The _Avatar_ sequel, presumably also directed by James Cameron

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.

To be fair, the aliens in the Alien franchise are also colonizers.

Also fwiw, I commute a lot for work and listen to some movie podcasts and Cameron and Avatar are very much Cool and In. If I’m bucking, I’m bucking that thing.

I think he’s got 3 great movies. First Terminator fucking rules and is his best imo.

tie between that one and Aliens.

I was being a bit flip but I do enjoy the dialogue in everything Cameron did pre-Titanic. I wasn’t changing that assessment, just expressing self-doubt

and I know he was the writer and not director but when are we going to get a Strange Days critical reassessment

by the time I watched Aliens the entire Space Marines trope had been kind of driven into the ground so it wasn’t as compelling to me as Alien, which is just top tier

Aliens kills, but Ridley wins that one by a mile. Some of the best art direction in the history of film.

it was kind of fun in avatar 2 to see those aliens-esque space marines as the villains

I mean, they’re not the heroes in Aliens, either. They’re hubris getting clobbered.

i played Hudson in a Shakespearean adaptation of Aliens this past year and basically my entire motivation was "be the loudest talking, dickwaving bullshitter on the planet, then whine like a baby at the first sign of trouble"

true, but fun to think of the movie as aliens from the point of view of the aliens haha

my favorite part of this movie was the general getting overruled by the angriest marine, and then she just walks away and out of the movie about 2 hours before it finally ended

she's just like 'eh, they'll fix it in post, it doesn't matter, bye'

really? that was only my second favorite part of the movie

it was a tough choice! lol

i love this article and the rumor it's based on:

https://www.cbr.com/james-cameron-avatar-3-cut-nine-hours-vfx/

The rumor comes courtesy of industry insider Jeff Sneider, who discussed the third Avatar installment's progress during an episode of the Hot Mic podcast. "Someone reached out [to me] and said Cameron handed in a cut of Avatar 3 last week," he said. "The cut was, no joke, 9 hours long. And apparently, he's insisting on doing the [visual effects] for this cut, so that all 9 hours get fully VFX'd, then he'll cut it down. Rather than figuring out what he wants and having them just do the VFX for that. That's what I heard."

and now that's what i heard, too!

Nine hours?!?

And you'll love every minute of it or else

so that all 9 hours get fully VFX'd

That can't possibly be true.

i feel like a good rumor should push the envelope of plausibility juuuust a little bit

Or maybe that is what Cameron wants, I dunno

Relax guys he'll break it into two 4 1/2 hour installments, it's a win-win.

lol if that’s even a tiny bit true it’s another tick mark in the “dude doesn’t know how to make an animated film” column

It's going to be a Zaireeka-esque experiment where you enter the film midway through at a random point, and there's one boombox with the score, one with the dialogue, and someone in the front row is responsible for hitting play on both

Speaking of Cameron rumors: https://www.thesuburban.com/arts_and_entertainment/entertainment/james-cameron-confirms-urban-myth-about-unique-aliens-pitch/article_c9796270-bc89-5447-a1a5-1938acef7767.html

To be fair, I'd probably watch a Cameron version of DAU.

you have to respect cameron's hustle - feels like he basically convinced the studios to front him three hundred million dollars for his own personal submarine hobby by saying look, it's a big upfront investment but you're gonna get at least 3 billion dollar blockbusters out of this one investment. and feels like he may be... right? i mean it's obvious we're not gonna get dune: avatar or avatar: into thin air, as much as that'd be cool. it's gonna be water from here on out because james cameron loves submersing.

Guessing he’s had some crazy waterproof pressurized casket made so he can be dropped into the deepest part of the ocean.

Cameron at the crib

https://media.tenor.com/jSXJXHzJe64AAAAC/simpsons-troy.gif

It’s interesting to contrast where this movie sits in worldwide movie revenue for 2022 vs US movie revenue for 2022.