce us to the world. He's aware of what he did.
I don't think looking at the first one's story reception makes sense to anticipate what we're gonna get this time around. But we'll learn some more in a few hours
I don't think looking at the first one's story reception makes sense to anticipate what we're gonna get this time around. But we'll learn some more in a few hours
Wanted to catch this Thursday but ultimately decided on Sunday so I can see it with the fam. Just five more days...
I can articulate why I don't like Avatar just fine, thanks. It's not its sincerity that bugs me, either.
And people don't say "no one liked Avatar". It's perfectly valid to say it had very little lasting impact given its lack of presence in fan spaces and among fan creators.
Measuring "lasting impact" by fandom doesn't make any sense for Avatar. Something like Top Gun (huge blockbuster/cultural zeitgeist of its time) to Top Gun Maverick (decade's later return) is the impact to compare to, not to franchises that saturated every form of media for decades to ensure you never stop thinking about them. Avatar isn't Star Wars. Avatar is Independence Day, Top Gun, Inception, The Matrix pre-sequels, etc.
A reminder: Untagged spoilers will be allowed tomorrow morning. Reviews going up shortly.
OP
OP
Hi everyone. Going to threadmark this so anyone not actively following the thread can see.
Two things:
- Reviews will be going live today. There will probably be a separate thread for it. That thread will most likely have spoiler tagged discussion. So if you're not going to see the movie for awhile, consider moving over to that thread to avoid spoilers.
- Untagged spoilers will be allowed the second the general public can watch the movie in any country. If any members here says the movie is now screening in theaters in their home country, they can immediately begin talking about it with no restrictions.
It is highly recommended if you care about spoilers to consider bailing very soon. You have a few more hours left, so you don't need to right this second. But I strongly advise you prepare to do so.
That's all I have to say. Enjoy the movie!
Two things:
- Reviews will be going live today. There will probably be a separate thread for it. That thread will most likely have spoiler tagged discussion. So if you're not going to see the movie for awhile, consider moving over to that thread to avoid spoilers.
- Untagged spoilers will be allowed the second the general public can watch the movie in any country. If any members here says the movie is now screening in theaters in their home country, they can immediately begin talking about it with no restrictions.
It is highly recommended if you care about spoilers to consider bailing very soon. You have a few more hours left, so you don't need to right this second. But I strongly advise you prepare to do so.
That's all I have to say. Enjoy the movie!
Last edited:
Those all have still penetrated the public consciousness in ways that are pretty positive. There's nothing in Avatar that people positively remember like "I feel the need, etc.", "You can be my wingman anytime", "welcome to Earth!" or the deal with the tops in Inception. There's no shots in it that have proven enduring, like the White House being blown up or the first uses of Bullet Time. The most I've ever seen that people remember from Avatar are the fact it used 3D and the use of "unobtanium" as a plot device.
Can you really tell me that Jake Sully is in the pantheon of great film heroes as people remember like Neo, or Maverick? Or that Quarich is as enduring a villain as the likes of Agent Smith? Is that even his name? I struggled to remember it.
I'm not sure how you can type that and think it seriously; I don't think any particular characters in Avatar have been particularly endearing, the ingenuity of the plot line certainly isn't going to wow audiences for decades to come, nor is there a specific scene (akin to 'bullet time', the White House being destroyed, etc.) which people point towards but the one aspect which absolutely undeniably endures is Pandora as a setting, which the film went to great pains to establish over it's run time.
I think there are very few people that have seen the movie who 'forget' the world that the movie created over its runtime, whether that's the ponytail connection 'thing', the various creatures, the floating mountains, the woodsprites, the Navi, the humans' tech (planes, armoured suits) etc., and it's very telling that the trailers for the second has once again been about recapturing and reminding people about Pandora, and the entire Disneyworld Park capitalising on people remembering (successful results in terms of membership beyond other parks' similar rises and also avoiding a cannibalisation of other parks' numbers) is a testament to the enduring impact it had. People largely remember the 3D (beyond it being an incredible technical showcase) specifically because of how it aided in immersing people into Pandora and completely buying this world .
While people like to try and detach 'setting'/'lore' from plot, creating a setting is inexorably part of storytelling and creating a plot line. While there's little complexity in the plotline, the world it builds in such a limited runtime is (arguably) far more fully-realised even if rather detail-scant than most movies.
I think you can try to pretend Pandora didn't leave a lasting impact, and you can completely ignore the success of the Disney World Resort, the continued legs of Avatar (in it's initial run and its many re-releases), and the marketing strategy of the sequel essentially focusing entirely on capitalising on people's memory of Pandora, but your imagination needs to do a lot of work to try and legitimise that to oneself.
Last edited:
Just personally speaking, as someone who saw the movie, you had to remind me of everything except the USB tail thing.
And considering Avatar 2 is all about new parts of Pandora, with new creatures and settings to make toys of (which by the way didn't sell well the first time around), I'm pretty sure the new movie isn't banking as much on people's nostalgia of that world as you think.
If you don't like a film, offer up some real critique of it, but this just feels like the same wishy washy critique most people offer up because it's difficult to refute (and equally to prove too).
How does anyone begin to prove something has penetrated the public consciousness?
Edit: You could maybe look at something like this I suppose, but it kinda refutes your point.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=/m/0bth54,/m/018js4
Oh yeah. I remember there was a line of Mattel figures that sold very poorly. Clogged shelves for a good while.
I would say that was in doubt, and there's been a lot of ink spilled on this forum over the years making that argument lol
I agree it does seem silly to frame the biggest film of all time as an underdog, but that is generally how this community has acted toward it for the past decade. If I were Solo or Sculli I'd be taking a victory lap around the doubters too lol
I see it rising very modestly as the sequel approaches. Is this the smoking gun you wanted it to be? I'm not very good with these kinds of graphs.
But nevertheless, I have given a "proper" critique of it. I'm only bringing up stuff like this because that's what the original post I responded to talked about. Multiple people in various threads have complained about Avatar's use of white savior tropes and clumsy attempts at colonialism criticism.
But in all seriousness, I need to duck out here. I'm not trying to stir up shit and run, it's more I've been supposed to trying to stay out of arguments like this. It's seriously bad for my health. x_x
I was looking at the average, but you can look at the yearly data if you want to.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2022-01-01 2022-12-31&q=/m/0bth54,/m/018js4
I have read your posts about your bolded critique before, and while I don't agree with it, it's at least something that can be discussed.
Well there's nothing to really discuss when it comes to what you or I personally remember, that's a very different topic to the lasting impact it has where I think there are many indicators that make it quite clear people do remember Pandora; they may not remember specific parts, but absolutely remember the world that was created.
You can try to mischaracterise the marketing focusing on the world as a cynical attempt to sell merchandise, but it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of why the original was so successful (which was specifically around the world), why the Disney park is so successful, and why there is anticipation about the sequel (which is specifically about returning to Pandora, and seeing more of Pandora). The merchandise's lack of success further highlights that again, it's not about a specific individual character, or creature, that people cared about in the original, it was explicitly about how immersive the world was, and that's what people remember and why the movie had the legs it had and why it had such a massive impact on the industry in the years it followed (massively influencing 3D development in the time surrounding its releasing and shifting TV manufacturer focus for almost half a decade).
1570 DL for me... that's good right?!
Sooo uhh, how impossible is it going to be to just roll up this weekend and get tickets to this lol?
Edit - Ah, it's literally all reserved seating at my nearest theater.
Edit - Ah, it's literally all reserved seating at my nearest theater.
Last edited:
