I don’t recall that the 3D really did much to enhance the movie. It was just there. Cameron really needs to lean into the 3D cheese and have stuff popping out the screen.
Without the 3D, would it have even been a fraction as popular? The gimmickry is pretty much the only reason anyone went to see it.
When this was mentioned I went into Youtube on my Quest 2 and watched some 3D trailers. StarWarsTFA trailer was pretty good in 3D. I feel it does have a nice effect, and remember mostly enjoying 3D movies that were shot that way, not the conversions. But it feels like the hurdles it has to success is fairly insurmountable these days. Maybe Cameron doesn’t care about making it a standard, he just likes it and wants his movies to use it, and doesnt care about the rest of the industry.
The Avatar franchise is an incredibly expensive way to troll typography nerds.
That’s just bolded Papyrus.
What is this fucked up Woody Allen bullshit of a storyline?
The teaser (in full glorious 4k) has leaked. It’s visually stunning.
It’s playing before Dr. Strange 2 and it’s boring.
Ya. It certainly didn’t do anything to entice me or lead me to believe the story is anything but cliche after cliche. It didn’t even look all that great. Just lots of blue. So much blue.
Hey now, there’s a chance Star Citizen could be good.
It just befuddles me that Cameron, a guy who rarely makes movies, is basically devoting the last of his filmmaking years to spamming out a shitload of Avatar movies. It’s not that great a story to begin with.
If one does a deep dive on the William Gibson-esque peripheral technology rather than the environmental macguffin of unobtanium, there is potential. Plus, Cameron is a fantastic director. There are reasons that Avatar was phenomenally successful (ditto Titanic).
This I agree with, but I’m not sure his directing had much to do with Avatar’s success. Though you could argue he combines live action with effects better than anyone. At least he did prior to the last 10 years of advancements that helped Marvel do its thing.
I have no doubt (at this point) that the new Avatars will be no deeper than the Noble Savage/Enviromental tropes the original played in. But Avatar was really the only Cameron film I didn’t like, so I’m hoping it’s the outlier. Even if the new ones are good I’d prefer he spread his wealth to other films/stories.
I really enjoyed it, despite the rather pedestrian story. I don’t think it has aged that well, but that first viewing was a lot of fun. And I’ve watched it a couple of times since, but not as much as his other efforts.
I would say it has a fair bit to do with. There are many other action-epics-cg fests, but only a very few handful reached success like Avatar. Part of it is the great directing. It’s just the the average moviegoer doesn’t know it.
Good directing isn’t just “showy” directing styles, or gimmicky long one takes, which is what some people recall when they think of a director’s job (because they only notice the director’s work when it’s very overt). It also can be more like an invisible hand guiding the work and making it better than the plot is by itself. Just solid knowledge of how to enhance a scene, how to make it flow effortlessly, how to make it just a little bit more thrilling. The effect is subtle, but profound.
By the way, originally I watched Avatar in 3d on cinemas. Which it had the typical issues for me. Low brightness, it didn’t feel very smooth, the effect 3d was there but felt fake… I don’t if it happens to other people, but for me the 3d effect is like see 2d cutouts at different depths, it isn’t 3d like real life.
Half a year ago I rewatched it on my Quest 2 and woah. VR headsets make 3d films good, for the first time. No brightness loss, no flickering, perfect 3d effect as each image is only shown to each eye without not crosstalk. At times it was like there was really a window in front of me where I could glimpse to another world.
Saw the trailer in front of Multiverse of Madness. Sure, I guess? It looked like an Avatar 2.
A fully fantastical world made with CG and live-action elements just isn’t as mind-blowing as it used to be.
Other than the visual effects, which didn’t exactly blow me away back in the day, Avatar was a crappy movie with a tedious plot and absurd, uninspired action. Putting a dagger in the hands of a mech pretty much captured the level of dumb.
Watching the trailer before Dr. Strange reminded me of Horizon Zero Dawn with a less engaging story, and that’s a low bar…
Oh, agreed. And I see this in his other films but Avatar rode the coattails of the technical/visual achievements not story or acting or really anything else. That said, I haven’t seen it in ages and only chose to sit thru it one time in the first place. So perhaps I missed something. Maybe I’ll take anothe look before the others start coming out.
Yeah, my take on Avatar is that it lacks everything that makes Cameron’s stuff work. That or he’s just lost it. Titanic (the last movie of his I liked) is now 25 years old and Avatar came 12 years after that.
I’ll probably see the two new ones, but likely James Cameron is no George Miller.