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The King James Victory Parade - Avatar: The Way of Water and sequels

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Arthur Frayn said:
Avatar likewise spawned an entirely two new field filmmaking (digital filmmaking
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Digital film making was not spawned by Avatar, what on earth??? That shit was pioneered by Star Wars. That was literally the crowning technical achievement of Attack of the Clones; and ya can't pretend fhat somehow that was a singular one-odd, since there absolutely was ofher big budgeted sci fi works before Avatar that hit the clouds like that as well, most obviously that I can point at being the Matrix sequels, or nascent MCU films (Thor being an obvious example I can point at of 'lot of CGI environments and acting and broader use of environment and characters and etc).

Avatar did not make anything new there. It helped popularize motion capture and green screens, sure (although neither was invented by it and instead directly taken influence from earlier works that pioneered and watershed'd that), certainly, I won't argue on that, but Avatar certainly wasn't the birthplace of that.
Arthur Frayn said:
who gives a shit about Star Wars, eventually someone would have figured out how to shoot mashed up WW2 model kits against a blue screen and make them look cool. Who gives a shit about the Wizard of Oz, eventually someone would have popularized color filmmaking.
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Avatar did not as single handedly invent its staples; you call it nihilistic to dismiss, I call it "it stood in others shoulders to get where it is"; Star Wars was something inspired from before, in every way, something its unabashedly proud of, to a point where its greatest achievements are literally it taking inspiration on its sleeves. It didn't invent models on a blue screen to look cool, it did what was already there to make something cool, and Avatar is zero different in that regard.

That's something literally James Cameron himself has said, citing that things like Lord of the Rings, Peter Jacksons King Kong, and Pirates of the Carribean were what finally made him think he could create a film like what he did. Avatar itself, as every person can tell you, is also plain in the influences on its sleeves on its very existence — which is to say, James Cameron grabbing words of authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and going "I will now put my sci fi mil flavouring in there, as the villains".

Avatar didn't invent some new, undreamt of thing, outside the size of its environments (and even then that's nit incomprehensible outside fidelity, which is more a matter of the technology advancing than anything; King Kong certainly isn't slouching in the department of scale of a tropical, magical world; more brutal and grimey and the fucking bug pit, but still, and Pirates of the Caribbean was not underperforming its motion capture or character designs and acting with the crew of the Flying Dutchman or its set-piece battles, especially in the last film). It capitalized on an idea and niche that you can find having started in 2002, and capitalized forwards with inspiration from other great huge CGI works, which is what pretty much every major film company was doing, because giant CGI action-piece environments was becoming the norm. The Prequel trilogy of Star Wars, Mateix, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean, Michael Bays Transformers, the MCU, How To Train Your Dragon, etc.

To say that plainly is not nihilism, it's observing the environment it existed in.

It ain't Jurassic Park when everyone, to stretch a metaphor, is going all in on giant monsters with practical effects and CGI. Avatar being the prettiest and taking home the most prizes is commendable as a technical achievement, but to try and call it some watershed "nothing that looks like this has ever been done before" is so patently untrue, even James Cameron could argue against it.
 
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SpiritFluid said:
Digital film making was not spawned by Avatar, what on earth??? That shit was pioneered by Star Wars. That was literally the crowning technical achievement of Attack of the Clones; and ya can't pretend fhat somehow that was a singular one-odd, since there absolutely was ofher big budgeted sci fi works before Avatar that hit the clouds like that as well, most obviously that I can point at being the Matrix sequels, or nascent MCU films (Thor being an obvious example I can point at of 'lot of CGI environments and acting and broader use of environment and characters and etc).

Avatar did not make anything new there. It helped popularize motion capture and green screens, sure (although neither was invented by it and instead directly taken influence from earlier works that pioneered and watershed'd that), certainly, I won't argue on that, but Avatar certainly wasn't the birthplace of that.

Avatar did not as single handedly invent its staples; you call it nihilistic to dismiss, I call it "it stood in others shoulders to get where it is"; Star Wars was something inspired from before, in every way, something its unabashedly proud of, to a point where its greatest achievements are literally it taking inspiration on its sleeves. It didn't invent models on a blue screen to look cool, it did what was already there to make something cool, and Avatar is zero different in that regard.

That's something literally James Cameron himself has said, citing that things like Lord of the Rings, Peter Jacksons King Kong, and Pirates of the Carribean were what finally made him think he could create a film like what he did. Avatar itself, as every person can tell you, is also plain in the influences on its sleeves on its very existence — which is to say, James Cameron grabbing words of authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and going "I will now put my sci fi mil flavouring in there, as the villains".

Avatar didn't invent some new, undreamt of thing, outside the size of its environments (and even then that's nit incomprehensible outside fidelity, which is more a matter of the technology advancing than anything; King Kong certainly isn't slouching in the department of scale of a tropical, magical world; more brutal and grimey and the fucking bug pit, but still, and Pirates of the Caribbean was not underperforming its motion capture or character designs and acting with the crew of the Flying Dutchman or its set-piece battles, especially in the last film). It capitalized on an idea and niche that you can find having started in 2002, and capitalized forwards with inspiration from other great huge CGI works, which is what pretty much every major film company was doing, because giant CGI action-piece environments was becoming the norm. The Prequel trilogy of Star Wars, Mateix, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean, Michael Bays Transformers, the MCU, How To Train Your Dragon, etc.

To say that plainly is not nihilism, it's observing the environment it existed in.

It ain't Jurassic Park when everyone, to stretch a metaphor, is going all in on giant monsters with practical effects and CGI. Avatar being the prettiest and taking home the most prizes is commendable as a technical achievement, but to try and call it some watershed "nothing that looks like this has ever been done before" is so patently untrue, even James Cameron could argue against it.
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This is twisting my words and you know it, given how you've sliced and diced my comments literally mid-sentence. Honestly I'm shocked my comments have spiraled this far into a full blown argument now, I thought I was making a fairly neutral statement but apparently things like "Jurassic Park didn't spawn a huge multimedia franchise" and "Avatar pioneered a lot of filmmaking techniques" are controversial.

If you go back and actually read what I wrote, the full quote is this:
Arthur Frayn said:
Debates about Avatar's impact, or lack there of, on pop culture kind've miss the point of what Cameron was aiming for, and also ignore the fact that Avatar was insanely impactful and an absolute game changer in the world of filmmaking. First, yes Avatar is a big genre blockbuster and so we expect it to be franchised to hell and back with an EU (and are thus mystified when no EU appears), the film was never really meant to be a Star Wars-esque franchise starter (though I'm sure the suits hoped it would be).

Instead, Avatar is James Cameron using his blank check status to push digital filmmaking and motion capture technology to their absolute limits. The film is, by design, a pretty familiar story with pretty familiar trappings (environmentalism, Vietnam imagery, colonization of the Americas, etc.) so it doesn't have to waste time bringing you up to speed on the world building bullshit. The focus is on Pandora, not as a setting, but as a set piece - to but it simply, Avatar is a $200 million tech demo. It's Cameron showing what the technology can really do with time and effort, applied to a clear vision.

And Avatar was, like I said, an absolute game changer - modern filmmaking is divided into a pre- and post-Avatar world. Like who gives a shit if you think the story is trite or undercooked, the film pushed filmmaking technology to the absolute bleeding edge. It took motion capture technology, which at the time was essentially just fancy rotoscoping (that pretty much only worked on Andy Serkis) and turned it into a practical tool that's (relatively) simple to use. It took digital filmmaking from the fancy FMV cutscenes of the Star Wars prequels and showed us how you can render shots that are almost indistinguishable from real life, in entirely digital landscapes. When it won the Oscar for Best Cinematography, despite something like 75% of it being "shot" on a computer, you know it's a whole new world. There's no MCU without Avatar, full stop, or at least no MCU that we'd recognize.
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I'm clearly saying that what made Avatar unique was its pushing existing technology to the bleeding edge and combining them in new and inventive ways. Motion capture technology and fully digital filmmaking did exist before Avatar, of course they did. What differentiates Avatar, however, was it's depth, literal and metaphorical, of blending of digital filmmaking techniques. In the same way that Star Wars pioneered filmmaking by perfecting blue-screen filmmaking with practical effects and model work, Avatar pioneered filmmaking by perfecting motion capture technology and integrating that into a digital landscape.

Attack of the Clones may have had fully digital environments, but there Lucas was essentially using them as backdrops while the actors walked around a few green blocks, then interspersed with essentially video game cutscenes - there was a clear difference in the cinematography and presentation. With Avatar, Cameron's moving seamlessly between the two with no differentiation, and the elements are interacting with one another in the same way. The motion capture performances are fully lifelike and shot in mays to highlight the lifelike nature. Again, as I said, the film is best viewed IMO as a massive tech demo, Cameron pushing the technology to the bleeding edge as a gauntlet thrown at the industry.

And course Cameron's standing on the shoulders of giants, I never said otherwise. What I found nihilistic about Cloak's post was his attitude essentially boiled down to "Eventually someone else would have done it, therefore no film is significant", a statement I think we'd both agree is pretty bleak way to view art. I'm not sure where you're drawing the point you're arguing against from, since you've sliced it out of context. Look, I've quoted the whole thing, not the bit you've snipped:
Arthur Frayn said:
Lol "It doesn't matter that it did the thing, the thing would have happened anyway" is a meaningless statement, what kind of point is that? Obviously someone, somewhere, eventually would have pushed digital technology forward, but Avatar is the film that did and is thus significant. Like you can say this about any film - who gives a shit about Star Wars, eventually someone would have figured out how to shoot mashed up WW2 model kits against a blue screen and make them look cool. Who gives a shit about the Wizard of Oz, eventually someone would have popularized color filmmaking. What a nihilistic attitude towards art, nothing is significant because eventually someone would have figured it out.

And as @Ford Prefect points out the book was already a runaway hit and the rights sparked a bidding war. We came this close to seeing either Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Columbia and Richard Donner, or 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante make the movie instead of Universal and Spielberg. Dinosaurs had already been popular for literally a hundred+ years before the film came out. While it did change the way dinosaurs looked in the popular consciousness, it didn't suddenly spawn a fandom ex nihilo.

Jesus, my point referencing Jurassic Park was that it was a similar effects driven blockbuster that changed filmmaking but didn't lead to a Star Wars-esque expanded universe (come to think of it, has any non-Star Wars film franchise blown up as big?), but somehow since people liked dinosaurs even more after it came out it proves...I'm wrong? Or something?
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To spell it out for you, the tiny bit you're quoting was me mocking my interpretation of Cloak's attitude with increasingly hyperbolic statements. To go back to Avatar the film, it kicked off the trend of CGI-heavy blockbusters that's since dominated the industry, as we both agree there is no MCU without Avatar. Since everyone's hung up on examples/comparison's, I'll just say that Avatar's supposed lack of pop cultural impact isn't really that anomalous when looked at in comparison to non-megaafranchises, and that there are plenty of other blockbusters that achieved box office success without spawning a devoted fandom.

Honestly I'm, not even sure what is this argument even about. You can misread my statements a certain way, therefore...got you? Therefore the movie...is bad? What's going on here.
 
Arthur Frayn said:
isn't really that anomalous when looked at in comparison to non-megaafranchises,
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This may be the sticking/confusing point, because blockbuster not megafranchise IS unusual these days. Most of us are too young to remember blockbusters that aren't sequels, remakes, adaptations, or franchise installments of something already pop culture huge. Godzilla, DC, Marvel, Jurassic Park, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Sonic the hedgehog, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter... that's the sort of thing most of us think of when we think blockbusters, which distorts the conversation.

The days when you could break the bank and embed yourself in pop culture enough to come out with imagery that everyone knows and references in an original property like Roland Emerich with blowing up the White House in independence day or Spielberg with ET, and then fade away to another unrelated property the next year are before most of our times (I was around for the former but too young to be allowed to see it; I was alive for Jurassic Park 1 but wasnt allowed to see them in theaters until 3).
 
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A thing to keep in mind is that when a work spends an unusually large amount of money to deliver on CG better than anything that came before it, the effect on the industry isn't just "well I guess that level of fidelity is possible, now we need to spend more money to match it." Like that fidelity isn't achieved just by having the animators do more of what they were always doing. That huge budget allows them to develop new tools to do things that haven't been done before, and spend the time to solve problems that've gone unsolved. And then the rest of the industry can use those tools and lessons without needing to spend nearly as many resources as the project they got them from.

IDK maybe everyone here is already aware of this, but it's something that I think isn't immediately apparent about how the industry can benefit from these sorts of projects, and so something people in this conversation might not have considered.
 
If we're only talking about the movie's merits as a tech demo for filmmaking techniques, that doesn't really say anything about its actual quality or cultural relevance. If those same CGI techniques were developed and used to make a 2-hour movie that consisted of nothing other than monkeys throwing feces at each other, everything you just said would still apply. That wouldn't make it a good movie in any way, though.
 
Mak Taru said:
If we're only talking about the movie's merits as a tech demo for filmmaking techniques, that doesn't really say anything about its actual quality or cultural relevance. If those same CGI techniques were developed and used to make a 2-hour movie that consisted of nothing other than monkeys throwing feces at each other, everything you just said would still apply. That wouldn't make it a good movie in any way, though.
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Why does a movie have to be 'good' to have had a cultural impact? That seems like a very prejudicial stance. For example many would agree that Michael Bay's Transformers were not 'good' films, but they definitely impacted movie culture.

To take your monkey example, I don't think we could have gotten anything like Rise of the Planet of the Apes without Avatar.
 
Well when you say 'cultural impact', I assume you're talking about a positive one. Lots of movies that are infamously bad have a cultural impact, just because they're known for being so bad (Plan 9, Gigli, Manos, Birdemic, etc.)

Avatar certainly isn't one of those, but it's not particularly great either. It's really just mediocre, with the visual effects being the only thing that stands out about it.
 
Quality is subjective in any case, but something widely considered to be bad can still be impactful. Jar Jar Binks causes physical pain in a wide range of adults but nonetheless that mocap work has a definite impact.

It's not like Hollywood is chasing things necessarily considered good, so much as they're chasing the last thing to make a ton of money or to capture the zeitgeist.
 
ZeSteel said:
Why does a movie have to be 'good' to have had a cultural impact? That seems like a very prejudicial stance. For example many would agree that Michael Bay's Transformers were not 'good' films, but they definitely impacted movie culture.

To take your monkey example, I don't think we could have gotten anything like Rise of the Planet of the Apes without Avatar.
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bluntblade said:
Quality is subjective in any case, but something widely considered to be bad can still be impactful. Jar Jar Binks causes physical pain in a wide range of adults but nonetheless that mocap work has a definite impact.

It's not like Hollywood is chasing things necessarily considered good, so much as they're chasing the last thing to make a ton of money or to capture the zeitgeist.
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I really don't think this is the line of argument you want to make when insisting that Avatar is awesome and had equal impact to Jurassic Park and Citizen Kane among others :V
 
Jar Jar was unlikeable enough that parodies and bashing directed at him become ubiquitous in pop culture for a while after TPM came out, and he assumed the role of a public hate sink (along with the likes of Barney the dinosaur, Carrot Top, Scrappy-Doo, etc.)

No character from Avatar is memorable enough to achieve that memeticly bad status. Aside from a few dozen people on spacebattles for a few years, no one cared enough about the film to actually hate it or any of its characters. Neither did they love them. They were just... there.
 
1986ctcel said:
I really don't think this is the line of argument you want to make when insisting that Avatar is awesome and had equal impact to Jurassic Park and Citizen Kane among others :V
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I'm not using it to say Avatar was awesome? And I definitely don't think it has had an equal impact to Citizen Kane. I was saying that a movie isn't culturally impactful only if it was good (which @Mak Taru seemed to be saying). A film can be bad or have bad ideas and still massively influence culture.

Similarly a film with an unexceptional story like Avatar can still leave impacts, even if it is not in the way other modern films have. (Think the technologies as mentioned previously, but also its environmental theming and world design).
 
I'm going to go see the sequel as it'll be a cool movie visually, going off the trailer and first film. Fully expect the plot to be average at best, though, and for my to have forgotten it a month later.
 
Mizu said:
I'm going to go see the sequel as it'll be a cool movie visually, going off the trailer and first film. Fully expect the plot to be average at best, though, and for my to have forgotten it a month later.
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Pretty much my position as well.
 
Avatar was a big enough deal that people literally renamed part of a UNESCO world heritage site as a result of its release. This name still stands as of 2022, despite the fact that there's been several grassroots campaigns in China to 'sinicize' stuff like this and avoid just copycatting Western stuff.

I wouldn't call a movie that had enough popularity that as of 2022, there is literally a chunk of a UNESCO World Heritage Site named after a place in the movies one that has no cultural impact.
 
Empire got an interview(s?) with James Cameron for the film, which are scattered about in a disparate state right now because their upcoming issue is only gonna be about this film and will have a lot of exclusives and the like, so, publicity.

But for now and still, some important tidbits
  1. The film is 3 hours long (which he's rather aggressive about, which… I don't really get, that's just A Thing that's starting to come back with films anyways, Avengers ans The Batman being most immediately to mind, but eh)
  2. He doesn't give a single fuck for people who think Avatar didn't have an impact (which I think we can agree is an argument we'll just let sit there like a dog, because the entire page above feels a decent enough to and fro on that, and also No Shit He Feels That)
  3. He's thinking he might have someone else direct Avatar 4 and 5, since he's been wanting to work on other projects and those films will be very big and involved. Robert Rodriguez was floated in the article due to Alita: Battle Angel, but that's more explaining that this has happened before then confirmation of "he's gonna be making an Avatar film"
 
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tankdrop24 said:
Try 100%

www.empireonline.com

Stephen Lang’s Quaritch Is ‘Bigger, Bluer, And Pissed Off’ In Avatar 2 – Exclusive Image

The military commander antagonist of the original Avatar is back for the sequel, and he looks a little different. Read more at Empire.
www.empireonline.com www.empireonline.com

They're explicitly laying out that the RDA is bringing people back from the dead in Avatar form.
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Inb4 Avatar 3 is when the RDA brings back Tupac and Micheal Jackson as Na'vi to spread pro RDA propaganda and they lead an uprising while having a crisis of spirituality.
 
Hologram Killer said:
Inb4 Avatar 3 is when the RDA brings back Tupac and Micheal Jackson as Na'vi to spread pro RDA propaganda and they lead an uprising while having a crisis of spirituality.
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I know this is a joke but honestly, I sincerely hope every single one of these movies takes its concepts and just goes as ham as possible with them. Gimme a musical/culture war story about undead musician-furries in a battle for the soul of an alien world.
 
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