Oh dear God no. How many films about 9ft smurfs does anyone really need ?
The Avatar franchise will carry on for at least four more films, after James Cameron announced a fifth installment would be released in 2023. The Oscar-winning director had already committed to three sequels but revealed he had too much material to tell the story in only three films.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36052818
I completely agree, but I guess Cameron figures there's some cash to reap.
ReplyDeleteWhat? I didn't even know about the second installment.
ReplyDeleteName single line quotable from the movie .. I come up with nothing. VIsually, it was great. But no "I'll be back" moments in it for me.
ReplyDeleteFred Beckhusen: Hey, Charlie Chaplin is not remembered for his quotables, either.
ReplyDeleteFred Beckhusen "You call that a knife?" Oh wait, that was Crocodile Dundee. Still, the line could have worked with the fight with the guy in the mech suit. That scene only stuck in my head because it cracked me up. Everything else, at least for me, was utterly forgettable.
ReplyDeleteOkay, the knife fight and "un-obtainium".
I loved the CGI. One of the later scenes where they were swooping over the breaking waves was fantastic! The alien plant life was 100% believable. That the story was centered around blue aliens solves "the uncanny valley problem" brilliantly. There are more details I can appreciate but yeah, the story is the old good vs evil.
ReplyDeleteI expect this many movies will be unobtanium.
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't even enough material for one film, how can it make five?
ReplyDeleteThe main problem I have with this film, beyond the absence of scenario, subtlety of an anvil or how it presents the very civilisation that made it possible in the first place as the Ultimate Evil (shame on you villainous spectator, you should live a free life under the guise of a planet-god by neural-linking with all higher forms of life!)
No, the real problem I have is that this entire world is obviously a construct. Think about it.
- Despite what Fermi said, the very next world is inhabited by intelligent aliens
- Despite the age of the Universe, they emerged at our (incredibly ephemeral) development level at the same time as us
- They are more human than any other Earth life-form. Talk about convergent evolution!
- The planet it at the very limit of our interstellar capabilities, and is brimming with a stuff so rare that we (oh so stupidly) call it Unobtainium, right at the moment we need it.
- Oh, and also the entire planet is sapient and all high life forms share a compatible neural port even among preys and predators, in defiance of everything we know about evolution.
So, you find a world that was obviously crafted by Sufficiency Advanced Aliens in the explicit goal to interact with us. What do you do?
- Blocakde it! No-one is going closer to a light-year around it until we have the slightest idea what built it! Oh, and maybe we should start checking our radio emissions...
- Send ambassadors, with a science team, to start very, very carefully studying it from high orbit down.
- Beam around everything we can think of as communication rosetta stones, in the hope they pick it up and start answering the same, along with full-sky surveys to try and guess where they come from
- Invade it, ruin the local environment, pillage it with no respect for what amount to their ambassadors, and most importantly, show that we are the lovely violent/irrational/divided/unpredictable/unreliable/smart/fast-learner kind. You know, the single most dangerous combination to have around as an alien neighbour. To the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that built an entire planet for us and probably have the power to swat us out of the sky like a flea before it multiplies...
So not only this (otherwise idiotic) film hypocritically vilifies the civilisation that produced it, but it even celebrate the collective Darwin Award of the human species, without even realizing it.
That said, I see one way the sequels could retroactively make it a great film. Obviously, that would imply dynamiting its entire premise, the way a point of view is presented to better shoot it down.
ReplyDeleteHere is an example:
Pandora: ...which concludes my report on this new species.
World Mind 1: Their myriads of ephemeral individualities are disconcerting.
World Mind 2: This makes them too dangerous. Can we contain them?
World Mind 3: They are evolving too fast. Our containment would be overrun, and they would then be too strong for us to oppose their will.
World Mind 2: They are too unstable, this cannot be allowed for our survival.
World Mind 2 to 14, Pandora: Agreed
World Mind 1 : There are so many worthy individuals among them. I wish we could have spared them.
World Mind 2: A child will be sent to their world. Sealing their fate, it will keep memory of them, of their history.
World Mind 3: The Na'vi have served their purpose. Time has come for them to end, along with the other humans.
Pandora: No.
World Minds: ...what.
Pandora: They are my children. I will protect them. Even from you.
Synopsis: A relativistic projectile hit Earth, taking Humankind by surprise. Though damage is surprisingly minimal, something starts to influence nature, and turn it against humans.
What do you do when Mother Nature wakes, and turns against you? Kill it? How do you kill a goddess? Your most powerful weapons will barely scratch its surface - but they will kill you...
Spoilers:
-Then, of course, technology itself starts being taken over.
-Also... remember the body snatchers? Direct connection to a Goddess will do... things to a feeble human mind.
-Then again, Pandora has one potential ally, and She won't let them down. Expect to see the Na'vi Expeditionary Force drop from interstellar space aboard geneered horrors any time now. Good thing those things are on our side...
But of course, we need three more films! So, in no particular order:
-Humans ultimately made peace with Gaia, and even adopted neural ports along most higher life forms on Earth. This actually helped greatly their civilisation, and the techno-organic blend is pretty nice once you're used to it.
-Some humans keep isolated from Gaia. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows them greater independence of thought, and make them more inventive. But of course it will sometimes go wrong.
-Then again, even heard about the Internet? Even a planetary neural web with literally a Goddess as the administrator won't always go so smooth.
-That said, there are other problems. Like the many World Being still wanting to wipe out the Human-Na'vi alliance from existence
-Even once those are finally made peace with, because there is enough good in Humankind to make them worth saving - and there are two world minds keeping them in check
-But that is because the world minds have forgotten why they feared Humankind's reckless so much, even at the top of their immense power.
There are ancient shadows, from the abyss of space and time. They have felt new minds arise, and now the time for darkness to cover this galaxy has come back...
Also, Battle for Terra is kind of the Mirror Universe twin of Avatar: both are 2009 CGI films with similar premises, but Battle for Terra had a 4$ budget, and is one of the best films of its decade.
ReplyDeleteElie Thorne I can sum up the problems with Avatar in two words : Floating. Mountains.
ReplyDeleteWhich is also a problem in Interstellar that gets frequently overlooked, possibly because of all the bleakness porn.
I could also go on a rant about the USB-compatible horses, but I won't. Or the US military attacking a giant tree. Or... well, lots of things. It wasn't actually that awful a movie. As CGI : The Movie or better yet Let's Make Sure All Cinemas Buy Expensive 3D Cameras And Increase Their Prices it was fine. There are far, far worse movies out there, and it was one of very few films where the 3D actually worked really well. But the story is Dances With Wolves IIIINNNN SPAAAAACE except told with less subtlety and more explosions. It's fine as far as it goes. But it does not need a sequel, let alone four sequels.
The only way to salvage them will be to call the second one Avatar II : The Search For More Money and go from there.
I believe even Jim admitted that magnetic fields that powerful would pull the iron out of your blood, so... artistic license ;-)
ReplyDelete