Jump to content

Avatar 2, 3 and 4 or how James Cameron stopped worrying and pulled The Hobbit on us


crocodile

Recommended Posts

59 minutes ago, leeallen01 said:

But Cameron has suggested the 3rd film opens with the 1st act being the summary of the conflict in The Way of Water, and then as the 3rd film continues, it further develops Pandora and its unexplored Na'vi clans.

 

Sounds reminiscent of the split they did for DOS and BOTFA in the Hobbit trilogy (no doubt Cameron will handle it significantly better here).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

Yeah I assume they had a lot more setup at Bridgehead City about why the humans are back (probably involving Selfridge, who only cameos in the final cut but clearly has a larger role in the future), and their plans for Pandora. I wouldn't be surprised if their eventual plan is to terraform the planet with atmosphere processors, like in Aliens.

 

In the final cut of A2 they really glossed over the concept of humans abandoning earth and making Pandora the new home base, which is quite a significant plot point!

 

So it makes complete sense taking that whole chunk of story and moving it to film 3, because the primary antagonist in A2 is Quaritch and his revenge tour, not RDA. Clearly Quaritch will have some type of transformation as each film progresses, then RDA will take over as "the big bad."

I saw a behind the scenes pic of Michelle Yeoh's human character with Selfridge from A3 so he's definitively back in the third movie in a bigger role and I also think that we will see more of General Ardmore. David Thewlis and Oona Chaplin will be in the next movie as well... I wonder who they will play, hopefully na'vi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Mr. Who said:

I saw a behind the scenes pic of Michelle Yeoh's human character with Selfridge from A3 so he's definitively back in the third movie in a bigger role and I also think that we will see more of General Ardmore. David Thewlis and Oona Chaplin will be in the next movie as well... I wonder who they will play, hopefully na'vi.

 

Yep, definitely more to come from Selfridge and Yeoh.

 

Ewmzat8WUA8sa3M?format=jpg&name=4096x409

 

Should we assume that Selfridge ends up back on Pandora, as I doubt the series will return to Earth until the 5th film.

 

18 minutes ago, Mr. Who said:

David Thewlis and Oona Chaplin will be in the next movie as well... I wonder who they will play, hopefully na'vi.

 

Great question about Thewlis, I absolutely love that guy as an actor. So bloody varied!

 

But it seems he'll be in the series until the very end:

 

Quote

“I should be clear, by the way, cause I know that a magazine in Britain has got me in Avatar 2, but I’m not in Avatar 2,” said Thewlis. “I’m going to be in Avatar 3, which was shot at the same time as Avatar 2, and the plan is that I will be in Avatar 4 and 5, as well. I just wanted to clear that up because somebody got that wrong recently.”

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed, @crumbs, about Thewlis.

Boarding school professor (and part-time werewolf); 60s gangster; very angry young man; camp medieval prince, not to mention whatever that was, in TOTAL ECLIPSE (:lol:).

He's a very talented actor, and one of my favourites.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, crumbs said:

 

Yep, definitely more to come from Selfridge and Yeoh.

 

Ewmzat8WUA8sa3M?format=jpg&name=4096x409

 

Should we assume that Selfridge ends up back on Pandora, as I doubt the series will return to Earth until the 5th film.

 

 

Great question about Thewlis, I absolutely love that guy as an actor. So bloody varied!

 

But it seems he'll be in the series until the very end:

 

 

Great picture! I’m looking forward to seeing Yeoh in A3. I think you’re right, Selfridge probably returns to Pandora and might be the head of operations for the RDA, along with General Ardmore. I think that Yeoh’s character is a scientist so she might interact with the scientist who was in the Tulkun hunt scene but that’s just me guessing lol.

 

Thewlis is a great actor for sure. I first saw him in HP but he can really  play any kind role. I read that Oona Chaplin plays a na’vi clan leader (maybe the ash people).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did anyone else feel that there were scenes, especially in the third act, where the CGI noticeably stepped down in quality? I’m not sure if it was more the bad set my up in my rural, struggling theater or if they ran out of time to polish it. Could also have been that I didn’t see it in 3D…

 

I wish I would have waited to see it in my home theater. I think it would have been more of a spectacle. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, PokeDocMatt said:

Did anyone else feel that there were scenes, especially in the third act, where the CGI noticeably stepped down in quality? I’m not sure if it was more the bad set my up in my rural, struggling theater or if they ran out of time to polish it. Could also have been that I didn’t see it in 3D…

 

I've heard from people who saw the 24FPS version that some of the animation during flying scenes looked a bit off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw it again last night in something called RealD 3D (in a Cinemark RealXD theater) and some of the flying scenes in the opening minutes looked rather video game-y in a hyper-real kind of way, if that makes sense. There were also a handful of moments where things looked just a tiny bit off—for example, when one of the massive flying ships was landing and you see the wheels up close, when they hit the ground the tires don’t seem to bulge at all, which was weird since they should bulge a bit when a 2-megaton vehicle is settling onto the ground. At one moment in the third act, Quaritch jumps down from a higher deck and he doesn’t quite move in a finished way. 
 

But believe me when I say that these minor things are completely forgivable considering everything else in the movie looks so good. Like when the whale-creature pulls the harpoon line through the superstructure of one of the boats and you see the violence in the metal and glass being ripped apart… if ASMR was visual, that’s the kind of shit it would look like. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had the opposite experience.

 

When I re-watched Avatar 1 via blu last weekend, I thought that the visual effects were uneven; Really good most of the times, but really rough in spots, most egregiously when Jake goes to sleep in the netting, that looked so fake.

 

When I saw Avatar 2 in the theater though?  Flawless visuals, I thought!  Everything looked perfect the entire time.  The technology is really impressive

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Bayesian said:

some of the flying scenes in the opening minutes looked rather video game-y in a hyper-real kind of way, if that makes sense.

 

I know exactly the scene you're referring to and had the exact same experience (the colourful scene at night flying around the forest, lit only by the moon and bioluminescence). RealD 3D as well. 

 

It might be the first instance of rapid movement HFR in the film and thus stands out in your brain more? 

 

I remember one of the early shots in the first Hobbit looked horrifically bad in HFR, one of the shots of old Bilbo walking around Bag End. It was like the film was running at double speed, because my eyes hadn't adjusted to the HFR. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, leeallen01 said:

I watched the first Avatar recently, and was blown away at the massive step forward that the Way of Water took. It's as big a leap as the first film was.

That reminds me, early in TWOW, we see a flashback to the scene from the OG (sorry, Avatar) when Selfridge and his team are being led away, and the decrease in quality in the rendering from that flashback compared to TWOW is noticeable.

 

How do WETA do it, time and again?? Used to be that ILM was the top dog in the CGI business, but that's certainly no longer the case.

 

Actually, come to think of it, I think I should be a lot more conflicted by the state of this art, since I seriously dread the way AI is soon going to make it impossible to know if we can believe anything we see on a screen, yet I've got nothing but praise for TWOW. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Bayesian said:

How do WETA do it, time and again?? Used to be that ILM was the top dog in the CGI business, but that's certainly no longer the case.

 

 

I think WETA took over as the top dog with LOTR. The real jumps in CG advancement went from LOTR to King Kong to District 9 to Avatar to Apes Trilogy to Avatar 2. 

 

I think WETA took over because of their speciality in facial CGI. ILM did do Davy Jones in POTC though, which still looks incredible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was anyone else confused when the Tulkun hunter Scoresby said he's never seen the Tulkun fight back? But we are shown and told that Payakan led a few Tulkun and Na'vi against a hunter ship. Either Scoresby was lying or he doesn't know that they once tried to fight back. Either way it's strange.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, leeallen01 said:

Was anyone else confused when the Tulkun hunter Scoresby said he's never seen the Tulkun fight back? But we are shown and told that Payakan led a few Tulkun and Na'vi against a hunter ship. Either Scoresby was lying or he doesn't know that they once tried to fight back. Either way it's strange.

Avatar 2 has many strong aspect, a coherent and original screenplay is saddly not one of them

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, leeallen01 said:

Was anyone else confused when the Tulkun hunter Scoresby said he's never seen the Tulkun fight back? But we are shown and told that Payakan led a few Tulkun and Na'vi against a hunter ship. Either Scoresby was lying or he doesn't know that they once tried to fight back. Either way it's strange.

 

It's not at all, if you pay attention to what you wrote that I bolded. :) 

 

I get the impression that Payakan did that years earlier; heck it could even possibly be before the events of the first movie. There's no guarantee that Scoresby was even on Pandora at the time. But even if he was, there are a bunch of reasons why he might not know. I don't get the impression from Avatar 2 that all of the hunter ships are in close contact with each other or anything. They're competitors.

 

Yavar

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just realized another possibility: maybe Scoresby even has heard of this one time the Tulkun fought back. He only mentions that he’s never seen them do it!

 

Either way, I don’t see the problem.

 

I more wonder why practically all of the water clan disappeared at the end, lol…

 

Yavar

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

It's not at all, if you pay attention to what you wrote that I bolded. :) 

 

I get the impression that Payakan did that years earlier; heck it could even possibly be before the events of the first movie. There's no guarantee that Scoresby was even on Pandora at the time. But even if he was, there are a bunch of reasons why he might not know. I don't get the impression from Avatar 2 that all of the hunter ships are in close contact with each other or anything. They're competitors.

 

Yavar

 

I was just curious because when I heard him say they never fight back, but saw them literally fight back, it made me think about the contradiction. But yeah there are many reasons why he might say that. 

 

Also another thing I've been thinking about is the timeframe that Way of Water takes place in. E.g. we see that Ronal wasn't pregnant or at least wasn't showing her pregnancy when the family arrives, but then she is clearly pregnant at the end of the film. Therefore we can assume (I don't know Na'vi pregnancy time) but they were perhaps with the Metkayina for a few months. So that must mean that Spider was with Quarritch for several months. Interesting to think about, because it feels like he's with him for a few days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

I always had the impression that months passed in between Spider’s capture and his eventual rescue.

 

Yavar

 

I don't know why I didn't get that impression. We see him accepting his capture and 'go with it' so to speak. After that we are shown him at the Ikran nest, on the hunter ship and then in all the villages as they hunt for Jake. Of course it's implied that they searched many villages, so that tells you that it would've taken time. I guess I would've liked maybe 1 or 2 very small, personal scenes between Quaritch and Spider. Maybe one discussing his mother. Then it could convey Spider's anger of being held for so long, and also establish a deeper personal connection. It probably exists in an extended/deleted scene, because the deleted scenes of the first film are hugely important to Grace and Neytiri's characters e.g. the incident at Grace's school and the death of Neytiri's sister.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I’d be very interested to see deleted scenes for this. Maybe one explains why the water Na’vi disappeared during the final confrontation. Maybe one shows whether Clement’s character survived. Etc.

 

But actually one main reason I understood it as months was the time amongst the water Na’vi. As you already pointed out Kate Winslet’s character goes from being not visibly pregnant to very visibly pregnant. But are you forgetting that whole montage of them learning the ways of their new community? That to me conveyed a fairly substantial passage of time.

 

Yavar

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Yeah I’d be very interested to see deleted scenes for this. Maybe one explains why the water Na’vi disappeared during the final confrontation. Maybe one shows whether Clement’s character survived. Etc.

 

But actually one main reason I understood it as months was the time amongst the water Na’vi. As you already pointed out Kate Winslet’s character goes from being not visibly pregnant to very visibly pregnant. But are you forgetting that whole montage of them learning the ways of their new community? That to me conveyed a fairly substantial passage of time.

 

Yavar

 

 

Yeah, true. I guess it was just because I wanted more haha. I always want more with the Avatar films. It's just a world and story that I'm glad to lose myself in for as long as I can. 

 

I'm sure the deleted scenes will show the Metkayina retreated under heavy losses or something. Perhaps they were overwhelmed and didn't want to risk more harm. After all, they blamed Jake for their daughter, Tsireya being in danger and once they saw her leave the ship, they probably got the hell out of there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 28/1/2023 at 4:01 PM, leeallen01 said:

I'm sure the deleted scenes will show the Metkayina retreated under heavy losses or something. Perhaps they were overwhelmed and didn't want to risk more harm. After all, they blamed Jake for their daughter, Tsireya being in danger and once they saw her leave the ship, they probably got the hell out of there. 

It’s nearly a sure bet that it’ll be addressed in Avatar 3. The question is whether it was always intended to be addressed in that sequel (ie, before everyone started noticing the problem in TWOW), lol. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 27/01/2023 at 4:41 PM, Yavar Moradi said:

I more wonder why practically all of the water clan disappeared at the end, lol…

Headcanon is that they went after the rafts that escaped from the boat, 'cause those disappeared as well, the last we saw of them was a few getting smooshed by the boat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.