The _Avatar_ sequel, presumably also directed by James Cameron

a brief google search for "avatar colonialism" suggests lots of people are talking about it and here's why

and yeah i hate 3d and it was so worth seeing in 3d

On top of not really caring about 3D, the first movie made me pretty motion sick during the 3D shaky-cam parts. But I gave this one a chance and very much enjoyed the 3D, with only a slightly sick feeling at times (not sure whether I changed or if there's a difference between the two films)

jim cameron you mad bastard you did it again

saw this in imax hfr 3d and thought it was an astonishing spectacle

the man spent a billion dollars to make a nature documentary about animals that don’t excise that is also a war movie about transhuman osama bin laden and i simply have to respect the hustle

exist not excise ffs

I decided to revisit some old Cameron stuff I haven’t seen in a while. Titanic. First rewatch since the 90’s. True Lies lined up next, I think.

Titanic is legit fucking bad. Like comically bad through a large portion of it. I say that as someone willing to embrace the cheese. Maybe he has been growing as a filmmaker.

from a disaster movie standpoint, I love Titanic. w/e about the romance bit

It works as a disaster movie when it gets macro and you see the boat splitting in half and people falling and such but that’s probably 15 minutes of the movie at best. Lot of time with cartoon characters and Rose running back and forth in water doing cartoon things.

It is not good.

It's not like he's made much since then, but that was the introduction of his "who gives a shit about the script and acting, it's all about the impact" mode of filmmaking. Basically shamelessly sensorial (including sentimentality). But imo the reason he can get away with long stretches of inaction in movies like the Terminators, the Abyss or Aliens or even (to a lesser extent) the really dumb True Lies is that one likes and is invested in the characters and their relationships in more than a surface way. That's one of the most disappointing aspects of "Titanic" and where imo it loses the plot (so to speak). Since you know from the start that the boat is going to sink, that does a lot of the heavy lifting while you sit through all the boilerplate melodrama. Whereas movies like Aliens and T2, you think you know where they're going, but for sequels they're full of surprises, which heightens the situations of characters you actually, well, care about. Sounds like maybe the new Avatar does a better job on that front than the first one did.

it helped that the "boilerplate melodrama" of titanic featured a romance between two of the absolute finest actors of their generation

titanic is a much more old fashioned film than avatar, a pure star-driven vehicle that relies on their charisma to keep the movie afloat (no pun intended) before everything goes to shit.

that romance was the box office draw, much more than the effects, no matter how state of the art they might have been.

Ffs Billy Zane was in it. Practically screams time capsule.

hey now, Billy Zane slammed evil. Show some respect.

romance was the box office draw

otm. it was a romance 'date' movie from the ground up. the culminating disaster/gruesome mass death/big sfx aspects allowed men to enjoy it, too.

two of the absolute finest actors of their generation

Winslet is very good but are you arguing with a straight face that Leonardo Dicaprio is a good actor? Shit, he's not even a good movie star.

DiCaprio can be good, but he was not good in Titanic. In fact, he was bad (or at least had some of the worst dialogue). But it made him a household name movie star, of which he remains one of a dwindling few.

The romance is what gave it legs for sure, and the sort of legacy that Avatar lacked, but as I remember it was sold as spectacle. Everyone saw Titanic for the FX, but it was the legions that saw it again and again for the romance that surprised the naysayers and made it huge.

I feel like Cameron understands what actors are charismatic but I think at some point he lost the ability to write charismatic dialogue

maybe he never had it, idk!

brad and voodo chili otm, everyone else offtm

Aliens has fabulous dialogue wtf

maybe he never had it, idk!

He managed to make Arnold Schwarzenegger an icon, despite his obvious limiations.

See, Schwarzenegger had no obvious limitations. He never wanted to play Lear, he didn't want to be Meryl Streep: he wanted to be the biggest star on the planet and, maybe, get the Constitution changed so he could run for president. He succeeded with the former. I don't knock off points for realizing his career aspirations.

They’re both good in it, Winslet particularly. But there’s a ton of ADR, understandably (boat deck stuff mostly) and it is weirdly crappy.

I went in with open arms with this one, paid to rent it, but it is insultingly stupid. Without the gloss of WOW that it had at the time, there’s nothing there. Obv The Romance connected hard with a certain segment of pubescent people at a certain time and I can’t begrudge them that. But man, it’s pretty rough as an adult viewer in 2022.

but apparently Scrunchy Face is so good at the sexing that Winslet's hands presses against automobile glass.

every night in my dreams, I see you, I FP youuuu

near
far
I watch Avataaaaaaar

i don't think this movie's politics are bad at all tbh. it's an anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, and environmentalist big budget hollywood movie celebrating a successful indigenous resistance movement. it kind of seems miraculous that it exists? it's a breath of fresh air compared to the cynical ironic centrism of marvel movies. the sequel downplays the white saviour/noble savage stuff a lot relative to number 1 imho

it's a deeply earnest and corny movie so it's inevitable that people who value feeling cool and aloof will clown on it, but it's a genuinely incredible achievement

Cameron's politics are often as opaque as John Milius'. True Lies is a batshit terrible anti-Arab and anti-woman movie, but the Alien and Terminator films have enough genuine contempt for capitalism and faceless corporatism.

I haven't seen anything DiCaprio's been in since Shutter Island, but he's usually been good, especially in his earlier roles.

See, Schwarzenegger had no obvious limitations.

Apart from his inability to deliver dialogue of any length or complexity, which Cameron obviously recognized.

eh every scriptwriter ever has written to a star's limitations. He's not any worse.

Cameron's politics are often as opaque as John Milius'. True Lies is a batshit terrible anti-Arab and anti-woman movie, but the Alien and Terminator films have enough genuine contempt for capitalism and faceless corporatism.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 23, 2022 2:45 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

anti-woman, anti-arab, anti-capitalist, anti-corporatism are not mutually exclusive. makes sense to me as the ideology for an 80s action film director

xp But that's my point, it was actually genius to write a script where Arnold's most memorable lines consisted of no more than a handful of words.

It’s not a miracle that a James Cameron movie put out by Disney that is destined to make billions of dollars has milquetoast anti capitalist, hippy sentiments, sorry.

xp’s

anti-woman, anti-arab, anti-capitalist, anti-corporatism are not mutually exclusive. makes sense to me as the ideology for an 80s action film director

― flopson

True. See: First Blood.

yeah I might even go see it again tonight. I get the white savior comments of the first (i made them myself), but in this film you get illegal game hunters 86'ed, evil imperialist Marine avatars all diced up (but one), the military portrayed as dim-witted automatons that do nothing but destroy, and then there's the inclusivity aspect, where Grace's daughter is at first derisively called 'half-breed', the children all having 'demon blood' and having those same bigoted people coming around and accepting them (except the marines but fuck them).

I feel like Avatar franchise gets held to different standards than some of its peers, mostly because Cameron is a cocky dude. like in 2009 among people I knew it was "well it LOOKED great, but it doesn't look as good on your home tv screen or sound as good, and it doesn't hold up as well on repeat viewings, and also the plot seemed like Ferngully and I needed something STIMULATING for my forward-thinking brain, something like Forrest Gump". whereas some of these same people showed up to Jurassic World opening night and came all over the movie theatre seat cushions

guess I won't be sitting down on any Sanford theatre seats

It’s not a miracle that a James Cameron movie put out by Disney that is destined to make billions of dollars has milquetoast anti capitalist, hippy sentiments, sorry.

Black Panther was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end the Black Panther turned to the camera & said "i am communist now" & then specified hes the exact kind of communist i am

— TORMABLAS PARODYIACKLELALES (@Tormny_Pickeals) February 19, 2018

xpost who cares if they're milquetoast, when it comes down to it, the politics of just about every Marvel movie are pretty cringe (and half the fans took the wrong position, Team Captain, in Civil War). and blah blah blah 'detention center filled with innocent contractors' Star Wars etc etc. idk why Avatar gets singled out.

lol flopson

xps- calling it "milquetoast anti capitalist" proves my pt that "it's a deeply earnest and corny movie so it's inevitable that people who value feeling cool and aloof will clown on it"

the Bill and Ted Halloween show at Horror Nights in Universal used to have a running gag for a decade (until it closed) where someone could come out dressed as an Avatar character and say "THEY HAVE SEX WITH THEIR TAILS" and during the final show ever this actress admitted they'd had it wrong for years and that it was the hair they had sex with and not their tails.

Hollywood has been blandly liberal forever. I mean I guess we’ve dumped far enough that we need to stand up and applaud Avatar 2’s politics.

The piece of cloth dangling between the male Na’vis legs will always cover their penis. They may jump around, swim, or fight, but cloth will always swing into place to hide the penis. Their energies are forever connected with Eywa. The great mother watches over them 🙏

— Rajat Suresh (@rajat_suresh) December 20, 2022

think flopson was more reacting to why people said the politics were terrible in A2 rather than saying Cameron had literally achieved The Battle of Algiers with Blue People.

like do I really go to these hollywood tentpoles thinking "I am hoping to see a film that advocates for a living wage", no, at best I say "I hope this film is entertaining and that its makers don't ruin it with really toxic beliefs" .

lol Aliens is practically the hambone '80s Battle of Algiers.

"Let's see how we whiteys can survive as the native population takes revenge on us."

I checked out on Marvel shit many years ago so if this is a welcome corrective measure, I’ll take it. I grew up in the age of Fern Gully and Free Willy and I guess I don’t see it as revolutionary.

This was a lot of fun.